The Main Corpse

by Diane Mott Davidson

  I looked back. Below the median, I could just make out the two women approaching the ambulance. The guard’s body was still sprawled, limp, on the road.

  We were fugitives.

  Chapter 16

  “Goldy … I’m sorry you had to …” Marla rasped. “I can’t believe you and … Bo … what you did …”

  “I need your wrist,” I said matter-of-factly. “I’ve got to monitor your pulse. That epinephrine could zap your heart right into overtime.”

  “Great.” She struggled to catch her breath. “So then what? Call an ambulance?” Finding this amusing, she wheezed with laughter.

  “Look,” I replied, “cool it. I can’t do blood pressure or EKG, but you need to let me check you for extra heartbeats. We may end up at the hospital yet.”

  Marla cackled and gasped again. “Leave it to Goldy to break me out of jail using food. Marvelous—”

  “Try to calm down,” Bo ordered her gently.

  Instead, to my dismay, she gulped for breath and started to weep. She thrust her left hand in my direction. I clasped it, felt for a vein, and checked my watch. Normal. I knew enough about adrenal-type stimulation to expect bad side effects, if there were going to be any, within thirty minutes. On the other hand, the epinephrine should start alleviating her allergic reaction within a minute. Let us pray.

  With her free hand, Marla opened the glove compartment. A cellular phone fell out. Sniffling, she slammed the compartment shut, groped in the storage compartment between the bucket seats, and pulled out a tissue. Awkwardly, she blew her nose. “Bo … I’m so … sorry I haven’t been nicer to you …” She laughed between sobs. “Great time for remorse, huh?”

  “Would you please stop talking and hold still?” I demanded. Still, the wheeze appeared to be fading from her voice. I concentrated on the vein in her wrist.

  But Marla would not be quiet. “When I heard Bo’s voice, saw the two of you, I … I didn’t know what to think. What … what have you done? What’s going to happen to us?”

  Bo’s smile beneath the fake blood streaks was small and guarded. He took a clean tissue Marla offered and dabbed at his face. “Is that allergic-reaction medication working? Do you need some ointment for your hives?”

  She ignored his questions. “Why, Bo?” she insisted. Her pulse remained normal. The scratchiness definitely had cleared from her throat. “Aren’t you violating your parole? Why are you here?”

  He glanced over at her. “You’re beginning to sound better.” He frowned. “Why am I here? Because Goldy asked me to help. You know me, I’m a military-action kind of guy.”

  “Cut the crap,” Marla snapped.

  “All right, then,” he snapped right back, “I did it because whatever’s gone on between us, we’re family.”

  “I don’t know, guys,” Arch interjected. His voice wavered. “This is all pretty … heavy.” With my free hand, I patted his shoulder. He shook me off with a muttered, “Quit it.”

  Still clasping Marla’s wrist, I twisted in the leather seat to check whether anyone was coming for the guard and the ambulance driver. But the roadside scene had long ago been swallowed in fog. I tried not to imagine how much trouble Tom would get into when news got out that his wife had held up an ambulance. I turned back and focused on Marla’s pulse. Hunched over the wheel. General Bo sailed up the interstate. His prominent chin jutted out at a determined angle. The speedometer needle quivered just above seventy miles per hour.

  “That guard’s going to be fine,” Bo reassured Arch. His grip tightened on the wheel. “She must have studied acting, that one. Or maybe she was truly passing out. When I want to kill or maim someone, I do it.”

  “So …” Marla groaned. “Where are we going? How is all this … going to end up?”

  No one answered her. Bo glanced into the side mirror and changed lanes. I checked my watch: Ten minutes had passed.

  “Getting back to cutting the crap,” General Bo said mildly, “why don’t you, Marla, dear, tell us what’s going on. Goldy didn’t have a lot of time to fill me in. She said you’d been accused of killing your boyfriend. Did you?”

  Marla bit her bottom lip and said nothing.

  “Self-defense?” Bo prompted. His eyes didn’t move from the road. “Maybe you were just pissed off? God knows, I invested in that mine, too. I’m pissed off.”

  Marla shuddered. “I did not do anything to Tony. I know it looks bad, because I was the last one with him….”

