The house remained quiet.
“Can’t you just go up to the door?” I suggested to Thorne.
He pointed to the “Beware of Dogs” sign. “Can you read?”
“I don’t see any dogs,” I said. “And I know you’ve got a gun. Can’t you defend yourself against some puppies?”
Thorne said, “Let me try calling again.” He took a breath. “Hello!”
Still no sign of action at the house. No one at a window peeking out. Nothing.
“If you’re not going to go, I guess I will,” I said. I had my foot on the bottom board of the gate, the other foot on the board above it, then a leg over the top in a couple of seconds. “I’ll go knock on the door,” I said. I was feeling a bit wired still. The discovery of the body, the drive up, the mistaken identity, it all had me a bit rattled, and I was eager to get some answers. Also, there was a part of me that was enjoying showing up Chief Thorne in a way I found hard to explain.
“Mr. Walker, I think you’re making a mistake,” Thorne said. But I had both legs over now, and had hopped down to the other side.
I had taken maybe a dozen steps in the direction of the house when, up by the barn, I saw two brownish-gray blurry things heading toward me. Blurry, because they were moving so quickly. They were low to the ground, galloping, coming at me like a couple of torpedoes, and as they closed the gap between us, I could hear their rapid, shallow breathing and deep-throated growling.
The sign was right. These were dogs.
“Yikes,” I said, stopping for maybe a hundredth of a second, then turning back and bolting for the gate. Never did such a few steps feel like such a great distance.
“Hurry!” Bob shouted. “Don’t look back!”
I leapt at the gate, had my arms over the top, my legs looking for a purchase. My chest was over the top as the two dogs threw themselves at the gate, a combined frenzy of snarling and barking. I looked down, only for a second, saw one brown beast, one black, a bristly ridge of fur raised along each of their spines.
My leg jerked back as one of the dogs grabbed my pant leg, down by the cuff. The dog must have been in midair as he bit into it, and his own weight dragged my leg back down. I kicked wildly, heard the sound of fabric tearing, and now Bob and Thorne had grabbed hold of my upper body and were pulling me to safety. I fell into their arms, didn’t even try to find my footing on the other side of the gate, then fell out of them and onto the gravel.
The dogs were going nuts on the other side, barking, biting at the wood, slobber flying in all directions as they tried to eat their way through the gate to get at me.
They weren’t even particularly huge dogs-they wouldn’t have come up much past my knee if I’d been standing next to them, which I had no intention of doing. But their boxy heads and ragged teeth seemed disproportionately large compared to the rest of their sinewy bodies. Their ears were short, their eyes large and menacing.
They were jaws on legs.
Thorne offered a hand to help me up, then pointed to the relevant sign again. “I told you not to go over,” he said smugly.
The dogs had accomplished what Thorne’s shouts had not. The front door of the house was open now, and there was a man approaching, followed by another, younger one, stocky with black hair, and then a young woman. She had dirty blonde hair, and the down-filled hunter’s vest she wore over a plain blouse and jeans failed to hide her nice figure.
The man in the lead, late fifties I figured, was about six foot, broad shouldered, nearly bald with a glistening scalp, thick through the middle, 230 pounds, easy. He had the look of a football hero gone to seed. Not quite in the same shape he was thirty years ago, but still capable of doing a bit of damage. He trotted down in black military- style boots, and while not in camo pants like our dead friend in the woods, his pants and jacket were olive green.
“Wickens,” Thorne said quietly.
“Gristle!” he shouted. “Bone! Halt!”
The dogs kept barking, oblivious. As Timmy Wickens got closer, he shouted the names again, and the dogs, hearing him this time, stopped their yapping and looked behind to see where the voice was coming from. At the sight of their master, they became docile and stood, patiently, awaiting instructions.
“Barn!” Wickens said, pointing back to the structure, and the dogs immediately took off, charging back to where they’d come from. “Dougie,” Wickens said, speaking to the young dark-haired man who’d come loping along behind him, “make sure they stay in there. Did you not close that door like I told you?”
Dougie looked down. His arms hung heavy and straight at his sides. “It might have slipped my mind. I was doing some other stuff.”
Wickens sighed. “Go do it now,” he said, and Dougie turned and walked off as obediently as Gristle and Bone.
That dealt with, Wickens approached the gate with a relaxed swagger, like having the law and a couple of other men waiting to see him was no big thing. His eyes narrowed as he looked at the three of us, settling finally on Thorne.
“Chief,” he said, a somewhat bemused expression crossing his face. “What can I do for you today?”
“Mr. Wickens,” Thorne said, nodding, removing his hat and tucking it firmly under his arm. Any other time, I might have interpreted that as a gesture of respect, but odds were he just wanted to hang on to it. “How are you today?”
“I was pretty good up to a moment ago when you got my dogs all riled. Who’s this man was about to trespass on my property?”
I let Thorne do the talking. “This here’s Zack Walker, Timmy. He’s Arlen’s son. Arlen twisted his ankle, has been taken to the hospital, and Zack here is trying to help out. And you may know Bob here, he’s renting one of Arlen’s cabins.”
The woman-I guessed she was the daughter, May-inched forward, holding back a step or two behind her father.
“Is this about Morton?” she asked. “Has someone found Morton?”
Timmy Wickens turned and said, “Just hold on, May, and let me see what this is all about.”
“Is someone missing?” Thorne asked. “Who’s Morton?”
“My daughter’s boyfriend,” Wickens said, not yet appearing concerned about anything but my going onto his property, which, when you thought about it, it really wasn’t. This was all land rented from my father. “Morton Dewart. He’s been gone awhile, doing a bit of hunting.”
“What’s he hunting for?” Thorne asked.
Wickens ran a hand over his bald head, paused a moment as if to collect his thoughts, and said, “Well, there’s been a bear out there he’s been looking for. It’s been nosing around the house, Morton’s been saying he wants to teach it a lesson, make sure it don’t come around here no more. My daughter, she’s got a young son, Morton wants to make sure it’s safe for him to play outside. So he grabbed his shotgun and said he was gonna go looking for it.”
“You’ve seen this bear?”
Wickens nodded slowly. “Big bastard.” Another pause. “Has one ear missing, left one I think, like it got cut off, or he lost it in a fight with another bear, which is more likely.”
Bob raised an eyebrow, imagining a bear fight, maybe.
“What’s going on?” May asked. Her voice was filled with worry. “Why are you here? Has something happened to Morton? He’s been gone a long time.”
Thorne swallowed hard, put the hat back on his head. He must have been confident that no one would hide his hat when there were life-and-death matters to be discussed.
“Mr. Wickens,” Thorne said, “there’s been a bit of an incident, just down over the hill a ways, by Arlen’s cabins.”
“This to do with Arlen’s ankle?” Wickens asked.
“Uh, no, not exactly. But I wonder if you’d mind coming to have a look with me at what we found.” Tentatively, he added, “You might want to leave your daughter here.”
May stepped forward. “No, I’m going, too.”
