by A. J. Thomas
It was obvious from the scene that Christopher had been hit by a car while on the jogging path. If the tire tracks marked where he was hit, and the pool of blood marked where he had landed, then he had been hit hard enough to send him flying about fifteen feet. The bottle had probably been in his hand, and it had flown another ten feet past the blood.
Doug focused on backcountry medicine, but he still had to keep his standard EMT basic certification valid. He knew when a pedestrian was hit by a car moving that quickly, a broken leg was almost guaranteed. If the blood was any indication, Christopher had at least one compound fracture. A small smear of blood about two feet from the puddle was probably where his head hit the ground. That meant a concussion on top of a badly broken leg. Wherever Christopher was, he needed to get to an emergency room.
The only consolation was that there wasn’t enough blood on the ground to indicate Christopher was in danger of bleeding to death. Doug had to keep reminding himself of that. When he helped teach wilderness first-responder classes, one of the other instructors always liked to pour a few ounces of water out onto the ground, just to show their students how big a mess a few ounces of fluid could make when it spread out.
It wasn’t enough blood for Christopher to bleed to death. If his wounds kept bleeding, though, it was more than enough to start him on the downward spiral that would lead to shock. Twenty-four hours with such traumatic injuries and no medical care meant shock was close to a certainty. Doug felt his stomach twist, but he forced himself to take a deep breath and calm down. There would be time to throw up later.
“Try the hospital again,” Doug told Delgado. “Ask about anyone brought in yesterday with a broken leg. He might have been unconscious.”
Delgado stared down at him, a look of sincere surprise on his face. He made the call, this time asking about any John Does with leg injuries. “Nothing,” he said, hanging up.
“If you can, look up the hospitals in Ronan and Kalispell and call them too.”
Delgado did as Doug asked him to, shaking his head after each phone call.
Doug shut his eyes and resisted the urge to curse. “Well, we know he was hit by a large truck. There aren’t all that many fifth-wheel pickups running around.”
“Huh?”
Doug rose to his feet and went back to the tire tracks. “Two SUV or truck tires stopped here.” He pointed to the tire marks where he suspected Christopher had been hit. He walked back several feet to where he believed the truck’s tailgate had ended up. “Here, there are two tires right next to each other,” he said, pointing to two deep indentations in the dirt. They were side by side and only a few inches apart. A few feet away, where the other end of the truck’s rear axle would have been, were two more parallel tire marks. “The truck was a fifth wheel. It's usually more of a commercial truck, used for towing and hauling heavy loads.”
“So, it’s distinctive?”
“Unfortunately, yes. I’ve really only seen one running around.” Doug wanted to call Belkamp and ask if they had gotten to Brubaker’s house yet, and if he had found Christopher. It wouldn’t do any good to call, though, since at best, it would be a fruitless effort, and at worst, it could be a potentially lethal distraction.
“Where do we find it?”
“We don’t,” said Doug. “The FBI is already working on it.”
“The FBI?” Delgado laughed. “Even they can’t get a description of the truck out of your head, and they don’t move that fast. This is all one case, isn’t it?”
Doug didn’t know what the hell it was anymore. He’d been in the hospital or stuck at home all week. “The feds think so. The agent in charge said something about the suspect I shot Monday. It seemed to make sense to him.”
“And they’re going after him, right now?”
“That’s what they said they were doing.”
Delgado stared at him, as if expecting something more. “So it’s a hurry-up-and-wait kind of thing?”
Doug grimaced. “Might as well go to the hospital,” he suggested. “They’ll transport him there, if they find him.”
“That or the morgue.”
“He hasn’t lost that much blood!” Doug snapped.
“He hadn’t lost that much blood yesterday morning. Who knows what might have changed? And why the hell would blood loss matter? Your suspect can just shoot him in the head.”
Doug shook his head furiously, an absolute denial ready to spill from his lips. He bit it back. He kicked the dirt. “Yes, he can. Either way, I’d rather bet on the hospital. If you’d like to go hang out in the morgue, I’ll drop you off on the way.”
He jumped like a started deer when the phone in his pocket rang. The number was restricted, but he recognized it. “Heavy Runner,” he answered.
“Where else would Brubaker be?” Belkamp demanded.
Doug froze at Belkamp’s question. “He wasn’t at home?”
“Negative. The house was empty. Where else would he be?”
“I… fuck it, I have no idea. He’s just my boss. I don’t know him that well. Did you ask Daniels?”
“He said something about a cabin, but he didn’t know its location.”
“I didn’t even know he had a cabin,” Doug had to admit. “But there should be property records….” He was grasping at straws now, and he knew it. Christopher didn’t have time for them to dig through property records at the county courthouse. “He has Hayes,” Doug whispered. “He’s hurt. Bad.”
“Are you sure? Are you absolutely positive?”
Delgado stepped in front of him, his eyes wide. Doug nearly ran into him. He’d been pacing without even realizing it. “I got a location, but it went offline again fast,” Delgado said. “Like he turned his phone on for a few minutes, then turned it off again.”
