A Fragment Too Far

by Dudley Lynch

  “And what’s the message?”

  “Isn’t that the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question? But I can think of one possibility.”

  I rested my notebook on my leg, reached for my ballpoint, and got ready to write.

  Boots saw this and chuckled. But I wasn’t being cute. This self-taught search and rescue expert had given me more new ideas twenty-five minutes into our drive than I’d had in three days of puzzling over the peculiar exhibit on the prairie. “One might be enough.”

  He laughed again. “Isn’t every day I get the undivided attention of one of the Ivy League’s finest.”

  “Just a humble Texas boy who wanted a change of scenery, thanks. But you’re right, you’ve got my attention.”

  Boots returned to his serious face.

  “Remember the seventies? And that I’m Okay — You’re Okay book that set off such a craze in pop psychology? Maybe this is that kind of message — two kinds of okayness. Two all-seeing eyes. Not in competition. And not paired together. But coexisting in the circle of God, so to speak. Look at the circle one way, and one is on top. Turn it over and look at it the opposite way, the other one’s on top. Doesn’t matter. Both are okay. You think?”

  Looking over at me, saw the intent look on my face, then served up his best imitation of a hillbilly Texas twang. “Howse ’bout ’em apples?”

  Indeed. Here was a professional dog handler explaining how the world was working in terms that would have sounded right at home in one of my Yale Divinity School graduate seminars. I considered joking that “such apples” were hard for a one-eyed person to spot. But instead, I left the subject dangling, and we devoted the remainder of our drive to chit-chat.

  Reverend might find nothing at the circle of trees. But if he didn’t, I sensed that I’d not be needing to apologize to my friend Boots for dragging him and his dog all this way. Abbot County’s descent into craziness was intriguing him. And his keen observational skills were rekindling my own confidence that breakthroughs could be had.

  As he’d reminded me with little effort, my challenge was deciding where to look for them.

  Chapter 41

  Reverend’s deep barks filled the SUV. Somehow, he knew that we’d arrived.

  Boots raised the rear door. Cracked the door to Reverend’s cage open wide enough to reach inside and grab his collar. Let him take a short jump to the ground. Told him to sit. Then did something that surprised me. He let go of his cadaver dog and told him to “go find Johnny.”

  Boots knew he’d need to explain this. “I could say, ‘Go find the corpse,’ but ‘Go find Johnny’ sounds better. Friends and family are usually around during a body search. Or the general public.”

  I wondered about something else. “What if he sees a rabbit?”

  “Wouldn’t give it a second glance. Maybe not even a first.”

  Reverend’s boss pointed to a plastic grocery bag in the back of his vehicle. “He doesn’t get chews for chasing rabbits. His chase target is odors from a human body. And he knows that.”

  “What if it’s a dead rabbit?”

  “Same difference. He’s trained to find human remains, not animal.”

  Boots and Reverend had another surprise for me. About ten minutes into our search, Boots tossed a scarred yellow tennis ball out into the clearing. You’d have thought they were back home on the lawn. Reverend tore after it. Clamped his jaws around it. Squeezed it a couple of times and trotted back to return it to his partner. Ready for another round of ball-retrieval.

  This went on for about five minutes. Then Reverend got a drink of water and returned to work.

  I watched to see if I could spot a pattern to his movements around the clearing. There wasn’t one. All I could detect was unpredictable lopes and quick veers and abrupt stops. Always directed by his nose.

  He wielded it like Assistant Fire Marshal Burrows did his sniffer. Back and forth. Up and down. Wide swath, then a pinched one. If he couldn’t get close enough to the ground to suit himself, he tried to dig a hole. The dirt was so hard he wasn’t having much success, but he’d sent a fair amount of white rock flying.

  Then I saw there was a pattern to the dog’s movements. I’d been looking for the wrong thing.

  My friend Boots had been moving across the clearing a dozen steps at a time. Each time he moved, Reverend made a corresponding shift. When I noticed this, he was nearing the center of the clearing.

