Missing Mark (25 page)

Miles made us blur their faces because the mom and the biker guy, nonpublic figures, hadn’t been officially accused of anything. I suspected authorities were negotiating a plea bargain to get them to testify against George.

((RILEY/NAT))
THAT’S THE DOG’S WAY OF
INDICATING DRUGS ARE
HIDDEN INSIDE.
((RILEY/LIVE/SHEP))
AND HERE HE IS, WITH ME
NOW … THE DOG OF THE
HOUR.

Just like Lassie, Shep barked on cue.

And of course, the overnight numbers went through the ratings roof at Channel 3. Helped along, no doubt, by a promo that ran all through the network’s prime-time lineup.

((PROMO/SOT))
EXCLUSIVE! SEE RILEY
SPARTZ’S BIG BUST
TONIGHT AT TEN.

I only found out because my mom called me, all embarrassed, checking to see whether she dared tune in at ten.

She and Dad live outside the Channel 3 viewing area, but bought a satellite dish for Christmas just so they could watch my stories and tell me how good they are. At first, she thought she misheard the promo, but when it ran again half an hour later, she tried to alert me but I let her call roll over to voice mail and didn’t find out until too late.

Noreen apologized that no one at the station caught the double entendre. Then she abruptly changed the subject by asking me how I was coming along on the fish story.

I
DIDN’T KNOW
it at the time, but Emily’s hunch about Shep being in danger was more than pooch paranoia. Among the 30 share audience watching my reports on the yard-sale bust must have been the meth cartel seeking to eliminate Shep.

To protect him from revenge seekers, I’d been careful not to mention Shep’s name on the air. Or that I lived next door to the drug raid. Or that the hero dog temporarily lived under my roof. But this kind of information apparently gets around in criminal circles. And George Maurice probably viewed my actions as less than neighborly and likely ratted me out to any drug kingpin or peon behind bars who’d listen.

So while I definitely started getting the feeling someone was watching me, I guessed it was Mark. Figuring he’d seen my news coverage about his mother’s murder, he might have been interested in eye-balling me without a television screen separating us.

As a wanted man, he’d be easy to recognize. So many fugitives blend into the crowd, usually resulting in false sightings and tying up law enforcement teams in far-flung geographic areas on squat. That hadn’t happened in this case. Police received absolutely no tips reporting the missing groom/suspected murderer. They attributed this to his skill in lying low. After all, he’d vanished months ago without leaving a trail.

Madeline insisted he’d not been in touch with her. Best man Gabe Murray claimed the same.

But during the last twenty-four hours I felt certain he was out there, watching me, and since I didn’t have a bodyguard, I was glad for the row of news trucks parked conspicuously on my street and the company of a big dog with sharp teeth. But tomorrow, Shep would be reunited with Emily, so tonight we went for a last run together.

It had a parade quality.

A couple of times people recognized us and cheered.

When we passed Ursula’s Wine Bar, the owner chased us down and insisted we take a break on his patio. He poured me a glass of what he called his finest red and served Shep a slab of raw sirloin under the table. He asked if I’d mind if he put our visit in his monthly newsletter under “celebrity sighting.”

The sun was nearly gone, but I didn’t want the day to end. Also without Shep’s protection, starting tomorrow, I’d want to be home by nightfall. So we ran west into the end of the sun and the start of the moon.

A white full-size van pulled up alongside us as we raced and I waved to the driver, who I assumed was another fan. Then I saw a man in the passenger seat raise a gun. The illumination of a streetlight just then revealed that neither man was Mark.

“Shep!” I called and turned off the street, cut through a dark industrial park, over some railroad tracks. Soon I found myself in the Tamarack Nature Center parking lot. The vehicle followed us from the street and sped straight toward us, flying over speed bumps. I sprinted for the trees with Shep on my heels. A car door slammed. Then the sound of running feet.

I changed directions several times and heard a voice shout something like “Make sure you get the dog this time.”

That’s when I realized that instead of Shep protecting me, I needed to protect Shep.

And I wished my dog was named Nitro.

O
N THE PRO
side: I had a head start, was familiar with the park after my walk and talk with Madeline, and was highly motivated to stay alive.

On the con side: I was tired, had a dog to keep quiet, and my pursuers were armed, dangerous, and highly motivated to kill.

The prairie where the wedding didn’t happen was straight ahead. Hiding seemed my best option. I ducked under some bushes, pulling Shep with me, and we rolled and pulled until we were wedged deep in a briar patch. This seemed as good a place as any to make our last stand.

“Hush,” I whispered to my dog, wrapping my arms tight around him and closing my eyes. Then I listened, heard nothing except my beating heart. Or was it Shep’s? My cell phone was gone. I spread one hand across the ground, reaching and searching for something metallic, but felt nothing except damp leaves and soggy moss.

Shep struggled against my grip, so I loosened it, whispering for him to sit still. But he wanted to stretch. Then he wanted to sniff. Then he wanted to move.

