Night fell. Bernie and I sat in the dining hall, which was called the chuckwagon here at Big Bear Wilderness Camp. We have a wagon at home, and when Charlie was younger I’d pull him around on it. “Chet the Jet!” he’d be shouting. “Faster, faster, Chet the Jet!” Did we zoom around or what? This was back in the days when Iggy was still roaming outside. And guess what: Iggy didn’t race along with us, oh, no. Instead he liked to jump on the wagon, crowd in with Charlie, and steal a free ride. That Iggy!
Nice and quiet in the dining hall, just the two of us. Bernie sat at the end of long old wooden table, eating a bowl of chili. I stood beside him on the floor—a floor made of wide boards worn down smooth, soft and comfortable—eating a bowl of kibble. All kinds of kibble out there on the market, but this one from Rover and Company was the best. The owner, Simon Berg, is a buddy of ours, sometimes sends over samples from the test kitchen. We were living the dream, me and Bernie.
He took out his cell phone, called Suzie for the zillionth time, and that didn’t include the zillion times of not getting a signal. “Suzie? Suzie? If you’re there, pick up. Are you there? Suzie? Suzie?” He clicked off, looked at me. “How the hell did I forget she was coming up here? Took me by surprise. If I’d been prepared, I could have …” He didn’t tell me what he could have done, but he didn’t have to because I knew it would have been perfect. So maybe he didn’t have to tell Suzie either, because she too would just know? A confusing thought, and not my usual kind at all. It slipped away, and I licked the last bit of kibble dust from the bottom of my bowl. Since licking was on my mind, I licked all around my mouth, and then the tip of my nose. Why not? It was something I could do, so I did. Once this perp named Walter “Honey” Potts bet Bernie a C-note that he could touch his nose with the tip of his tongue. Bernie took the bet—“No human can do that,” he said. But maybe Honey Potts wasn’t human— although he smelled, very powerfully, of human—because it turned out he could do it no problem. “Double or nothing?” he said. He was still laughing when we turned him over to Central Booking.
Hey! Bernie was watching me, head tilted at an angle. “Something on your mind, big guy?”
Me? Nothing at all. I got my tongue under control, sat down, shifted closer to Bernie, waited for whatever came next. How were we doing on the case? Not bad, right?
A kid came through the far door of the hall. I remembered him—a biggish dark-haired kid, a kid I liked, although I couldn’t think of one I didn’t, and then all of a sudden I could: Preston. But this wasn’t Preston.
Bernie smiled and said, “Hi, Tommy.”
Tommy came over, walking slow, the way humans—and especially kids—walked when they actually wanted to be going in the other direction.
“It’s okay,” Bernie said. “I don’t bite.”
Of course he didn’t! What would be the point, with those little teeth of his, not little for a human, but still?
Tommy stood before us, shuffling from one foot to the other. At that moment, I drew my lips way, way back, exposing my teeth. I had not the least intention of biting anybody, but with the idea of biting somehow in the air, I just couldn’t help it. Funny how the mind works.
Tommy stepped back. “His teeth are huge!”
I tried to get my lips back to where they belonged, but for some reason could not. It occurred to me to try licking my nose again, sort of on the way to reining in the lips, if that makes any sense.
“That’s just because Chet’s a big guy, period,” Bernie said. The nose-licking method worked, and there I was: mouth closed, attitude professional. “He likes kids,” Bernie said, “might even let you pat him, if you want.”
What a joker Bernie is sometimes! Of course, Tommy could pat me. I turned my head to give him a nice, direct opening. He reached out, kind of cautious, and laid his hand on my head, went pat pat. Not a great patter, compared to Bernie, maybe, and nothing like Autumn or Tulip who worked at Livia’s house of ill-repute and were off the charts when it came to patting, but still: no complaints.
“He has a nice coat, huh?” said Tommy.
