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Elle put her back behind the crowbar, yanking backwards. The warped board popped upward with a snap, and she grabbed hold, wriggling the last nail free. She tossed it over the wobbly porch railing to join the growing pile of others on the ground in front of her cabin. She’d been at it since a tad past dawn, and figured she’d be able to lay new board on the little porch by noon.
The intermittent sound of a hammer reached her ears, and she glanced off the porch and onto the roof of cabin number four. On top, August Hermes perched, a fan of nails in his mouth. He slapped another shingle down and adjusted it before reaching for one. Elle smiled briefly. The man was worth his weight in gold, and that was saying something since his size alone was imposing. It was the third cabin he’d put a roof on since he’d cut a deal with her for the use of his muscle in return for room and board.
The sound of a motor caught her attention, and her eyes wandered down the trail as an ATV came into view. She recognized the uniform before the man. Miles Porter gunned the engine up the hill and parked. He sent a wave to August, who gave one back and then went back to work. He got off and came her way. Elle gave a sigh, her mouth tightening. She liked Miles, she did, but she didn’t have time to spend on idle conversation, and she was enjoying her hard won solitude.
Miles came up the steps and stopped. He leaned on the newel post that supported the porch above them. When it moved under his weight, he straightened quickly, looking at them nervously. Elle sighed and sat back, swiping an elbow over her brow, collecting the thin film of sweat there with her sleeve. “Wouldn’t do that if I were you. The rail is next.”
Miles looked sheepish. “Sorry about that. I was just running the trail and thought I’d stop by and see how things were going with you or if you need anything. Things are looking good, by the way. Your Mr. Hermes really seems to know his way around a hammer. Roofs look great.”
Elle shrugged, getting to her feet and grabbing several more boards to toss aside. “He really does. I could have never gotten this much done without his help.”
“You know, I have some time, if you needed another hand with things...” he offered, a light blush creeping along his jawline.
Elle stared at him. Even if she wanted someone else poking their way into her business, which she didn’t, it wouldn’t be some young guy at least ten years her junior crushing on her. Feeding that young obsession just had disaster written all over it. “Thanks a bunch, Miles, but I’m good. This here, what I’m doing? It’s therapeutic for me. I need to do it myself. As for August? He’s my charity case for the year.” It was a flat out lie, but he didn’t know that.
He nodded. “So, how is the case coming? Any more news on the identification of the bones?”
Elle shrugged. “We have a positive ID on the first two. Both died within the last couple of years. Sly Warhol and Charlie Stine. And now there’s a third set.”
Miles’ eyes jerked to hers in surprise. “I’d heard they were looking, but...no matter. I heard that the victims, the pushers? They all went missing in late fall, around the same time of year.”
Elle’s brows rose. “A little birdie tell you that?”
It was Miles’ turn to send her a knowing grin. “Something like that. Anyway, Mr. Crawley plans to go up in the chopper again.”
Elle’s eyes narrowed in irritation. “What? When?”
He shrugged. “He said he was going to make a circuit over the next few nights, take a chance on seeing any lights. If the killer is getting ready to take another victim, he’ll be burying him at night, right? It makes sense to do it when nobody is around. But they couldn’t do it completely in the dark. If he or she uses a flashlight, it would show up on the ground pretty good from the chopper.”
Elle was still seething at the part where Jacob Crawley planned on keeping her out of the loop. She bent down to clean up and collect tools. The porch would wait another day. “So, are you planning to go up with him?” she asked casually.
Miles snorted. “Not me. I don’t do well in anything that leaves the ground.” He smiled. “I thought you might want to, though. So, I figured I’d pass the information along.”
Elle sighed, straightening, the crick in her back making her wince. “Thanks, Miles. I owe you one.”
A few more minutes’ worth of idle chitchat, him more than her, and Elle watched Miles leave, her eyes moving to the roof and the still figure perched there, watching him go. August had good eyes for a vagrant. She wondered what else he’d been. Her mouth tight, she called to Mia, playing in the yard. Together, they went in, and Elle headed for the kitchen and a required cup of tea. On the way, she picked up her phone from the kitchen table.
#
“IT’S MY CASE, CRAWLEY,” she snapped, her fingers tight on the phone.