I tried to coax him back in the direction we came, thinking by backtracking we might find my phone. He ignored me, heading the opposite way. I trailed behind, praying our opponents didn’t detect our movement. I recalled Madeline saying that Tamarack was more than three hundred acres, which seemed like plenty of space for all of us to get along. I couldn’t let our paths cross with the gunmen or Shep would attack and lose badly.

He stopped and started smelling the ground. Then pawing it in a now familiar manner. “Not now,” I whispered. “Lie down, boy. Please.”

But he continued, sniffing and pawing, like on a mission from a drug czar. Then he started digging.

Great, I thought, he’ll probably unearth ten kilos of heroin. And then those thugs will get rich wasting us. Why can’t you just chase cats like other dogs?

I pulled at what seemed to be a cloth bag wedged under the dirt, thinking the sooner we finished this, the sooner Shep would settle down. As the fabric tore, the hole deepened, and while I couldn’t see the contents, the smell told me we had not uncovered a secret stash of illegal drugs. The smell actually reminded me of the corpse flower, which couldn’t be all that rare if they also grew wild in the woods of Tamarack Nature Center.

Shep kept digging and I kept pulling and suddenly, we were not alone.

In the moonlight, a human face stared back from the hole in the ground.

y Jamie Lee Curtis scream started Shep barking. Movement seemed to come from different directions and I guessed the bad guys had split up looking for us. I wasn’t sure which way to go, then I heard repeated gunfire and turned the opposite way.

I tripped, landing in the dirt. I blamed my clumsiness on a tree root until I realized it had a handle and a blade. Piling dead, damp leaves over Shep and myself, I kept one hand on the shovel in case I needed a weapon. Then I flattened my body and tried not to breathe.

I prayed some nosy neighbor might have heard the gunshots and called the police to report poachers in the nature center. Minutes later, sirens.

“O
VER HERE,” I
called out when I could see uniforms behind flashlights.

The two officers were skeptical of my story until Shep led them through the brush and showed them the corpse at our feet—the fifth dead body I’d seen in just under six months.

By their reaction, I suspected it might have been their first.

One of them took my statement while the other called for the homicide team. The parking lot had been empty when the squad cars arrived to investigate the sound of “shots fired.” The cops decided to walk up to the park lodge to make sure the building was secure when they heard me hailing them down the path. The only detail I could provide was a vague description of a white full-size van.

“Sure they weren’t after you instead of the dog?” one of the cops asked.

“I’m very sure.”

“Usually thugs don’t go after women with dogs,” the other insisted.

“That’s the whole point,” I explained again, “they weren’t after me, they were after him.”

I explained that Shep wasn’t just any dog. Leaning against my legs, he seemed to nod.

Over the next hour, more questions. “Tell me again why the dog started digging.” That query came from Detective Leo Bradshaw, a homicide investigator with the White Bear Lake Police Department.

Even though there seemed little connection between the men chasing me and the corpse in the ground, he pressed for minutia. “Are you sure you didn’t get a look at either of them?”

Like most Minnesotans, they were Caucasian. But that’s all I could offer. Then I remembered how K9 dogs in Europe are used in scent lineups, and suggested Shep might be able to identify the men if they were captured. Detective Bradshaw shook his head.

By morning, state crime lab technicians would finish unearthing the body and begin forensics. In the meantime, additional investigators arrived to string crime-scene tape and sweep the nature center for evidence. That’s when they found a freshly dead drug dealer shot in the heart, apparently by his careless accomplice in the darkness.

That made six dead bodies I’d seen in just under six months.

——

W
HEN WE GOT
home, Shep slept in my bed with me. A squad car stayed parked in front of my house all night and escorted me to Emily Flying Cloud’s place the next morning where I returned her four-legged partner.

They delighted in seeing each other again. She looked much stronger than the last time I visited. We agreed, at the moment, that Shep was safer with her than with me. I shook the big dog’s face, traced the scar on his ear with my fingers, and told him goodbye. He barked, but didn’t try to follow me out the door.

I left lonely.

Sitting in my car outside her house, I switched through radio stations until a sad song from the seventies stopped me. I listened to Sylvia’s mother advising a caller that her daughter was too busy to come to the phone. Now I really felt lonely.

So I called Nick Garnett for an early lunch. We met at a Mexican restaurant in south Minneapolis where few of the help or customers seem to speak English—a good place to meet a source since no one can understand your conversation. That same reason also makes it a good place for a rendezvous, except it lacks romance.

I hadn’t decided where I wanted this encounter to lead. My latest brush with death made me want to cling to someone without fur and a wet nose. I wanted to touch and be touched. Intimately. Just to reassure myself I was still alive and could still be thrilled by passion.

But Nick didn’t seem to want me unless I wanted him. I could sort of understand his position. I had rejected him once—pretty convincingly. So I almost made the first move and reached across the table to squeeze his hand; instead I chickened out and reached for salsa and chips.

“If I hadn’t lost my cell phone,” I told Garnett, “I would have called you last night and said, ‘I see dead people.’”

“You would have been better off dialing 911 because I’d simply have answered, ‘Haley Joel Osment,
The Sixth Sense
, 1999,’ and hung up on you.”