MERCY STARTED GOING TO THE VERMONTER Drive-In out on Depot Street when she was just a kid. Famous for its sandwiches and milkshakes, the popular joint drew locals and summer people every day rain or shine during the season. All of Vermont went into mourning on November 1, when the place shut down for the winter—and celebrated even if the snow was still falling when it reopened on April 1.
She hadn’t been back here in years. The place hadn’t changed much. Calling it a drive-in was a glamorous misnomer; the restaurant was really just a glorified lean-to with a large window fronting the parking lot, where she stood in line with Troy and at least a dozen other folks to order. The dogs waited in their respective vehicles, Elvis alert on the front seat of her Jeep, dark muzzle jutting out the passenger window, and Susie Bear curled up on the backseat of the game warden’s truck, obviously more confident that there was a burger in her near future than the ever-vigilant Elvis.
“Come on up, Warden.” Lillian Jenkins, the owner, waved Troy up to the window. Everyone knew Lillian, an energetic and effusive petite brunette who’d been feeding the good citizens of Vermont in various capacities for decades. She ran the drive-in during the summer and the local book club the rest of the year. In a state where winters were interminable and access to cable and even satellite TV could be spotty, reading was a favorite pastime. Lillian also served on every committee in town, from the Friends of the Library to the historical society, and even authored a popular regional cookbook that was a New England indie bookstore hit. If there was anything of artistic note going on in southern Vermont, she knew about it.
“Hi, Lillian.” Troy smiled, but he flushed and Mercy could tell he was embarrassed by the preferential treatment. “No need for this.”
“Nonsense.” Lillian turned to address the long line of patient customers in a voice far bigger than her person. “This is Warden Troy Warner, and he earned first place in line in perpetuity when he removed a rabid bat from the Porta-Potty out back before it bit anybody.” She swiveled her attention back to Troy. “Who’s your friend?”
“Mercy Carr,” he said.
“I know you.” Lillian gave her a long look. “You’re a Fleury.”
Mercy smiled. “Patience Fleury O’Sullivan is my grandmother.”
“The veterinarian?” asked Troy.
“One and the same,” answered Lillian, her eyes still on Mercy. “It’s been a while, young lady.”
“I was living out of state.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m back now.” She knew those were the only words that ever placated a native Vermonter like Lillian, who could never understand why anyone would ever leave paradise.
“I went to school with Patience, up in Hyde Park.” Lillian grinned. “You got your grandmother’s good looks. But that red hair is all your granddaddy.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She waited for the inevitable red-haired and hotheaded comment.
“I hope you didn’t get the O’Sullivan temper to go with it.”
And there it was. Her grandfather had been the sheriff in Lamoille County for decades and as many people loved him as hated him. He’d died nearly twenty years ago, but memories in Vermont were long and hard, just like the winters.
“No, ma’am.” She could see Troy holding back a laugh.
Lillian tapped her pencil against her pad. “Two cheeseburgers, fries, and chocolate shakes?”
“Make that four cheeseburgers, fully dressed,” said Troy. “We got a couple of dogs to feed.”
Lillian looked out into the parking lot and spotted Elvis. “That sweet shepherd yours?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Again, Mercy waited.
“Now that’s a Fleury for you.” Lillian bestowed a warm smile on her. “Have a seat out back with the warden. And feel free to bring the dogs.”
* * *
TEN MINUTES LATER, all four of them were gathered around the lone picnic table behind the burger shack that Lillian reserved for visiting dignitaries and such. At least that’s what the laminated tabletop sign said. The weathered table had seen better days, but it sat at the edge of Lillian’s potager garden, a beauty of knots and raised beds that produced a bounty of vegetables and herbs that made the Vermonter Drive-In menu justifiably famous.
Certainly Elvis and Susie Bear enjoyed their meals, which they gobbled down in ten seconds flat. The Newfie mutt plopped down at Troy’s feet, ready to lap up any stray fries that might come her way. In stately contrast, Elvis dropped down into his classic Sphinx position, alert as ever.
“How’s the baby?” Mercy knew Troy had received several texts, and she assumed that at least one of them concerned the infant she’d found.
“She’s doing well. But they’re still keeping her overnight.”
“And then she goes into the system.” She sipped at the chocolate shake to chase down the bitter taste that the idea of handing the baby over to Child Protective Services left in her mouth. “Will you even try to find her mother?”
“Of course. They’ve already got some volunteers doing a grid search of the area.”
She jumped to her feet, startling Elvis, who scrambled up to join her. “We should go help.”
“Sit down. If there’s anything to find, they’ll find it.” Troy waved them both back to their meal. “You need to eat.”
Mercy knew he was right, but she didn’t like him telling her what to do. She stabbed a pair of french fries into the little paper cup of ketchup and popped them in her mouth. Elvis watched her, his eyes on the fries. She raised her forearm, palm up, toward the sky—the hand signal for sit—and the Malinois sat up.
“Do you turn everything into a training exercise?” Troy watched her as she rewarded Elvis with a french fry. Susie Bear watched, too, and promptly sat up.
“Give a dog a burger, but make him work for the fries,” she said. Another one of Martinez’s rules. “Besides, what he really works for is his Kong.”
“Well, hell.” Troy held his palm out to Susie Bear, offering her a fry of her own. “It’s all about food for this one.” She lapped it up with that huge tongue. Troy wiped his hand on a napkin and looked at Mercy. “We’ll find the mother.”