  I walked over to Boots. “How much longer can Reverend do this?”

  “Not much longer. I’m going to give him another drink. Then we might get another ten minutes.”

  “Can he check outside the trees?”

  “Not today, I don’t think. I’m concerned about the heat. We can come back tomorrow. Early, maybe. Be cooler then.”

  The surrounding trees were throwing longer and longer shadows. The summer sun had started to set, but the heat wouldn’t dissipate. My thoughts were wandering.

  Not the right word.

  Migrating. Better word.

  Reconstituting. Best word yet.

  My fear over finding bodies in the clearing was lessening. They might be somewhere else. But that required a new theory, and this was what my mind wanted to work on. Tomorrow was another day, and my theory was going to need reconstituting.

  Or so I assumed.

  Then Reverend decided on his own to search outside the tree line. Not tomorrow when it was cooler.

  Now.

  That was clear from the beeline he made for what mariners in the Middle Ages called “Potente.” Due west. The point on the compass that gathers in the setting sun.

  He stopped in the deepening shadows, a few steps beyond the tree line. And began to scratch the packed dirt again with his front paws. Scratch and sniff. Raise more dust, and sniff. Move a few inches away, disturb the surface with those sharp claws.

  And sniff.

  Until he stopped. Laid his head on his paws. He continued to move his bushy tail nonstop. Barked. Checked to see if his handler was paying attention.

  Boots was on the move but not toward his dog. He was returning to his SUV. I headed for Reverend, walking slow. When my friend caught up with me, he was holding a narrow, pipe-like affair with a wooden handle at one end. He held it out so I could get a closer look. “Best fifty-dollar investment I ever made. Called a Paul Brown probe — don’t know why. Beats shoveling where Reverend’s located all to hell.”

  “A soil corer?”

  “Yeah, you can call it that. Reverend and I use it to take sniffing samples. He’s going to go nuts when I get there with it. He knows what it’s for.”

  Boots was soon perspiring like he’d been eating chili peppers.

  The dirt was more than hard. It was rocklike. He’d put as much force on the device’s coring rod as he could without bending it. That had sent it about half an inch into the dirt. “This red clay gunk of yours is harder than the bottom of Satan’s cistern.”

  I had an idea. “What if we poured water around your hole?”

  “I’ve tried that before in soil this hard. The first inch or so of dirt says ‘thank you very much’ and soaks it all up. Nothing much changes.”

  Another thirty minutes of daylight remained, and I didn’t want to quit. “You have a hammer?”

  He was about to shake his head in defeat when he had a light-bulb moment. Or half of one. “What I’ve got is an old croquet mallet that I’ve cut the handle down on. I use it to drive stakes. But you can’t hammer on a Paul Brown — you’ll crimp it in the middle.”

  “How long are the stakes?”

  “Couple of feet.”

  “Have any with you?”

  “One, maybe.”

  “One might do it.”

  Boots dropped the probe on the ground, told Reverend to stay, and started in a brisk walk for his vehicle.

  Halfway
to the SUV, he stopped. Shook his head. Turned to look back at me. “Too bad you don’t have Reverend’s nose. You got a head for this.”

  The stake and the mallet helped us extend our hole to two feet. We fed enough water into it to start growing tomatoes. The probe found softer soil, and Boots sent it deeper and deeper. He dropped to his knees, so he could still push on the handle. About six inches of the rod was still visible when we all heard the thud.

  We’d hit something solid. Something the corer wasn’t going to penetrate.

  Boots started withdrawing the Paul Brown. “Let’s see what Reverend makes of this.”

  The dog was beside himself at the prospect. If Boots needed me to control him, we had a problem. I told Boots that. “Don’t think he knows me well enough for me to grab his collar when he’s like this.”

  Boots had the coring device free of the ground. “No need to do that. He knows the drill.”

  He turned the grip ring until we could view the soil sample inside it and held the instrument out to the dog, allowing Reverend to sniff it at the opening. One more time, he told him to go find Johnny.