  “Well, next to last, anyway,” Arch added helpfully.

  Marla went on: “Besides my hundred thousand in Prospect, he’d borrowed another eighty thou from me to put down on land in Steamboat Springs. He probably owes money all over the Denver metropolitan area. I want my money back. But I didn’t kill him.”

  “Maybe he was cheating on you, and you just thought you’d hurt him,” Bo offered, his eyes still fixed on the road. “Maybe he insulted you. Maybe you’d just had enough. Frankly, I don’t care. But before we go farther, it would be best to know all we can.”

  Marla didn’t bother to hide her hostility. “You’re as bad as the cops. I haven’t even begun to tell you how they treated me.” She turned around. Even with the hives receding, her bruised face seemed hideous to me. “You should have heard them. ‘What were you mad at Tony about? Did you hit him? How many times did you stab him?’”

  The general groaned sympathetically, but glanced at her expectantly, as in. Well? How many times did you stab him?

  Marla’s tone was frosty and deliberate. “I don’t know who hit me, I don’t know why, I don’t know who hit Macguire, I don’t know who put the bloody shirt and knife in my car. I didn’t take Tony’s damn watch, and I certainly don’t know where Tony is.” She glared at us.

  Another uncomfortable silence filled the Jeep.

  “Jake could f-i-n-d Mr. Royce,” Arch spelled out confidently.

  “Dead or alive,” the general whispered.

  “So what are we going to do?” Marla asked angrily. “Go back to Goldy’s house and wait for Tony to call?”

  Twenty minutes had elapsed, and Marla’s heartbeat, if not her humor, was in good shape. I took a deep breath. “Okay, look. You were attacked by a bald person. Maybe it was Albert. Maybe it was someone else. Tony’s vanished. I think our only hope is to go back to the campsite. The Furman County Sheriff’s Department has access to just one bloodhound these days—”

  “Oh, yeah!” Arch interrupted. “The police in Aurora asked to borrow that dog a couple of weeks ago, and the handler’s been involved down there, so they haven’t been able to work that dog up in the mountains—”

  “Are you kidding?” Marla exclaimed.

  “Look, Marla,” I protested, “it’s our only hope.”

  “What is our only hope?” she squealed. “Going back to that damned campsite? In this weather? To look for what? Besides,” she added sarcastically, “I thought Arch’s dog was retired. Something about how he’d become untrustworthy. Please tell me I’m wrong.”

  Jake, sensing he was being discussed, began to whine. Perhaps the canine was smarter than I was giving him credit for.

  Arch piped up, “Jake just had trouble with three trails last year! It was because the department got a new handler who didn’t know what he was doing. Jake was mistreated and got all nervous. The department thought his smeller was off. But Tom and I know that isn’t true.”

  “I think we should try to track Tony’s movements,” I said. I added mentally. And rely on Jake’s smeller not being off.

  “Mom’s finally beginning to understand what Jake can do,” Arch said with an eagerness that made me uneasy. “See, even with the trail going to the creek, we should be able to locate the body. In the water, I mean. All that stuff in movies about prisoners getting rid of their scent? You know, by wading in a stream or something? That is completely wrong. You leave your scent in the water just as much as you do on the ground. See, bloodhounds can follow the trail along the creek—”

  To my as
tonishment, Marla burst into tears. “My life is hell,” she wailed.

  “Please stop,” I murmured. “Please don’t, you’ll just—”

  “Who is trying to ruin my life?” she bawled. “What did I do?”

  “Don’t try to talk,” I told her gently. Bo pulled into the far right lane and slowed slightly until we came to a lighted green highway sign.

  “All right, listen to me,” the general began, as he peered through the mist. “Goldy’s plan is good. We go to the site. We track Tony to the last place he was seen. Maybe he was kidnapped. We track him to where a car picked him up. Or say he was killed, thrown in a ditch. Ditto. Then whoever did it must be the one who planted the evidence implicating Marla. Arch, you said you and Tom have worked with Jake. You don’t think the dog’s unreliable, do you? We’re all telling the truth here, young man.”

  “Okay, look. Jake had a couple of problems our first time out,” Arch admitted. “He got confused by a pool scent. But he did better after that.”

