The dog immediately trotted through the parking lot to the same area as she had before and circled the exact spot where she had paused only minutes earlier. She lowered her nose again and sniffed deeply.
Again, I commanded, “Find.”
Beulah took the direct route to the outhouse again, stopping short of the closed door and baying wildly.
I frowned and ordered, “Beulah, find.”
The dog would not budge.
Streeter was watching along with everyone else. I gave him a shrug and he just shook his head.
“This is so odd, Streeter. I’m not sure what to make of it,” I said.
Streeter replied, “Well, there is no way he’s here, unless you see a mound that I’ve missed.”
“I sure don’t.”
After three more identical attempts, Chief Gates shouted to us, “The search teams are ready to head out, guys.”
Streeter nodded and waved. Turning back to me, he said, “What’s next? Your call.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen it quite like this. The way Beulah is reacting I would swear she’s found her target. She only bays like that when she finds what she’s looking for. Other than the mountain lion incident on Christmas Eve.”
“A mountain lion?” Gates asked, unfolding his arms.
“But that was because the mountain lion was between me and her,” I corrected.
Streeter asked, “What mountain lion?”
“Long story. But maybe that’s what has her spooked out here. That or the dark. I’ve never taken her on a night search. And she hasn’t been back in the woods since the mountain lion incident.”
Streeter said, “The scratches and sore ribs? A mountain lion, right?”
“A close call, let’s just put it that way,” I said. “I would swear little Max was in or around the outhouse.” I couldn’t even think about Noah. I had to stay focused on little Max. For my own sanity.
“But he’s not,” Streeter said.
“I know. The only thing I can figure is that Fletcher let little Max out to go to the bathroom, then took him by car to some other spot. But then she would have backtracked. I would bet money that these guys won’t find anything out in the wooded area. If Max was out there, Beulah would have picked up the scent of a different trail on one of those attempts and followed it.” I was convinced. I knew Beulah and she wasn’t a quitter.
Streeter warned, “The search teams will be starting any minute. Want to go with them?”
“I’ll kennel Beulah. I have a battery-heated blanket I’ll throw over the kennel to keep her warm and I’ll join you on the search.”
Gates said, “Maybe it’s the noise from the generator.”
I kicked some snow with the toe of my boot. “Maybe I’ll try again after the search.”
Streeter called out to the teams, “Remember. Based on the time of Fletcher’s departure from home and subsequent return, taking into consideration the driving time, and taking into account that he wasn’t in the best physical shape, Fletcher could not have wandered very far from the parking lot. He did not have snowshoes, only snow boots. And he had a five-year-old boy in tow and would be carrying the other boy strapped in a bright blue Styrofoam car seat. Turn back in an hour and a half for the first sweep, and we’ll meet back here in three hours. Go slowly and be thorough.”
The teams took off in their respective directions, with Gates assigned to direct one, me the other, and Streeter the last. The searchers of each team linked arms to form a human chain and slowly kicked away the soft snow beneath our feet, looking beneath every tree, bush, and crevice we encountered. The chaotic sweep of headlamps was as mesmerizing as a well-orchestrated laser show. The mountainous, wooded terrain offered peculiar challenges to all the team members as we fanned our way through the woods.
Every time I kicked a clump of snow, I was praying I’d find nothing beneath.
CHAPTER 61
A CHILL GRIPPED ME.
Maybe it was the drop of melting snow that landed on the back of my neck. Maybe it was thoughts of little Max and Noah braving the elements all night. Cold. Alone. Scared.
I told Steve Knapp to take charge of my line, broke from the search party, and told him I had to stay back. I was thankful for the bright moonlight in the clear Colorado sky that would soon surrender to dawn. It was five o’clock. I noticed that our extensive search had eroded the hard snow in the campground, but revealed nothing but frozen earth beneath. The stubborn foliage and sparse rocks poking through the surface somehow gave me hope.
