“Let's at least go to his camp and look around,” I pushed.
She thought a moment, then looked at her watch.
“That I can do.”
“Give me five minutes.” I gestured at Boyd.
She nodded.
“Come on, boy.”
The head came up and the eyebrows puckered.
A ping in my mind. The dead squirrel. My line of work makes me unusually sensitive to the smell of putrefaction, yet I hadn't detected a trace. Boyd went ballistic at ten yards.
“Could the dog ride along?” I asked. “He's not cadaver-trained, but he's pretty good at sniffing out carrion.”
“He sits in back.”
I opened the door and whistled. Boyd bounded over and leaped in.
Eleven days had passed since the Air TransSouth crash. All remains had been taken to the morgue, and the last of the wreckage was being hauled down the mountain. The recovery operation was winding down, and the change was evident.
The county road was now open, though a sheriff 's deputy protected the entrance to the Forest Service road. The families and press were gone, and only a handful of vehicles occupied the overlook holding area.
Crowe cut the engine where the road ended, about a half mile beyond the cutoff to the crash site. A large granite outcropping lay to the right. Clipping a radio to her belt, she crossed the gravel track and walked the uphill side, carefully studying the tree line.
I leashed Boyd and followed, keeping him as close to me as I could. After a full five minutes the sheriff cut left and disappeared up the embankment into the trees. I gave Boyd his head, and was dragged along in her wake.
The land climbed steeply, leveled off, then shot downward into a valley. As we moved farther and farther from the road, the trees closed around us, and everything started to look the same. But the landmarks given by the Wahnetah family made sense to the sheriff. She found the path they'd described, and from it a small dirt road. I couldn't tell if it was the same logging trail that passed by the wreckage field or another similar to it.
It took Crowe forty minutes to locate Daniel's cabin, set among beech and pine at the edge of a small creek. I probably would have walked right past it.
The camp looked as though it had been thrown up in an afternoon. The shack was wood, the floor dirt, the roof corrugated tin, extended in front to provide shelter for a makeshift bench beside the door. A wooden table and another bench sat to the left front of the shanty, a tree stump to the right. Out back I could see a pile of bottles, cans, tires, and other refuse.
“How do you suppose the tires got here?” I asked.
Crowe shrugged.
Gingerly, I cracked the door and stuck my head inside. In the gloom I could make out a cot, an aluminum lawn chair, and a collapsible table holding a rusty camp stove and a collection of plastic dishes and cups. Fishing gear, a bucket, a shovel, and a lantern hung from nails. Kerosene cans lined the floor. That was it.
“Would the old man leave his fishing gear if he planned to move on?”
Another shrug.
Lacking a real plan, Crowe and I decided to split up. She searched the creek bank while I walked the surrounding woods. My canine companion sniffed and peed contentedly.
Returning to the shack, I secured Boyd to a table leg, swung the door wide, and propped it with a rock. Inside, the air smelled of mildew, kerosene, and muscatel. Millipedes skittered as I shifted objects, and at one point a daddy longlegs high-stepped up my arm. I found nothing to indicate where Daniel Wahnetah had gone or when he'd left. Or why.
Crowe reappeared as I was poking through the refuse heap. After toeing over dozens of wine bottles, cracker tins, and Dinty Moore beef stew cans, I gave up and picked my way out to join her.
Trees whispered in the wind. Leaves sailed across the ground in a colorful regatta, and a corner of the corrugated tin rose and fell with a scraping sound. Though the air felt dense and heavy, there was movement all around us.
Crowe knew what I was thinking. Without a word she pulled a small spiral-bound atlas from her jacket and flipped through the pages.
“Show me,” she said, handing me the book.
The map she'd chosen was a close-up of the piece of Swain County in which we stood. Using elevation lines, the county road, and the logging trails, I located the crash site. Then I estimated the position of the courtyard house and pointed to it.
“Here.”
Crowe studied the topography around my finger.
“You're sure there's a structure back in there?” I heard doubt in her voice.
“Yes.”
“It's less than a mile.”
“By foot?”
