Redemption (A Joe Burgess Mystery, Book 3) (40 page)

"It's been more than three hours. He wouldn't do that if he could get back here on his own. Not knowing how worried I'd be. Clay's not like that." Her eyes jumped back and forth between Burgess and the trooper, uncertain where to light. Who was supposed to be in charge.

"You have a topo map?" Burgess asked.

"It's here," she said, crossing the room and opening the cellar door. The map was pinned to the inside of the door. As they crowded around her, she indicated where they were, where the roads and the neighbors were, and where, according to her best guess, she'd found the dog. "All this here"—she indicated a swath of green—"is where the swamp and the beaver dam are. Beyond that is where the road turns and heads toward town. And this here"—she pointed again—"is where an old logging road goes back into the woods and climbs the hill."

"Does that come out back down the road about a quarter mile?" Burgess asked. She nodded. "Any buildings out there?"

"Here," she said, her finger stabbing a small black square along the logging road. "There's a half-finished hunting camp some guys from Massachusetts were building." She shrugged. "I think it was really a drinking camp. They never did get it finished. Just threw it up and then walked away. I hear the town's taking the land for unpaid taxes. Clay was looking into buying it. We like..." She shook her head, as though recognizing what she was about to say might no longer be true. "We like the privacy. The isolation."

"And that's the only structure?" She nodded. Burgess looked at Lovering. "How do you want to do this?"

Lovering shrugged. "Guess we might as well check out that dog, take a look around there, see if it tells us anything." He turned to Mary. "Does your husband carry a cell phone?" She shook her head. Without waiting for consultation, he turned and headed out into the storm, Kyle and Perry right behind him.

Perry paused, though, before going out the door, and took Mary's hands in his. "We'll find him, Mrs. Libby. Don't you worry. We'll find him."

Burgess slipped off his shoes, put on dry socks, and shoved his feet into his boots. They might need more bodies. They might need the wardens and their dogs. But there was no sense in calling in extra people until they had the lay of the land. Until they were sure Clay, or his body, wasn't somewhere close to where Mary had found their dog.

Mary was buttoning her coat. "You'd better stay here in case we need to call you, in case Clay comes back," he said. "And you need to wait for the sheriff's patrol."

"But I want—"

"We need you here, Mary. And keep that shotgun handy." Burgess finished lacing up his boots and headed out.

Chapter 32

Things hadn't improved while they were inside. Wind howled like a banshee around the eaves of the old house, and where the new lights Clay had installed illuminated the night, rain poured obliquely in glowing golden needles. Once they were away from the house, Lovering stopped and tilted his hatbrim, staring at Burgess like the Portland detective was the pathfinder and he was a rube lost in the woods.

He leaned forward into Burgess's airspace, yelling to be heard over the wind. "I didn't want to say anything in front of Mrs. Libby. Looked like she was falling apart. So how are we doing this?"

Before Burgess could reply, a black figure emerged from the darkness. Four hands went to four guns before she stepped into the light and they recognized Mary. She looked at Burgess defiantly from under a yellow rain hat. "I'm not coming with you. I just want to show you where I found Tucker." Her shoulders were rigid and her chin was up, but the tremble in her voice told how little she wanted to see her poor, slaughtered dog again. Before her will failed her, she turned and headed away along the dirt road that hugged the side of the barn.

Lovering looked at Burgess and shook his head. Nothing to do but follow. They trudged through the noisy night following Mary's small, hunched figure, their meager beams sweeping the road and the roadsides, the loud night making conversation impossible. She moved fast—the gait of someone who has an unpleasant task she wants to get over with—but her short distance was actually closer to a quarter mile. The rain added misery to uncertainty, running off their coats, soaking pant-legs and sneaking in icy trails down their necks.

At last she halted, turning to face them. "He's over there," she said, using her flashlight beam to illuminate a huge tree, carefully avoiding the ground beneath it. "I'm going back. I don't want to see." As Burgess directed his light the way she'd pointed, she grabbed his arm and leaned into his face. "You find Clay, Joe. Find him. Oh, God, please find him." She wheeled and hurried past him, heading back the way they'd come.

Kyle's white face loomed out of the dark, leaning toward him, "I'm going to walk her back," he shouted. "I don't like her going back there alone. Like to see her safely inside with the door locked."

"Good idea. If sheriff's patrol is there, ask them to send someone to sit on Joey's car."

"Roger that," Kyle said. He disappeared down the track after her, invisible except for his bobbing light. Then it disappeared around a curve, leaving Burgess literally and figuratively in the dark. On a night like this, anything could happen. All the senses trained to keep them safe were blunted.

Before they crossed to the dog, they drew together into a small circle. It might only be a dead dog, but they were going into a crime scene. "In a line," Burgess said. "Eight feet apart. Check left, check right, check ahead. Everyone stays in line. Okay?"

Perry nodded. Lovering hesitated, then said, "Okay."

They spread out, paused to check their alignment, and started moving slowly forward. Burgess, in the center, got the road. Even over the storm, he could hear the two of them crashing through branches and leaves. Step, pause, search. Step, pause, search. When their beams were aimed forward, they could see the wet, crumpled form of the dog, its fur matted and flattened, reduced to the small heap that grew closer with every step. Death diminished everything.

TV liked to glamorize violence—the car crashes, explosions, dramatic gun fights. The reality was never glamorous. Nothing glamorous about cowardly teenage immigrants shooting a working man in the back, a possessive and violent boyfriend eviscerating his girlfriend, a frustrated boyfriend beating his girlfriend's tiny child to death. Nothing glamorous about a raped and strangled grandmother, her false teeth lying on the pillow next to sightless eyes.