Doug looked at the phone the man was holding up. A GPS-style map was on the screen, and a tiny flag, with Christopher’s picture on it, was in a large green section of the map to the north. The small icon even listed his coordinates. “He’s in the Jewel Basin!” Doug shouted. “What the hell do you even use that thing for?”
“Trail runs,” said Delgado simply. “He leaves me behind after a few miles. This way, we can keep track of each other. It’s all GPS-based, so it works even if we lose the cellular signal. It logs miles, pace, and everything….”
“What are you talking about?” Belkamp roared in his ear.
“I’ve got GPS coordinates for Hayes’s location,” Doug said quickly. “And, yes, I’m sure!” Doug read off the coordinates.
Belkamp read them back carefully. “We’ll check it out.”
“You’re going to need a helicopter to get up there fast,” Doug told him. “It’s the Jewel Basin—it’s all dirt roads, most of them aren’t marked, and some places are only accessible on foot.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Belkamp asked.
Doug felt his stomach twist painfully. “No,” he whispered. “I’m not.”
“I’ll try to find a chopper. But for now, we’ve got to work with what we’ve got.”
The line went dead before Doug could say anything. He stared at his phone for a moment, trying to figure out what else he could do. He could call the FBI agent back again, but every moment he spent on the phone with him was a moment wasted in the search for resources. There was no chance anyone who wasn't already familiar with the Jewel Basin would be able to drive in with a regular GPS and hope to find those specific coordinates. There were six different roads into the expansive wilderness area, but only one of them led to the small tracts of private land owned by hunters and fishermen. It was not the main road used by backpackers and hikers, and it was several miles farther to the north.
Doug’s pacing brought him to the edge of the small pool of blood. He stared down at it and he knew there just wasn’t time.
“Are you armed?” he asked Delgado without looking at him.
“Yes.”
Doug went to his truck, took off his jacket, eased his arm out of the sling,
and pulled his Sig and harness out from under the seat. He gritted his teeth against the pain as he slipped the harness over his shoulders.
“You can’t be serious,” Delgado said. “You can hardly move.”
“I’m right-handed,” said Doug, checking the magazine and then inserting it. He had to press it against his thigh to get it to click into place. “Christopher has at least a compound fracture and a concussion. It’s been twenty-four hours and he probably hasn’t received any care. If he is still alive, he doesn’t have much time. The feds aren’t going to make it fast enough. They’re at the suspect’s house, on the other side of town, and even with the coordinates, they don’t know the roads they need to take to get there.”
“What about your department? You can’t be the only police officer in town, and you’re in no condition to be driving, much less running off like some damn cowboy!”
“There is no town police department. They were consolidated years ago,” Doug rambled, trying to avoid explaining. Delgado just stared at him. He dropped his head and shut his eyes. “The suspect the FBI is trying to find—he’s our sheriff. I’ve only been with the department for two years, and I honestly don’t know if there are any other police officers in my department I can trust right now.”
“The news said they had an arsonist and potential serial killer in custody. Why are they after your sheriff?”
Doug shook his head. “Sheriff Brubaker took that man into custody. He probably has nothing to do with it. This—” He pointed to the ground. “I’d bet money it’s Sheriff Brubaker’s truck.”
Delgado gaped at him. “They’re after your commanding officer?”
“Yes. So, you can either get in the truck and help me, or you can walk back to your car.”
Delgado was in the truck in a flash. “You know where we’re going?”
Doug nodded. “I know the general area. The final roads, we’re going to need those coordinates to pin down. But I can get us up there.”
“Right.”
As Doug drove them out of town, Delgado produced three different handguns from somewhere in his clothes, along with two small knives from his sleeves. He checked everything methodically, then replaced the weapons with a smooth, practiced ease.
“You carry all that on vacation?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t think San Diego was that bad….”
“San Diego is my home.” His voice was calm, but Doug picked up a hint of warning, and sadness, in Delgado’s tone.
When Doug turned off the main road, then turned again, following a discreet brown sign pointing to the Jewel Basin Hiking Area, Delgado went on. “I’ve got a big family,” he said quietly. “Including some cousins who take me being a police officer personally. When they finally got it through their heads that I really do work for the city and not for them, they took it very personally.”
Doug glanced sideways at Christopher’s partner, wondering how Delgado maintained such an easygoing personality when his own family posed the kind of threat that required him to carry a small arsenal, even a thousand miles away. Doug’s paranoia because of his ex seemed trivial compared to living and working in a city where even parts of your own family were your enemies.
“So you and Chris have been partners for a long time?” Doug asked, trying to give him an easy out.
“He lets you call him Chris?”
“He hasn’t objected to it.”
Delgado sniggered. “Four years. Before that, he was a patrol officer assigned to the gang unit. I worked Gang Enforcement for years, and he knew more about some of the Eastside gangs going into it than I did. It was novel, finding this cute little white boy who was more of a street rat than me.”