There was a brief hesitation. “Well, it’s not. You didn’t want it, remember? I believe you agreed to act as a consult.”
She gritted her teeth. “And in order to do that, I need to know what’s going on. I need to be kept in the loop. How come I didn’t know you were planning on going up without me?”
“Because it’s probably a wild goose chase. I don’t expect to find anything. Besides, seems to me that the last time we went up together, you weren’t too happy with the company.”
“How egotistical. Typical that you would think my mood at the time would have anything to do with you.”
“It usually does. But if not me, then what was it that had you so jumpy?”
Elle ignored the question, changing the subject. “The chance of his coming back on whatever night and time you choose to go up is slim. A proverbial needle in a haystack.”
“That’s right. Thus, the reason I didn’t tell you,” he repeated stubbornly.
Elle pursed her lips in irritation. “When were you planning to go up?”
He hesitated. “Tomorrow night, and maybe the next couple after that. You’re right. It’s probably nothing, but the time of year is right.”
“I want in.”
“Look, Elle—”
“Two sets of eyes. Unless you have someone else in mind, you are going to need to have your eyes and hands on the controls. You need a pair of eyes on the ground.”
Jacob hesitated. “Okay. This would be easier if we knew who the next victim was going to be, and when he was going to go missing.”
Elle snorted. “That would make all murders easier to solve, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah, it would.”
#
IT WAS A COLD, CLEAR night, the stars bright in the sky when Elle arrived at Jacob’s and parked. He made his home in a real log cabin, and not one of those prefab kits you buy. This looked like a bonafide mountain man had felled the logs and assembled it from scratch. He probably had. Jacob answered the door when she knocked. Her eyes immediately pulled to the long lean fingers doing up the last buttons on a thick flannel shirt. He stepped back, and she entered reluctantly.
Elle didn’t want to know where and how Jacob Crawley lived. It brought back too many memories from when they were kids and spent too many hours in each other’s company.
“Give me just a minute to grab socks and my pack. Go in and make yourself at home,” he added brusquely, not meeting her eyes.
He’d been at least civil the last time she’d seen him. Today he was a stranger.
The inside was one large living space aside from a section in the back down a short hall that housed the bathroom and what she assumed was his bedroom. A central fireplace in the living room flickered behind a grate, casting welcome heat into the room. Two recliners surrounded a hand-hewn coffee table in between, an abandoned cup and a dog-eared book on one side. Dark spectacles rested atop the leather binding, and a crumpled blanket draped the chair. It looked like he’d just gotten up minutes before. She turned her attention to the kitchen that took up most of the front of the cabin, a long, low counter and several bar stools resting beneath a substantial lip along one side. Like the end table, the countertop looked as if it had been done by hand, a huge flat slab of maple, planed to a smooth surface and varnished to bring out the whorls of grain in the wood. It was rugged and masculine and absolutely beautiful.
A sound made her start, and Jacob was back, thick socks covering his feet and an old army pack slung over his shoulder. He glanced up at her as he grabbed the waiting thermos next to the coffeemaker. “You ready?”
Elle nodded. “I like the countertop. Your doing?”
He nodded, his eyes warming when they ran over it. “I did. First couple years I was in Veil Falls I needed something to occupy my mind. I built the cabin with a little help from August Hermes. He’s quite the carpenter. That counter was a sliver from a massive maple we felled. I used the same log to make the coffee table, and a king-sized bed frame.” The last gave her an unwelcome jolt of memory. Her eyes flew to his, and she knew he’d done it on purpose.
His expression dared her to comment.
Instead, she turned towards the door. “We’re wasting time here. We should be in the air.”
Outside, they moved towards a large polebarn and set off to the side. Unlike the house, this was modern and sleek—and huge. “How do you get it in there without clipping the sides?” she asked curiously.
“I don’t. You’ll see.”
Huge double white doors at the front contrasted with the bright red of the siding. But he opted for the single door to its side, using a key to unlock it. They might have lived in the boonies where theft and vandalism were few and far between, but both of them were cautious by nature and experience. It was something she understood.