  “My number-one priority on this trek is to keep everyone safe,” General Bo announced fiercely. “With you first. Arch. I promised your mother. You take care of Jake. I’ll take care of you. Okay?”

  “All right,” Arch replied angrily. “You don’t need to baby me.”

  I said, “We’re just looking for clues that De Groot and Hersey might have missed. And to track Tony’s last movements. Maybe with Marla gone, the sheriff’s department will search a little harder for Albert.”

  I looked tentatively at Marla. Her face was set in deep doubt. No point in discussing any more until we got to the site. But to do that the fastest way, we had to go into Aspen Meadow and turn onto the state highway that led to Blue Spruce and the Grizzly Creek campsite.

  We rounded the lake. I held my breath as we began the descent to the light on Aspen Meadow’s Main Street,

  “Christ,” muttered General Farquhar. He pointed and I felt my heart clench. The law, it seemed, had already arrived on my street. Two patrol cars, lights whirling, were double-parked by the turnoff to our home.

  The light at the intersection of Main Street and the highway leading to Blue Spruce and Grizzly Creek changed to red. With no place to turn around and the light against him. General Farquhar rocketed the Jeep through the intersection. He swerved wildly around a Volvo with a Kansas license plate, then barely missed a pickup truck as he plowed down the left lane. I guessed he was trying to find enough room to make a U-turn. He finally careened onto the sidewalk in front of the Aspen Meadow Café, plowed down a bush, and gunned the Jeep back up Main Street. Behind us, a siren sounded.

  At the light, an enormous Safeway truck lumbered into the slow, tortuous turn toward the lake. The Jeep tires squealed as General Bo darted wide around the truck. The truck driver, confused by the Jeep’s sudden appearance, braked. All traffic was suddenly blocked as we zipped through the narrow opening made by the truck. Bo veered left, heading west on the highway. Belatedly, the truck driver let loose with his horn. Drivers on three sides joined in the cacophony.

  “What was that about keeping everybody safe?” I yelled. No one listened to me.

  When we had gone less than a hundred yards, General Farquhar gunned the Jeep up the grass-covered hill next to the road. We slammed through a flimsy wire fence and careened across private property. For the next ten minutes, the general took us through two more yards and then across back roads until we came to the acreage of Furman County Open Space property. We met with some strange looks and barking dogs, but no police cars and no angry-tempered Coloradans wielding .357 Magnums. Thank heaven.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” I asked, once we were on a pathway that cut through a county-owned meadow. Bo did not answer. The overgrown, muddy path was sort of an off-road road. The Jeep wove around rocks and smashed back through someone else’s fence before returning to a rural paved road that eventually intersected the highway leading northwest out of town. Maybe he did know where he was going.

  We drove the next forty minutes in near silence. Carl’s Trout Pond, High Country Auto Repair, and Blue Spruce all whizzed past. The road climbed until a sign swathed in tendrils of mist announced we were driving through national forest. At seven-thirty, we would have less than another hour of daylight. It was extremely unlikely that the police would still be at the campsite. When Tom had a team of investigators at the scene of a crime, they rarely stayed past a few hours, long enough to take photographs, make a videotape, and collect evidence.

  At a dirt road where a collection of dilapidated signs stood propped like abandoned rakes. General Farquhar finally slowed. The rusty markers with their skewed arrows named a host of camps, picnic areas, and campsites that included Grizzly Creek. Grunting, Bo negotiated the razorback turn to get onto the dirt road. We jolted over a wooden bridge. Less than a foot below us, muddy, swollen Grizzly Creek teemed and foamed.

  After crossing the creek, we wound swiftly upward through national forest. Occasionally, the fog cleared, revealing vistas of rock-strewn steppes and hillsides dense with evergreens. Stands of lovely white-skinned aspens randomly interrupted the green. We came into a narrow canyon where lodgepole and ponderosa pines stretched up bluffs on either side of the road. There were no cars, bicycles, or hikers. I dreaded the prospect of all the unknown territory out there—even more than I feared arriving at the campsite.

