Lost Dog (A Gideon and Sirius Novel Book 3) (16 page)

“I couldn’t help but notice you only came home with one dog. I assume you found Annie’s owner.”

“Her name is
Angie
,” I said, “and I’m afraid that I’m still looking for her lost human.”

I told him the story of Angie and her missing human, concluding with the tracker being found on Pico Boulevard. Then I took another drink and ground some ice between my teeth.

“Heather’s out there,” I said.

“You believe she’s still alive?”

“That’s what I
want
to believe. In her lifetime she’s already been through hell and back.”

“If she’s the survivor you say she is, then you know she won’t quit.”

“That’s what keeps me going. She is a survivor. Because of that I’m going to keep believing she’s out there, and I’m going to keep beating the bushes in the hopes something will surface.”

“Isn’t that what you always do?”

“This is one case I don’t want to go unsolved. It’s got its claws and its paws in me. I got a dog counting on me.”

Sirius’s ears perked up.

“Excuse me,” I said, “I have two dogs counting on me.”

“I’m not sure if you found Angie or if she found you. Maybe it was meant to be that your paths crossed during her walkabout.”

I’d leave that mysticism to Seth. “Angie sacrificed the pads of her feet,” I said. “I better be able to do the same with my shoe leather.”

Seth stood up and went over to his prized stereo system. He owns thousands of vinyl albums, and probably as many compact discs. His library is alphabetized and color coded, and it didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for.

“This is for you and Angie,” he said.

Sometimes nothing revives you like the right music. I started smiling from the opening beat. There’s no better pick-me-up than listening to the Scottish duo the Proclaimers emoting their song “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).”

Ten seconds of listening was enough to push aside the disappointments of the day, at least for the duration of the song. My head was bobbing and my feet were bouncing.

Angie had started the walk, and I would keep it going, even if it meant walking five hundred miles, and then five hundred more, to find Heather Moreland.

CHAPTER 21

STUMBLING OVER HEATHCLIFF

Flames lashed out like spiked whips, their venom making our flesh boil. Sirius was still breathing. That’s what kept me going. But he’d lost so much blood.

The Santa Ana Strangler was watching me. His eyes could have passed for the eyes of a demon. The fire had burned away what little humanity he possessed and revealed him. He had set the fire that burned us. He had shot my partner. He had shot me. But now I was the one holding the gun, and he was answering its commands.

He screamed when a wall of flames went up right behind him, the fire scorching his back. He would have dropped my partner, but was stopped by my command: “Don’t!”

The only reason the Strangler was still alive was to help me carry Sirius.

Using my gun to signal him, I directed him away from the worst of the flames. But the Santa Ana winds made it impossible to know where to go. They pushed the fire one way, and then another. Our hope for survival meant choosing the way where we might burn less.

The wind gave the fire a rumbling voice that threatened and roared. And burned. Yes, it burned.

And then I was the one who was screaming. The flames had me in their fiery grip. But I wasn’t going to give up on my partner. I kept the gun leveled on the Strangler. And what I read in his face was that he was more scared of me than he was of the weapon I was holding.

He saw me as I saw him. The Strangler thought he was looking at a demon. And in the midst of my pain, and in that raging inferno, I smiled at him. By then much of my hair had burned away, and what he saw was a maniacal, skeletal face. He looked at me and trembled, and I was glad to be revealed
.

Sirius awakened me from my fire walk. “Oh, God,” I said, words spoken more for the pain I was still feeling than for the relief that was too slow in materializing.

The flames began receding from my mind and body. It didn’t matter that there was a part of me that knew my bout with fire was a thing of the past; even years later I continued to burn.

I hugged Sirius. His being there made all the difference, easing me into what I describe as “the moment after.” I don’t know where these visions come from; they might be a natural reaction of relief from escaping the fire and the frying pan, or maybe they come from another realm that I don’t want to believe in. The moment after opens a window; it is my oracle. Sometimes the meaning seems clear; sometimes the vision just frustrates me for my inability to understand what is being revealed.

Langston Walker stared at me with concern. Maybe he saw the demon in me, as Ellis Haines had. Walker was dead, but he appeared to be more troubled by my condition than his own.

“You’re still carrying a lot of pain, aren’t you?” he asked.

“What about you?”

“I’m afraid this is a double haunting, Gideon,” he said. “Now you’ve got me and my ghost.”

I shook my head, not understanding what he was saying.

“Maybe ghosts are like birds,” said Walker. “Maybe you can kill two with one stone. Or is that two with one moan?”

