By Dog Alone: A Kelton Jager Adventure Book 2

by Charles Wendt

  She turned about, hoping to go all the way around the building and get to her car from the other side. No luck. A gaggle of emergency personnel was there, and waved her forward. By now she was shivering from being soaked through, and Sergeant Barker’s blood was discernable approaching the entrance lights.

  “Hey, look at her,” said a medic. He ran over with a blanket and shined a small light at her eyes.

  “I’m fine, just cold. It’s not my blood,” she declared.

  “Who’s blood is it, Sweetie?” asked a lady trooper with the broad squat face of a bulldog and brunette braids pinned up under her hat.

  “The patrolman’s,” she said pointing back toward the charred police car.

  “What’s your name?” she asked pulling out a notebook. Her pen’s ink grew fuzzy under the drizzle.

  After giving up her name, Abriella was allowed to go inside clutching the gray blanket tightly about herself. It was noisy inside as traumatized girls, mostly in night clothes and robes, chattered away, taking pictures and thumbs tapping on their phones. Some tried to call, but the storm impeded the signal. Email might be hard too, thought Abriella, as the school turned off the wireless network from 10pm to 6am each night.

  A couple of night matrons were working hard to get pots of coffee going for the responders. Mrs. Grant shuffled student rosters into a semblance of order on a table to get a full accounting of everyone without having day staff to help. Out the windows she could see firemen and medics going from house to house, ensuring the rooms were clear. Policemen with drawn guns shined tactical lights into every nook and cranny. She found her housemates and sat with them, pulling up the blanket to cover her face and hair.

  “I’m not supposed to be here,” she whispered. “What do we say to Mrs. Grant?”

  Elizabeth shook her head, “Don’t worry. She’ll call the names one by one to check off her list, but you’re not on it. Just don’t draw attention to yourself.”

  “The cops got my name,” Abriella countered.

  “But that’s only to talk to you later as a witness, not to accuse you of being a trespassing day student. They’ll never ask her,” countered Vicky and then hissed for emphasis, “So shush.”

  “I wish I would have parked better when Kelton jumped out,” lamented Abriella.

  “Quiet,” Elizabeth scolded in exasperation.

  Mrs. Grant calmed the room and called roll as quickly as she could. A state police officer stood respectfully next to her. This one had silver bars on his collar instead of stripes on his arms, and seemed to be pressing her to proceed with urgency. There were no dark drops of rain on his uniform. Only Holly was missing, and it sent a muttering through the assembly. Kate, and a few other girls, started to cry. Then Mrs. Granted started her speech.

  She told them to expect some special assemblies in the morning, and over the next few days. How they’d be kept informed as the investigators learned more information. Students would be permitted to express themselves in these forums. Mrs. Grant pledged special support would be made available for those who felt they needed it. But for now she declared, it was best to get back to bed to have their strength facing a new day. She admonished them to look out for their dorm and housemates, especially her new safety patrol members, and to call her emergency phone if intervention was required. Upon dismissal, the girls began to make their way back to bed.

  Helmet and the lady police officer were at the house as the four of them returned. They were told the photographers were largely finished, but technicians would be dusting for prints and other DNA evidence for quite a while yet. The girls could enter and get clothes and such, but would be spending the night in a dorm empty for the summer session.

  “I put bedding in there,” promised Helmut. “Here are the keys. Its 2nd floor, Bluebell Suite. Such a silly name. Do you know where it is?”

  Vicky nodded, “My first year was in Monarch Butterfly next door. See you in the morning, Helmut.”

  “And thank you,” offered Elizabeth.

  Abriella only nodded, trying to keep the blanket about herself and comfort wailing Kate at the same time. At least the rain was letting up. She watched Helmut turn toward the barn leaning heavily on his cane. The poor man was clearly bone tired, and wasn’t likely to get any worthwhile help tomorrow. She’d try and remember to bake him some more cookies.

