revealing vistas of rock-strewn steppes and hillsides dense with evergreens. Stands of lovely white-skinned aspens randomly interrupted the green. We came into a narrow canyon where lodgepole and ponderosa pines stretched up bluffs on either side of the road. There were no cars, bicycles, or hikers. I dreaded the prospect of all the unknown territory out there ? even more than I feared arriving at the campsite.
“You need to show me where you turned off,” General Bo told Marla, and she pointed mutely to a still narrower, unmarked dirt road. We rocked through muddy ditches, turned and once again found ourselves next to Grizzly Creek, this time heading upstream. We paralleled the bloated waterway until it disappeared upward into a ravine. The water crashing over rocks roared so loudly we could hear it inside the car. We pulled up to a rough parking area lined with logs. Marla drew in a ragged breath. Arch leaned forward to peer outside.
Arch told General Bo to cut the engine immediately. My son said, “Carbon monoxide from the engine exhaust can destroy the scent at the site. All the rain will make Tony’s scent stronger. A person drops individual bacteria and skin cells everywhere he goes,” Arch added. “When there’s little wind, no car exhaust, and a lot of moisture, the trail of a person’s movement can be detected for a long time, even weeks.” Even, as I had just learned, if he’s gone into or through water.
My eyes skimmed the abandoned campsite. Because we had climbed from the main road, what had been a lowlying gray cloud just above us was now a mist drifting between the pines. A picnic table had been upended, either by campers or by the investigators. Bits of tissue, crusts of food, and torn paper plates spotted the mud. It looked as if the trash can had been emptied. My guess was that this had been done in search of evidence.
“Okay, I’m going to get out first,” General Bo announced. He emerged stealthily from the Jeep and checked every corner of the campsite. His movements were hawklike, aggressive.
General Bo signaled to us to come. Jake began to snort excitedly. When Marla opened her door, I nodded to Arch, who hopped out with Jake in tow. I glanced at the cellular phone on the floor of the front seat. Call Tom now or later? I was going to call him, I was determined. I jumped out of the Jeep. Later.
Arch crouched next to Jake and murmured. Marla limped over to the creek and stood next to the raging water with her arms hugging her body. Arch reached into his backpack and pulled out his dog-handling gloves, then the working harness, which he snapped into place around Jake’s powerful torso. My son’s face was serious. I suspected he was beginning to understand the possible consequences of what we had done ? or what we might find.
The general strode back to the Jeep and pulled out a large backpack on a frame. He hooked his arms through the metal support and fixed the straps around his waist. I took a deep breath of the cold, moist air and tried to think. Arch had told me that the record for a bloodhound tracking was one hundred forty miles in a day. Before darkness obliterated this fog, I doubted we’d go
more than a tiny fraction of that distance.
At Arch’s request, General Bo hauled out the bulging plastic bag that held Tony Royce’s pants. Bo signaled to me to come, then handed Arch the bag and reached into his pocket for a tightly folded laminated map. In the gathering gloom we squinted at the map: Ragged red lines marked Grizzly Creek, Bride’s Creek, Clear Creek; blue lines indicated the back roads; a double yellow line showed Interstate 70. To the west lay Idaho Springs; to the east, Aspen Meadow. Bo looked up and scowled.
“You ready?” I asked him. He nodded. In one fluid motion, Arch expertly opened the bag and clutched it from the bottom so that the open end was near Jake’s nose. Don’t ever overwhelm a bloodhound with scent, he’d told me. You just give him a whiff; and that’s enough. Arch held up the bag and leaned toward his dog. Then I was startled to hear my son’s mature command cut through the fog.
“Find!”
And off Jake went, glossy nose to the ground, long ears brushing the mud, long brown legs swaying from side to side. The hound cast around for a moment, then, tail curled up, ambled purposefully up the path away from the creek. Sensing that something was finally happening, Marla pulled away from her somber contemplation of the creek’s edge. Thirty feet beyond, Jake made his way with determination up the hill. The dog tugged so hard on the leash that Arch’s arms were straight and taut. Maybe I should have called Tom. But what would I have said to him? Arch and I are trying to pick up on the trail of a guy who might be dead. With us are a) my friend who’s been accused of murdering the maybe-dead guy, b) her brother-in-law who was so crazy the Pentagon dumped him and you sent him to prison, and c) a bloodhound the police retired for being unreliable. Wish you were here! I sighed deeply and trotted toward the path. Marla called that she would follow at a slower pace.
