“The Johnson case?”
“The very one. Everything is here, I just don’t want to deal with that damn machine right now.”
We both looked at the ancient fax machine. Whether it would send the fax or chew it up depended entirely on its cantankerous mood. “I’ll see if I can coax it,” Joan said, voice reluctant.
I strode down the hall and grabbed my coat. Frank leapt to his feet as I cued up the radio clipped to my shoulder. “Romeo 3, dispatch.”
A woman’s voice crackled over the radio. “Romeo 3, go ahead.”
“I am en-route non-emergent to the campground.” I rattled off the address. “Reports of suspicious activity.”
“Romeo 3, I copy that. Do you need a second?”
“Not at this time.”
Frank raced out of the building ahead of me and leapt into the cab of my truck when I held the door open for him. I drove carefully down the hill and turned onto the state road. When I crossed the bridge, I slowed as I drove into the unplowed campground. Snow shifted under my tires. There was a decent amount of foot traffic through the campground but no vehicle tracks. I parked in front of the warming hut.
Frank sniffed around the hut as I grabbed gaiters and snowshoes from the back of the truck. Once the gear was donned, I checked the interior of the hut and found it empty.
I whistled for Frank and moved into the woods. The trail was broken, but the snow was still deep. I picked my way carefully, studying the ground and surroundings with each step. There were animal tracks along and over the trail, fox and snowshoe hare.
It was only because I was searching for it that I saw a disturbance in the snow and the slight splatter. I knelt to examine the sudden depression. Six drops of blood marred the white expanse, and a curved accordion of tracks around the depression marked the culprit of the violence—an eagle. For someone unfamiliar with the wilderness and its wildlife, the scream of a dying hare would sound terrifyingly human.
I thought about turning back, but a glance at my watch showed only thirty minutes had passed. No need to hurry back. I took my time descending the trail to the river. The trail followed the bank for a mile before it branched in two, one trail looping back to the warming hut and parking lot, the other following the river deeper into Yellowstone.
A lone cross-country ski lay sticking out of the snow to the side of the trail.
A flurry of movement was stamped into the powder, and farther off the trail I found a knit cap half buried. I whistled for Frank, and after several moments he came bounding through the woods to my side. I caught hold of his collar, positioned him so he was facing into the forest, and pointed into the trees. “Frank, find.”
The change came over him immediately, a shifting of muscles from playful, overgrown pup to a trained animal with a mission. I had started the day I brought him home from the breeder at ten weeks of age, beginning with the game of hide and seek. When he was older, I trained on different terrain, increasing the distance. I had gradually added age to the track and incorporated multiple people. He was the second dog I had trained, and he had picked it all up with ease.
He was not trained in track and trail like a bloodhound. His certification was in air scent, and he raced around the area, venturing off the trail at different points until he locked onto the scent and veered into the woods.
I followed him off trail. There was evidence of a struggle angling into the woods. The broken branches and disturbed snow were a testament to someone’s desperate resistance.
Frank found a mitten at the base of a lodgepole pine, and when I picked it up, I could imagine the circumstance that left the article here: a woman reaching out, catching hold of the tree in an attempt to anchor herself as she was dragged away.
Frank darted on, deeper into the forest, nose working the snow-covered ground and the air. I trailed him and spoke into my radio. “Romeo 3, dispatch.”
There was a crackle of static and then, “Romeo 3, go ahead.”
“Have there been any calls regarding this incident?”
“No, sir, dispatch has not received anything.”
“I copy.”
The scent trail ended at an old service road well away from the marked paths of the campground. Frank raced up and down the stretch of road, but the trail was gone. The only thing that remained was a backpack on the ground that Frank kept returning to.
I offered him a treat from my pocket, patting his side when he leaned against me. “Good boy. Well done.”
I donned a pair of black nitrile gloves as I knelt beside the backpack. Frank paced by my side, whining as I unzipped the pack and searched through the contents. There were extra layers of clothing, two water bottles, several granola bars, and a first aid kit. Standard fair for someone spending a few hours on the trails.
There was no wallet, no identity tags on the pack itself, just a keychain adorned with a pink plastic cartoon puppy hanging from one of the zippers. The bag itself was from a high-end sporting brand, and one of the straps was broken.
I straightened and studied the scene. The drag marks in the snow from the woods led to a set of tracks on the service road. The tracks were spaced liked the tires of a vehicle, but they had the tread of a snowmobile’s tracks. They led south, deeper into Yellowstone territory.
I spoke into my radio again. “Romeo 3, dispatch.”
“Romeo 3, go ahead.”
“Put me in touch with the rangers in the park. Have someone call me at the station.”
“Romeo 3, I copy. Is this in regards to the report of a suspicious incident at the campground?”
“It is.” The suspicious incident had all the hallmarks of a kidnapping.
Six
It is the time you have spent
on your rose that makes
her so important.