“Chet likes spending time with the groomer,” Bernie said. He could say that again—I waited for him saying it again to happen, but it did not. Janie’s my groomer. She comes to us in her silver truck: what a great business plan. Janie’s a strong woman with a broad face, big hands, and dirty fingernails: who wouldn’t love her?
“Some dogs do well with allergic people,” Bernie said.
“The Maltese, for one,” Bernie said. “And Portuguese water dogs, if you want something bigger.”
“Yeah,” Tommy said. “Something bigger.”
“Maybe your mom could spend an hour or so with a Porty, see how she does,” Bernie said.
Tommy’s eyes lit up: a nice sight, especially in a kid. “That’s a good idea,” he said, still patting me. He looked into my eyes, like he was trying to see something. I looked right back, trying nothing particular. “Chet helps you in your work?” he said.
“More the other way,” said Bernie.
Tommy laughed. What was funny?
“What we’re working on now,” Bernie said, “is finding Devin and bringing him back safe.”
Tommy stopped laughing. Then he sat down on the bench opposite us, his back to the table. Now we were all of us sitting together. Sitting conversations usually went better than the standing kind, the chasing after at full speed kind being the least promising; you learn these things in this business.
Bernie turned a bit, facing Tommy across the space between the benches. At that moment, I happened to spot what looked very much like the rounded end piece of a sausage lying under our table, in easy reach. I scarfed it up; yes sir, the rounded end piece of a sausage, nice and crunchy on the outside, juicy within. Nothing wrong with any part of a sausage, but end pieces were the cherry on the sundae, not that I’m a fan of either of those. This dining hall would be worth exploring if I had time, no doubt about that. Meanwhile, I’d maybe missed a bit of what was going down.
“… play any sports, Tommy?” Bernie was saying.
“Little League,” said Tommy.
“Catcher.”
Catcher? Tommy and I had something in common.
“Great position,” Bernie said. “You like having the whole field in front of you, huh?”
Tommy looked surprised. “Yeah. I guess I do.”
“That’s kind of what Chet and I are trying to do right now, see the whole field,” Bernie said. “Devin’s out there somewhere.”
“Um,” said Tommy.
Bernie remained silent. That was a right we had, very important. One night over a bottle of bourbon, Bernie and Lieutenant Stine of the Valley PD had a big argument about it. How it turned out I don’t know, because things got too exciting for me and I had to take five out on the patio.
“Like,” said Tommy, after the silence had stretched on for what seemed a long time, “where?”
“We need help on that,” Bernie said. “When someone disappears, we always talk to the people who saw him last.”
“But you talked to us already,” Tommy said. “In the tent.”
“True,” said Bernie. “But now Chet and I have been up to that campsite by the creek, had a look-see that raised more questions.”
“You went up with Turk?”
“He showed us around—where the campfire was, the tent, all that.”
Tommy nodded.
“Remember that sock of Devin’s?”
Another nod from Tommy.
“Based on the scent off the sock, Chet was able to find the exact spot where Devin spent that last night.” Bernie sat back, placed his hands on his knees, relaxed and patient. This was an interview—and Bernie’s a great interviewer—but I didn’t remember him ever sitting like that in an interview.
Tommy looked down at the floor. “He …” Tommy’s voice got thick, the way human voices did when tears were about to enter the picture, but no tears came. He cleared his throat, looked up, even meeting Bernie’s gaze for a moment or two, and said, “Devin didn’t sleep in the tent. He slept on the ground outside.”
“How did that happen?” Bernie said.
“It just seemed like a good idea,” said Tommy.
“Yeah?” said Bernie. “Gets cold up there at night, even in summer. Devin didn’t mind that?”
There was a silence, except for a faint scratching behind the nearest wall, the sort of scratching mice do, but no one except me seemed interested.
“I guess he kind of did,” said Tommy at last.
“But?” said Bernie.
Tommy took a deep, deep breath and let it out with a groan. For a moment I was worried he was going to be sick, poor kid. “He just couldn’t stand it anymore,” Tommy said.
