Dog Days (Raine Stockton Dog Mystery Book 10)

by Donna Ball

  That’s what I told myself as I tried to pull enough oxygen into my lungs to keep from passing out. But when, with a gargantuan effort, I lifted my feet again to pound against the door, I remembered that the direction which Cisco had chased the keys was on the other side of the parking lot from this truck; no one, looking for him, would pass this way. And all Sellers had to do was call Cameo to get both dogs to run to him; where Cameo went Cisco would follow. He might be gone with both of the dogs before Marshall, or the police, even thought to look here.

  My strength was draining away in rivers of sweat. My skin was so hot it felt as though it was blistering. I had to rest.

  My wrists were slippery inside their duct-taped ties, and I tried to wiggle them free, pushing out against the tape to stretch it, turning and pulling my wrists inside the too-tight bonds. It was no use. Whatever give in the tape might have been created by my sweat and the heat was not enough. He had wrapped my wrists too tightly, and used too many layers. Duct tape was meant to withstand extremes of temperature and force. I tried for a while to loosen the tape around my mouth by rubbing my face against my shoulder. It might have worked if he hadn’t wrapped the tape around my head more than once. As it was all I succeeded in doing was painfully ripping out a few strands of my hair.

  Okay. I had to think. I couldn’t keep on banging against the door like this; I was losing too much fluid and over-stressing my heart. Heat exhaustion was only moments away, if not already here. Heat rises, so the best thing I could do was to stay low, near the floor, and conserve energy. It was possible there might even be a loose seal near the door that would let in fresh air. Stay put. Stay still. Stay low.

  Or get out of here.

  What I needed was something sharp to cut the tape on my wrists. A shard of glass, a jagged piece of metal, a bolt or screw protruding from the wall that I could use to saw away at the tape. People did it all the time on television.

  I pushed myself to my feet against the wall and kicked off my sandals so that I could sweep the floor with my bare feet for anything that might be useful. Inch by inch I made my way around the perimeter of the truck, pressing my hands and back against the wall to check for screws or nails or loose pieces of metal, sweeping my feet out in front of me along the dusty floor. I found some scraps of packing material, a crushed cardboard box, some cigarette butts, an empty paper cup. There were no nails, no broken bottles, no conveniently forgotten box cutter lying in a corner. By the time I returned to my starting place I was weak and light-headed, the heat pulsing around me like slow-boiling syrup. I was about to brace myself for the excruciating search of the middle of the floor, away from the safety of the walls, when my foot struck my shoe.

  My shoe.

  I dropped to a sitting position, pulling the sandal in to me with my toes and maneuvering myself around until I could grasp it with my fingers. Clumsily, I undid the buckle, dropping the shoe more than once and painstakingly picking it up again, until I held the loose strap between my fingers, buckle facing upward. I had to stop and rest, drawing in deep breaths through my flared nostrils. It took several tries, but I managed to position the buckle, with the prong held between my thumb and forefinger, against the bottom of the duct tape. I scraped the sharp point of the prong against the tape, trying to tear the fibers. Nothing. I tried again. And again.

  It was only three o’clock in the afternoon. The hottest part of the day was still to come.

  Time lost its meaning. I knew hours were passing only because I felt the heat building as the sun moved slowly, inexorably closer in the western sky. I worked at the tape with the little prong until my arms hurt so badly I could not make them move any longer. Then I rested for a while, and tried again. I thought I was making a little progress. Some of the bottom of the tape was beginning to fray, but as it did it became harder and harder to lift the buckle high enough to saw away at more fibers. I was dizzy, and I had to rest more and more often. The heat was searing.

  For a time I tried to listen for signs of movement outside—voices, cars, police sirens. Dogs barking. Sometimes I thought I did hear those things and I would stop sawing at the tape and start kicking the door again, but then I began to worry I was hallucinating the sounds and I stopped wasting my strength. I could hear the sound of calliope music, muffled and far away, and sometimes the shriek of a happy fairgoer. But maybe I imagined that too.