  Elizabeth and Vicky had their arms full, the bundles draped with their rain jackets, and the four of them turned toward the hockey field sideline between theirs and the next house. Abriella started to guide Kate to the right toward the main building, but Elizabeth and Vicky went toward the barn instead.

  Abriella started to ask, but Vicky shook her head extending a finger, her arms too full to properly shush her. Abriella wasn’t about to do anything contrary to her best friend’s lead. A firetruck departed along the perimeter road, its duties done, as the girls entered the base of the spiral stairs under the parent’s loft. They cut through the indoor arena, and made a left in the barn’s main hallway toward their horse’s stalls. With the bad weather, all the horses were in and stirred with the visitors.

  In the barn proved noisy. The metal roof roared with the clattering of the sprinkles above, and larger drops incessantly fell from the overhead tree branches to add some base to the symphony. Elizabeth had to raise her voice to be heard.

  “They still don’t have their search teams together yet and it’s been an hour. We’re going after Holly. They couldn’t have gotten too far on foot,” declared Elizabeth. Under the rain jacket bundle was hers and Kate’s breaches, paddock boots and chaps.

  Abriella looked at her skeptically as Kate perked up, “But how do we find them out there?”

  Vicky explained the plan, “In the hunt, they organize the riders into three flights. First Flight chases the hounds, and will go over jumps to keep up with them. Second Flight gallops after hounds and First Flight to be close to the action, but goes around any jumps. The third flight is the Hill Toppers, who trot to different vantage points to watch the chase from afar. When it’s not a special youth hunt, as well as the first few times I went, it was with the Hill Toppers.

  The fixture has three main hills, each with a great view all around. There’s trees and folds in the ground and such, sure.”

  Abriella remained skeptical, “And it’s dark as Hades out there as Mrs. Beechcroft would say.”

  Vicky nodded enthusiastically, “Exactly. Really dark. Not even moon or starlight with all the rain clouds. If anyone turns on a light, or even uses a cellphone, we’ll see it and can call Kelton. He gave us his number.

  And we can find the hills in the dark too. The bridle trail goes to the parking area. Then it’s just following the cemetery wood line to the wigwam fence. There’s a gap in it big enough to drive a truck through. Then it’s just a matter of heading up hill.

  I brought my old chaps and an extra jacket for you. You can ride in your jeans.”

  “Indy’s at home though.”

  “True. But Ollie and all his tack is here. And he’s really familiar with the ground out there. And there’s a bunch of quarter sheets in the corner of the tack room.”

  Quarter sheets were a type of horse “raincoat” for riding, designed to keep the powerful leg muscles of the hind end warm and dry so they didn’t cramp.

  Another girl came down the barn aisle from the indoor arena. She was older, maybe a senior, with broad shoulders and some pockmarks on her face.

  “I’m Jordan, next door in Aster. Saw you go by from the sleeping porch. Why aren’t you at your dorm?”

  Kate answered, “We’re going after our friend, Holly. The police are taking too long.”

  “Holly’s on my hockey team. We can’t ride, but would love to help.”

  Vicky spoke up, “We’re supposed to empty and scrub all the water buckets in the morning. Jose does the real heavy lifting stuff like straw bales, but doesn’t have time for other things. If we don’t do buckets, Helmut will do it himself even though the horses wo
uld probably be fine. And he’s old and tired. We’re worried about him. It’s hard work, and messy.”

  Jordan nodded, “Sure. No problem. He always smiles and shouts encouragement at us when we run on the perimeter road. Even makes Jose, who’s leading in the horses, give us the right away. I’ll get the team on it in the morning.”

  Abriella asked, “Won’t your coach get mad about missing practice and make you run laps?”

  Jordan shrugged, “With Holly gone, I don’t know if they will hold practice. But if they do, the field is soaked so she’ll make us run laps anyway. Probably for a few days while it dries out. What’s the difference?”

  Jordan began to walk back down the aisle to the arena’s entrance when Elizabeth called after her, “Hey! Jordan! When’s your next game?”

  She replied smiling over her shoulder as she rounded the corner, “Thursday afternoon. We play Dogwood.”

