The Hiding Place

by Karen Harper

  He nodded once and locked on the door again, yanked the curtain closed, then pulled her to him. They stood, holding each other tight, in the dark house while something infinitely darker ruled the night.

  Although the sermon was a good one, Nick had to fight nodding off. He’d hardly slept last night, too keyed up after kissing Tara, then too angry about someone tormenting her. He hadn’t even gotten over jet lag yet, which was throwing his internal clock off.

  “‘If a man has a hundred sheep,’” the pastor read from the Bible, “‘and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountain to find the one that is straying?’”

  He should have run out onto the mountain after the trespasser last night, Nick told himself. But Tara might have been right. It could have been a trap. If it was meant to lure him out, he didn’t want to leave her and Claire alone. He was starting to think that if he took the Fort Bragg job, he should insist that Tara come, too. She could run Finders Keepers from there, though he knew she wouldn’t go. Not unless she was going to something instead of running from something. She was scared here, but then, so was he. The truth was, he’d been running scared and guilt-ridden ever since the day they’d lost Tony and Superman.

  Superman’s name was really Clark Brent, so he’d always lived with being teased with cornball questions like, “Hey, Clark Kent, where’s Lois Lane?” or “When do you dart into a phone booth to change into your tights?” But Clark, who was from a little Ohio town called Sunbury, took it all with good humor and had some clever comebacks. “Just hope those Taliban SOBs don’t have Kryptonite in those caves,” he joked the day he and Tony were lost…the day they died. The new dog had taken them the wrong way and then the rocket-propelled grenade hit the two men…

  “And from the book of Luke, the same message of our Lord seeking straying sinners, with a different illus tration,” the pastor was saying as Nick gave a sharp sniff. “‘What woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?’”

  They’d found their bodies, or what was left of them. Ironically, the dog had lived and was still working, searching caves in the mountains…maybe finding the head mullahs like Hezbi Islami or other remnants of the Taliban.

  Man, Nick thought, forcing himself to think of some thing other than the bloody scene that still haunted him, Tara ought to be loving this sermon. It sounded custom-made for her P.I. firm. But she was frowning. Was she even paying attention, or was she lost in her own thoughts? He knew she was puzzling out the cryptic message from her former mother-in-law.

  As for Claire, she seemed to be listening, though she was drawing a picture on the program, one of a mother and daughter, stick figures with skirts and hair, holding hands. It reminded him he’d said they’d go to visit Alex’s grave after church. This afternoon, he intended to go with Beamer up on Shadow Mountain to trace the scent on those rose stems, if the rain and fog had not washed it all away. Sometimes, it seemed Tara’s tormen tor, like the Taliban, had simply vanished into thin mountain air.

  For several reasons, Tara had always loved Ever green Memorial Park just off North Turkey Creek Road. The cemetery seemed so natural, with its lakes and what appeared to be spacious meadows, which were actually three burial areas. The Garden of the Pioneers provided a history lesson about the area, with its Indian fighters’ and women settlers’ tombstones near an original log cabin and artifacts from earlier times. Besides the usual cemetery buildings of the chapel and crematory, the park had a wild game preserve and a pet cemetery. Only in the area called the Garden of the Cross were there upright grave monuments, so most of the grounds looked pristine with flat markers. Events and weddings were held at the center of the park in a historic barn with stunning, stained-glass windows.

  The park was Alex’s eternal resting place. Tara’s parents were also buried here, in the Garden of the Pines. She had happy memories of them here; when she was a child, her family had often visited at dusk to watch elk emerge from the forest to feed on the meadow grass and drink from the ponds. Today, as Nick drove them in, she remembered there was a section where babies and children were buried.

  “I’m going to let you go over to Alex’s area, while I take a walk the other way,” Tara told Nick and Claire. “Then I’ll meet you back at the car.”

  “Aunt Tara’s mom and dad are here, too,” Claire told Nick, as if this was just the expected place to visit parents.

