by Dale Cozort
***
They watched the sun rise and ate an unsatisfying breakfast of cereal bars. As they finished, Amelia said, “The rest of the pages would be nice to have.”
“So would French toast and real sausage,” Greg said.
“The pages are probably shredded in a nest somewhere,” the pastor said. “We could find them and piece them together.”
“How do we find the nest?”
“Did I tell you I can track a mouse over bare rock?”
“Three or four times,” Amelia said.
“I can also find a mouse nest.” He strolled to a scrubby tree and flashed a light into a hollow. “Oops. Someone’s home.” A mouse lemur poked its head out and hissed. “I hate to evict the little girl, but we need to look.” The pastor scratched the tree trunk and hissed. The lemur rushed out of the nest with a baby in its mouth and two others clinging to its back. “It’s not afraid of me, but it’s afraid of chameleons, which is why the scratch and hiss. Let’s see what mommy lemur has here.”
The pages were shredded and mixed with shredded leaves. The pastor poked through the nest and shook his head. “It’s too chewed up.”
He started to put it back, but Amelia stopped him. “I can piece it together.”
“You can’t. The biggest piece is half an inch wide, and there aren’t many that big.”
“I have a trick or two.” Amelia stashed the nest in her backpack. “Poor homeless mommy lemur. Can I take her home?”
“No!” Greg and the pastor said at the same time.
They spent the bulk of the morning hiking back to the bus. As they headed back to the cryptozoologist camp, the pastor said, "Even if there were moon bear lemurs around they wouldn't find them. Too many people, most of them city folk. And I would have found golden moons if they were here."
"So they're extinct?" Amelias asked. "That would be sad."
"It would be. That's the way it works though. Big, fierce animals are first to go. Rats and cockroaches hang on unless you melt things down to bedrock. If moon lemurs are still around they’d be deep in the Amaharana Cavelands. I won’t take this lot up there because someone would wander off and get killed. This bunch will have fun and get pictures of regular bear lemurs, which are impressive enough, especially up here where they haven't been hunted much."
"Should we tell the sheriff what we found?" Amelia asked.
"I'll let old Lyle make that call. Up here the law doesn't always take a hand when justice gets meted out."
"What about the 'vengeance is mine, says the Lord' thing?" Greg asked.
"I don't imagine old Lyle is thinking along those lines, and it wouldn’t do a bit of good to remind him."
Greg thought about the Lyle's angry stride. "No, I don't imagine."
The safari bus struggled on through the rocks and hills. There was little evidence it had rained the previous night. The bus splashed through a couple of puddles, but their trail was mostly dry.
“Either you’re as good an actor as you are a tracker, or you didn’t kill Kelly Dunne,” Greg said. “So who did? Reuben Haigh is the obvious suspect, but you don’t have the resources to find us and bring us in. That means someone is backing you. Are you sure they didn’t kill her?”
“You dearly want to know who else is in on this, don’t you? Sorry. We stick with you knowing me and that’s it.”
“But are you sure you can trust your partners?”
“You don’t even know there is anyone else. Don’t underestimate this backwoods pastor. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t have it done, and I hope the guy upstairs rains his wrath down on whoever did it.”
A gunshot rang out ahead of them. The pastor picked up his rifle with one hand and scanned the horizon. They crested a hill and Greg spotted Reuben Haigh’s pickup truck in the distance. Another gunshot sounded. It didn’t sound as though it hit nearby, but Pastor Julius hit the horn. “I don’t want to get perforated by accidental-on-purpose gunshots.” He drove up to the truck.
Reuben Haigh came out of the nearby woods. “Hi pastor. Hi, 2011 folks.”
“You know their names.”
“Maybe. What are you doing up here, pastor?”
“Backtracking Kelly Dunne. Heard shots.”
“Bear lemur got curious. I shot in the air. Find anything interesting on the back trail?”
“A thing or two. The good Lord brings every hidden thing to light in his own time.”
“I’m not one to put a lot of stock in your line of work, pastor. I figure some things stay hidden because somebody real smart decides they will.” Reuben glanced over at Greg and Amelia. “The pastor tell you that bullshit about tracking a mouse across bare rock?”
Greg put on a mock puzzled expression. “Why no. Pastor, you’ve been holding out on us. Are you really that good of a tracker?”
“Yes, I really am that good.”
“Good luck tracking anything after that rain,” Reuben said.
“Sometime you read a trail in the sand. Sometimes you read a trail in the mind. I’m good at those trails too.”