Inside, he flipped a switch and the entire inside lit up, revealing a blue and white helicopter on a white circular painted helipad in the middle. In the back of the building, she spotted what looked like a four-up ATV and a bobcat. There was a small, glassed-in office beneath a stairwell that led up and over the top to an enclosed loft nearly the size of his cabin. “Is that an apartment?” she asked curiously.
Jacob shrugged, walking around the outside of the chopper and opening and closing compartments, poking around and doing a preflight check on the outside. “It could be. Nobody lives there right now.”
Elle thought of her guest, sent by Jacob. “Why not August?”
He hesitated and looked up, his eyes inscrutable. “He couldn’t afford it,” he said cryptically.
Elle snorted and didn’t respond. A small smile tipped his lips upward. “And are you grateful for his expertise yet?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Not bloody likely,” she lied.
He gave a small grin and opened the small door on the side of the chopper. “Get in. I’ll start it once you are. You won’t have to duck that way.” Elle climbed into the front passenger seat, fiddling with the lap belt and reaching for the spare headset. It wasn’t exactly her first rodeo. Jacob reached in from the other side and grabbed what looked like a remote. He looked up overhead and hit a few buttons. There was a grinding of gears and above them, the night sky was revealed in inches as the roof slid back, a substantial opening plenty large enough for the small chopper. “I fueled her earlier, so we don’t have to worry about that. Keep those headphones on, though. They help dampen the noise. Enclosed places like this make it louder than the devil ’til we clear the roof.”
And he wasn’t kidding when minutes later the engine turned over and the little beast woke up with a scream of the engine and whirling rotors. Jacob turned and met her eyes with a nod. He touched the side of his headset, and she did the same. “You good?” came through in her ears.
“All set, Sherlock,” she agreed.
And smooth as silk, Jacob’s hands steady on the throttle, they lifted straight up and through the roof into the night sky.
They rose above the tree line, swinging due west along the Lake Superior coastline, over Paleman’s Bluff, where they swung inland towards the Little Hat Wilderness Preserve, and the walkway that ran along the Little Hat Creek.
“Won’t anyone on the ground hear the chopper?”
Jacob’s voice came through the headset, deep and gravelly, as if he were whispering right into her ear. She gave an unwelcome shiver of awareness. “Probably. But it’s unlikely whoever our guy or gal is, that they’ll suspect a helicopter out at night. Besides, I make this run periodically to Marquette when we have a package, human or otherwise, that needs delivering, so it’s not out of the ordinary.”
“Does that happen often? Trips to what, the hospital there?”
He shrugged, fiddling with a few switches, his eyes probing the darkness past the windshield. “More often than I’d like,” he admitted.
“At least you’re there. Worse if you weren’t.”
Jacob turned and looked at her, his expression enigmatic. “True enough.”
“Is this the first night you’ve been up?”
He hesitated, probably nervous about incurring her wrath because he hadn’t included her. “No. This makes the third night in a row I’ve made a pass.”
Elle’s mouth tightened, but she didn’t respond to the admission. Instead, she leaned forward as they came in along the Little Hat, the long silver ribbon of water snaking through the preserve where it would empty into the mighty Superior several miles on. The river created a breakthrough the woods on either side, the thin dark limbs of the surrounding wooded margin creating a web of crude, indistinct lines and black smudges below.
“Has Suzy processed that third body? Any idea on a positive ID?” he asked, the headset crackling now and then and distorting his words.
Elle stared at the passing landscape below, a whir of motion that made her eyes tired and struggle to focus in on anything. “She did. She was right about them being older. Carbon dating put them around five to six years old.”
“And the cause of death, do we know that?”
She nodded and stopped herself. His eyes were on the controls, not looking her way. “Toxicology reports on the bone samples we sent in came back positive for heroin laced with fentanyl.”
He hesitated, pushing the throttle forward and causing them to dip several feet for a better angle. Elle’s stomach dropped along with it, making her clutch the sides of the seat.
“That isn’t surprising. A lot of drug pushers are also users.”
Elle frowned and gulped, her stomach settling. “Maybe, but it would also be an effective way to murder someone. And there was no arrowhead like there was in the second grave.”
“So maybe that’s because it was just a coincidence.”
“I’m not ruling anything out,” she said thinly.
“As determined as always. Some things never change.”