  My throat was like sandpaper, and I was so thirsty my stomach hurt. I didn’t even know thirst could be like that, an ache that spread through every cell of your body. I thought about the liter bottle of water in my day bag. I thought about ice floating in the red-and-white striped soda cups they sold at the concession stand. I thought about paper cones filled with ice and drizzled with fruity syrup. Thinking about those things made me want to cry, but I didn’t have any tears.

  My wrists inside the tape weren’t quite so slippery anymore. I wasn’t sweating as much. And I remembered enough about heat exhaustion to know that was not a good sign.

  I thought about white water rafting on the Nantahala River, and how the cold spray hits your face and drenches your arms when you steer into the rapids. I remembered how Buck and our friend Andy and I used to hike up the mountain as kids to a hidden spot in the woods and crawl out on the ledge overhanging a waterfall then cannonball into the pool below. It was crazy dangerous but, oh, that moment when the cold water shocks your sweaty body and then embraces it, the cool bright shower of the waterfall tumbling over your head and splashing off your shoulders … there’s nothing like it in the world.

  Funny how some things stay with you forever, just as sharp and real as the moment they first happened. I could almost taste that clear cold water, see the sun sparkle and glisten on the wet rocks, hear the roar of the falls. But Andy was dead, and Buck was married, and the three of us would never climb that waterfall together again.

  And then the oddest thing happened. Somehow, deep inside I came to realize for the first time that it was okay. I still mourned for Andy, who had died too young, and I was sad for the loss of my marriage, which should have worked but hadn’t. But that, like the childhood foolishness that allowed us to believe diving from the top of a waterfall was a good idea, was in the past now. It was over. And it was okay.

  My head started to throb, and my neck grew so stiff I could barely move it. The shoe slipped from my fingers and I rested my head against the hot metal wall, focusing all my effort on breathing; just breathing. I tried to remember the symptoms of heat stroke, but I couldn’t. All I knew was that when I closed my eyes to rest I saw swirling red lights and had crazy dreams about my skin frying on my body like bacon and then falling off in strips. I tried not to dream. I tried to keep my eyes open and think about cold things. Like snow. Last winter, when I’d been trapped in a blizzard up to my waist in snow I thought I’d had my fill. But now I clung to the memory of howling winds and ice-numbed fingers as though, if I thought about it hard enough, I could transport myself back there. It didn’t work.

  Cisco had saved me then, and everyone else on that mountain. Cisco, with the curiosity of a puppy and the heart of a hero, and Miles, who refused to give up on me even though I’d done everything in my power to make sure he did.

  Cisco was still out there. He would find me. He was a search and rescue dog, after all. That was what he did. He would find me, of course he would, and he wouldn’t give up until he did. All I had to do was hang on until he got here.

  Miles was still out there too, and Melanie, and the unrealized future we might all have had together stretched out into the distance like the road not taken. Maybe that road was filled with pitfalls and dangerous curves and steep, twisty hills. But it was also filled with adventure and excitement and the thrill of possibility. I found myself desperately and unexpectedly hoping that Miles had not given up on me, either.

  In the back of my head I heard Sonny saying, I’ve never known anybody who worked as hard as you do for what you don’t want. But those days were over. Perhaps for the first t
ime in a really long time, I actually knew what I wanted, and I was willing to fight for it.

  I fumbled around on the floor for the shoe and positioned the buckle against the tape again. My fingers were stiff and aching and it was hard to make them work, but I started plucking at the tape with the prong again, catching fibers, pulling them away, gritting my teeth with the effort. It seemed I was making some progress this time, and when I pushed my hands apart, stretching out the tape, I actually felt it tear a little. I gripped the prong again, plucking and stretching, wiggling and tugging my hands inside their prison. And then, abruptly, one of my hands slipped free.