  Reverend dropped to the ground. Pushed his nose flat against the slit that displayed the soil in the corer. Sniffed once. Withdrew his nose as if to clear his sinuses. Pushed his nose up against the pipe-like device again. Sniffed again. And began to pray. He considered Johnny found.

  The resounding thump had dissolved any optimism I’d been feeling about not finding signs of any bodies buried in the circle of trees. Now, dread was flooding in — fear that Reverend had found more than one Johnny.

  Boots tossed the coring device a few feet away and left it where it landed. “I think we’ve at least got a suspicious wooden box. If you want to find out what’s in it tonight, we’re going to need a shovel crew and some floodlight stands.”

  I was already adding to the list. “And a CSI team. And the medical examiner’s people. And a consignment from one of Flagler’s all-night diners. What does Reverend eat?”

  His owner’s grin telegraphed how fond he was of the talented canine. “Scrambled eggs. Hot dogs. Three or four hamburger patties would be nice. Or a couple of liverwurst sandwiches. But he’s headed back into his cage. Look at him. He’s tuckered.”

  Chapter 42

  The food never arrived. My mistake. I’d forgotten to ask anybody headed out to bring it. That was a shame. Everyone in the sheriff’s department — Deputy Tanner, Detective Moody, Detective Salazar, Detective Coltrane, all of them — knew the closing hours of every café, burger joint, and bar kitchen in town. Knew the best cooks to place late-night or early morning orders with. And they welcomed a chance to rustle up grub for colleagues because they’d get a chance to order something for themselves.

  From the sounds coming from the back of the SUV, Reverend didn’t consider food an issue. Or anything else. The snores had kicked in about thirty seconds after Boots put him back in his cage. Ever since, they’d rolled through the vehicle, regular as high-tide ocean waves, and about as loud.

  “I take it Reverend doesn’t share your bedroom.”

  “Uh-uh. No way.”

  I told him I had one more location where I wanted Reverend’s assistance. The remodeled Cromwell Company warehouse. To get in all the rooms, we were going to need machinery — and machinists — capable of cutting through hardened steel. But we could give Reverend’s nose enough to sample that we’d at least know if this was a high-tech slaughterhouse.

  Boots said he’d like to see the structure himself. Told me where he planned to stay the night. Said he wouldn’t mind a chance to sleep in and a late breakfast. I suggested meeting at the Eden Junction Bar and Grill. Told him we could get Reverend a couple of double meat cheeseburgers. We humans could have something more sensible like their whipped-eggs breakfast pie, hash browns, biscuits and gravy, and homemade strawberry preserves. He said he wished I’d not been so specific. Now he’d lie awake all night in anticipation.

  Boots and his devoted sidekick headed back to town not long after the first of my department’s vehicles arrived. A CSI team. Only a couple of guys — and I was lucky to get those. All my crime evidence folks were young, and late Saturday night wasn’t the best time to try to round up a crew, even if they did wear their phones around the clock.

  Soon afterwards, we got occasional glimpses of a parade of vehicle lights making their needle-prick approaches through the darkness.

  They seemed to be taking forever as they crept toward the ridge. That was because the crappy road between us and the Sweetwater cutoff wouldn’t let them come any faster.

  After thinking about it, I got the road equipment manager for the county out of bed. Apologized. Told him our predicament. Rock-hard ground. A probable hit by cadaver dog four feet below the surface. I was thinking a casket or at least a large box. We needed help excavating it.

  That explained one set of headlights. He’d rounded up a work crew and sent us a backhoe.

  My CSI youngsters had hand shovels. The driver for the ME office’s van didn’t look like he knew how to use one. The two night-shift deputies who’d responded did. Better yet, they’d brought one for me.

  The powerful steel teeth of the backhoe’s digging bucket needed less than a dozen hefty bites before I heard the thump again. Same solid reverberation as before. I wasn’t sure what to compare it to. My grandmother’s old cedar chest popped into my mind, not that I’d ever heard it make that kind of a sound.