  “Sure, that’s fine,” Nick said, and took Claire’s hand as they headed in the opposite direction. Again, Tara noticed that he was not only distracted by his own thoughts—understandably, since he hadn’t been to see his murdered sister’s grave before—but he also seemed disturbed. It was, she sensed, something that went deeper than their current troubles with a trespasser, or perhaps even than the harsh reality of seeing Alex’s grave.

  Tara knew where she was heading, and she knew why. The small area beyond the western lake drew her, an area she’d never set foot in before. The ground was still wet from last night’s rain, but she didn’t mind. The grass smelled fresh, despite the cool air. Soon, too soon, this would all be cloaked by late-autumn and winter snows.

  With her hands clasped between her breasts as if to steady her heart, Tara walked the neat rows of infant graves, reading the flat markers. Little lambs were carved into some of the simple, flat stones. She thought of the sermon today. People were driven to search for a lost coin until it was found…for a lost lamb until it was recovered. Only then, could they rejoice.

  She had a lost lamb of her own to look for.

  So sad, these lives cut short, she thought as her eyes skimmed the names and dates. Beloved baby…our pride and joy… Some died the day they were born. A few had plastic-coated pictures embedded in their stones, those stiff, just-born hospital photos parents used to use for birth announcements before so many people had digital cameras. Just as her clients had lost their children, these parents had lost theirs, only this was forever, a tragedy one would never get over.

  It was still difficult to believe that she had borne and then lost a child. It must have been because she was so ill no one had told her. Those who knew about the miscarriage or stillbirth didn’t want her to suffer more. Laird, who had desperately wanted children, had been heartbroken and moved away. Perhaps people didn’t want to answer questions about how the baby had died.

  So she could have had a child, but if the Lohans weren’t talking, they would not have laid the baby to rest in such a public place. She could easily check cemetery records for the entire area online. She could become her own client for Finders Keepers. Sometimes, she never found the child of a grieving mother. She kept those files separate, revisiting them from time to time. She never gave up.

  Tears blurred her vision. The cool September wind lifted her skirt and ruffled her hair. She turned and looked across the lake to see Nick and Claire, holding hands, heads bent, standing beside Alex’s grave. It helped, she knew, to have a place to mourn, a person to mourn.

  She must learn whether she had borne a living child, and, if so, how he or she had died. She vowed she wasn’t going to rest until she had the entire truth.

  10

  “You take the lead,” Nick told Tara. “That way you can get the feel of how Beamer tracks.”

  They’d just put Claire on the school bus Monday morning. It had rained again Sunday afternoon and evening, so Nick had not tried to track their Saturday-night visitor. Without Claire around now, they could talk and walk more freely. The child had been told that someone was trespassing and had left the flowers for the wrong person, but she’d been assured that the unwanted visitor was not her father. It must have worked, at least so far, because there had been no repeat of the nightmare where she’d dreamed he was lurking above the house.

  The storms yesterday had put a crimp in Tara’s plans. She’d hoped to spend time online looking through burial records for a baby, last name Lohan, but with all the l
ightning she’d kept her PC unplugged. Before Claire and Nick awoke this morning, Tara had thoroughly searched all local cemetery records for such a burial and had come up with nothing. Surely, Laird would not have used cremation, because he didn’t believe in that.

  All these dead ends—though she didn’t like to think of it in those words—meant she was going to have to interview people who might know something. If she got nowhere that way, she would have to confront Jordan Lohan or even phone Laird.

  “Oh,” she said as she took Beamer’s taut leash from Nick, “he’s raring to go.”

  “That’s my boy. Okay, now since he got no scent off the soggy rose box or the stems, I’m going to re-scent him with the candy wrapper to see if the original trail is washed clean or not.”

  “Aren’t fog and rain bad news?”

  “Very, but these tracker dogs surprise you sometimes. I’ve seen them follow a trail over bare rock in a dust storm.”

  “Has Beamer ever done something to protect you? He feels so strong.”