I lumbered back through the snow. Alone. Nearing the parking lot, the curving line of cars shimmered in the rays of the waning moonlight, like an eel. The imagery tugged somewhere dark in the recesses of my mind. Shallow waters. A fish or eel. Just below the surface. In the mountains where it shouldn’t be. Water everywhere. Forty days and forty nights. Lots of rain. Just like in the Bible. Noah. Where he shouldn’t be.
I pulled Beulah from her cage again. I slipped on her harness and attached the lead. I was going to try this one more time. Only this time, I was going to search for Noah, not little Max. I don’t know why I didn’t think to try this before. I fished in the backseat for one of Noah’s stocking caps he’d left in my car this week. I knelt down beside Beulah, took a deep breath, and held out the stocking cap.
“Find, Beulah. Find!”
The persistent bloodhound circled the parking lot, hesitating at a spot about three feet from where she had in her search for little Max. I realized Noah had been in the backseat. That made sense. Fletcher would have put little Max beside him in the front and Noah in the rear to make a quick getaway. Beulah pulled me to the exact location as before, directly in front of the outhouse. Again. Not far behind the bloodhound, I stood rubbing my forehead. The hell of it was that all I could think about was Fletcher’s comments about forty days and forty nights and lots of rain. Crazy how the mind works. The all-nighters were beginning to take a toll.
“Stubborn,” Streeter grumbled as he walked across the trodden snow toward me.
I hadn’t heard him at first because the generators were so loud. The crunching of the hard-packed snow beneath his feet as he approached ripped me back to the previous night. Fletcher’s wet boots across the concrete floor in the dark garage. Why hadn’t I shot the son of a bitch when I’d had the chance? Made him die the slow, painful death he had deserved. My mind slid to the image of Fletcher dangling from his makeshift noose, his stained pants and underwear bunched around his ankles. The fury of my lost opportunity in that garage fueled my body despite my exhaustion.
“She’s not stubborn. She found her target. I just don’t understand what she’s telling me.”
“I wasn’t talking about the dog. I meant you.” He smiled.
“I knew you’d come back,” I said, staring at the outhouse as if it were a giant wooden tarot card.
“I told you to forget about this.”
I brushed a loose strand of my hair from my face. “I’m sorry about breaking ranks. But I just couldn’t let this damn thing go.”
“That’s when mistakes are made. People can die from mistakes.”
“It won’t happen again.”
And that’s all it took. He was back to helping me again.
“What’s your gut telling you?” he asked.
“Beulah’s not the rusty one. I am,” I answered.
“And?”
“Look at her.”
Beulah stood directly in front of the outhouse door, howling.
Streeter folded his arms as he watched the persistent hound.
“This time I used Noah’s cap, not little Max’s sock. Beulah tracked Noah to the exact same spot. Again.”
“Maybe it means something totally different.”
“Like?” I grabbed Beulah by her harness, crouched beside her, and rewarded my hound with strokes across her red coat. Her howling stopped and her tail thumped against the frozen ground.
“Well, we’ve looked al
l around this outhouse several times, right?”
I nodded again.
“And there are no boys.”
I shrugged.
He persisted. “Fletcher couldn’t have buried the boys’ bodies because the ground is frozen. What if Fletcher left the boys right here and someone else picked them up? Would Beulah still return to this spot?”
I shook my head, rubbing my chin. “She would track the scent to the car or snowmobile or whatever picked them up. There were no tracks, except in the parking lot. If they went back that way, so would Beulah. She’d follow right up to where the boys got into the car or whatever. That would be a more recent scent.”
“In the parking lot?”
I nodded.
“But it had snowed. Maybe the snow covered the tracks.”
“True.”
“Sorry, Liv, but I have to ask. What if Fletcher killed them right here, then carried them off somewhere. Would the scent stop when they died?”
I shook my head.
“If a wild animal got them, say a mountain lion or a coyote dragged them from this spot sometime before we got here? Is that possible?”
I shook my head again. “If a wild animal dragged them off somewhere, Beulah would have followed the boys’ scent.”