  CHAPTER—28

  Kelton kneeled with the carbine as Azrael paused to give a puddle under a tree a long sniff. It was proving one of the most difficult tracks he’d ever attempted. More than just letting the dog do his nose work, it was forcing him as a handler to think about the overall situation and reason out a strategy.

  The quarry had to skirt down to the bridle trail to get a quick enough head start to avoid the first responders. The trees and brush surrounding the perimeter road were too thick, especially in the dark, to make the required headway. The initial chase by the first responders was way too slow and uncoordinated to catch the perpetrators, but fast enough to interfere with his efforts. By the time he’d made sure everyone was all right, got a handle on what had happened, and found a scent item, the response was arriving on scene and charging off into the surrounding area. In the dark and carrying an M4 carbine, it would have been understandable if the good guys had shot him. He’d given them a wide birth, skirting around the flashlights and the breaking branches, until well ahead of the pursuers.

  This posed the first problem of where to pick up the trail. He’d heard the yapping cry of the Westburg Hunt’s hounds, and the barrage of insistent barking to answer part of that question. That meant the abductors had taken the bridle trail all the way to the parking area. The clubhouse awning proved a great spot for Azrael to get a fresh sniff of Holly’s underpants, and to keep them dry in case he needed to remind his dog. Then they quartered the grounds.

  It proved difficult. He suspected they’d carried Holly for the sake of speed in the initial flight which meant she wasn’t touching the ground to leave him much to work with. The other factor, of course, was the rain. In the rolling ground the runoff carried scent away. Lastly, it was a big area which could accommodate several dozen trucks and horse trailers. But Kelton committed to Azrael’s nose. If he wasn’t picking up the trail here, it was because there was no trail here. With shooting not imminent, he removed doggles and muffs, to commit fully to tracking activities.

  Behind him was Stirrup Cup Road and the low clouds reflected all the flashing lights. He doubted they cut back in that direction. Someone by themselves in dark clothes may have considered sneaking through the thin line of searchers. But with four of them, one holding a squirming teen in her nighty, there was no way they’d manage and not be seen.

  The gravely wounded sergeant had taken out their cars. If they were true planners, they may have thought about some contingency options, but more likely they were just reacting. They were on foot, in the rain, on strange terrain, with little in the way of equipment. They had to be panicked and running, Kelton thought. They were on the north end of the school’s campus, with the police coming in from the west and south. The most likely direction was clearly to the northeast.

  So Kelton moved his dog to the north for a hundred meters, and then sliced east to zigzag in the open ground between copses of trees in what he felt were the most likely areas for them to have fled in haste. Azrael and him had been playing out in the fixture for several days, and had developed a good feel for the area. Holly was a small girl, but her muscles probably tipped the scales well north of ninety pounds. That was a lot of wriggling weight to carry. Eventually they’d have her walking on her own feet, or two of them would drag her between them.

  He’d eventually been right. Azrael finally picked up the trail by a narrow wood line, nose pausing for a deep sniff and his tail feathering up into the air, probably a couple of klicks north of the school’s back pastures. He’d knelt by his dog’s side, silently praising Azrael with a hard rub along the neck, coating himself with wet hair. To ensure silent control, he attached the long tracking lead to the ring on the back of the coyote brown body harness. A quick glance around him showed all the police flashlights still to the south. Kelton gave the soft command of “such,” and they moved out.

  Up until this point, they’d been losing ground. And at two and a half miles an hour, a reasonable guess for a cross country pace at night, they were possibly close to four miles ahead of him. He struggled to do the math while watching Azrael concentrate on his nose.

  Kelton figured four miles an hour in the dark and rain, was about the best he’d be able to do; the same speed as a quick walk on a paved road in the daylight. He’d really be doing little runs, trying to dodge tree branches and holes he couldn’t see, and then pausing as Azrael worked out changes in direction. And that meant he’d be where they were now in an hour, but with them being yet another two and half miles ahead. The next hour after that, he’d be within a mile. So another half hour would be required. Two and a half hours to catch up to them. Just a few hours before dawn.

