Red Tide

by Peg Brantley

  Loneliness had become a physical ache, but Vivaldi smoothed it out and it faded a little with each note that soaked into his brain. His Uncle Gage always said, “If whatever is bothering you is out of your control, let it go, and then let it go some more.” He didn’t believe he’d always be alone and he could change his status tonight with a phone call, but he didn’t have the energy. Or the heart... or something. Still, the weekend hours stretched ahead of him like a dusty country road.

  Nick’s cell phone buzzed on the table next to his glass. The caller ID looked familiar. Damn. He picked up the phone. “Mr. Archer, how are you this evening?”

  “Susan and I were wondering how that last site turned out. I told her I’d call....”

  “I’m sorry. I planned to get in touch with you tomorrow.” Nick would never get used to giving someone bad news. Liam and Susan Archer never pushed and never blamed.

  “It’s not the place,” Nick said. “That doesn’t mean we won’t come up with a positive hit soon. Elimination is part of the process. We’re bound to be getting close.”

  “Nick, I know you believe the photograph is the place where our Amy is buried, but couldn’t it simply be a picture of a place Bonzer liked? Or maybe it’s just a cruel joke he saved for ten years before—” Liam stopped talking and Nick heard him blow his nose.

  “Mr. Archer—”

  “Liam.”

  “Liam, I have one of the best clearance rates in the bureau. I’m good at what I do and you know I am. This case, Amy’s case, is not going to be the one that ruins my record. It’s been a rough ten years, especially for you and Susan and for the other families, but have I ever once misled you? Have I ever once said one thing and it turned out to be something different?”

  “No.” Liam Archer pushed his answer through the phone like mist, but without hesitation.

  Nick winced at the childlike trust the one-word acknowledgement evoked, and the exhaustion and frailty and failing hope that bled from its source.

  “Then trust me. We’ll find her.”

  Liam Archer cleared his throat. “I’ll let Susan know. And thanks.”

  “Any time Mr. Archer.”

  Nick put the phone back on the table and slipped his feet into his slippers. Some days his job didn’t live up to its billing. He searched the bookcase for something to read. Tonight he needed distraction until he could no longer keep his eyes open. He finally selected one of his favorite Hillerman’s. He never minded re-reading a good book.

  He snagged his cell phone to pop it in its charger and it rang in his hand. So late... so tired... I am so over this day. He considered letting it go to voice mail. The caller’s name on the screen however, nixed that idea. He answered. “Grant.”

  “We’ve got another site, Nick. I’ve got a feeling this one is it. It meets every criteria you’re looking for.”

  After getting a few particulars from Arnold, Nick felt better than he had for two weeks. He knew this could come up negative. Still, the place sounded right. It was about fifteen miles out of Aspen Falls in the right direction, remote but accessible. He wanted everyone out there as soon as possible.

  “Call the sheriff’s office and get me a team of searchers out there tomorrow at dawn. Make sure they’re experienced and know what they’re looking for,” Nick said.

  “You want dogs?”

  “Yeah. Dogs too.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Why can’t you cook like your sister?” Phil Sussman reached for the bottle of red wine on the table, refilled his glass, then set it back down, ignoring the empty glass in front of his wife.

  Jamie grabbed the bottle and poured the rest between Jax and Ellen. Her grip tightened a little on the glass bottle when she considered what a satisfying sound it would make as it met the side of her brother-in-law’s head.

  “And I heard you say earlier why Ciara isn’t here tonight, but I didn’t catch it. Where is that hot mama?” Phil waggled his eyebrows.

  “She’s at a shoot in Colorado Springs this weekend.” Ellen speared the last bite of beef tenderloin on her plate a little harder than she needed to and swirled it around to gather up as much of the demi-glace as she could.

  “That’s too bad. I could use a beautiful woman to look at right about now. It would top off a perfect meal.”

  Before Jamie could say what she really wanted to say, Jax stood up. “Let me help you clear these things, Jamie.”