She glanced up at him, his jaw tight, his eyes hard. She wasn’t the only one.
“What are we looking for exactly?” Elle asked, her eyes searching through the darkness.
“The only thing we can probably see at night—light. Whoever our killer is, he can’t see in the dark any better than we can. So, he’ll use a flashlight or a headlamp to light his way. And logic leads me to believe he’ll be on that walkway along the river at some point since that’s close to where the last three sets of bones were found.”
Elle gave a nod and leaned towards the window, her eyes moving in the dense blackness below, looking for a flicker of light. “So, say we see something. Can you set this down in the dark?”
Soft laughter filled her ears. “No way. That’s where Miles comes in. He isn’t much use for anything that has him leaving the ground, but he’s wicked on that ATV. He’s standing by at home, waiting for a signal from me. He’ll go where I direct him.”
“That sounds dangerous for Miles.”
Jacob hesitated. “It should be okay. Our killer isn’t expecting company, and Miles doesn’t have to catch him, he just has to get a good look at whoever it is. We’ll take it from there. Besides, the Veil Falls Precinct doesn’t have the spare manpower to handle it initially. But they’ll step in if we have a line of sight on the guy.”
Elle didn’t answer, her eyes moving back and forth along the landscape that whirred past them below.
They rode in silence for several moments without speaking. When he did, Elle wished she’d thumbed the headset to mute. “I looked you know. When I came back.”
Elle didn’t pretend not to know what he meant. “Did you? I didn’t stick around. I moved away a few months after you left,” she whispered.
“They said you were in an accident.”
“Yeah?” She wondered what else they’d told him.
“How bad was it?”
Elle thought about the extra something that had followed her through the darkness and stayed with her when she regained consciousness.
“I lived,” she muttered, her mouth tight.
“That’s hardly an answer.”
“I was fine. And you weren’t around to do anything if I hadn’t been. You were off fighting for God and country.”
“I—”
“Wait, hold up. I see something,” Elle interrupted, straightening. She squinted, trying to focus in on the bob and weave of a tiny speck of light almost directly below them. “Can you swing this thing around for another pass?”
The helicopter tilted, and he turned back in a wide arc, making her world whirl crazily for a minute. Sure enough, the light was still there, creeping along the walkway, a dancing white dot in the darkness. “I see it,” Jacob grunted, reaching for his phone. “I’m calling Miles now.”
The call was brief before he hung up. “That’s just a couple hundred feet down from the first bridge. Miles is moving in.”
And less than a half mile from the camp. Elle wondered if she should give August a call and let him know. “Maybe we shouldn’t just hover here. Looks suspicious.”
“Agreed. I’m going to swing along to the end of the valley and come about, give Miles time to do his thing.”
Fifteen minutes later, they were headed back, and Miles called. Down below, they could make out a pair of headlights moving quickly down the trail. A half mile farther along, the flashlight continued to bob and weave, moving faster now but in the opposite direction. “Whoever it is must hear him coming,” Jacob murmured.
The ATV continued for another couple hundred feet before slowing, the lights abruptly winking out. Almost immediately, a smaller, single beam cut the darkness. Now there were two dots, the first moving away from the second, which was closing fast. In tense silence, they watched the tableau play out. The first light dot was within fifty yards of the second when it abruptly cut off, leaving Miles alone in the darkness, his lamp now a beacon to whoever was out there with him.
Jacob swore. “Turn it off!” he hissed beneath his breath. Elle held her breath and jerked when their phone abruptly lit up again. Miles’ name came across the screen when Jacob answered. “He’s suspicious. And you’re a sitting duck, Miles. Turn the light off and hide,” Jacob bit out rapidly as soon as he answered, Miles’ breath heaving through the phone the only other sound from his run through the woods in the dark.
“No...worries. He’s right up ahead...” his voice came back, excited.
“It’s a trap, Miles. Shut the damned light off!” Jacob snarled.
“Okay, just a minute, wait. I can’t hear him anym—” Abruptly his voice cut out and a loud pop and crackle sounded. A few seconds of silence went by, and then they heard another sound: someone breathing heavily, listening to them from the other end. The hair on Elle’s nape rose in alarm. Neither of them spoke into the silence. All at once a subtle laughter filled their ears, drifting into the cab, just audible over the loud drone of the rotors. It was brief, followed by a sharp crack, and then nothing.
