by Ellen Clary
Harris said, “Secure the bag and then examine the string very carefully.”
“I’m hanging off the side of a canoe, how am I supposed to secure it?”
“Can you lift it into the canoe?”
“Probably not without capsizing. Wait, I have an idea.”
He took off his flotation vest, wrapped it around the bucket, and then tied it to the canoe. “I wrapped my PFD around it and tied it to this cross-piece-thingy of the boat.”
Janet said patiently, but trying not to laugh, “It’s called a thwart, for the record.”
“This thingy?” he said, inclining his head towards it. “It can call itself Harold for all I care as long as it hangs on to the bucket.”
Steve reached down and picked up the bucket lid. “I’m going to put the lid on as best I can without sinking us.” He lined up the lid and reached down into the water, his fingers pulling up while the other hand pushed down. “Brrr, this water is cold.” The boat started to roll, but the life vest attached to the bucket helped counterbalance. Switching arms, he pinned down the other side of the lid. “Bucket is secured.”
He could hear, “Yaaay,” over the comm.
Steve said, “This string appears to be kite string. I’m pulling it in and I really hope there’s not a bomb on the other side.” Hand over hand, he slowly started pulling the string in, letting it pile up in the bottom of the canoe. “I’m feeling some resistance, but it’s not like a treasure chest.”
After what seemed to Steve to be a few weeks, he could feel the string tugging more. Looking down, he saw a white round shape. Pulling it closer revealed it was a roll of the rest of the string. “Central, I’m holding a ball of string. I didn’t realize he was flying a kite.”
“Acknowledged.”
“We’re heading back in. I’m working on a theory about this.”
“Come back in, and we’ll be all ears.”
As they carefully worked their way back to the shore, Steve looked back at the first point that Pearl had signaled. Then his eyes traveled over to the second place. It made perfect sense. In his mind’s eye, he could see Adam setting the bag and its tarp down in the water and securing the string to the bag with a piece of tape. Then he watched Adam walk around the edge of the lake playing the string out. When he got to the second spot he carefully pulled the bag into the center of the lake. Once there, he then wrapped the rest of the string back onto the roll and threw it into the water.
It was a cleverness he had to admire.
CHAPTER 62:
Yolanda and Gimli Search
YOLANDA AND Gimli were walking in the parking lot of Cromwell 2 looking for Adam’s scent, when Gimli said, /Here./ Phew, Yolanda thought, feeling both relief and excitement. They had struck out at Cromwell 3 and she was afraid they were going to have to try number 1. This lot was paved and large. They had been methodically scanning it for five minutes when Gimli found a sign of Adam on the far side of the worn paved area. It was a surprising location as it wasn’t right by the wide hiking trail that surrounded the water body. “That’s weird, it’s almost like he’s trying to be sneaky,” she said to no one. Adam hadn’t struck her as the sneaky type. Wrong again, she thought.
“Central, this is Yolanda. We’re at Cromwell 2 and Gimli has indicated a spot that has Adam’s scent.”
She heard Harris say, “Good to hear, Agent Danimeyer, please keep us updated on your progress.” That was sort of a pointless thing to say, she thought. But she realized that his statement of the obvious combined with the formal address form meant they were doing for-the-record references.
Just to be a smart ass she said, “Thank you, Agent Consuelo’a.”
“Oh, and Yolanda?”
“Yes, Harris?”
“The lab analyzed the bag that Steve and Pearl found, and they revised the deadline when the bags might start dissolving to two and a half hours.”
“It’s so nice to hear your voice sometimes. Such a nice, relaxing time.”
“Good hunting.”
Oh, eff off, she thought.
She looked at Gimli, who was still drinking in what he found on the damp, paved ground through his nose, but he looked up and danced in place in anticipation. Time to go my boy. “Go search,” she said, and with a bark he was off.
Because he was low to the ground, he could easily alternate between smelling the scent that was in the air versus actually putting his nose to the ground. Once in a while, his head would come all the way up and he’d look around, sniffing in several directions. “Gimli, do you still have the scent?”
/Mmm,/ came the noncommittal response, which essentially meant: Hang on a moment.
Then he put his nose to the ground and said, /Here,/ and was off again.
He worked his way halfway around the perimeter of the lake. There he stopped and started moving around to the left and the right. He took a few steps ahead, then turned around, and came back to the same spot. Yolanda could swear she saw smoke coming out of his ears, but decided not to interrupt him. Harris knew where she was and would eventually notice that they weren’t moving anymore, but he would let them work for a bit first.
Then Gimli was standing on a rock beside the path. It was beside a small stream coming into the reservoir. The water went from the stream into a pipe and then presumably into the larger body of water. He was standing there with his head extended out from his neck, which looked very odd on a dog with such a small body. His body length appeared to double, though she knew that wasn’t possible. Then, at what had to be his maximum stretch, he folded his body in an accordion and leapt up the stream.
“Whoa, slow down, let me catch up,” she said as she located a boulder that would support her weight and not roll. She didn’t weigh much compared to the average human, but she was no corgi. She wanted to keep him in sight, but didn’t want to compromise the scent track.