  Ellen stood as well. “Yeah, me too.” She stretched for the empty serving platter that the focaccia had been on and grabbed the oil cruet.

  Phil tossed a gold lighter on the table, then reached inside his jacket, which was hanging over the back of his chair.

  “Not in my house, Phil. Not now, not ever. I’ve told you before, if you want to smoke you need to step outside.”

  “I’m just getting my gear together, Sergeant. Get off your high horse.”

  When the three women were in the kitchen, tension lessened for at least two of them. Jamie rolled her shoulders. Phil never changed. His stripes just got more bold.

  Jax launched into her regular defensive posture. “He’s going through a difficult time.”

  “And none of the rest of us are?” Jamie asked. “You let him get away with things you wouldn’t hesitate a minute to call us on.”

  “He tries so hard, Jamie. Let up a little, okay? I love him.” Jax piled the dishes next to the sink.

  Those three words froze Jamie in her tracks every time. Her sister loved him. The loser. The jerk that used her income as a Medical Examiner so he could be the big man around town and at the casino tables in Central City. The ignorant jerk who abused her.

  Ellen went back into the dining room to gather the last of the dishes. On her way out the door, she flashed Jamie a warning look. Let it go.

  “Thanks for the loan.” Jax mouth screwed up for a second before it relaxed. “We really need it to pay bills, and I’ll get my car back on Monday.”

  “We? You promised you wouldn’t let Phil know you had any money,” Jamie said.

  “I didn’t, but I am married to him so they are our bills. Not just his, not just mine—ours. You do remember that particular concept, don’t you?”

  “That’s not fair.” Jamie’s hand went to her mid-section, as if covering the area between her belly button and her left breast would shield her from further pain related to those years. Cover the scar, cover the past. The six-inch slice in her body, and the resulting scar, reminded her of more than the horror of her marriage to the charming Andrew Stanton; it reminded her of her strength, her decision not only to survive, but to thrive. But she’d never quite gotten over the failure and her poor decision related to a man.

  “I’m sorry,” Jax said. “It was pure meanness of me to say anything to you about your marriage. And I am grateful to you. When you bought me out of my share of the house after Daddy left you saved me. Not just Phil, who I know you couldn’t care less about, but me. And you’ve saved me more times than I want to count since then.”

  “Seven.”

  “What?” Jax asked.

  “I’ve bailed you out seven times. This makes eight.”

  Ellen walked in. “Look who’s being snarky now.” She placed the last of the serving pieces in the sink, folded her arms and watched the two sisters.

  “I’d just like to know when Phil Sussman intends to become the husband my sister deserves. She works hard and he gambles it away.” Jamie set the bucket for her compost pile by the back door. On top she set the plastic bag full of scraps that normally would have gone down the garbage disposal.

  “Speaking of work,” Jax stretched a damp dishcloth over the drying rack under the kitchen sink. “Jerry Coble called me today. Said you’d turned down a request to help on a search and rescue operation. Some missing camper from Idaho. What gives?”

  “Did they find him?” Jamie had hated having to say no to Jerry. Socks ranked as one of the best S&R dogs in the region, and he lived to work.

  “Not last
I heard but that doesn’t answer my question.” Jax folded her arms.

  Jamie’s phone rang. The sheriff needed her and Gretchen tomorrow for a major search involving the FBI.

  Saturday. How lucky can I get?

  Chapter Eleven

  Nick showed up at the site Saturday morning before anyone else. Sleep had not come easily to him the night before, but his focus was sharp. Adrenaline pulsed through his body. He paced just outside the driver’s side of his SUV, unwilling to compromise even the slightest bit of ground until the searchers and their dogs arrived.

  He looked out at the mountain meadow, peaceful and serene in the pre-dawn light. Birds called to one another and rabbits hopped through the long grasses, occasionally pausing to nibble breakfast. A deep, blue-gray sky shifted to a palette of oranges and pinks as the night slipped away. Three deer strode into the area near him, content to feed on the leaves of bushes near the trees, their ears perked, alert for danger.