  I was so surprised that I fell against the wall, chest heaving, eyes staring at absolutely nothing, for a single long moment unable to move. Then I tore away the tape from my face, and took a long gulp of thick, hot air, and another and another. I flung my hands against the metal but the sound it made was feeble and ineffectual. I tried to scream. All that came out was a croak.

  I hit the wall again, and again. I sucked in hungry, wheezing, dragging gasps of air. My lungs were burning; my throat so dry that I couldn’t even swallow. The rush and roar of my struggles for breath obscured every other sound, even the pathetically weak sound of my hands slapping against the metal. Every sound except one, and it was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.

  It was the barking of a dog.

  At first I thought I was hallucinating, and I stopped moving, stopped breathing, desperately trying to clear my head. Listening, heart pounding, lungs bursting, until it came again. The single, sharp bark of a dog.

  “Cisco!” I cried, only no sound came out. My lips were too swollen to move, my throat too dry to make sound. But the joyous sound repeated over and over and over in my head as I pounded my hands on the wall, Cisco! Cisco! Cisco!

  There was a mighty screech and the door against which I had been flinging myself fell open. I tumbled forward into sunshine and noise and swirling color and sweet fresh air. The last thing I saw was a blur of gold scrambling toward me; the last thing I felt before I sank into the cloud of unconsciousness was a sweet golden retriever licking my face.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I spent the next five hours in the emergency room hooked up to an IV drip. The first couple of hours were mostly a blur, punctuated by vivid dreams that featured, of all things, Cornelius S. Lancaster the Third. It was only after my head cleared and I regained enough strength to suck on ice chips that I began to realize those had not been dreams after all.

  Corny’s white, terrified face and shock of orange hair had been the first thing I saw when I regained consciousness on the stretcher before they put me in the ambulance, followed by Cisco’s grinning face and two front paws on the sheet beside me. I saw him again as they wheeled me into the emergency room; he was trotting along beside me with Cisco’s leash in his hand, shouting, “Out of the way, out of the way! This is a trained rescue dog!” Every time I opened my eyes over the next few hours, Corny was there, still wearing the dog-pin covered cap with tufts of frizzy hair sticking out from all sides, peering anxiously down at me, Cisco right beside him.

  Now Cisco stretched out on the cool linoleum floor of my curtained cubicle while Corny brought me another cup of ice chips. Cisco was a familiar figure around the hospital, since he often did therapy visits here, but he had never been allowed in the emergency room before, and I couldn’t imagine how Corny had gotten him in.

  “Well,” he admitted modestly, fluffing the pillow behind my head, “the police woman helped with that.”

  “Jolene?” I said, surprised.

  He nodded vigorously. “Everyone was out looking for you. She even had her dog searching the woods, but of course you weren’t there.”

  “It was Mr. Lancaster here who figured out how to find you.” The male voice spoke from the entrance to the cubicle, and I looked around to see Marshall Decker hesitating there. “Is it all right if I come in?”

  “Of course.” I gestured him in with my free hand and tried to make sure I was decently covered in the flimsy hospital gown. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” I added apologetically. “You were there, weren’t you, when Cisco found me?” I thought I remembered seeing him but I really couldn’t trust my memories from that time; everything was all jumbled up.

  He nodded as he came over to me. “It took us a while to even realize you were missing,” he admitted. “At first it was all about bringing down Sellers.”

  “You got him?” I said excitedly, pushing up onto my elbows. But the exclamation triggered a spasm of coughing, which made me dizzy, which resulted in a lot of fussing around on Corny’s part and concerned looks from Marshall. Even Cisco got up from his nap to check on me.

  “I’m okay,” I gasped in a moment, waving my hand in front of my face as though to brush away the weakness. “I want to hear what happened.”

  Corny gave me a look of stern reprimand. “The doctor said you were to rest, and that we could only stay as long as you didn’t get excited.”

  I said, “I won’t. I promise.”