She looked up to see Gimli working his way up a creek. “This is called a stream. It’s a small river,” she said, using a word they’d worked on before.
/Pof/
Which meant: I’m busy, no time to learn a word.
“Fine then, don’t mind me helping you evolve.” Actually, we really don’t have time for school right now anyway, she thought.
/Pof/
“Central, Canine Gimli has discovered that the suspect’s trail is leading up a small stream. He’s working his way up it.”
“Roger, Agent Danimeyer,” Harris said.
Yolanda smiled, remembering Steve’s penchant for saying, “Roger who?”
Gimli kept working his way along the stream, first going on one side and, when that seemed to run out, discovering the scent on the other side a little ways down. It wasn’t easy for a human to stay in this stream. It was clear that Adam wasn’t experienced in evading a tracker, and he was trying things he had probably heard about in the media.
As they progressed, the embankments on each side seemed to grow, and she had to raise her head to see the top of them. Then they went around a corner and ran into a shrubbery. But it wasn’t a shrub, or at least not just one. There were branches of possibly four different trees, one pine, one alder, and a couple of other ones, and some manzanita and other bushes facing them. Closer examination showed they had been recently broken off. Gimli was shoving his nose all over the bushes. /Here,/ a head turn, /Here,/ a step to the right, /Here/.
Relieved he wasn’t freaking out about the bushes, she said, “Okay, stop. I get it. Good boy. Adam placed these branches. Is it to slow us down or to hide something, I wonder? Want to climb?”
He barked in assent.
“And how did I know you’d say yes?”
He barked again, bouncing.
She amused herself thinking that this was a weird place for a herding command, but she looked at him and said, “Go bye,” which was the herding command to circle out clockwise. Gimli charged up the embankment, circling around the branch barrier, and then careened down to the stream on the other side of it. She peered over
the branches and asked, “Any scent there?”
/Huh?/
“Go search.”
/Search!/
He sniffed in the stream, then to the left and back to the right in larger and larger arcs. Then he stopped and looked at her. Nothing. Adam hadn’t gone over there. The branches were covering up something.
“Come on back,” and he repeated the half-circle.
She said to the handheld, “Central, Adam has created a large pile of branches over a stream. Gimli verified that he hasn’t walked past this point.”
“Roger, Yolanda. Can we look closer?”
“I’m sending photos now. I’m going to start lifting off the branches.”
“Be extremely careful. I’m checking to see if Markus and David can come help,” Harris said.
Yolanda finished the thought. “We probably don’t have time to wait for them, so I’m going to start.”
“Acknowledged.”
Yolanda picked up one branch, which had the red bark of a manzanita. She levered it up and set it to the side. No bombs yet, fortunately. This would be one of those “dumb ways to die,” she thought, but then again, they would find a way to make it sound heroic. She picked up another branch, an oak this time, awkwardly tangling around the others. With effort, she freed it. It didn’t appear to be booby-trapped either. She set it aside. Shit, this is going to take forever, she thought.
Gimli chomped on the first branch, dragging it further away, clearly wanting to help. This wasn’t a good time for him to help yet, so she let him continue doing what he was doing to keep him occupied. Branch by branch, she picked them up and put them to the left.
She progressed for a while in the same fashion, the air redolent with the smell of rotting leaves, when a thorn snagged at her skin. She froze in mid-heft. She knew the bag was plastic and vulnerable, but she couldn’t see it. Looking closer she could see some of the branches had a lot of vicious-looking thorns. She proceeded even more slowly. Her progress seemed glacial to her, but when she stopped to reassess, the pile was indeed getting much smaller.
She was getting closer to seeing the water and still couldn’t see a bag. From what she understood, it had to be in contact with the water. As she progressed, and things got less hazardous to a corgi, Gimli had worked his way closer. Extending his nose to sniff the latest branch he said, /Here./
Yolanda said to him, “Well, now we know he picked this branch up.” She picked up the next one and let him sniff it. He sniffed at the base and said, /Here,/ and pointed his nose higher on the branch and again said, /Here./
So Adam was more carefully placing the branches now. I have to be getting close, she told herself. She lifted one of the last branches to reveal a bag partially poking up out of the water, balanced on a couple of small branches.
Gimli sniffed at the bag and said, /HERE./ He opened his jaws to retrieve it, his eyes alive with joy in anticipation of seizing onto his prize.
Yolanda’s mind flashed on all those exercises they’d been working on recently where what they were looking for was poisonous or a bomb. She also remembered all of the times the exercises ended with “Boom. Game over. Everybody is dead. Start over.” They had switched to not having the doggy retrieve the found item and instead using a mental /Here,/ or lying down beside it, or running back to the handler. But Gimli was from the older times and he loved, just loved, retrieving. But this was no longer a test or a game, and she hoped he would listen. Adrenaline poured into Yolanda’s system and she shouted, “Gimli STOP!” Then she belatedly added the closest thing that he would understand: “Poison.” Gimli froze with his jaws open, his tongue touching the bag.