  Azrael trotted on, and Kelton got back to his feet to follow as the lead played out. In the dark, they clambered over a hedge which served as a cattle fence. Water gushed in the low channels throughout the rolling ground. Maintaining four miles an hour was probably optimistic. It might be three hours before he caught up with them, he thought, depending upon how fast they were moving.

  That was assuming he didn’t lose the trail all together. If the men he and Azrael were tracking turned and followed any of these multiple impromptu streams, he’d have to search for where they emerged from the flowing water, further slowing him and Azrael down. Or his dog could just get downright tired or bored. He shuttered at the thought of what that meant for Holly, pushing for all the haste he could muster, balanced against staying on the scent cone.

  Bobby McFife shouted at Diego while gasping for air, “How much further?”

  The dogcatcher leaned forward, using a hand on his knee to brace himself against falling over. His carbine was not “at the ready”; he was too tired for that. He carried it with his left hand, gripped about the handguard slipring in its middle.

  The little blond girl squatted again, stepping backward shivering into her own puddle when he turned his head to sneer at her. It was just his luck they’d kidnapped a diabetic who seemed to have to pee every time they stopped. Her night shirt was soiled and torn, and her lips were turning blue. Andres towered over her so she couldn’t run away. Diego peered into the surrounding darkness, trying to discern any possible landmark in the gloom.

  Diego answered him, “Mr. Armesto said to come this way, so we’re going this way. He didn’t stay how far. Fall behind, and it’s the needle for sure.”

  The bulletproof vest under his wet uniform chafed as he shook his head from side to side, “That’s not what I mean. Mr. Armesto is our salvation. But I’m tired. You guys are a lot younger than me. And it won’t be the needle for me. You guys will shoot me as one less witness if I can’t keep up.”

  “I can’t carry you and watch the girl,” snarled Andres with a nod of his head. “You need to keep up.

  “Let me ditch the carbine. It would be less weight for me to carry. Or do you boys have your heart on shooting it out?”

  Andres weighed in, “I don’t want to be leaving no trail of equipment to let them know they’re on to us.”

  Diego’s neck bulged, “It was an accident. You try carrying that thing and screwing around
with this piece of crap phone while finding our way through this wilderness. You should show more respect.”

  McFife raised the resting palm toward Diego, while still bent forward and hunched over. He’d need to square his shoulders and extend his legs to have any chance of straightening his back on his own.

  “Can you carry it for me when we move? I mean, when you’re not looking at your phone. I’ll hold it when we stop, while you’re checking our bearings.”

  Diego stood silent for a long moment, and then nodded. Bobby reached out with the carbine, holding it sideways, and let go of if just before Diego got his hand around it. It fell into a puddle of pasture water.

  “Shit, sorry,” said Bobby in his most remorseful tone.

  Diego took off his suit jacket, ruined anyway from the rain and small tears caused by snagging tree branches, and used it to wipe down the carbine.

  “These things work a lot better, you know, if they’re kept clean.”

  “I didn’t mean to. I’m just exhausted.”

  Bobby smiled inwardly, keeping his face downward in case any trace of relief showed. Wipe my fingerprints away, and put your own on the weapon which shot Sergeant Barker he thought. Without his police sidearm and no other weapon, he began to look more like a hostage. The rain would have long washed away any powder residue on his hands. Start being nice to the girl and get some favorable testimony from her, and who’s to say he wasn’t a victim too?

  “Okay everyone, come on. And keep your eyes looking for those headlights. We’re not going to line up exactly so you got to be looking out and staying alert,” Diego encouraged.

  “I’ve never been so freezing in summer,” complained Kate, but Elizabeth Whitman barely noticed scanning the surrounding darkness. Her lips felt irritated from the wind, and she made a quick application of ChapStick she kept in the shallow pocket of her breeches, but her blood was too up to be cold. She was mad at those who had violated their cottage and taken their housemate, and mad at the cops who still hadn’t got on task.