“Alive?”
“There was no sign of foul play.” He chomped away at his cheeseburger in the same reasonable and resolute manner in which he appeared to approach everything else.
“Except for the corpse and explosives.”
“Alleged explosives.”
“So you think it’s all a big coincidence?” She refused to believe that, even it was a possibility. And his believing it angered her. She could feel her face redden. The telltale curse of the redhead. It wasn’t that she was more emotional than other people, it was just that those emotions played out in pink right on her face. She bowed her head away from the game warden, toward Elvis, letting her hair fall across her brow. She lowered her hand, and the shepherd dropped down at her feet, earning another deep-fried treat.
Susie Bear plopped back down as well. Troy frowned at Mercy but handed his dog another fry anyway.
“That’s enough,” he told her. “I happen to like fries.”
“I can’t help it if your dog knows an alpha when she sees one.”
“Very funny,” he said with a laugh, and set about systematically destroying the rest of his burger and fries.
She focused on her food and they ate in silence under the watchful eyes of their four-legged friends.
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Troy said finally.
“Neither do I.” Mercy tapped the surface of the table with her index finger. “Someone took good care of that baby.”
“Yeah, right up until they left her in the woods to die.” His voice was calm but there was a note of disgust there that cheered her.
“Maybe.”
“Hail Mary pass theory again?” Troy turned his attention to his milkshake.
“Maybe they didn’t leave her to die but to be found.”
He stopped midslurp. “By you?”
“By somebody.” She thought about it. “It is a holiday week. Maybe they figured someone was bound to come by sooner or later.”
“Seems risky. The Lye Brook Wilderness is not nearly as popular as the national forest it borders. Why not pick a more well-traveled route?”
“I don’t know.” She took a bite of her burger. “But some of us hike there regularly anyway. Maybe they knew that.”
The warden considered this. “No evidence of a struggle.”
“And they left diapers and bottles and formula and wipes—everything she’d need, at least in the short term.”
“Yeah.”
“Elvis and I have hiked up to those falls nearly every morning since spring. We leave at dawn and take the same route, more or less. We don’t usually see many people on the way up because it’s so early. But we glimpse more people later on the way down. Sometimes with babies. Not often. But it does happen from time to time.”
“Just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they don’t see you. Especially if they’re off-trail.” He seemed to be warming to her theory.
“True enough.”
“We’ve got the baby clothes and the carrier. Maybe that will give us something.”
“What about baby footprints?”
“There’s really no database,” he said. “But we can check the birth records from around six months ago, when the doc says she was probably born.”
“I could take her,” she said. “I mean, instead of her going to Child Protective Services.” Which was ridiculous, since she didn’t know that much about babies.
He eyed her with surprise. “That’s not really how it works. But I suspect you know that.”
“I did keep this baby alive until you came along.”
“You saved her life,” he said. “No question about that. And maybe her mother was counting on that.”
They both fell silent at that.
Finally Mercy spoke. “If her mother left her there for me and Elvis to find, then she must be in trouble.”
“Which leads us right back to the bones and bombs.”
“But you said there were no bombs.”
“I said they didn’t find any explosives.”
“But they did find something.”
“You never give up, do you?” Troy looked at her with a mix of admiration and annoyance.
She didn’t say anything. Just waited him out.
“I couldn’t tell you at the crime scene. Too many people around.” He paused. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you now.”
“But you will.” She leaned toward him. “You know you want to.”
He stiffened, and she laughed. To his credit, he laughed, too. “They found traces of PETN, a chemical compound often found—”
“Often found in explosives,” Mercy interrupted. “Yeah, I know.”
More important, Elvis knew. As a sniffer dog, he was trained to find weapons and to detect a number of explosives odors. When he alerted to a scent, that scent was typically gunmetal; detonating cord; smokeless powder; dynamite; nitroglycerin; TNT; RDX, a chemical compound often found in military-grade explosives; TATP, used in peroxide-based explosives; and PETN.
PETN stood for pentaerythritol tetranitrate, a powerful explosive similar in structure to nitroglycerin and used by everyone from miners and the military to terrorists.
“Of course.” Troy looked over at Elvis. “That explains why he found the PETN. But it doesn’t explain why he found the bones.”
“Susie Bear found the bones.”
“But Elvis was there, too.” He frowned. “Is he trained to find cadavers?”
“Not exactly. That is, I don’t know,” she said. Like all military working dogs, Elvis was trained as a patrol dog, to guard checkpoints and gates, detect intruders, secure bases, apprehend suspects, and attack on command. But beyond that, most military working dogs were specialists; they were trained to sniff out drugs or cadavers or explosives. For Elvis, it was all about explosives. At least that’s what Martinez told her.
Troy stood up, gathered up the litter of his meal, and dropped it all into the trash can that flanked the picnic table. Turning back to face her, he placed his large hands on the table and leaned in toward her. “What does that mean, exactly?”
Elvis promptly sat up and growled. Susie Bear reacted, too, lumbering to her feet and facing off with the Belgian shepherd as if to say, Dude, what’s up.
“It means that I don’t know.” Mercy stood up, too, and steadied the shepherd with a pat on his head. “Not for sure.”
Troy leaned back, straightening his spine and standing up. He looked like cops looked when you lied to them. Unimpressed.
“What kind of dog handler are you?”