Tainted Trail (12 page)

Jared accepted it as truth with a slight nod and a lessening of the worry. “He does good work.” He started for his
car. “I'm going to drive back to the campground and question the other camper.”

“She shouldn't be left alone,” Kraynak stated.

Jared frowned, then nodded. “People around here leave their keys in the car and their houses unlocked. I hate the thought that a girl can't be safe alone in my county, but you're right.”

“If you don't mind, we'll tag along and see what Rose says.” Max looked around at the desolate stretch of road. “There's nothing here for us.”

Bear Wallow Creek Campground, Ukiah, Oregon
Friday, August 27, 2004

Rose shook her head, a hand covering her mouth as if to keep a sob or scream trapped within her, her eyes huge black buttons of fear. Her terror wreathed her like perfume. Ukiah put space between him and her fright as the others questioned the geology student; he was too tired to shield himself from its effects.

He glanced into the tent and experienced a bolt of surprise that the tent was half empty, stripped of Alicia's items. Then he remembered that Kraynak had packed her stuff the night before, intending to take Alicia straight home after this experience.

“No, no, there was no one,” Rose murmured from behind the imprisoning hand. “We talked to people, but no one seemed dangerous. No one was scary.”

“We'll need a list of everyone Alicia might have spoken with prior to her disappearance.”

Rose's eyes went a little wider. “I have no idea who she talked to. When we went into town, we would split up. She would go to the library, the bead shop—I don't know where. I went to the post office, the ice-cream shop, and the bookstore. We took turns doing the laundry. The only place we went together was the grocery store.”

Ukiah looked away from her alarm, wearily studying the ground. Time, wind, and dew had eroded Wednesday's massive number of footprints down to a rumpled mass, and only
Rose's and one other person's now crisply marked the campsite. Judging by her footprints, Rose had spent most of the day sitting at the picnic table, doing the same paperwork she had been working on when they arrived. The other person, in comparison, had walked from the parking lot to the tent, entered the tent, and then returned to their car.

He frowned as he realized that all of Rose's tracks to the tent were from the morning, and the stranger had been in camp within the last hour. If the person came to see Rose, why no tracks to the picnic table? If Rose hadn't been at the picnic table when they arrived, why not look around for her? He crossed the campsite to crouch wearily beside the tracks and examined them closer.

What he found pulled a growl out of him.

“What did you find, kid?” Max asked.

“She was here. The woman driver of the kidnapper's car. She was here within the last hour.”

“Here?” Rose squeaked. “One of them was here while I was gone?”

“Where did you go?” Jared asked.

“The rangers came up and asked me to come to the office with them. There were some forms that they needed filled out. I just got back only about five minutes ago.”

“Miss, I don't think you should stay here today,” Jared said quietly. “Could you pack your things and we'll take you into town.”

She nodded. “I want to go home.”

They waited until she was out of earshot.

“Why did they come back for her now?” Kraynak wondered quietly. “She's been out here alone since Monday morning.”

“Which was stupid of us!” Max snapped. “We should have moved her to the hotel the first day!”

“With Rose here safe,” Jared guessed, “it seemed more likely that Alicia was merely lost.”

“Why not take them both?” Kraynak whispered.

“There were other campers here Monday and Tuesday,” Max reminded Kraynak.

“And herding two people through the woods would have
been nearly impossible,” Ukiah said. “Wolf packs usually only pick one animal out of a herd.”

“They came for Rose as soon as we had proof Alicia had been kidnapped,” Max said. “They're tying up loose ends.”

“Damn it!” Kraynak swore. “The police scanner!”

Jared looked puzzled, so they explained their theory on how the sniper knew where to find Ukiah. “And I reported in that Ukiah found the kidnapping site. Everyone in the county with a scanner knows.”

“We should have thought of it beforehand,” Kraynak said. “Thank God Rose wasn't here when the kidnappers came for her!”

