Bones (13 page)

** CHAPTER 15

THURSDAY, EARLY MORNING, MAY 18

Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains

The rain held off until just before dawn the next morning. The rainfall was not hard or steady--just a series of intermittent gentle showers for the most part--but the first of these awakened me as its chilly droplets struck my face. In my fitful sleep I had moved off my open sleeping bag, and so I came awake lying faceup, halfway outside the tent. The part of me that was still on the thin insulation mattress was fine, but the other thirty percent or so wasn't so comfy. Especially the part that was getting pelted by cold water.

I moved back inside only long enough to change and pack up my gear. When I emerged, I saw the others were already breaking camp. No one wanted to linger here. Although weather might delay the plane's arrival, last night it had been decided that we would hike back to the landing strip to wait for it.

Occasional but unpredictable gusts of wind made taking down my small tent a tricky business, and those who were managing the larger tent that had housed Parrish nearly lost control of it more than once.

I wondered if the trail would be muddy. Our progress had been slow before, and even though some of the weight of the food was gone from our packs, the body would be an awkward burden to steer through the terrain we had covered on the way in.

The rain briefly lessened the body's lingering odor, to which I had almost become accustomed, and brought the scent of dampened earth and woods to replace it. But when the first storm passed, and the air became still again, the scent returned. Perhaps it was the moisture in the air that seemed to increase the scent's power, or that short respite now resulted in a renewed awareness of it, but whatever the cause, its presence was soon unmistakable.

We set out just after a quick breakfast, which I made myself eat because I knew I'd need the energy for the hike, although my appetite was nearly zilch. I tried to cheer myself with the prospect of going home, of seeing Frank again, of being finished with this sad business. But I would not be finished with it, of course; the Sayres awaited me, and my editor expected a story.

As we began hiking, I saw that while the ground and grass were damp, there wasn't much mud yet. The wind had steadied, and was not much more than a strong breeze. J.C. was in the lead, assuring us that he could now take us on a much more direct route back to the plane. Bob Thompson and the guards followed with Parrish, who seemed lost in his own thoughts--I hoped they were distressing visions of spending the rest of his life in prison. Bingle walked with me, while David and Ben took the first turn with the stretcher.

We reached the ridge between the two meadows--not far from where the coyote tree stood--and stopped to rest so that Andy and J.C. could take over the task of bearing the stretcher. We only planned to stop for a few minutes. But here, just after David and Ben had gently laid down their burden, two things happened that changed the course of our journey.

The first was that Nicholas Parrish said to Thompson, "I thought you would have shown more initiative, Detective Thompson. To find only one body, when my lovely tree surely tells you there are more here."

After a moment's silence, Thompson said, "Are you volunteering information, Parrish?"

"Do I need to say more than I have? Not all of my works are as enchanting as dear Julia--I do wish you'd let me have a peek at her. Her fragrance is so enticing!"

"Out of the question," Thompson said, then reconsidering, added, "if you show me the other graves, I might be able to work something out."

Parrish laughed. "You've made your forensic anthropologists frown at you, Detective."

"He's just stalling," Duke complained.

Thompson nodded. "We'll discuss your other victims when you're back in your cell, Parrish."

"Oh no," he said. "It's now or never."

Thompson began pacing.

"You can count, can't you?" Parrish said. "Count the coyotes."

"A dozen. I know, I know," Thompson said, still not decided. "If you knew there were more, why did you get rid of your lawyer? You know we can use everything you say to us against you."

"He was boring. As you are becoming boring. I will show you another grave, Detective Thompson," Parrish said, "but if we continue to hike, we hike away from it. We both know that I won't be allowed to accompany you on another expedition, so as I said--now or never!"

"It's a trick of some kind," Manton said. "If there were more bodies, he would have negotiated for whatever he could get while his lawyer was still here."

"Ms. Kelly," Parrish said. "Can you understand why I don't want my dear ones to be left behind?"

I thought I knew the answer, and why he asked it of the only member of the media he could appeal to at that moment. But I didn't especially want to be involved in this decision; I was there as an observer. And the things I had observed--after looking into Julia Sayre's grave--made me certain that I didn't want to aid Parrish in any way, shape, or form. The others were looking at me, waiting.

It was Ben Sheridan who answered, almost exactly as I would have. "Mr. Parrish takes pride in his work. He doesn't want it to remain hidden. That's why we're up here in the first place."

"Yes!" Parrish said warmly. "You surprise me! You understand perfectly!"

Thompson was besieged by arguments for and against, mostly against.

It was then that the second thing happened, the one that decided the issue.

The wind shifted.

Later, I would look back at that day and wonder what would have become of our group had the wind blown in some other direction. But it shifted--shifted toward us--a stiff breeze coming off the other meadow, up one sloping end of it, to the ridge where we stood, and beyond.

Bingle raised his nose and then pitched his ears forward. He looked back at David. I had seen that intent look the day before.

"zQue pasa?" David asked Bingle.

Bingle turned back into the breeze, lifted his nose in short quick motions, sniffing, eyes half-closed, then brought his ears up again and stared at David. This time, the dog's tail was wagging.

"What's going on?" Thompson asked.

"Bingle is alerting," Ben said.

Thompson turned back to Parrish with a gleam in his eye. "Maybe we won't need you to show it to us! Maybe the dog is going to take us straight to it!"