-Antoine de Saint Exupéry
EVELYN
The scream ricocheted in my head until a sharp series of knocks cut through the echo. I jolted upright, only then realizing I had dozed off curled into the embrace of the overstuffed chair pulled close to the hearth.
The slant of light hinted at late afternoon, and Faye’s son sat in a chair opposite me, his wide, curious gaze fixed on my face. I smiled at Sam as I straightened, plucking off my glasses to rub sleep from my face.
The knock came again, and when I opened the door, I found the police officer on the inn’s doorstep. Hector, that was what he had told me his name was. I remembered the character from the Iliad, bold and noble and loyal to a fault. I imagined Homer’s Hector looked much like this one. The only thing that softened his hard, square slab of jawline was the silver goatee. His thick shock of hair was the same color, though liberally streaked with white, but his dark brows gave testament to his former hair color.
His was not a face that would ever be considered handsome. His windburned features were too harshly rawboned and craggy for that. There was a remoteness and a coldness about him. But he had a face that women young and old, myself included, would find arresting. Hector had always been my favorite character in the Iliad.
“Miss.” His voice was low and rough in a way that sounded perpetually hoarse.
I glanced past him and saw a second man, this one garbed in the khaki green of a park ranger. I turned my eyes back to Hector. “You found something.”
“We’d like for you to come down to the station,” he said.
Dread knotted my stomach and locked my muscles. We’d like for you to come down to the station. I had heard that numerous times, always accompanied by solicitous, hard edged smiles. Would you be willing to submit to a polygraph?
I met Hector’s gaze and realized I had been silent for too long. “Why?” With the police, it was never just a conversation. It was always an interrogation, whether it was slyly casual or seated across from a detective in a small, windowless room being asked the same question over and over. With the police, it was not a matter of being innocent until proven guilty. It was always a
matter of being guilty, struggling to convince them of your innocence.
“We’d like for you to give a formal witness statement and look at some things.” Nothing in his voice gave him away, but from the way he studied me, I knew he saw my hesitation.
I swallowed. I did not try to smile at them as if I were completely at ease. I knew it would fall flat. “Let me just grab my coat.”
The ranger was in his own vehicle. Hector gestured toward his truck, and when I opened the passenger door, I was greeted by the white standard poodle.
“Frank, get in the back,” Hector ordered.
The poodle waited until I parsed my fingers through his topknot before obeying.
The ride to the police station was made in silence. It was a tense silence on my end, hands tucked under my legs and a conscious effort made to keep my knee from jostling nervously. On his end, I thought it was simply because he was not a man who spoke much unless he had something to say.
When we arrived at the police department, I was braced to be led into a small, cold room and given a cup of coffee that tasted like they used toilet water and stale grounds. Instead, it was just as Hector told me. He led me down a hallway into a large room with several couches and chairs. It was brightly lit, and efforts had been made to make the room less stark with landscapes on the wall and floral throw pillows on the couches. An office was sectioned off one side of the room, and beside the door were racks of pamphlets about domestic abuse and sexual assault. The plaque on the door read VICTIM ADVOCATE.
Hector handed me a clipboard with a stack of lined papers with the police watermark on them. I accepted the pen he offered me and took a seat. Frank hopped up on the couch beside me and curled up on the opposite end.
“Was someone hurt out there?” I asked.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Hector said. “This is Ranger Edwards, he’s with the Yellowstone Law Enforcement Services Branch. We’d like for you to write a witness statement, everything you can remember from the campground, and then we would like to go over the details with you.”
I glanced back and forth between the two men. Edwards was short and stocky with a boyish face and a genial smile. “Of course.” The dread at having the police focus on me shifted into concern and the certainty that something had happened at the campground.
It took me thirty minutes to recount the morning’s events in writing, and when I was finished, the two men returned to the room and pulled up chairs across from me. I handed the statement to Hector, who skimmed through it quickly before passing it to the other man.
Hector took a small notebook and a pair of reading glasses from his pocket. “What more can you tell me about the woman you saw in the warming hut? You thought she was a cross-country skier?”
I nodded. “She had those long skis and poles with her.”
“Do you remember what brand of skis she had?”
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t get a good look at them, and I probably wouldn’t remember even if I had.”
“What else do you recall about her?”
I took my time answering as I thought through the brief exchange. “She was young. I would say late teens, early twenties. White. I think she had blond hair, but she was wearing a beanie, so I’m not entirely certain. I remember when she spoke to me that I thought she was from Texas.”
“Do you remember what she was wearing?” the ranger asked.
I pondered the question, staring at the wall as I brought her to my mind’s eye. “She had on one of those puffy athletic coats. It was blue. And she was carrying a backpack.”
Hector wrote in his notebook as I spoke, but now he looked up and met my gaze. “I’d like for you to take a look at something and tell me if you recognize it.”
“Okay.”