“That sounds like something I’d say.”

“Maybe you’re a ghost too.”

The vision passed, and I fell asleep. I’ve never burned twice in one night, and luckily for me, I don’t burn as frequently as I used to.

Normally I sleep like the dead after undergoing a fire walk, and I usually don’t remember having any more dreams. My subconscious mind must have been working on multiple levels, though, for in my second dream I found myself walking through a valley awash in fog.

I wasn’t alone. Someone padded next to me, and at first I thought it was my partner. But when I looked down, I saw that it was Angie and not Sirius. Angie was sniffing intently. She was on the trail of something. But the scent was elusive.

“I am here!” cried a voice, but I wasn’t sure if I was hearing words or hearing the wind.

The fog made it impossible for me to see who was calling, but I suspected it was Heather Moreland.

And then I realized we were walking in a valley in the moors. I couldn’t see Heather, and Angie couldn’t sniff her out. We kept walking and kept looking, but she remained hidden from view.

When I awakened in the morning, I felt the usual hangover that comes from a fire dream. I was stiff and creaky, and my skin didn’t quite feel as if it was my own. My skin grafts itched, and I felt like a harlequin again, a human patchwork quilt.

I drank coffee and tried to feel the new normal, which meant accepting the limitations that came with the aftermath of the fire. Sirius was there to cheer me up. He’d been through the fire as well and had come a lot closer to death than I had, but you wouldn’t know it by his attitude.

My partner joined me in some stretching. After the fire I underwent intense physical therapy to try and obtain the best possible range of motion. When you’re severely burned, you have to worry about all sorts of things, including muscles and tendons shortening and scar tissue causing contraction of the skin. Sirius did the exercises to keep me company. Whenever I get down on the ground, he considers it an invitation to play. That’s probably what keeps me doing the exercises.

The stretching and playing allowed me time to think about the dream that had come in the aftermath of my fire walk. I was still feeling the frustration of walking with Angie and not being able to find Heather Moreland. She was close enough that I could hear her, but not see her. There was some answer there, something in that dream, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Heather remained elusive, lost in the moors. At least I hadn’t encountered Heathcliff walking the foggy moors.

I decided that for the time being, it would be better to switch one Rubik’s Cube for another. At the moment there was little I could do about Heather Moreland. Reyes had promised he would try and flag any cases that involved break-ins in the residences of young women, or other abductions. I had calls in and balls in the air; sometimes, as much as you want to press forward, you have to wait for the case to come to you.

A few hours earlier I hadn’t even considered looking into the death of Langston Walker. I’d been told that Walker had died of natural causes, but that was before my vision, or dream, or visit from Jacob Marley. I had been touched and told, “Tag, you’re it.” My subconscious mind, in the form of Walker, had passed on a “double haunting.” There was that case of his, of course, his ghost case. And now I was curious about his death.

It was time to bust some ghosts, so I said to Sirius, “Who you gonna call?”

He barked, and I said, “Damn right.”

CHAPTER 22

THE CRUELEST MONTH

Langston Walker had died somewhere near the ten-thousand-foot mark of Mount San Jacinto on April 15. If Benjamin Franklin was right about death and taxes being the only two certainties in this world, it seemed unfair that the two had ganged up on Walker and his son on the same fateful date.

The night before, when Seth and I had been discussing Walker’s death, my shaman friend had solemnly quoted from T. S. Eliot and said, “April is the cruelest month.” At the time I didn’t ask him about Eliot’s rationale for making such a proclamation. In L.A., April is usually the sweet spot of spring, with the daytime temperature in the high sixties and the nighttime in the midfifties. But Walker hadn’t died in L.A. He’d died on a hiking trail with Palm Springs below him and the mountain town of Idyllwild above him.

I packed a day bag, thinking about what I might need. Sirius carefully watched my preparations. He knew the day bag meant an outing, but wasn’t sure if he was invited.

“Are you ready for a desert getaway?” I asked.

My partner raced to the door, his tail moving like a metronome signaling a tempo of presto. When he saw I was coming, the metronome increased to
presto agitato
. Tails often say a lot more than mere words.

Early in our drive I started making phone calls. While I shot the breeze, Sirius merely enjoyed it. His eyes were half-closed while the wind traveled through his fur. Every so often he shifted his head as if saying, “It’s all good.” My partner is the epitome of cool without even trying. He is so cool he almost makes me look cool.