Elle looked up at Jacob in horror. “How quickly did you say you could land this thing in the dark?”
#
LANDING THE CHOPPER blind in unknown territory would have amounted to suicide on their part. Instead, Jacob headed to the trailhead, where the ground opened up into the empty parking lot. It was the closest spot they could think of to set the chopper down. Meanwhile, Elle tried Miles’ phone twice more, getting no response. Then she made the call to Allen Peabody and notified him of the situation. “They’re on their way. But it’ll be at least twenty minutes before they can make it to where we are. I don’t think we can wait.”
On the ground, they grabbed packs and ducked under the settling rotors before they stopped and headed at a jog down the trail. Jacob handed Elle a headlamp to match his own and to light up the path so they didn’t catch a toe or twist an ankle. They weren’t worried about unwelcome company. It was very unlikely that whoever had been down there with Miles had stuck around.
Elle bit her lip as she ran, reaching down to run her hand over the personal carry at her hip, making sure it was secure. Jacob, she noted, was likewise armed.
Above them, as the dense forest swallowed them up, a pale sliver of moonlight occasionally appeared as faint dots on the path where the woods above cleared momentarily. They estimated they were a quarter mile out from where they’d last seen Miles’ flashlight wink out and had lost all contact with him. Elle tried not to let the panic overwhelm her. Miles, despite his ranking as a conservation officer, was more rookie than pro. They both should have known better, Elle worried. They’d sent a novice to tangle with a probable killer with a minimum of three kills beneath his belt that they knew of. They suspected more. It had been a fool’s errand, and Elle blamed herself...and Jacob.
Jacob led, and all at once slowed and held up a hand as they neared the bend in the trail that came out near the first bridge. “We shouldn’t just rush in here, let’s hold up.” Jacob’s voice was all business. He wasn’t a cop, had never held a badge. But he’d been commander of his own unit in the Army and he’d later worked with the Coast Guard, leading a search and rescue unit.
“Miles could be hurt,” Elle hissed quietly in token protest, a sense of urgency still pushing her forward.
“He could be dead,” Jacob stated flatly, making her flinch. “I’m in no hurry for us to join him.”
Elle lapsed into silence, following on his heels. When he reached up and toggled his lamp off and allowed his eyes to adjust to the near pitch black of the forest floor, Elle did the same.
Jacob reached back and grappled for her hand, giving it a squeeze. Elle realized she was shaking, and took a deep breath, counting down slowly in her head to calm her nerves. Up ahead, something large crashed in the brush to their left and they both froze. The bleat of a terrified deer reached their ears, and they breathed again. They’d gone a matter of feet more when they heard a different sound, something low and human.
“Did you hear that?” Elle hissed, listening hard.
“Left in, about a hundred yards,” Jacob confirmed. Another painful moan reached their ears and Jacob angled slowly off the trail, moving into the woods. Elle was grateful that the woods weren’t very thick with brush and briers where they were. Mature elm, maple, and oak provided ample canopy to keep the understory to a minimum. The pain-filled cry came once more, and Jacob adjusted his direction accordingly. Up ahead, there was a movement against the trunk of a large sycamore. Jacob paused, and Elle forced her feet to stop moving. They didn’t know for sure that Miles was alone. Nothing moved but the man moaning on the ground.
Together they moved in, Elle crouching down, Jacob’s eyes scanning the darkness for anything suspicious. “Miles, are you all right? What happened?”
Another hiss of pain, and Miles grabbed the side of his head. “Idiotic,” he hissed. “I wasn’t thinking, didn’t hear you tell me to cut the damned light until it was too late, and it was lights out all right,” he snapped in disgust, his fingers coming away wet from his head where a sizable lump was already visible.
“Did you get a good look at him?”
Miles growled. “No. I couldn’t even do that. Some cop I’d make. I was following along, running through the woods, when I was clobbered from behind. Went down like a sack of potatoes.”
Elle reached out and touched his arm lightly. “You did just fine. You couldn’t know. Allen and Jerry are on their way.” Even as she said it, they all heard the faint drone of an engine a way off.