He left the room and came back moments later with a clear plastic bag. It looked like an oversized envelope, rectangular with a lip folded over sealing the contents within. The label on the lip was red and the word EVIDENCE was printed in bold black ink across the seal. Within the bag was a backpack. One of the straps was broken.
I stared at the backpack and then looked at the ranger before meeting Hector’s gaze. “That’s the backpack the young woman had. I remember that keychain on it.”
“Is there anything else you can remember about her?” Hector asked.
I shook my head, scouring my brain. “No, wait. When I first saw her, I thought I might have seen her last night, eating at Maggie’s Diner with a group of girls. I’m not certain about that, though. I’m sorry. That’s not much information.”
“It’s more than we had,” the ranger said, smiling at me. “Thank you…” He glanced at the witness statement, at the section of the page where it asked for my contact information. “Miss Hutto. This was helpful.”
Hector stood. “I’ll give you a ride back to the inn.”
The ride back was just as silent. When he pulled his truck into the semi-circular front drive of the inn, I thanked him for the ride.
Twilight had crept down the valley, and the sky burned with dying light in the west. I hesitated with my hand poised to open the door. “What did you find out there? Is that young woman I saw dead?”
He had not been looking at me. His gaze was on the rearview mirror, but now he turned to me. He studied me for a moment. “I didn’t find a body.” Just as my shoulders started to relax, he said, “But I found a scene that makes me think someone was grabbed off the trail.”
“Grabbed. You mean kidnapped.”
“I mean it looks like someone was ambushed on the trail and dragged through the woods to a waiting vehicle.”
I flinched at his blunt words. “Jesus.”
He nodded and said, “Someone from the station will be in touch if we need anything else from you.”
I climbed down from his truck and stood lost in thought on the inn’s front porch, watching him drive away. I thought about the young woman’s guileless smile and the eerie quiet and stillness of the woods. I shivered.
I turned to the door, but a sharp sound caught my attention. I followed the porch around the corner of the inn to find Faye chopping wood. The ax bit into the wood and wedged there, resisting her efforts to seesaw the blade free.
“That looks like hard work.”
She jumped at my voice, but her smile was friendly, if a bit wan, when she turned to me. She pushed her hair away from her face. “It is. I could purchase firewood. But it seems like a silly waste of money when I have plenty of trees at my disposal.” She yanked the ax from the wood with such force she stumbled back a step. “I rethink that thought every winter, though.”
I crossed the yard. I knelt beside the pile of raggedly chopped wood and collected a bundle in my arms.
“You don’t have to do that.”
I balanced the load carefully, avoiding the splinters that tugged at the sleeves of my coat. “I don’t mind.”
She grabbed a stack as well, and I followed her inside through a side door that led into the dining room. Sam was sitting beside the fire coloring. “Did you enjoy snowshoeing this morning?”
“The woods were beautiful but…disquieting.” I did not tell her of hearing the scream in the woods, of the harrowing suspicions the police officer had just voiced to me.
She stacked her load of firewood in the rack beside the fireplace. While I followed suit, she grabbed a broom and swept aside the debris. “When we first moved here, the quiet bothered me more than anything else. I was used to hearing traffic and people twenty-four seven.”
I caught Sam staring at me. “What are you drawing there?” He extended the piece of paper to me without saying a word, and I admired the unidentifiable pencil and crayon sketch before following Faye back outside.
“He’s not being rude.” Her voice was quiet as she stacked logs onto my outstretched arms. “He doesn’t speak. I usually let guests know so they don’t think he’s being rude when he doesn’t respond to them.”
Her gaze darted to mine. “What?”
“You said when you first moved here.”
“Oh, yes. We moved from New York City.”
“That is quite the change in setting.”
She chuckled. “It was quite the adjustment, too.” She stopped on the porch and turned in a slow circle, gaze on the darkening forest, mountains, and river. She turned back to me and smiled. “Now, though, I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
I had followed the circuitous route of her gaze. “There is something about this place.” I stacked the firewood in the rack and then opened the front door as she swept the debris out into the snow.
She leaned the broom against the firewood rack. “Would you like to join us for dinner?”
“I wouldn’t want to be any trouble.”
She glanced over her shoulder and smiled at me. “You wouldn’t be. I made spaghetti. There’s plenty.”
“Then I gladly accept.” I followed her to the kitchen, where the rich, fragrant smell of tomatoes, oregano, thyme, and rosemary beckoned me farther into the room and made my stomach growl. “What may I do to help?”
Her kitchen was state of the art and well stocked. Soon dinner was plated and the three of us were seated around the breakfast table under the window. It was quiet, there was no back and forth chatter, just the occasional clink of fork tines on a plate. But it was companionable.
Faye refused my offers to help her clean the kitchen after dinner, and I retreated to my room. Once locked within, I completed my nightly rituals quickly, humming Greensleeves under my breath as I readied for bed. The tune reminded me that I needed to get the box from my car, and I made a mental note to go to the auto shop in the morning.
Hunting Ground Page 5