Megan
We made our way in Bustamente’s cruiser, the detective at the wheel and yours truly riding shotgun, with Brigit and Harper in the backseat. Harper was an incredibly observant little girl. She’d not only directed us to Highway 199, but continued to let us know we were on the right track.
She pushed back the hood on her panda-themed coat and pointed up at the Lake Worth water tower. “I remember that water tower with the blue stripe around it.” A few miles later, she recognized another water tower in the city of Azle. “I remember ’cause it has three Ss on it.”
The S shapes were intended to resemble the waves on Eagle Mountain Lake, which sat to the east of town.
As we went along, the helicopter trailed us, scanning left and right with its searchlight, making sure we in the cruiser hadn’t missed anything. After all, we were confined to the pavement and had limited visibility in any direction, but those in the helicopter had much greater range and could see all over, into places not visible from the roads.
Harper sat up taller in the back, her little hand curved around the top of my seat. “Can you go slower?” she asked the detective. “I need to look for the donkey. That’s where we turn.”
Uh-oh. Any donkey she might have seen in the daylight last Saturday was unlikely to be standing in the same place tonight. We might not even spot him in the dark.
I turned to address her. “What if the donkey moved? Is there another way you could know where to turn?”
She shook her head.
I fought the urge to scream. I needed to relieve some tension. Too bad I couldn’t twirl my baton in the cruiser. There wasn’t room.
Harper’s hand shot forward, her little finger pointing. “There’s the donkey!”
I needn’t have worried about the donkey moving. This donkey was a ceramic yard decoration that someone had set atop a stump. He wore a broad smile and a cowboy hat, and had a piece of straw clenched in his buckteeth.
Detective Bustamente negotiated the turn and there, way off in the distance, appeared two tiny red lights. But were they the lights on the back of some farmer’s car? Or were they the rear lights on Fleming’s trailer?