Parrish shrugged in indifference.

"I thought we needed to get to that airstrip," Manton said.

"Go ahead," Ben replied. "We're going to see what the dog is after."

"Maybe he's just smelling the body J.C. and Andy are carrying," Manton persisted.

"No," said David. "He's finding it on the wind. The wind is coming up the slope, off that meadow. The wind isn't in the right direction to carry scent off the body. And he's not excited about that find now. This is something new."

But Thompson's certainty had been shaken. "What if it's just a dead deer or something like that?"

"He won't alert to nonhuman remains," David answered, after commanding Bingle to sit quietly. The dog shifted on his front paws like a kid that needs to go to the bathroom, but obeyed. "He was interested in that meadow when we walked there two days ago. I'm going to check it out."

"I'll stay with you," Ben said, then turned to Thompson. "Go on to the plane. We'll catch up."

"Catch up?" Thompson said. "What if you find something? How are you going to get it out?"

"We'll mark it and come back later," Ben said.

But only yesterday Thompson's mind had been filled with visions of glory for bringing in a second body, and he wasn't going to be left out of a chance to make those visions a reality, especially not after Parrish himself had hinted that there were as many as eleven other burials. "No way," he said. "You stay, we all stay. We're in this together."

"Suit yourself," Ben said.

David had by this time put the leather working collar on Bingle. Bingle was staring at him intently, and began barking.

Andy and J.C., who had been standing near the stretcher, were deep in conversation. I saw Andy nodding. Just as David managed to quiet the dog, J.C. said to Thompson, "Let the two of us go on to the airstrip with the body."

"That's a lot of hiking for the two of you," Ben said.

"True," J.C. said, "but we can manage it. And I've got an idea. The plane should be back soon, if it isn't waiting for us there already--the weather hasn't been bad enough to keep it from landing. When we get to it, I'll radio the ranger station for a chopper. They can pick me up at the landing strip, and I'll show them where to find you. They won't have any trouble landing in this meadow. And leaving by chopper won't give your prisoner many opportunities to make a break for it--not as many as a walk through the forest might."

The idea of skipping the hike back to the airstrip obviously appealed to Thompson, but he hesitated. "You can get one in here before nightfall?"

"No problem. Without Parrish leading us on his goofy side routes, it shouldn't take us long to reach the airstrip. You can have him locked up before the end of the day."

Thompson looked over to see Parrish frowning. Caught at this, Parrish gave a sugary smile to the detective. Thompson hesitated.

"The guards are looking tired," J.C. said. "This hasn't been easy duty. This way, they won't have to backpack, watch the trail, and keep an eye on Parrish all at the same time."

"Okay," Thompson said.

Ben extracted a promise from Andy to stay with the body while J.C. came back for the others. "I don't want anyone claiming that the body or evidence was out of our control at any time."

David and Bingle went down into the meadow first, at a fairly fast pace. Ben and I followed not far behind them, carrying the excavation equipment. Flash carried some of this as well, along with his camera equipment. Thompson, Parrish, and the guards moved more slowly.

The wind died down, but David didn't seem to be bothered. He used the opportunity to rest the dog, set down his backpack and equipment, and pick out a place to wait for the chopper. "J.C. was pretty optimistic about the weather," he said, looking up at the sky. "I don't know. It's not bad right now, but I think we might get more rain yet."

"I thought the same thing," Ben said. "I have a feeling that we'll be spending the night here. On the other hand, J.C. knows these mountains better than we do. If the plane is waiting for him when they reach the airstrip, and the chopper gets up here fast enough, we may be okay. But I don't want to be rushed if Bingle finds something."

"I'll stay here with you even if Thompson and the others want to go back," David said. He paused, took out the squeeze bottle with the powder in it and tested the air. The powder drifted slowly off toward the ridge. "Look at that. A really fine breeze. This is better for working than that wind--it could have been blowing scent from a mile away." Bingle, standing a little apart from us, was alerting again.

"zQuieres trabajar?" he called out. Do you want to go to work?

Bingle's tail wagged, and he gave a bark.

"Find us a good spot, Ben," David said, moving toward the dog. "Haven't heard any thunder yet, but if there is a storm, I sure as hell don't want to be standing out in the middle of a meadow like a lightning rod." To Bingle he said, "VBuscalo! VBusca al muerto!"

Dog and handler began to move in a crisscross path down the meadow, much as they had done when I followed them the day before.

From our earlier hike through this area I remembered that the woods were denser here than those near the meadow where Julia Sayre had been buried. Farther in from this meadow, there was a stream; beyond that, a small pond.

Flash, Ben, and I set up one of the smaller tents in the woods, to give Duke and Earl a place to catch up on their sleep. If necessary, we would set up camp there. While sheltering under a single tree, or even a small stand of trees, would be extremely dangerous in a bad storm, a forest of this size would be safer than the meadow. We would no longer be the tallest objects.

It wasn't long before we heard Bingle crooning.

We hurried to the meadow, where David was praising the dog. "VQue inteligente eres! VQue guapo eres!"

"Yes, he's handsome and intelligent," I said, "but what did he find?"

David commanded Bingle to stay, and walked with us to a place another few yards away. "A little newer, I suspect."