Lost Dog (A Gideon and Sirius Novel Book 3)

by Alan Russell

  As scientific explanations go, Langston Walker’s appearance could be explained as my subconscious mind’s processing information and events. That was the logical explanation for my “moment after.” But too many times my oracle offered me insights that didn’t seem to fall within the realm of science. And while I would never go around telling anyone that Walker came to me for a post-death talk, neither would I definitively say this was simply a case of my synapses firing and my subconscious sorting.

  I took a last look at Mount San Jacinto. In the heat of Palm Springs, it was difficult to imagine that snow country was within reach, but there it was.

  After driving over to the tram’s lot, I flagged down a shuttle. The driver pulled up alongside me and apologetically said, “I’m not allowed to transport dogs.”

  “He’s not a dog,” I said. “He’s a sworn police officer.”

  The driver still looked dubious.

  I showed him my wallet badge.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  Then I showed him Sirius’s badge. Some police departments actually give their K-9 officers badges, but not LAPD. Recently the Los Angeles Police K-9 Fund started offering badges for sale that feature a German shepherd holding handcuffs in his mouth. Beneath the picture it says, “L.A. Police,” and underneath that is the motto “You can run but you can’t hide.” It was that fake badge that sealed the deal: Sirius and I were chauffeured to the visitor center.

  We walked into the air-conditioned lobby and made our way to the tramway’s ticket counter. The young woman working there stared at Sirius as if he was the big bad wolf.

  “I’d like a round-trip ticket, please,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I’m afraid dogs aren’t allowed on the tram.”

  I flipped open my wallet badge, then waited while she sought out the opinion of her supervisor. They had a whispered conversation, during which I heard Adriana ask her boss, “Should I also charge for the dog?”

  “Kids three and under ride free,” I said, pointing to the sign.

  Like just about every parent I know, I lied about the age of my kid. Sirius is almost seven, even though he doesn’t act his age. In that he’s just like his partner.

  I paid for my ticket and was directed to what the young woman called “the lobby area.” Around fifteen people waited for the tram’s arrival. It was a good thing I’d chosen a weekday and a nonpeak time for our ride. None of those waiting appeared too bothered by Sirius’s presence, although one mother took a protective hold of her boy and drew him close.

  “I want to see the doggie,” the boy said.

  “Not now, Cody,” the mother said.

  As we waited, the flutter in my stomach grew. I’m not sure what scares me more, fire or heights. The prospect of traveling two and a half miles upward on one of the self-proclaimed “World’s Largest Rotating Tram Cars” was giving me butterflies. I’d tried to hide my uneasiness from Jenny on the only other occasion I’d taken the tram, but I’m pretty sure she knew, just as Sirius did now. My partner leaned into me, making as much contact with me as Cody’s mom was making with her son. And here I was supposed to be the adult in the relationship.

  Four other people joined us in the lobby area before the tram arrived, but that still left window viewing space for everyone. As we started the ascent, our gondola was only half-full. It’s only a ten-minute ride, I told myself. I also told myself I didn’t need an airsickness bag, even though it felt like I did. The gondola slowly rotated; there was no need to go from side to side to try and get the best view, as eventually the view came to you. I tried to ignore the loud noises and the vibrations from the tram’s operation, and tried not to fixate on the fact that the gondola was suspended from a wire. It wasn’t like I was a member of the Wallenda family attempting a wire walk.

  Aside from the occasional feeling of weightlessness and the uneasiness that came when the gondola approached the different towers and swung a little too vigorously, after a few minutes my vertigo eased, and I actually began enjoying the sights and the changing landscape. We went from cacti to brush to trees. Looking down and seeing the steep incline showed me the difficulty of the hike that Walker had undertaken.

  We landed at the terra firma of Mountain Station. The difference between where we started and where we ended up was kind of like going through a Stargate portal into another world. It was at least thirty degrees cooler than in the valley, and I breathed in the aroma of pine trees.

  Passing by Peaks Restaurant, we continued along the path to the ranger station. Signs pointed out hiking trails and lookouts. We took a slight detour to a nearby lookout and found ourselves looking more than eight thousand feet down to the expanse of the Coachella Valley.

  The ranger station was about a quarter mile away from where the tram had let us out. It was a rustic-looking outbuilding with white siding and a red metal roof. I climbed a few wooden steps and went inside. There was no ranger at the information desk—only a sign that said all hikers continuing up Skyline Trail needed to sign in and get a wilderness permit. A pile of those permits had been left on the desk.

  I studied the sign-in book, flipping back a few pages to the entries and signatures that had been made on April 15. Finding Langston’s name brought a pang to my stomach. I used my cell-phone camera to take pictures, making sure to get the names of all those who’d signed.

  While waiting for a ranger to appear, I snooped around the office, looking at maps and studying posters showing flora and fauna. Half a dozen visitors came and left; two of them signed in and collected wilderness permits.

  I was trying to get a cell-phone signal and see if I could reach my ranger when a voice said, “Detective Gideon, I presume?”

  Ranger Riley Ramsey looked like a triathlete. She had short blonde hair, was about forty, and was impossibly fit. She probably looked forward to her annual physical and hearing the results of her body mass index.