I had highlighted some names as well as information in the articles Seth had printed out on Walker’s death. The first official on the scene had been a park ranger named Riley Ramsey, who worked out of the Long Valley Ranger Station, which was part of the Mount San Jacinto State Park. After I gave my phone a few voice commands, it connected me with the station. A male voice answered, but there was static on the line, and I didn’t catch his name.

“Is this Ranger Ramsey?” I asked.

“Not by a long shot,” he said. “You got Ranger Greer.”

“This is Detective Gideon of the Los Angeles Police Department,” I said. “I’m looking for Ranger Riley Ramsey.” The alliterative tongue twister didn’t beat me; the pronoun did. “Is he available to talk?”

“No,
he
is not,” said the man. “But
she
is. I’ll connect you.”

A few seconds later a voice said, “This is Ranger Ramsey.”

I identified myself and asked if she had a few minutes to talk about Langston Walker.

“Now isn’t the best time,” she said. “Could I call you back in an hour or two?”

“I’m actually in my car driving to Palm Springs,” I said. “In a few hours from now, I hope to be looking over the area where Detective Walker was found.”

“If I can clear my schedule,” she said, “I might be able to take you there.”

“That would be great.”

“I assume you’re going to take the tram up to the Mountain Station?”

“I’m sure not going to walk.”

“Do you have crampons?”

“I don’t even know what crampons are.”

“They’re spikes that attach to your hiking boots.”

She correctly interpreted my silence. “I’m guessing you don’t have hiking boots either.”

“I’m wearing some Air Jordan knockoffs.”

“You are aware Detective Walker died when he slipped on ice and hit his head, aren’t you?”

“Was he wearing crampons?”

“As a matter of fact, he was.”

“I think I’ll take my chances with sneakers, then.”

“I’ll see if I can at least get you a hiking pole.”

“Did Detective Walker have one of those?”

“He had two. From what he was carrying and how he was dressed, I would say he came well prepared for his hike, but even experienced hikers have died on the Skyline Trail.”

“He called it the Cactus to Clouds,” I said.

“Lots of hikers call it that, or C2C, but I think it should be called Fire and Ice. You go from burning to freezing. Honestly, I wish the trail didn’t even exist. Most of the rangers think the same. There’s always someone getting lost or hurt, and it seems like we’re constantly being called out to assist in a rescue or an evacuation.”

She avoided saying, “or a death,” but it was clear that’s what she was thinking.

There was the sound of a hand cupping the phone’s mouthpiece, and I could faintly hear Ranger Ramsey tell someone, “All right; I’ll be just a second.”

Then she relinquished her hand mute. “I’ve got to run.”

“Better put on your crampons, then.”

She laughed and said, “See you in a few.”

I knew I was approaching Palm Springs when I saw the spinning wind turbines. Thousands of them line the San Gorgonio Pass, a valley that runs between the San Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains. Heavy winds flow through the gap, the lifeblood of all those turbines.

“Thar’s gold in them thar hills,” I told Sirius, “but just not the ore variety.”

My partner opened one eye. I was intruding on his sunning.

It wasn’t even noon, but the temperature gauge in my car said it was already eighty-nine degrees. Detective Walker had planned for the heat. From what I’d learned, he’d parked in the lot across from the Palm Springs Art Museum, and had then proceeded to the trailhead. His plan had been to arrive around half past five in the morning and then to be on the trail at first light. Because he’d intended to take the tram down, his wife had agreed to move his car to the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway lot so it could be there waiting for him. I didn’t know if it was still there.

My GPS directed me to the art museum, and I parked across the street, where Walker had. As I stepped out of the car, I felt the heat of the day and knew it would only get worse. The nickname for Skyline Trail was evidenced by the landscape around us and the peaks above. We were in the midst of cacti, while above us, Mount San Jacinto was somewhat obscured by clouds. I shaded my eyes to get a better look at the mountains. Up high I could see pockets of ice and snow. The day before Walker’s hike, a storm had dropped more than an inch of snow on the upper section of the trail. That had made hiking in the high elevations treacherous. There was no good reason to believe that Walker hadn’t died in an accident, or at least no good reason other than his enigmatic visit to me after his death.

As scientific explanations go, Langston Walker’s appearance could be explained as my subconscious mind’s processing information and events. That was the logical explanation for my “moment after.” But too many times my oracle offered me insights that didn’t seem to fall within the realm of science. And while I would never go around telling anyone that Walker came to me for a post-death talk, neither would I definitively say this was simply a case of my synapses firing and my subconscious sorting.