  If this location was the right place, what looked like the perfect site for a romantic picnic also held buried secrets and evidence of unspeakable atrocities. He’d already devoted most of his free time to the case as the bureau backed away over the years, but now, since Leopold Bonzer’s death, the bureau would be even less concerned about acquiring closure for their files, never mind the closure for the families of Bonzer’s victims. He needed to wrap this up. Unless something else surfaced, that photograph in the serial killer’s cell was the last best hope he had of bringing closure to the families of thirteen victims.

  The deer startled back into the trees when three cruisers and a red SUV pulled up behind his vehicle. Nick walked over to the lead car and waited while two men got out.

  “Sheriff Coble, good to see you again. Seems like only yesterday.”

  “Good morning, Agent. I’ve got three deputies with me this morning and one Human Remains Detection handler with her dog.” The sheriff tossed an empty cup of coffee into the front of the car and pulled out his sunglasses.

  “Just one dog?”

  “It’s a small area, Agent Grant.” Coble pulled a toothpick from his pocket and popped it in his mouth. “Jamie Taylor and her dogs have the highest confirmed hits of anyone in the Rocky Mountain region. If we need another HRD handler I’ll call Rodney Casings in Glenwood Springs. His dogs are good but Rodney leaves a little to be desired.”

  Arnold had messengered a US Geographical map of the field to Nick last night, and he spread it out on the hood of his SUV. It was roughly the size of four football fields and Nick had already marked off search areas.

  The meadow was between Aspen Falls and Snowmass Village, just outside of Aspen. The locals had always called that general area Rocky Point. Apparently some of the older townspeople called it Kegger Point, but everyone knew the general vicinity in question regardless of the name.

  Sheriff Coble and his deputies gathered around. Whoever had arrived in the red SUV remained inside the vehicle. Nick figured the occupant was the dog handler. Just as well. “We’ll begin with the area closest to the road and proceed to the tree line. You’ve all got your GPS units and markers?” Nick didn’t have any spares and he intended to search right along with the deputies.

  The men nodded.

  “Good. We’ll go first; the dog can follow.”

  Jerry Coble pulled Nick aside. “You realize Jamie and Gretchen have the best chance of finding anything, don’t you? It’s been decades.”

  Nick wanted to ask how this Gretchen person fit in to the search, but figured he’d find out soon enough.

  Tension wrapped itself around Nick’s throat. He pushed the words out. “You’re probably right, but I’m not going to risk losing evidence because a dog or its handler didn’t know what they were seeing.”

  “Rodney, maybe, but Jamie? She makes some of my best deputies look like rookies.”

  “Let’s start off my way, Sheriff. We can move things around if we need to.”

  Sheriff Coble cocked his head. “You don’t much like dogs, do you?

  “Not much.”

  “On that note, let me introduce you.”

  Nick followed Jerry Coble’s gaze and saw a tall, confident, striking woman walking behind one of the one of the most wretched canines he’d ever seen in his life. All that fur made him crazy. And those teeth!

  “Jamie Taylor, meet Agent Nicholas Grant with the FBI. We’re here at his request.” He nodded toward the ground, a smile spreading on his weathered face. “And this fine specimen of a golden is Gretchen. Her sense of smell is the keenest I’ve ever seen, darn near three million times better than yours or mine. If she thought it important, she could probably tell you what I ate for breakfast last Tuesday, and a good strong sniff at the bottom of my boots would get her talkin’ about my fishing trip on the Poudre River last May.”

  “Don’t be silly, Sheriff.” Jamie’s smile lit up the morning like no sunlight could. “Gretchen doesn’t talk to strangers.” She reached down and rubbed the canine’s neck.

  Gretchen looked up to Jamie’s face, some sort of silent signal passing between them. It reminded Nick of the look law enforcement partners often exchange before entering an interview room. The good-cop, bad-cop thing.