  I gave the operator a go-easy signal. Two more partial scoops, and I shut him down.

  I was about to lead the way into the hole when the machinery operator shouted a warning. Too dangerous to do that, he indicated. Gestured to let his machine have another go at it. I did. He didn’t need long to uncover the rest of the box lid with his digging bucket. Then he maneuvered his machine so it could reach sideways into the expanding hole.

  I had to watch him work for a time before I understood. He was sloping the sides — all four sides. Making their angle more and more shallow. He didn’t want us climbing into the excavation until he had minimized the risk of a trench collapse.

  For this reason, it was deep in the night before we made our way into the hole with our shovels.

  I doubted that any of us had experienced a night quite like this. I hadn’t — not once in sixteen years on the job. The raspy mating sounds of the male katydids in the trees had provided us with background music. There hadn’t been a lot of talking. I’d noticed a lot of yawning. I was sure that every single one of us wished the night to be over.

  The box looked to be a cedar chest. Longer than most computer tables and about as wide and deep. Dirty as it was, the richness of the red wood grain still shone through. Both my grandmothers had had one.

  I decided we should try and remove the lid before we extricated the entire box. If it contained nothing of interest, we might leave it in place. Fill the hole back up. And go home. To bed.

  Our digging crew moved enough of the surrounding soil to keep it from piling in when I asked them to remove the lid. That turned out to be a shrewd idea. Otherwise, it would have tumbled down on the box’s contents. I didn’t want the body disturbed. Nor the Bible that had been buried with the individual.

  One glance suggested that this was an adult’s body — what was left of it.

  The skeleton was resting on its side, with both arms drawn behind its back. Another oddity was the belt. It was wrapped round the victim’s neck.

  I had a potential name for the owner within moments of our lifting the lid free. That was because of what was written inside the Bible: “Property of Wilson W. Carmichael.”

  This might not actually be Wilson W. Carmichael, of course. It could be someone else. But I wasn’t expecting that. I was suspecting that this was Dr. Wilson W. Carmichael, Bible faculty member at the University of the Hills, who had been missing for more than twenty years. No Cock Crowed Box No
. 6 had a file devoted to his disappearance. I hadn’t looked at it all that close, but I remembered a few details. Mainly how Dr. Carmichael had left his friends one spring night in 1997 and was never seen or heard from again.

  As I stared at the frontispiece entry in the old Bible, I couldn’t resist repeating aloud a snippet of “Amazing Grace”: “I once was lost, but now I’m found.”

  My next thought I kept to myself. Welcome back, Dr. Carmichael. You need to tell us why you went away.

  I’d think about it some more once I’d had some sleep.

  Chapter 43

  The first time my phone let loose with one of the musical tones I’d set it up to play, the LED display on my digital clock said 8:09 a.m. This time, it was the Spanish guitar ringtone.

  My initial impulse was to ignore it. I’d been in bed less than two hours. Couldn’t the universe let a dedicated public servant who’d been up all night get a few hours’ sleep?

  Then I saw the 512 area code — Austin’s area code. Had to be my friend Boots. Wasn’t going to be good news. No doubt my plans for the day were already falling apart.

  He said he and Reverend were headed back to the Hill Country. A gas explosion near Houston had collapsed most of a café filled with people. Rescuers were asking for Reverend’s help. He apologized. If I needed them back, they’d return as soon as they could.

  I said I’d let him know. Wished them safe travels. Tossed my phone back on the top of my nightstand and rolled over on my side. I was asleep in seconds.

  The next time my Spanish guitarists started striking up golpes, the LED display said 8:59 a.m.

  My dispatcher, Jeff Sanders, apologized. Wouldn’t quit, in fact. Sounded worse than Delbert Burrows. But Doc Konnie had called a couple of times insistent that she’d discovered something that I’d want to know about the remains in the cedar box. I told him not to worry, that Doc Konnie would do enough of that for both of us. Told him that I’d call her. And I meant to do that as soon as I hung up — and would have if I’d been able to stay awake that long.