I took a last look at Mount San Jacinto. In the heat of Palm Springs, it was difficult to imagine that snow country was within reach, but there it was.

After driving over to the tram’s lot, I flagged down a shuttle. The driver pulled up alongside me and apologetically said, “I’m not allowed to transport dogs.”

“He’s not a dog,” I said. “He’s a sworn police officer.”

The driver still looked dubious.

I showed him my wallet badge.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Then I showed him Sirius’s badge. Some police departments actually give their K-9 officers badges, but not LAPD. Recently the Los Angeles Police K-9 Fund started offering badges for sale that feature a German shepherd holding handcuffs in his mouth. Beneath the picture it says, “L.A. Police,” and underneath that is the motto “You can run but you can’t hide.” It was that fake badge that sealed the deal: Sirius and I were chauffeured to the visitor center.

We walked into the air-conditioned lobby and made our way to the tramway’s ticket counter. The young woman working there stared at Sirius as if he was the big bad wolf.

“I’d like a round-trip ticket, please,” I said.

She shook her head. “I’m afraid dogs aren’t allowed on the tram.”

I flipped open my wallet badge, then waited while she sought out the opinion of her supervisor. They had a whispered conversation, during which I heard Adriana ask her boss, “Should I also charge for the dog?”

“Kids three and under ride free,” I said, pointing to the sign.

Like just about every parent I know, I lied about the age of my kid. Sirius is almost seven, even though he doesn’t act his age. In that he’s just like his partner.

I paid for my ticket and was directed to what the young woman called “the lobby area.” Around fifteen people waited for the tram’s arrival. It was a good thing I’d chosen a weekday and a nonpeak time for our ride. None of those waiting appeared too bothered by Sirius’s presence, although one mother took a protective hold of her boy and drew him close.

“I want to see the doggie,” the boy said.

“Not now, Cody,” the mother said.

As we waited, the flutter in my stomach grew. I’m not sure what scares me more, fire or heights. The prospect of traveling two and a half miles upward on one of the self-proclaimed “World’s Largest Rotating Tram Cars” was giving me butterflies. I’d tried to hide my uneasiness from Jenny on the only other occasion I’d taken the tram, but I’m pretty sure she knew, just as Sirius did now. My partner leaned into me, making as much contact with me as Cody’s mom was making with her son. And here I was supposed to be the adult in the relationship.

Four other people joined us in the lobby area before the tram arrived, but that still left window viewing space for everyone. As we started the ascent, our gondola was only half-full.
It’s only a ten-minute ride,
I told myself. I also told myself I didn’t need an airsickness bag, even though it felt like I did. The gondola slowly rotated; there was no need to go from side to side to try and get the best view, as eventually the view came to you. I tried to ignore the loud noises and the vibrations from the tram’s operation, and tried not to fixate on the fact that the gondola was suspended from a wire. It wasn’t like I was a member of the Wallenda family attempting a wire walk.

Aside from the occasional feeling of weightlessness and the uneasiness that came when the gondola approached the different towers and swung a little too vigorously, after a few minutes my vertigo eased, and I actually began enjoying the sights and the changing landscape. We went from cacti to brush to trees. Looking down and seeing the steep incline showed me the difficulty of the hike that Walker had undertaken.

We landed at the terra firma of Mountain Station. The difference between where we started and where we ended up was kind of like going through a
Stargate
portal into another world. It was at least thirty degrees cooler than in the valley, and I breathed in the aroma of pine trees.

Passing by Peaks Restaurant, we continued along the path to the ranger station. Signs pointed out hiking trails and lookouts. We took a slight detour to a nearby lookout and found ourselves looking more than eight thousand feet down to the expanse of the Coachella Valley.

The ranger station was about a quarter mile away from where the tram had let us out. It was a rustic-looking outbuilding with white siding and a red metal roof. I climbed a few wooden steps and went inside. There was no ranger at the information desk—only a sign that said all hikers continuing up Skyline Trail needed to sign in and get a wilderness permit. A pile of those permits had been left on the desk.

I studied the sign-in book, flipping back a few pages to the entries and signatures that had been made on April 15. Finding Langston’s name brought a pang to my stomach. I used my cell-phone camera to take pictures, making sure to get the names of all those who’d signed.

While waiting for a ranger to appear, I snooped around the office, looking at maps and studying posters showing flora and fauna. Half a dozen visitors came and left; two of them signed in and collected wilderness permits.

I was trying to get a cell-phone signal and see if I could reach my ranger when a voice said, “Detective Gideon, I presume?”