“Dead or alive?”
“Dead or alive.”
“Even if it was a mountain lion, considering her scary experience on Christmas? If she was spooked by the cat?”
“I think so.”
“And the scent of a mountain lion or some animal doesn’t overpower the boys’ scent?”
“Maybe if the animal ate them whole. Right here on the spot.” I turned my head and made my last meal public. It was all too much. I wiped my mouth and said, “Sorry.”
Streeter patted me on the back. “We would have seen some signs. Carnage of some sort. Blood. A shoe. Something.” Streeter paced the trodden snow.
I told Streeter the whole story about the mountain lion, how Michael and I had been out on a training exercise. I didn’t leave anything out. I explained that Beulah didn’t act upset or even seem to know what danger she or I was in.
“Liv, you could have been killed.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“That’s why you’ve been walking so gingerly, protecting your ribs?”
“I bruised them, I think.”
We sat on the log in the center of the campground and said nothing. I adjusted the lens of my mind’s eye several different directions until I could focus my thoughts. The string of cars looked like an eel. Fletcher’s words about Noah being more like Joseph, only not a king, no colorful coat. Bible references. Beulah fixed on the outhouse. Something kept eluding me.
“If the boys are dead, Fletcher probably didn’t kill them. He caused their deaths, but didn’t actually do it,” Streeter thought aloud.
“But the bleach at his house?”
Streeter shook his head. “I don’t think so. He was too much of a coward to kill them. And too cowardly to let them live.”
“Didn’t think about it that way, but you’re right,” I said. “After all, Clint lived.”
“Fletcher was so much of a coward that when he was caught, he killed himself to avoid any suffering. Any embarrassment or pain he may have had to endure during the trial or in prison,” Streeter continued. “So if he was too yellow to kill the boys and was scared to death of little Max telling someone who he was, he would have left them for dead. Out here in the woods. In the middle of winter.”
“How could he be sure the boys would never be found, like Clint? Or that little Max wouldn’t walk out of here alive? Would he tie them up?”
“Maybe. Restrain them or incapacitate them somehow,” Streeter suggested. “Little Max knew too much. He was with Fletcher too long. He wasn’t sure what Noah knew. He snatched him from the car, probably because he saw your sister pull out of the garage and go back into the house. Who knows?”
“Do you think Fletcher worried about someone seeing him out here?”
“I doubt it. From what he said on that audio your nephew took, it sounded to me like Fletcher was crazy. Claiming his mother was trapped inside your nephew. I don’t think he was all there.”
“Noah’s eyes are gray. One is quite cloudy. Blind. It kind of freaks people out.”
“Maybe his mom had gray eyes. Or was blind. But I don’t think Fletcher worried about anyone seeing him up here. And if he did, he may have figured he couldn’t risk having someone stumble across the boys. After all, he thought this was a remote location, isolated, a summer destination. He never imagined seeing another car. And who knows what he might do if he did?”
“He may have decided to abort his plans and get rid of the boys somewhere else. A different location,” I guessed.
“No,” Streeter said with confidence. “We timed his trip. Remember? He wouldn’t have had time, based on your sister’s estimate of when Fletcher took Noah.”
“He must have panicked.”
“And was desperate,” Streeter added.
“Desperate enough to overcome his cowardice? To kill the boys?”
“Maybe.”
I couldn’t stomach the thought. Beulah whined. I stood and tugged on her lead. “Come on, Beulah. Let’s get you back in the car.” Beulah resisted, planting her paws firmly in front of the outhouse. She looked at me with sad, droopy eyes as I insisted, “Beulah, come. What’s the matter with you?”
When I leaned against the lead, Beulah bolted for the outhouse. The lead slid through my hands, the nylon burning against my scabbed palm. “Beulah!”
She ignored me, scratching at the door until it opened enough for her to squeeze through. Streeter scrambled to his feet and ran after me toward the outhouse. When we arrived, Beulah was howling, standing with her front paws straddling the seat.