  We shook hands. Her firm handshake didn’t surprise me. “Do you want me to call you Ranger, Riley, or Ramsey?” I asked.

  “Anything works for me,” she said, and then gave a head jerk toward Sirius. “What’s the story with the dog?”

  “Meet my partner, Sirius,” I said.

  The ranger looked skeptical, but that was before Sirius decided to charm her with an extended paw, an “Aw shucks” roll of his head, and his earnest eyes. We were in like Flynn.

  “I noticed Langston Walker’s signature in your register,” I said. “Was a ranger here when he signed in?”

  Ranger Riley answered my question while running her fingers through Sirius’s fur. “I’m afraid he came through when no one was here,” she said. “We’ve been dealing with budget cuts for the last few years, and having someone working this desk full-time was one of the casualties.”

  “So signing in is voluntary?”

  “The wilderness permits are free, so there’s no reason not to get one.”

  “But anyone could bypass this office and continue on the Skyline Trail without signing in, right? Or with no one here, they could sign in with a false name, couldn’t they?”

  My questions seemed to surprise her, and she stopped scratching Sirius. “Why would anyone do that?”

  “I’m just offering up some hypothetical situations.”

  “If we caught someone without a wilderness permit hiking on trails where it was required, then they’d face a potential fine. But you’re right that unless a ranger was here, they could sign in with a fake name.”

  “Or they could just take a wilderness permit without signing in?”

  She shrugged. “I suppose so.”

  “Since the permits are left out for anyone to take, isn’t it also possible that during a previous visit someone could have picked up a spare permit and used it on a later occasion?”

  “There would be nothing to prevent that, assuming a date hadn’t already been filled in,” she said. Then she added with a defensive tone, “But I still don’t get why anyone would want to do tha
t.”

  “Are there security cameras on the trails?”

  “There’s the Tram Cam that shows the Long Valley Ranger Station.”

  “Would that be easy to avoid?”

  “It wouldn’t be hard,” she admitted.

  “Can you get to the Skyline Trail from above? Is there a road from Idyllwild?”

  “There’s supposed to be a dirt road of sorts, but from there it would require a long hike to the trail.”

  But someone who was motivated, I thought, could have bypassed the ranger station.

  “Did you take photos of Detective Walker when you came upon him?”

  “I took a dozen pictures or so, but Officer Daniels took more.”

  I consulted my notes and saw that Daniels was with the Palm Springs Police Department.

  “And Daniels made the call that it was an accidental death?”

  She nodded.

  “So a crime-scene technician didn’t come and look at Walker’s body?”

  “Officer Daniels took pictures and videos. I heard him consulting with others. It was his conclusion, and one I agreed with, that Detective Walker fell and hit his head. You could see where he’d slipped in the snow, and there was blood on the rock just to the right of the trail.”

  “I’d like you to email me what pictures you have,” I said, handing her my business card. “I’ll be making the same request of Officer Daniels.”

  “It sounds like you think there’s something suspicious about Detective Walker’s death.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. But detectives are big believers in the Missouri motto: ‘Show me.’ I need to be sure his death was accidental.”

  “Were you born in Missouri?”

  I shook my head. “I’m an L.A. native. You’d think we would have a city motto, but we don’t, unless you count, ‘Shop until you drop,’ or ‘No one walks in L.A.’”

  “Well, we’re going to need to walk,” she said, “and climb. We’ll be traversing about fifteen hundred feet up. That’s where Detective Walker was found.”

  “Was he still climbing up to the summit when he died, or was he coming back down?”

  “As far as we can determine, he never made it to the summit and was still on his way up.”

  It seemed silly on my part, but I was sorry to hear that Langston hadn’t reached his goal.

  “Ready to rock and roll?” asked Ramsey.

  “I can do without the rock part,” I said.

  Ranger Ramsey was a great tour guide, and I was lucky that she did most of the talking. That saved her from having to hear my gasping.

  We were over an hour into our hike, and I was feeling spent. The two of us had climbed past huge boulders and made our way through rock formations. Pine trees provided handholds along the route. The higher we climbed, the more elusive oxygen seemed, and the colder it got. We crossed over a stream that came from melting snow, and had to deal with dripping water and muddy areas.

  “It’s been relatively warm the last two days,” the ranger said. “On the day the detective was hiking, there was snow and ice on this trail from the previous night.”

  My admiration for Walker’s fortitude had grown with each step. Hiking more than ten thousand feet up isn’t for the faint of heart or weak of limb. I was getting a small taste of what he’d experienced, and I felt like waving a white flag. My too-fit ranger must have noticed that.

  “It’s not very far,” she promised.

  “That’s good,” I said. “Sirius is clearly exhausted.”

  My partner was clearly not exhausted, and Ranger Riley laughed. “I’ve heard climbing C2C means going up the equivalent of more than a thousand flights of stairs.”

  “Do you have any idea how many climbers were on this trail on April fifteenth?” I asked.

  “I haven’t done a tally,” she said, “but I do know on this upper ascent, there were a lot fewer hikers than usual. It was a weekday, and the weather from the day before kept a lot of people from attempting the summit.”