Within moments the campsite was gone from view. I tried to recall the most Arch had tracked with Tom and Jake in a day. Two miles? Five miles? Far above the fog, the sun was beginning its decline to the west, and soon the light we did have would drain away. I wished I’d checked our exact location on the map.
My feet slipped on the dense, slick carpet of pine needles, and I stopped to wait for Marla. By the time she caught up with me, the mist was thickening to a light rain. Our scraggly company halted when Jake snuffled in an erratic circle. I hustled up in Arch’s direction, then walked beside him as Jake scrambled over a cluster of rocks. Abruptly, the dog stopped by a pile of granite outcroppings.
“Pool scent,” Arch muttered under his breath. “Maybe he or they sat down here.”
Increasingly excited, Jake continued to wheel in a tight circle. I looked up into the pines. Every now and then the object of a search would climb a tree, as Arch’s friend Todd had done on a trail only last week. The last thing I needed was to stare down the barrel of a gun aimed at me by Albert Lipscomb. But the lodgepoles and ponderosas were empty. The trees stood with perfect, eerie stillness in the swirling mist.
“Wait!” came General Farquhar’s brusque command. He was peering at the ground. “Arch, pull Jake up.” Arch obliged. “There’s something here,” the general insisted.
I walked carefully over the sodden ground to where Bo and Marla stood by the granite outcroppings. “Marla,” I said as I stared at the ground, “would you reach into the pack and bring out the plastic bags?” Bo dropped down on his knees to make the backpack accessible, and Marla awkwardly unzipped the pack and dug around until she found the cardboard box of Ziplocs, which she handed to me. I impatiently opened the box, carefully removed one bag, and unfolded it over my hand. Then I reached down and snatched the object from the ground, folding the bag up and over, the way I had seen Tom do.
Jake started off again. General Bo stood quite still and looked at the plastic bag in my hand. Then he snared me in the spell of his eyes. In the fading light, I carefully maneuvered my hand around the article I’d picked up.
Marla stared at the bag in disbelief. I couldn’t compute what was there. Any graduate of Med Wives 101 knows that, my inner voice reprimanded. What I held in my outstretched hand was a Vacutainer tube, the kind used in blood tests. The nurse sticks you with the hypodermic needle, draws out your blood, and it goes into a sterilized plastic tube. If you’re in for a complete physical, first she fills one tube, then another. The tubes are labeled and capped: one to have your hemoglobin checked, another your thyroid, and so on.
But this was one plastic Vacutainer tube only, and it was broken. The shards were covered with dried blood.
17
Marla spoke first. “So what does all this mean?” she demanded impatiently. “Is that Tony’s blood? Albert’s? Or somebody else’s?”
“Here’s my best guess,” I said. “This tube?” I pointed. “This is where the blood came from that ended up spilled all over the shirt in your trunk.”
“But whose blood is it?” she repeated impatiently. Before any of us could answer, however, Jake darted off: away from the granite outcropping, up the hillside path. Tugged along by his dog, Arch yelled for us to follow. General Bo gave one quick shake of his head, leapt to his feet, and jogged up the path in pursuit. I held Marla’s arm as the two of us struggled to follow.
The rain thickened to icy drops. Thunder rumbled overhead. The shaggy pine needles overhanging the path trembled as the chill rain pelted downward. I pulled up my jacket collar and looked anxiously up the trail for Arch.
“Safety alert,” Bo called down to Marla and me. “We shouldn’t be out in a forest, at this altitude, in a lightning storm.” We mumbled assent, and Bo called for Arch to pull Jake up. Then Bo loudly summoned us to a retreat action. “Back to the Jeep, everybody! Time to get dry and look at the map!”
I made a U-turn on the path. No matter what you were doing, it seemed, the general wanted to be in charge. The rain leaked down my collar. My skin was chilling as fast as the thin membrane of ice that forms on Aspen Meadow Lake each November. Thunder boomed again, much closer this time.