  “You need to show me where you turned off,” General Bo told Marla, and she pointed mutely to a still narrower, unmarked dirt road. We rocked through muddy ditches, turned and once again found ourselves next to Grizzly Creek, this time heading upstream. We paralleled the bloated waterway until it disappeared upward into a ravine. The water crashing over rocks roared so loudly we could hear it inside the car. We pulled up to a rough parking area lined with logs. Marla drew in a ragged breath. Arch leaned forward to peer outside.

  Arch told General Bo to cut the engine immediately. My son said, “Carbon monoxide from the engine exhaust can destroy the scent at the site. All the rain will make Tony’s scent stronger. A person drops individual bacteria and skin cells everywhere he goes,” Arch added. “When there’s little wind, no car exhaust, and a lot of moisture, the trail of a person’s movement can be detected for a long time, even weeks.” Even, as I had just learned, if he’s gone into or through water.

  My eyes skimmed the abandoned campsite. Because we had climbed from the main road, what had been a low-lying gray cloud just above us was now a mist drifting between the pines. A picnic table had been upended, either by campers or by the investigators. Bits of tissue, crusts of food, and torn paper plates spotted the mud. It looked as if the trash can had been emptied. My guess was that this had been done in search of evidence.

  “Okay, I’m going to get out first,” General Bo announced. He emerged stealthily from the Jeep and checked every corner of the campsite. His movements were hawklike, aggressive.

  General Bo signaled to us to come. Jake began to snort excitedly. When Marla opened her door, I nodded to Arch, who hopped out with Jake in tow. I glanced at the cellular phone on the floor of the front seat. Call Tom now or later? I was going to call him, I was determined. I jumped out of the Jeep. Later.

  Arch crouched next to Jake and murmured. Marla limped over to the creek and stood next to the raging water with her arms hugging her body. Arch reached into his backpack and pulled out his dog-handling gloves, then the working harness, which he snapped into place around Jake’s powerful torso. My son’s face was serious. I suspected he was beginning to understand the possible consequences of what we had done—or what we might find.

  The general strode back to the Jeep and pulled out a large backpack on a frame. He hooked his arms through the metal support and fixed the straps around his waist. I took a deep breath of the cold, moist air and tried to think. Arch had told me that the record for a bloodhound tracking was one hundred forty miles in a day. Before darkness obliterated this fog, I doubted we’d go more than a tiny fraction of that distance.

&nb
sp; At Arch’s request, General Bo hauled out the bulging plastic bag that held Tony Royce’s pants. Bo signaled to me to come, then handed Arch the bag and reached into his pocket for a tightly folded laminated map. In the gathering gloom we squinted at the map: Ragged red lines marked Grizzly Creek, Bride’s Creek, Clear Creek; blue lines indicated the back roads; a double yellow line showed Interstate 70. To the west lay Idaho Springs; to the east. Aspen Meadow. Bo looked up and scowled.

  “You ready?” I asked him. He nodded.

  In one fluid motion. Arch expertly opened the bag and clutched it from the bottom so that the open end was near Jake’s nose. Don’t ever overwhelm a bloodhound with scent, he’d told me. You just give him a whiff, and that’s enough. Arch held up the bag and leaned toward his dog. Then I was startled to hear my son’s mature command cut through the fog.

  “Find!”

  And off Jake went, glossy nose to the ground, long ears brushing the mud, long brown legs swaying from side to side. The hound cast around for a moment, then, tail curled up, ambled purposefully up the path away from the creek. Sensing that something was finally happening, Marla pulled away from her somber contemplation of the creek’s edge. Thirty feet beyond, Jake made his way with determination up the hill. The dog tugged so hard on the leash that Arch’s arms were straight and taut. Maybe I should have called Tom. But what would I have said to him? Arch and I are trying to pick up on the trail of a guy who might be dead. With us are a) my friend who’s been accused of murdering the maybe-dead guy, b) her brother-in-law who was so crazy the Pentagon dumped him and you sent him to prison, and c) a bloodhound the police retired for being unreliable. Wish you were here! I sighed deeply and trotted toward the path. Marla called that she would follow at a slower pace.

  Within moments the campsite was gone from view. I tried to recall the most Arch had tracked with Tom and Jake in a day. Two miles? Five miles? Far above the fog, the sun was beginning its decline to the west, and soon the light we did have would drain away. I wished I’d checked our exact location on the map.