“Preston’s bullying?” said Bernie.
Tommy took another deep breath. “Not just Preston,” he said. “It was all of us.”
“Okay,” Bernie said. “And this idea—the good idea of Devin moving out of the tent—who came up with that?”
Tommy turned toward a window. Nighttime, now, the real dark nighttime you don’t get in the city. “It was after supper, in the tent, and all this stuff about how the packs wouldn’t have been so heavy if we didn’t need so much food for Devin, and Devin sort of started crying for the first time, real loud and noisy, kind of scary even, and Turk opened the flap and said, ‘What’s all this shit?’ and ‘If you can’t fuckin’ get along, one of you’s gonna have to sleep outside,’ and …” Tommy went silent. Funnily enough, he was sitting like Bernie now, hands on his knees. He gazed down at his hands—nice, squarish hands, with a small scar on the back of one of them.
“So the idea was actually Turk’s?” Bernie said.
“Sort of, I guess,” Tommy said. “Did, um, you talk to Turk about this?”
Bernie has great eyebrows, if I haven’t mentioned that already, eyebrows with a language all their own. Right now they were showing me that Bernie was surprised. “Good question,” he said. “I did.”
“And, uh …”
“You’re wondering if he said the same thing? That it was his idea?”
“Yeah.”
“He did not. Turk said it was Devin’s idea.”
Tommy shook his head.
Bernie rose, went to the window, gazed out at the blackness. Did he hear something out there? I listened real hard, heard nothing but the mice and a slight buzz from one of the ceiling lights.
“You don’t believe me,” Tommy said.
Bernie turned to him. “What makes you say that?”
Tommy shrugged.
“You think adults always take the word of adults over kids?” Bernie said.
Tommy shrugged again.
“The truth is,” Bernie said, “in this business, we take the word of no one.”
“Oh.”
“But if what we hear matches up with what we already know, that’s a different story.”
“So you do believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to tell Turk?”
“Tell him what?”
“That I, you know, ratted him out.”
“No,” said Bernie. “You don’t have to worry about Turk.”
The way Tommy was sitting on the bench changed, like something inside him had softened.
“Our only worry,” Bernie said, “is Devin. So let’s take it from when Turk poked his head in the tent.”
“It was dark inside. Turk, uh, had the flashlight. He pointed it at Devin.” Tommy went silent. He shook his head, a slight side-to-side movement.
“Something the matter?” Bernie said.
“He was crying.”
“Right. You mentioned that.”
“But the sight of it, all of a sudden like that. You know—his face.”
“And then?” Bernie said.
“He kind of got his sleeping bag and stumbled out of the tent. Turk shone the light on us and said to shut our goddamn mouths.”
“Which you did?”
“Yeah.”
“Preston, too? He shut his mouth?”
“Maybe not that second.”
“What was he saying?”
“Just more stuff.”
“About Devin.”
“And then?”
“Things got quiet. We fell asleep.”
“The kids in the tent?”
“Yeah.”
“But not you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were noticing that the others—Preston, Luke, and Keith—had fallen asleep. So you were awake. How come?”
“I dunno.”
“Are you a light sleeper?”
“What’s that?”
“Someone who has trouble falling asleep, wakes up a lot during the night, that kind of thing.”
“My mom says I sleep like a rock.”
“So therefore … ?” Bernie said. That got my attention, which actually had been starting to slip, something that happens when humans get to going on and on, no offense. But I always perk up when Bernie starts with the so therefores, one of his top specialties.
“Guess I couldn’t get to sleep,” Tommy said.
“Were there noises outside?”
“That came later. Why I couldn’t get to sleep was ’cause of how … how we, you know …”
“Treated Devin?” Bernie said.
Tommy nodded.
“You can take yourself off the hook about that, Tommy,” Bernie said.