“We should get out of here if we can, move back to the trail so they don’t drive right by us.”
“Can you walk?” Elle asked. Miles nodded and reached for her hand. He was wobbly on his feet, but with her help, he could make the journey. They emerged onto the trail, holding up their hands. The oncoming headlights from the ATVs outlined their figures as they slid to a halt.
Jerry was the first to reach them, followed by the FBI agent. “Any sign of our guy?”
Jacob shook his head. “We didn’t see anything when we got here.”
Allen turned to Miles. “Are you all right?”
Miles nodded, looking shamefaced. “Just embarrassed that I let him get the drop on me.”
“Where did you first see him, do you know?”
“Back by the first bridge, I spotted a shadowy figure, picked up the trail and followed the guy’s light into the forest until he turned it off. Next thing you know? He clobbers me and that’s all I remember.”
Allen looked at Elle. “Too bad Mia isn’t here.”
Elle shook her head. “She’s not that kind of dog. I’m not sure she’d even follow a trail like that.”
Miles was shaking his head grimly. “You aren’t going to find him.”
Jerry and Allen looked at him quizzically. “How’s that?” Jerry asked.
“Because I was just coming to when I heard the motor start up. My guess is you’re going to find ATV tracks down that way a bit.”
Jerry looked around grimly. “We’ll check it out, but my guess is we aren’t finding much of anything until daylight.”
Elle made a humming sound in her throat, and Allen turned in her direction. “What is it?”
“There had to be a reason he was here.”
“Maybe he came back to pay tribute to his earlier handiwork,” Jerry speculated.
Elle glanced into the darkness, picking up the faint sound of the river rushing by in the distance. “Maybe that’s not all he came to do. You say he was initially down by the bridge, next to the river? Could be he was making another delivery.”
Allen Peabody looked on grimly. “Whatever the case, most of this is going to have to wait until morning. We call in a team tonight and they’ll be stumbling over each other, messing things up.” He turned to Elle. “And maybe you could come back then and bring Mia. Trail aside, let’s see what else he left behind for us to find.”
#
ELLE FIGURED IT MUST have been a weak moment to have agreed to let Jacob come by and pick her and Mia up the next morning at the crack of dawn to return to where Miles had been forced to take an unexpected and hasty nap. She reasoned as she climbed into the cab, Mia taking up the seat behind them, that it had its perks when he handed her a hot coffee from Java’s and a cinnamon scone, still warm and fragrant, wrapped in pink parchment.
“Are you trying to butter me up?” Elle asked, clasping the warm cup in her stiff hands.
“Nope. You’d never be fooled by such a daring move,” he murmured, unsmiling. But Elle didn’t trust the gleam in his eye as he pulled back onto the two-track. From where they were, it was a short trip to the trailhead where they’d set down the chopper the night before. Elle remembered the trip home after Miles had been knocked out. It had been done in almost complete silence, each of them lost in their own thoughts as Jacob manned the controls.
They pulled in behind Allen’s Buick and parked. Lyle and his CSTs had already arrived, cordoning off a small section of the trail where Miles had parked his ATV the night before and given chase into the woods. Lyle glanced up and caught Elle’s eye as she approached. Jerry and Allen were deep in conversation with Miles, who had insisted on coming back out. But not before he’d had his noggin bandaged at the emergency room, the white surgical dressing standing out in stark relief against his dark hair.
“Did you find anything?”
Lyle smiled. “Maybe we did. We may have a decent cast of the perpetrator’s shoe.”
“Really?” Elle asked with interest.
“And lucky for us, we could eliminate Miles’ own size tens. Our guy, most likely a guy anyway, had big feet. Size thirteens with deep treads in a zigzag pattern.”
“Anything else?”
Lyle looked down at Mia pointedly. “That’s what we were waiting for you...and Mia...for.”
Next to her knee, Mia looked up at them, her tongue lolling, her eyes bright with excitement as if she knew she was the subject of their conversation.
“I don’t know how much help she’ll be...” Elle started.
Lyle held up a hand. “Maybe more than you think. Imagine it, if he was bringing in another victim, he had to get it in here somehow. Evidence shows those ATV tracks moving up along the walkway next to the river for a ways. And it was pulling something, maybe a sled or a toboggan. If it held a body...” he left the rest unfinished. But Elle could see where he was going with it. He was right. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t already thought of it.