  Then the dog turned her gaze on him.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jamie could tell the FBI agent didn’t like women in the law enforcement field. Or maybe the attitude that bounced off him like sharp knives stemmed from his dislike of dogs. And here she stood, a woman, ready to get to work with a golden retriever as her partner.

  Regardless, she planned minimal contact with him. Agent Nicholas Grant, attractive in a lanky kind of way, sat on a shelf like something she’d only be too happy to add to her cart. Jamie would nip any attraction in the bud. She’d had early insight into his character, and she knew where he stood from the beginning. It simplified things. She wouldn’t make another bad choice, at least not with this man.

  Surprisingly, the arrogant agent understood that Gretchen would work better with a lane search pattern. They could set up a grid search if and when they found anything. Jamie preferred to work in ten-foot lanes even though Gretchen tested out at picking scents up from a thirty-foot swath, and neither was necessarily conducive to a grid search. The retriever’s long silken ears were perfect funnels to enhance and direct molecules to her nose. Jamie often felt like she could take a nap and not be missed. If Gretchen could document her own discoveries and communicate them in a different way, Jamie wouldn’t be necessary.

  Sheriff Coble told one of the deputies to get the bundles of wooden stakes from his car. Untreated, unstained and unpainted, the two-foot stakes would be placed in the ground at relatively close intervals. The deputies would get a sense of how easily the stakes entered the soil, and they allowed the ground to breath, making the scent of any decomposition easier for Gretchen to find. If the soil felt a bit loose and mushy the deputy would mark the stake for a closer scent from Gretchen, or even closer inspection for a possible grid search. Jamie would use her own soil probe with a t-bar on the top to push in and pull out of the ground frequently.

  Gretchen wanted to get to work, but Jamie made her sit and wait for the men to get ahead of them as per Agent Grant’s instructions. Fine with me. At least I won’t have to put up with his biases, and Gretchen and I can focus on the job. And to his credit the stakes used as probes should have about a thirty-minute lead on an HRD dog. Gretchen didn’t need that long but Jamie waited, happy to have a few minutes to think about the job they were about to begin. She poured some coffee and took out a cranberry muffin from her pack, watching the men to see if they marked any of the stakes to indicate softer soil.

  In these hurry-up and wait situations, in addition to considering the task at hand, Jamie always thought of her mom as both a reminder of why she did this job and a prayer for guidance.

  They had found her mom, Star Taylor, in a meadow just like this one a little more than ten years ago, two months after Jamie turned twenty-five. She had felt so
helpless then, the daughter of a victim. She vowed never to feel that way again.

  After his early retirement from the private international security firm he worked for, Bryce Taylor had relocated his family and settled into life in the Colorado high country. It was everything Jamie had ever dreamed of. Nature and space and down-to-earth people.

  But one of her dad’s old cases had come back to ruin their idyllic life. Star Taylor, wife, mom and friend, left to go grocery shopping one day and never came home. For nine days she was missing from their lives. For those nine days they were drilled and questioned and put under a microscope. For those nine days she tried to prepare herself for the worst but couldn’t let herself actually believe the worst could happen.

  Then the bad guy, ready to inflict the final blow, led Bryce Taylor on a long hunt that culminated in the literal unearthing of his wife. She’d been tortured and buried alive within hours of being kidnapped. They’d held out hope for over a week when they should have been grieving.

  Afterward, the bastard had disappeared. The case was still open, but cold. Only her dad’s dogged tracking of the killer gave the family any hope the murder of Star Taylor would ever be solved.

  Before she had arrived on the scene this morning, Jamie had received enough information about this case to know who they were looking for. These family’s lives hadn’t been stopped for nine days. They’d been stopped more than ten years.

  The sheriff gestured and Jamie waved back an acknowledgement. Agent Grant kept his back turned toward her.

  She brought some water out of her pack for Gretchen, more to moisten her dog’s nasal passages than to quench any thirst. She checked her GPS, not that it was necessary today with the smaller area and the manpower involved, but she prided herself on being thorough. Her records were impeccable, and in more than one trial over the years had proved pivotal.