I glanced around. No hooks in the vicinity, a good thing: I’d had a nasty run-in with a fish hook in some perp’s shed one time, ended up with stitches in my paw and a bandage that wouldn’t stay on no matter how much I knew it was supposed to.
“… much more interested,” Bernie was saying, “in those noises outside.”
“That was later,” Tommy said. “I was almost asleep. Like first I thought I was dreaming these voices. But I opened my eyes and I could still hear them.”
“Did you recognize the voices?”
“One was Turk.”
“And the others?” Bernie said.
“There was only one other,” said Tommy. “I’m pretty sure.”
“Man or woman?”
“Man.”
“What did he sound like?”
“You know, a man.”
“Anyone you’d heard before?”
“No. I don’t think.”
“What were they talking about?”
Tommy scrunched up his face. Humans do that sometimes when they’re thinking real hard. When we’re thinking real hard— I mean, we in the nation within the nation—our faces stay the same. As for cats, I couldn’t tell you.
“Coke,” Tommy said.
“Coke?”
“Like the drink. Not drugs.”
“What made you think that?”
“Because the man—this other man, not Turk, said, ‘Things go better with Coke.’”
“And then?” Bernie said.
“Then the voices got farther away so I couldn’t hear.”
“How long did the talking go on for, all together?”
“Not too long.”
“I’m assuming when you woke up, that the other man wasn’t there.”
“No.”
“Did you hear him leave?”
Tommy shook his head.
“Did you say anything to Turk about all this in the morning?”
“I kind of forgot about it,” Tommy said. “Turk was all upset, with Devin wandering off and having to search for him, and—” His eyebrows, dark and kind of prominent, sort of like Bernie’s, rose suddenly. “Did the other man take Devin away or something?”
“Real good question, Tommy. I don’t suppose Turk mentioned anything about him.”
“No,” said Tommy. “But you’re going to ask him now, right?”
“That’s the next logical move,” Bernie said. “But—”
The door to the dining hall opened and in came Sheriff Laidlaw. He walked toward our table, a bit bowlegged in his cowboy boots, and said, “Got a moment?”
“Okay,” said Bernie. He patted Tommy on the knee. “You’ve been a big help.”
Tommy rose. “Are you going to find Devin?”
“We’ll do everything we can,” Bernie said. “Can’t promise more than that.”
Tommy nodded. He turned and left the dining hall, his arms hanging stiff and motionless.
The sheriff remained standing. “What was that all about?” he said.
“New information about Devin’s disappearance,” Bernie said. “We need to talk.”
“That we do,” said the sheriff. Then, over his shoulder, he called out, “Boys!”
Two uniformed deputies came through the door. One held a shotgun, pointed at the floor. The other was carrying Bernie’s backpack—very easy to identify, on account of the duct tape patches. Where had I last seen the backpack? In Ranger Rob’s office? I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that Sheriff Laidlaw had changed a bit. His flat little eyes were no longer dull, now held a sparkle. Usually that makes a human more attractive, but not this time.
Bernie rose. Me, too. “What’s going on?”
“Conducted a legal search of your pack,” the sheriff said. “Here’s the warrant, signed by Judge Stringer, funny old coot.” The sheriff handed Bernie an envelope. “In the course of our legal search we came across a firearm.”
“A licensed firearm,” Bernie said.
“Good to hear,” said the sheriff. “The thing is, your duly licensed firearm smelled to me—and the boys, correct, boys?—”
The two deputies nodded.
“—like it had recently been fired,” the sheriff continued. “So based on that and other evidence we’ve been developing, and pending ballistics tests, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Turk Rendell.”
Bernie laughed. “What’s this? Some kind of backwoods humor?”
“Wish it was for your sake,” said the sheriff. “One of you boys read Mr. Little here his duly licensed constitutional protections.”
Both of the deputies were big and pear-shaped with real close-together eyes, one deputy’s even more close-together than the other’s. That was the deputy who took out a card and began reading.