“Only one way to find out. Mia, heel.” They closed in on where the tracks from the ATV had left off the night before.
“Did we establish whether Miles saw the ATV at least?”
Lyle shook his head. “He said no. But there are tracks consistent with the ATV and a sled being pulled over the bridge and along the water on the north side of the river.”
“That makes little sense. Miles said he took off on his ATV closer to the trailhead where we set the chopper down.”
Lyle shrugged. “True. Same question I asked Jerry and Allen. They both think he abandoned the ATV at some point when he saw Miles or heard him, and basically took off on foot to lose him or take him out of commission. He wouldn’t have wanted Miles to get a good look at his ATV so he could identify it. But now I’d like to know where he went before that happened.”
“Tracks like that should be easy to follow even without the dog,” Elle argued.
“Until they stopped, they were.”
“What?”
“At some point, the tracks performed a circle and doubled back. It looks like the sled left the trail and was pulled by hand at that point. And we got an inch or two of fresh powder last night to cover it up. Jerry thinks Mia will be a lot quicker than a bunch of officers and my crew stumbling around and hoping to get lucky. I agree with him.”
A waving hand caught her eye. Allen Peabody motioned them over. “About ready to get started?” He blew on his fingers and jammed them in his pocket.
Elle’s brows rose, wondering what had happened to his gloves. She turned to Mia, who was looking up at her expectantly. She called her and walked to where the tracks ended on the bridge, the faint muddy trace of tracks clear on the wooden bridge where the ATV had crossed with only a few inches to spare on either side. She tapped the footprints leading to the bridge and called to Mia. Her nose quivering suspiciously, Mia nosed the ground, making chuffing sounds as she tested the air and earth, sniffing about curiously.
“Search,” she commanded. Mia glanced up and waved her tail, her head tilting in confusion. Elle glanced at Allen and shook her head. “I don’t think this is going to work. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for.”
“Um, maybe I can help.” Miles spoke up.
“Oh?” Elle asked.
Miles reached into his pocket and pulled something out. “I found this while I was walking—I forgot all about it until now. I didn’t think it was anything but...” He held out his hand. A square piece of torn flannel filled his palm, no bigger than a fifty-cent piece. “I didn’t make the connection at first, but maybe if he was in a hurry, and there are a lot of brambles along the trail, and off it... It probably doesn’t even belong to him,” Miles finished lamely, looking sheepish.
Allen picked it up, looked it over, and handed it to Elle. “Maybe it does. Right now, we have squat. Let’s see what she does with it.”
Elle fingered the sodden cloth and frowned at the sticky dampness. “I think this might be blood.” She held it out for Allen to see.
Allen leaned in, angling the flashlight of his phone and gave a grunt. “You could be right. I’ll get it to the lab and have it tested. But for now, let’s see what the dog knows.”
Elle nodded and bent down, holding the fragment out, letting Mia take a good whiff, and holding her eyes. She brought the cloth down closer to the footprints and gave the command once more. “Search.”
Mia snuffled about for a few more seconds, gave a sharp woof of excitement and moved, following the footprints to where they disappeared in the mud at the entrance to the footbridge. She crossed and headed up the trail on the other side, coincidentally where the footprints reappeared, at least until they hit the pines and disappeared and Mia’s nose took over. At that point, it was a mad scramble to keep up. Elle called out for her to slow down. She turned to look back at them with an impatient bark.
The trail and the dog angled east along the river walk on the north side of the river. Mia had traveled for close to a quarter of a mile when she abruptly left the path and crashed straight into the woods, ducking and diving along a faint deer trail that went in at an angle along the river. It came out onto a high bluff overlooking the rushing water. But Mia had stopped before them beneath the enormous trunk of a large sycamore tree. When they reached her, she was already lying down, looking up expectantly. Beneath her paw, a mixture of fresh powder and loose earth and leaves lay crumbled. Someone had done a hasty job of covering something up. Elle’s heart sank as she called Mia to her and reached in her pocket for Squeaky Pete, Mia’s stuffed rabbit and favorite reward for a job well done.