Just a few days ago, that sturdy mutt had been vibrantly alive, placing itself defensively between Clay and himself, staking out its turf and letting him know who was boss. Had it done that again tonight? Gotten between Clay and whatever awaited him here in the dark? Dead because of its brave, loyal heart? He pictured Clay out on this road, calling his dog, following the barking to this place and finding—and finding what, he wondered? Joey? Joey and someone else? Did Joey really have it in him to hurt his own uncle?

The idiocy of the question slammed him like a punch. He ought to be long past the point of denial. Joey had it in him to hurt anything and anyone. Amanda had been a sweet, innocent girl. Reggie had been Joey's father. But what was at stake here that, in someone's mind, justified all this violence?

Step. Pause. Search. Like the Hollywood searchlights in the movies, their three beams moved together. Left. Center. Right. Center. Step. Slowly. Slowly. Slowly. Creeping over the branches and rocks and vegetation. Pausing at tufts of golden grass, hummocks of bright green moss, at the unexpected shine of wet rocks, the bone-white gleam of newly broken branches. Step. Search. Step.

Their slow march finally brought them to the base of the tree, their lights converging on the dead dog. They knelt around it as Perry reached out with gloved hands and lifted the head, revealing the ugly slash of red. "Something in its teeth," he said, laying the head gently down and reaching for it.

"Hold on," Lovering said. He pulled out a small camera, fumbled with the settings, and took a series of shots. "Okay." He put the camera away and fastened his coat.

Perry tugged until it came loose, then draped it across his palm and thrust it toward them. A small scrap of dark cloth with a placket and a button. Part of someone's shirt.

Lovering was giving him that pathfinder look again, though the next step was obvious. Search the area for any sign of Clay, evidence of a struggle, any tracks suggesting the direction whoever killed the dog might have gone. The question was: search together or each take a section. If they searched together, it would be more thorough. It would also take all night. He didn't think they had all night. He assigned sectors and they went to work.

He paused a moment as he passed the tree, considering the many strange places his career had taken him. Abandoned buildings and beaches, culverts and crypts. Boats, trailers, and freezers. A church steeple once. Out in all weather and at all hours. It was true, as the song went, that a policeman's lot was not a happy one. As he had so often through the years, he blessed the folks at L.L. Bean for making decent outdoor gear. His Gore-Tex jacket was good at keeping out the wind and the rain and holding in warmth. Except for a little water that had crept in over his socks, his feet were warm and dry. At some point, though, he'd slipped on some leaves and twisted his knee—the knee that high school football wrecked. Now it was torturing him. A policeman's lot.

"Look, Joseph. And listen." He switched off his flashlight and stood in the roaring darkness, hearing his mother's voice from forty years ago. The two of them sleepless while his father and sisters slept. "Look, Joseph. Listen." She'd taken his hand, there in the dark living room, and led him to the door, creeping together out onto the moonlit lawn. He'd silenced his breath with his sleeve and held himself still as a family of skunks formed a circle on the lawn and danced in the moonlight. Tonight there would be neither moonlight nor dancing. But her admonition to look and listen still served him well.

He could hear Perry and Lovering moving, the strange step, stop, step of a wedding march. Time to get to work himself. Yet something held him back, some sense that if he stayed still and listened, there was information waiting for him out there in the night. He took off his hat and held his breath, turning his head to listen. Lovering crunched more heavily. Stan moved more impatiently. And then, when both men had stopped, he heard it, a slight moaning, so faint it was almost lost in the wind. He listened hard, searching for a direction. He thought it came from somewhere ahead of him.

Ignoring their step, stop, step, he switched on his light and started walking. Twenty steps, swinging the beam from side to side, steady as a metronome. Stop. Take off hat and listen. Rain plastered his hair to his head. Listen. There it was again, so faint it might have been his imagination. He walked another twenty steps and stopped. This time it was clearer and closer. Five steps. He stopped and listened, leaning into the wind, turning his head slowly like a small human radar. The beam of light skipped over a messy forest floor. Fat trees with low-growing branches, a host of dropped branches, small hopeful pines and hemlocks, decaying trees. Glistening pieces of black ledge crusted with mosaics of lichen. No footprints. No tracks. No trail.

Forward five more steps. He was close now. He was sure of it. Another moan that sounded like it came from beyond a large downed tree. He slid over the broad, slippery trunk, lifting his reluctant knee, and beamed his light around. Nothing. He pulled off his hat again, slowly turning his head, listening. Nothing but the roar of the wind.

"Clay?" he called. "Clay, can you hear me? It's Joe Burgess."

He thought he heard something but now he could get no sense of direction, just a muffled noise that wasn't the wind. He called for the others, two bobbing specks of light like fireflies in a field on a summer night. They couldn't hear him over the wind. He tried to call Perry's phone but the signal was too weak.

He was close. He was sure he was close. He shoved his hat down the front of his coat, ignoring the cold drip on his chest, and turned in a slow circle. The rain had matted the leaves and needles so that any tracks were obliterated, but about ten feet ahead, he spotted the muddy hole left by a disturbed rock. He headed that way. When he reached the rock, he did his slow turn again. Another ten feet away, a tree's thick lower branches swept the ground like a Victorian lady's skirt.

When he pulled the branches aside, his torch picked up something white. And red. Something that fluttered briefly and was still. To hell with wet hands and knees. He got down on all fours and crawled into the branchy cave. It smelled of leaf mould and fir and the unmistakable copper of blood. The body was curled around the trunk of the tree as though the man sought to make himself invisible. He'd very nearly succeeded, except for the bloody red and white flag of one exposed hand.