  Corny looked fierce enough to forcibly eject Marshall from the room if he caused any more trouble, and I hid a smile by lifting the cup of ice and tapping a few chips into my mouth. Marshall assured him, “I’ll only stay a minute.”

  Corny relented and resumed his seat beside my bed. Cisco flopped down beside him with a sigh. I waited impatiently.

  “Actually,” Marshall said, “it was the dogs who’re responsible for bringing down Sellers, although I probably could have been of more help if I had known what was really going on.” Now it was his turn to look sternly at me.

  “I guess I should have told you he had been there,” I admitted uncomfortably, “and that the police were looking for him. I was just in such a hurry to get out of there, and I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  “I knew the police were looking for him,” Marshall said. “I’m still a policeman myself, remember? But I didn’t know he was at the fairgrounds. When I’m elected sheriff,” he told me, “there will be much more open communication between the police and the public.”

  I tried not to sigh out loud with impatience, but I must have, because he smiled a little and went on, “I felt so bad about letting your dog get away. I looked all over the fairgrounds for him. Finally somebody said they thought they had seen a dog running loose in the field behind the carousel so I headed that way and I spotted both of the dogs out in that field near the woods. I knew something was wrong because the last time I had seen the English Cream—what’s her name?”

  “Cameo,” both Corny and I supplied.

  “Right, Cameo. The last time I’d seen her she was with you, and I knew you wouldn’t just leave a dog behind of your own free will. Then I saw Sellers, and I started after him. The stupid son of a—” His lips tightened and he finished grimly, “He took a shot at me. All right, I guess I was the one who was stupid, going after him like that without knowing whether or not he was armed. Anyway, he took off for the woods and I called the sheriff. They had what looked like a whole battalion there inside of forty-five seconds.” His lips tightened briefly with a humorless smile. “That pretty little golden led the deputies right to him, with Cisco by her side.”

  I nodded. “She was crazy about him. She still thought of him as her dad.” And my brows drew together as I said, “It’s hard to think of him as a killer, when he was loved so much by a golden retriever.”

  “Dogs don’t discriminate,” Marshall said somberly, reminding me only of what I already knew. He added, “There might’ve been gunfire if it hadn’t been for her. In fact, I’m pretty sure he would have tried to take out a few deputies before they took him, but he wouldn’t risk hitting his dog.”

  “Maybe the judge will take that into consideration,” I said, because, despite what he’d done, I couldn’t believe anyone who loved a dog that much was entirely beyond redemption.

  Marshall said harshly, “Don’t start feeling too kindly disposed toward him. He was willing to
let you die while he negotiated for a deal.”

  I shivered a little, and Corny reached over quickly to pull the sheet up around my shoulders.

  “Of course they started a search right away,” Marshall went on. “But they found your bag and your phone in the woods, so that’s where the search was concentrated.”

  “He must’ve thrown them there,” I said. “To hide the evidence. But you found my car keys, right?”

  He nodded. “The K-9 unit did. We thought you must’ve dropped them. We searched that area too but didn’t find anything to indicate what might’ve happened to you, and the K-9 couldn’t pick up your trail. In a way that was a good thing. She’s trained to scent blood and munitions. If she wasn’t picking up either, we figured you were probably alive.”

  But all the while I was only a few hundred yards away, slowly smothering to death in a hundred-ten-degree metal box.

  Marshall went on, “Of course Buck pulled out all the stops, called in two shifts to help with the search, and I think if it had gone on much longer his next move toward Sellers would not have been of the nonviolent type, if you know what I mean. I have a feeling our sheriff has a tendency to take certain things personally. Not,” he couldn’t resist pointing out, “a particularly good characteristic for an elected official.

  “I decided to take the dogs back to your place so I could join the search,” he went on, “and that’s when Mr. Lancaster here demanded to know why Cisco wasn’t searching. To tell the truth, I’d asked the sheriff the same thing, and he said Cisco wouldn’t work without his handler, who was you. Deputy Smith concurred.”