  “Especially unprepared hikers without crampons,” I said.

  “Or microspikes or even ice axes,” she said.

  “Was Langston carrying an ice ax?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “He had hiking poles similar to what you have.”

  Ranger Ramsey had provided me with two adjustable poles. I hated to admit it, but the poles had saved me from slipping in several spots. She was also right about my footwear. My basketball shoes were wet through and through, and I’d be surprised if a few blisters weren’t developing.

  “Smell the butterscotch?” she asked.

  “I thought I was going crazy,” I said. “I’ve been smelling butterscotch on and off since we started hiking.”

  “It’s the Jeffrey pine trees,” she said, pointing one out.

  “Does the Peaks Restaurant serve butterscotch sundaes?” I asked. “I have a sudden hankering for one.”

  “I don’t think it’s on their menu.”

  “All this subliminal seduction going on, and they don’t even take advantage of it.”

  A gust of cool wind blew, almost enough for me to say, “Brrr.” The ranger also took note of the wind. “On the day your friend was climbing, there was some strong gusting. That might have contributed to his fall.”

  Walker had been climbing a slippery trail on a day when it was windy and icy. I was almost convinced I was wasting my time.

  “Do you know if your friend ever hiked the other saints?” she asked.

  “What saints are those?”

  “In Southern California, climbers always talk about the Three Saints,” she said. “This is Mount San Jacinto. The other two are San Antonio and San Gorgonio.”

  I found myself smiling. “One saint was enough for Langston,” I said. “He always did his climb on the anniversary of his son’s death. That’s why he was here that day.”

  “I see,” she said, and then added, “He was older than most of the climbers who come up here. This trail isn’t forgiving, as you can see. Hikers have succumbed to high temperatures and dehydration. And on the opposite end, there have been cases of hypothermia. Slipping and going down an ice chute killed one man. Since 2009 there have been at least five deaths, and I can’t tell you how many climbers we’ve had to helicopter out.”

  “As long as I’m not one of them,” I said.

  “We found Detective Walker right around this turn,” she said.

  There was no yellow police tape setting off the area. Despite that, I approached the spot as I would have any active crime scene.

  The turn to the right led to another switchback turn going upward to the left. A series of rocks, both big and small, lined both sides of the trail. Just steps off the trail were boulders and pine trees. If this had been a John Ford western, foreboding music would have swelled. This spot was perfect for an ambush. The bad guy could have emerged from behind a boulder or a tree.

  Ranger Ramsey showed me where Walker had been found, and pointed out the rock where he had supposedly hit his head. I listened to what she said and studied the rock, but I was more interested in the boulder just to the right of the trail.

  If I was looking at a crime scene, it was contaminated beyond redemption. Detective Walker’s body had brought a number of individuals to the scene who, combined with all the hikers who’d come afterward, had left various footprints everywhere. The melting snow and ice had left the area a muddy mess.

  I used my hiking poles to help me get up and around the boulder. Anyone could have hidden behind it. I found the best spot to see from while staying out of sight. In my mind I choreographed how I would go about ambushing someone. There were several possibilities. I could emerge from the boulder as Langston was passing and attack from behind. Or I could wait for him to come abreast with the boulder and jump out, striking at his blind side. As I considered potential angles of attack, I also thought about the best way of taking my victim out. By pushing off from the boulder, I could increase the force of my bludgeoning.

/>   Returning to the trail, I walked the likeliest path that Langston would have taken. It didn’t take any stretch of the imagination to come up with several scenarios in which he could have easily been murdered. A blow from a blackjack or a rock to the temple might have been enough to kill him. Then his body could have been positioned with his head on, or near, the jutting rock his head appeared to have struck during the fall.

  The ranger watched my movements. She could see my murderous choreographing and how I was imagining death scenarios quite different from the fall she had assumed. She looked uneasy. I didn’t much like these thoughts myself. I had hoped my visit to the mountain would dispel any qualms I had about Walker’s death. Unfortunately, it hadn’t.

  I took some pictures and asked some questions. And then we walked back down the mountain toward the tram that would take me home. Our descent was much quieter than our ascent, my dark thoughts proving contagious.

  CHAPTER 23

  THE MANY VOICES IN THE DARKNESS

  After being held for days, after being subjected to physical and mental torture, Heather finally heard her abductor. But he was playing games with his voice by using some kind of amplifier, or shifter, to broadcast his words. It was like a bludgeon on her eardrums.

  “Beg me to spare your life!”

  A single light speared Heather’s vision. The burka’s mesh wasn’t enough to spare her eyes after long hours in the darkness. But the light wasn’t as invasive as the voice. The voice was loud and alien, the kind you’d expect to hear in old science fiction films. Would Emilio go to such lengths? He had always liked his toys.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  The voice changed, becoming deeper and more powerful.

  “I am he who you will worship.”

  “I only worship God,” she said.

  “I am your God!” The room shook as he roared. “Do you ever want to see the sun again? I hold your life in the balance. If you have any hope of staying alive, you will do as I say.”

  Heather didn’t answer. As much as she wanted to challenge the voice, she knew that wouldn’t help her current situation. She had to play for time and find a way out.