  “Yeah, once when he was young. In downtown Denver after dark, Beamer tripped a guy who tried to rob me. I think the thief thought I was blind and Beamer was my guide dog. Anyway, he knocked the guy into a brick wall and my would-be mugger ran off like a flash before I could even react. He’s a hero in all kinds of ways, more than I’ll ever be.”

  As if he knew what was being said, Beamer wagged his tail during that story, but jerked his head when Nick let him smell the wrapper. “Tell him, f-i-n-d.” Nick spelled it out as if the dog were a child.

  “Beamer, find!” she told the dog, and they were off, down the deck stairs, in circles under the deck—no doubt where their unwanted visitor had been lurking—then up into the tree line with a long stop at the matted-down area where Nick had showed her someone had lain or sat for long periods.

  “This is what you called a scent pool,” Tara observed. “If it survived all that rain, it must be fairly fresh. Which means our lurker is fanatical enough to be out in a lightning storm on a mountain with tall trees.”

  “Yeah, I know. But on a happier note, your partner found this. Scratch him behind the ears as a reward, and repeat the command. He’s not resting on his laurels here.”

  Like Beamer, Tara was following the orders of her handsome handler. Nodding at Nick, she suppressed a smile at that thought. “Beamer, find!”

  The dog circled the scent pool, then pulled her onward, though he slowed down at times. The fact the trail toward the hunter’s cabin was partly mud and bare stone did not stop him. Nose almost to ground, he plowed ahead on the path through thick, wet trees and piles of pine needles and aspen leaves. But he was discerning about it; he ignored narrower deer or elk trails that darted off at odd angles.

  When the lodgepole pines above them shook in the wind, dousing them with drops, Tara experienced a strange foreboding. It was just a little water, for heaven’s sake, she told herself and fought the feeling of déjà vu. What was it that she was on the verge of remembering? She pulled herself back together; it was important to her to show Nick and Beamer she could do this.

  “Give him a little space, but not that much slack in the lead, or he might wrap it around a tree,” Nick said, coming close behind her. “Don’t distract him. When he stops, you stop. Keep your distance.”

  Keep your distance. The words stayed in her mind. Nick had asked her last night if she wanted him to keep his distance. He would probably be leaving in the near future and he didn’t want her to have any more emotional losses beyond missing Claire. She’d told him to keep his distance only if he wanted to, and he’d given her such a devilish smile that she’d giggled like a girl.

  But that little exchange had also made her decide to tell him about her search for her own child. She was tired of trying to hold Nick at a distance about her growing obsession. Maybe after she shared that, Nick would want to keep his distance. She knew that when she tried to pin people down on the possibility of her having been pregnant and delivering while comatose, they might think she was crazy. Or they might peg her as the embittered, deserted wife, snatching at straws, wanting to get back at her wealthy ex-husband. But she’d reached the point where none of that mattered now.

  She stubbed her toe and hit her shoulder on the branch of an aspen tree. Wet leaves cascaded around her. She accidentally jerked Beamer’s lead, but the dog did not stop. Nick was there instantly, steadying her, giving Beamer a bit more slack in the lead.

  “I can’t imagine training a new dog to do all this, let alone teaching a handler,” she told him.

  “It’s a partnership that kicks in at a certain point. They learn each other’s habits, and the intensity of the quest bonds them. The handler has to stay in charge and yet let the dog do his part, too. Okay, looks like he’s taking us back to the cabin. Hold him here and let me look inside first. Tell him to s-t-a-y.”

  “Beamer, stay!”

  “Don’t shout. Just use a low, steady voice. Besides, the woods might have ears, and I don’t mean deer and squirrels.”

  So he was feeling it, too, she thought, that something was wrong or that something living—even evil—was out here somewhere.

  She watched Nick produce one of his father’s old carpentry hammers from his jacket pocket and hold it ready as he pushed the door inward, then looked behind it.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, “Seymour or someone was here Saturday night. I see a few rose petals from one rose that’s been ripped to shreds.”

  “But there were a dozen of them on the deck. Who buys thirteen roses?”