He said, /Hmphf,/ lifted his head a little, and closed his mouth, just away from the bag. Relief flooded in and Yolanda had to resist dropping everything to kiss him. “Good boy! We get to live for a little while longer.”
Looking closer, Yolanda could see that the bag was carefully balanced on a V of shaped sticks. Her eyes traveled downward. Just below the bottom of the bag, where it would fall if it lost its perch on the sticks, was another branch. One with thorns. Not the teeny tiny pinprick ones but large nasty spikes. It was a booby trap. She said as evenly as she could, “Gimli, stop.” Which meant don’t move your feet, but she hoped he would just hold still.
She set her branch down and said into her handheld, “Central, I have located one of the bags. It’s balanced above some thorns in a booby trap.”
“I see your image. Are you requesting assistance?”
“There’s no time. The branches aren’t holding it down and the current is going to push it into the thorns, so I’m going to have to give it a go.”
“We’re with you. David and the lab tech are on their way.”
She reached over for the bucket they’d brought along. With it in hand, she crept closer. The bag was swaying back and forth with the pulse of the water. Without the branches restricting it, she realized she probably didn’t have much time. While she was considering how to lift it out with the branches, a wavelet rippled down the creek, the twigs holding it up fell over, and the bag started to camber forward.
“No!” she said, splashing into the water and grabbing at its top, praying it was sealed and wouldn’t break open. The bag held, just grazing past the spiked pike awaiting it. She nearly lost her balance and pushed down with the bucket to keep from falling. Ouch, she thought. Stand back up dammit. Crap, this water is cold. She got her feet under her with the bag teetering in her going-numb fingers. The bucket, she thought. Get the bucket over there.
In what felt like sheer force of will, she got her body to obey, and as gingerly as she could, she worked the bag into the bucket with her freezing, shaking hands. She carried it to the side and put the lid on it.
Almost in relief she said, “GOOD BOY!” and remembered to give Gimli a piece of liver. “Hamburger tonight. Let’s go back.”
He bounded down the creek. /Burger. Burger./
“Central, we have found a bag, it is in a bucket, and we’re on our way back. And I’m wet and very cold.”
“Excellent work, Agent Danimeyer. We’ll get a blanket for you and the lab tech will meet you and exchange buckets. Please have David finish your search of the area.”
“Okay,” she said, though she was quite sure there weren’t going to be any more bags here.
Gimli was still dancing along saying, /Burger. Burger/.
He so wants to be a fat corgi, Yolanda thought.
CHAPTER 63:
Amy Calls John
AMY DEBATED sending John a message saying that she wouldn’t make it home tonight and realized there would be hell to pay for such a dodge, so she called him. His smiling face appeared, looking as disheveled as usual. “Hi, Amy. Nice to actually see your face during the day.”
I need to call him more often when there’s nothing serious going on, she thought. “Hi, John. How are you doing?”
“I’m wondering why I’m the lucky recipient of a phone call. What’s up?”
“Bad news, I’m working on something and won’t be able to make it home tonight.”
“Not at all? Well, no hoisin eggplant for you then.”
“I know, I’m really sorry.”
“What are you chasing now?”
“Can’t talk about it yet, unfortunately.”
John peered into the phone. “Where the heck are you?”
“Up north.” Trying to appease him, she held up the device, so he could see better.
“Middle of nowhere?”
“Yep.” She looked back into the phone.
Then John leaned closer to the display, which made him look absurd, and she had to refrain from laughing. “Hey, you look like you’ve been in a fight.”
Oh, here we go. “I’m okay, John.”
“No, what happened? Did someone try to hurt you?” His voice grew agitated.
Amy ran a hand over her head and along her face. “We caught him. He’s not a threat anymore.”
The muscles around h
is eyes tightened. “Have you seen a doctor? Come home.”
“Yes, I have. I’m fine, and I can’t come home yet.”
“What happened to you?”
“I can’t talk about that now, John.”
“Well I hope the other guy is more messed up.”
Amy looked away from the phone, her eyes filled with tears, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
“Amy!”
Without looking she said, “I’m okay, John, really. Steve and Yolanda are up here too.”
“You’re not okay.”
“I have to be. I have to follow this through.”
“Come home.”
“I will, but not now.”
“Are you in danger?”
“No. Not anymore.”
“I don’t like this.”
“I’m really sorry, John.”
“I want to come up there.”
Amy paused, collecting herself. “I’ll be home soon, I’m okay. You have to believe me. I’m not in danger, so I’d rather you not close the shop to come up.”
She could see him cross his arms in front of him. “Don’t like.”
She said to him, as steadily as she could manage, “I’m a big girl.”
He ran both hands through his hair, sending it everywhere. “One that I like and want to see again. Come back alive and in once piece, please.”
“Will do, John, love you.”
Giving up, he leaned back, blowing her a kiss. “And I, you.”
CHAPTER 64:
Amy and Lars Search
AMY AND Lars tracked Adam’s path along the edge of the Lagoonas reservoir back to where a creek fed into it.
“It can’t be this far out, can it? Lars, are you sure you’re tracking Adam?”
Lars, who had been air-scenting up to this point, had his nose on the ground.
/Yes./