“Four years?”
“And you’ve known him all of a week.”
“Two weeks now, almost.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. That gives you so much more credibility than you had before the one-week mark.”
Doug couldn’t help but feel smug at the jealously radiating from Delgado. “I didn’t know my credibility was an issue.”
“Hayes is a bit like a kicked puppy,” said Delgado randomly. “He tends to avoid people because everyone he’s ever been attached to has hurt him. But it still doesn’t take much more than somebody throwing him a bone to make him follow them around like they’re the whole fucking world.”
“So,” said Doug, “you’re saying what, exactly?”
Delgado didn’t answer.
They turned off the paved roads and onto an unmarked dirt road. The truck rocked back and forth as Doug took the bumps and troughs in the road fast.
“Where are we?”
“About twenty minutes from Christopher’s mark on your map.”
“But there’s nothing up here….”
“That’s the point. It’s a wilderness area. Set aside for preservation, and for people to enjoy the outdoors.”
“Hm. Definitely not my thing.”
“We should be coming up on a few turnouts. I’ll need the GPS to know which way to go from here. Although most of the next roads are going to be too small to show up on a map.”
“They get smaller than this?”
“Logging roads, jeep trails, things like that. These are all privately owned tracts of land that were sold to hunters years ago. Half the time, there isn’t even an access road.”
Doug set Delgado’s phone on the dashboard, slowed down as they came upon a small turnout, and then turned right down a narrow trail. After another twenty minutes, the trail widened out a bit.
“Are you sure you’re not just driving us out into the middle of nowhere so you can cap your competition?”
Doug wasn’t sure if the man was joking or not. He couldn’t really be suggesting Doug would try to kill him. That was too ridiculous to believe. Given the fact that the entire sheriff’s department was going to be facing a massive FBI investigation to find out if any of them were accomplices to their serial-killer boss, Doug supposed he couldn’t blame him. He could treat it like a joke, but that probably wouldn’t do any good. The truth would do, he decided at last. “I’m not your competition. Christopher and I have spent the week fooling around. We’ve become friends, but that’s all.”
“Friends?”
“Friends with benefits,” Doug said smugly. “But both of us know this thing between us has a built-in expiration date. It’s not like he’s going to hang out after he’s dealt with all of his brother’s shit.” Doug didn’t know why he felt the need to justify himself to this prick. He could feel the other man staring at him again.
“Friends with benefits,” Delgado repeated.
“From what I’ve heard, you’re the last person who should be criticizing us.”
“Criticizing?”
“Try that active-listening shit again and I’m going kick you out and make you walk home!”
Doug fumed silently while Delgado laughed. “Fine. Let’s get him back alive and then we can fight over him,” said Delgado.
He slowed down by another dirt road, pulled Delgado’s phone off the dashboard, and then turned. They were within a half mile of the location Christopher’s phone had transmitted. The trees on either side of the small dirt road were marked with bright orange signs. “Private Property” and “No Trespassing” signs hung from trees every twenty feet for nearly a hundred yards.
Doug watched their progress on the GPS, then pulled his truck to the side and killed the engine. “Diesels are loud,” he said, in response to the expression on Delgado’s face.
Delgado’s curious look turned serious for the first time. He nodded once and got out of the truck, drew his sidearm, and held it in a low ready position. They would have to go on foot to avoid spooking Brubaker. If he heard an engine approaching, he might finish Christopher off—if he was even still alive.
If Christopher was dead, Doug didn’t want to give Brubaker enough warning to escape into the forest. They also had no idea what Brubaker might have stockpiled in terms of weapons, expl
osives, and supplies. Things could escalate into a shootout, an endless standoff, or just plain explode.
Doug hopped out of the truck, hurried to grab his daypack, and then trotted to catch up to the other man. Delgado regarded the daypack with raised eyebrows.
“Trauma kit,” said Doug. “And an emergency-locator beacon.”
“Huh?”
“Push a button and the national search-and-rescue dispatch center sends help. It works from anywhere on the planet.” Doug let the corner of his lip turn up slightly. “Of course, I’m the one they’ll try to contact to organize local rescue efforts… so we’re probably fucked either way.”
“We can’t just call for help?” Delgado asked.
“I don’t know, can you?”
Horrified, Delgado poked the screen of his phone helplessly. “But….” He poked the screen again. “Do the mountains block the signal?”
“There are no cell phone towers. No one lives up here.”
“But….” He tapped the screen harder.
“Don’t worry about it. Given the situation, I’m not sure who you’d call anyway.”
Delgado’s only response was a pathetic whimper.
“There is no cavalry up here. No overwhelming officer presence. The FBI might be coming to back us up. Or they might be lost six miles south. We’re on our own.”
Delgado slowed to a shuffle and slipped his phone into a pocket inside his suit jacket. The handgun appeared again, as if by magic. The man's confident smirk returned so fast that Doug was impressed. He wondered if Delgado would have been so instantly willing to help back at the railroad tracks if he had known just what he was getting into.