  “Either the florist was selling a baker’s dozen, or the guy’s intentionally giving you a so-called unlucky number,” he said as she followed him to the door. “You like puzzles, so try to puzzle that one out.”

  She saw Beamer wasn’t budging without permission. That was all right, because the cabin gave her the creeps. She peeked in to see a single rose had been beaten to death. Its petals were strewn all over and its broken stem, which looked as if it had been trampled, lay on the floor.

  “There’s a lot of anger here,” Nick said, his voice a whisper.

  She nodded. “I wish we could get the police to ID the blood type or get DNA off the thorns, if he broke the stem with his hands,” she said. “But I know better. Sometimes you can’t even get a restraining order until there’s an actual threat of physical violence, and I don’t think a massacre of roses counts. I just hope it is Seymour who was here. IBs usually seem like personalities who are all bravado but not much action. If only Colorado licensed and sanctioned P.I.s and IBs, I could file a complaint against him, but we’re still the unregulated Wild West in that regard.”

  She realized she was rambling, but it helped to talk to Nick. He put a hand on her arm. “Let’s see where Beamer takes us from this cabin, because I don’t think Seymour or Getz parked a vehicle down by the house. Maybe we can find more of Getz’s X-treme tracks, but I doubt it with the rain. Here, scent Beamer with this wrapper again and tell him to you-know-what.”

  “If you weren’t here would he even take orders—”

  “Not orders, commands.”

  “Commands from me?”

  “Tracker dogs are loyal to one master, but they are bright, working dogs, so yes. I think he’s especially eager to please you because he sees us as friends, though I’m still the alpha male in the relationship. Maybe he’s smart enough to realize I want us to be more than friends.”

  Despite the breeze, she felt herself blush. Both Nick and the dog were looking at her alertly, as if enjoying her emotional rush. What was wrong with her? No man had ever gotten to her so deeply with so little said. And she didn’t want Nick to know that, at least not yet.

  “Find, Beamer,” she said, and let the eager Lab sniff the wrapper again. He went in a tight circle, then gave the lead a tug, and they were off again, uphill on the twisting path around Shadow Mountain.

  Beamer led them higher to the location where the gravel road called Greening Drive became a narrow d
irt one. At a tight turnaround point, they found lots of car and truck tracks, all churned together, but none that they could be sure were from Getz’s bike. Only two footprints stood out: one from a running shoe, another of a Western-style boot heel. Tara and Nick were both out of breath in the thin air, and Beamer was panting with his tongue out.

  “Whoever it was probably got in his car or truck here,” Nick said, walking around a mud puddle. “But since your partner got us this far, give that lucky dog a scratch behind the ears again. Praise him, but no baby talk. Once they are out of puppyhood, I always teach that as part of respecting the dog.”

  Baby talk, she thought. They needed to have some talk about a baby.

  As she scratched his ears, Beamer wagged his tail and looked ecstatic, almost as if she’d dumped an entire sack of dog food in front of him. It was amazing how hard he worked for some TLC and a few kind words. “Good dog, Beamer. You are a handsome, smart, good boy.”

  “I know I’d work hard for praise and petting like that,” Nick said. “I think we’re at the end of our line for now,” he added with another glance into the trees and both ways on the narrow road. “Let’s go up on Big Rock and rest before we head back down.”

  Big Rock was a massive stone outcrop from which they could view the entire valley between Black and Shadow Mountains. They climbed up carefully, making sure the dog didn’t slip.

  “Spectacular!” Nick said, looking at her, then back out over the broad panorama of sites. To their left, toward the north, they could see distant Denver. On a clear day like this, Pike National Forest could be seen to their right beyond and above the little town of Bailey. Nick sighed. “I can’t tell you how many times I thought of this view when I was in the Hindu Kush Mountains in Afghanistan.”

  “Did you get homesick?”

  “I tried to keep on task, stay busy, do my duty. It wasn’t reasonable to get down over what I couldn’t have right then.”