Streeter and I crowded into the outhouse with Beulah. Our eyes met and our mouths fell open with recognition.
“He panicked,” I repeated.
“He needed to find a place for little Max and Noah where no one would ever find them and where they could never get out.”
“In the shit hole.”
“Alive,” Streeter said.
“Not Noah, but Joseph. He’ll never be a king, never have a colorful coat,” I recalled. “Straight from the Bible.”
“What?”
“Joseph’s brothers,” I explained. “They were jealous and threw him down a hole to die.”
CHAPTER 62
DURING THE NIGHT, WE had looked down that hole many times and seen nothing. We still couldn’t see any sign of the boys down there, even with our headlamps shining all the way to the bottom, which had to mean they were alive after they were dropped down the hole. If they were dropped down the hole.
“Little Max would have scrambled to the edge to stay dry and get out of the shit. Who wouldn’t?” I speculated, pulling Beulah off the seat. “He must have helped Noah.”
Streeter peered down the hole. He shouted, “Max! Max, can you hear me?” There was no answer. “The bad man’s gone. Papa’s gone! We’re here to help, Max! Noah?”
Stillness settled in the expected stench below.
Streeter ushered me out and closed the door. He must have seen the expression on my face of the dread I had been feeling. He added quietly, “No. Don’t think that. Come on. Help me.”
He rammed his shoulder into the side of the dilapidated shack, hell-bent on tipping it over as if it were a gravestone pinning the boys’ fate. I ran beside him on his second charge. Rage coursed through my veins. The worn, gray wood groaned in protest. We charged again and again until we both doubled over to catch our breath. My ribs ached and my lungs burned. I was having trouble catching my breath.
“Fletcher probably figured no one would ever find the boys until they froze to death,” I panted.
“No one would ever find the bodies. Or notice the smell of decay. It’s a perfect hiding spot.”
Beulah sidled up to me and licked my face. “Good gir
l. Come on. Kennel.”
Streeter caught his breath. “Do you have a rope? Blankets, too. Bring anything you think might help.”
I streaked toward the car, slipping on the packed snow and landing hard on my left arm. Wincing from the pain in my ribs and my arm, I pushed myself to my feet.
“You okay?”
“Fine,” I lied. I gave him a pathetic little wave and bolted for the car.
Beulah barked at the commotion, sensing our mounting excitement. I kenneled her, tossed her a handful of snacks, and rummaged through the car, grabbing several blankets, including the electric blanket that had draped Beulah’s kennel.
I carried everything Streeter had asked for in my right arm, except for the blankets, which were draped over the left. I was hurt, but I wasn’t about to say anything now. We had more important things to do and he needed my help. He had his head stuck down the hole, his shoulders preventing him from going any further.
“No rope,” I said. “Will this work?”
Streeter nodded his approval at Beulah’s harness and the twenty-foot lead that I held up.
“It’ll have to do.”
Streeter flung open the outhouse door and wrapped the dog’s lead around his chest, throwing the other end over a support beam. He had eased the two latches off their hooks and threw the entire hinged bench back like a lid to a treasure chest. He took a step up to straddle the box.
I hoped that Fletcher had dropped Noah still strapped to the spongy, blue chair. The chair would at least cushion his fall. And it would have easily fit in the opening if Fletcher lifted the bench as Streeter just had. I hoped he hadn’t taken Noah out of his cushion chair and dumped him down the hole with nothing. He really would be broken.
Streeter answered my unspoken thoughts, “If they’re down there, it could mean they’re sleeping.”
“Or unconscious,” I braved.
I watched as he started to step in and lower himself.
“Streeter, wait!”
He hesitated.
“Let me go. If you go down there and find them, I don’t know if I can pull them up with one arm.” His puzzled expression made me explain. I removed the blanket draped over my arm and showed him my limp arm. “I think I messed something up. When I slipped just now and fell on my arm.”
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