They packed all the camping equipment into Kraynak's Volkswagen van, which Alicia had used instead of her own small car. They made a small convoy pulling of out the campground, Jared leading in his cruiser, then Kraynak and Rose in the van, and finally Ukiah and Max in the Blazer.

Max was silent for the ride back to Pendleton. Ukiah slumped in the passenger side, exhausted but too unnerved to sleep.

As they pulled into the hotel's parking lot, Max gave a deep sigh. “Kid, could Sam Killington have been one of the kidnappers?”

Ukiah recalled the long-legged blond woman. “No, wrong shoe size. I think she's about an eight, and the tracks were fives. The kidnapper wore tennis shoes, high end, probably considered walking shoes or cross-trainers. Sam had on hiking boots both times I saw her.”

“And the others?”

“I think the rest were men.”

“Good,” Max murmured, then, as a grin spread across his face. “Well, speak of the devil.”

Max toggled down his window, and the wind spilled into the cabin, bringing Sam's scent of leather, gunmetal, female sweat, and Obsession perfume. She swaggered across the parking lots flipping a keyring around her right index finger in a jangle of metal. “Hi, guys! Can I interest you two in a proposition?”

“Proposition away,” Max grinned, half-leaning out his window.

“Thought you might be interested,” she said with a wink. “Let's do dinner and swap information. That is”—she glanced past Max to Ukiah—“if you're up to it.”

Max looked to Ukiah. Ukiah would have preferred to order room service, followed quickly by sleep, but there was no denying that Sam could be the key to finding Alicia. She knew the area. With snipers and multiple kidnappers roaming the area, they were safer traveling as a team. So Ukiah nodded.

“We're up to it.” Max told her.

They followed Sam on her Harley across town. On the way, Ukiah called and let Kraynak know where they were heading. Kraynak had volunteered to drive Rose to the airport for the evening flight. He told them to eat without him.

A neon sign in the window marked the restaurant, a cowboy hat with the word
STETSONS
. Of the four parking spaces beside Stetsons, two and a half were taken up by a pickup truck and a badly parked station wagon. Sam tucked her Harley into the short third space behind the station wagon, and Max pulled into last space. She was pulling off her helmet when Ukiah opened his door and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

Sam paused, helmet cocked over her shoulder, frowning at him. “Where's the crutches?”

“I told you that I heal quickly,” Ukiah said, though he felt far from well. His entire body ached as if someone had beaten him with a baseball bat. He had pushed himself too hard, ignoring his body completely during the day's tracking.

“Ah, I forgot.” Sam snapped her fingers. “You're a Kicking Deer.”

“What does that mean?” Ukiah asked.

“The Kicking Deers are local legends,” Sam said. “Stronger. Faster. Healthier. They say that the Cayuse horses are so sturdy because the Kicking Deers bred with them.”

“What?” Max said.

“Oh, it's an old Indian tale.” Sam said. “A Kicking Deer
woman ran off with one of the stallions and turned into a horse, and had colts with him. You listen to enough of these stories and you start to wonder if they didn't spend much of their time on peyote.”

Max gave Ukiah a worried glance, and then did a frowning double take. “You sure you're up to this? You look wiped.”

“I'll be better once I eat.”

Max headed them toward the front door, keeping a light hand on Ukiah's arm, as if to catch him if he fell. “Ukiah tells me that you're doing insurance work.”

Sam fell into step with them, helmet tucked under her arm. “Oregon Life and Home handled all three houses that burned. Not surprisingly. This is a small town. They cover most of the homes. Three home policies. A dozen life-insurance policies. They're suddenly paying out a large chunk of money, and they don't want the trend to continue.”

Max opened the door, and held it wide for Sam and Ukiah to go through. A flood of information spilled out of the restaurant. People. Alcoholic drinks. Cooked food. Twanging country music. Max caught Ukiah's arm, actually supporting him now, without comment. “What are we talking about, moneywise?”

“A few hundred thousand.” Sam didn't say it the same way Max would have. A hundred thousand was petty cash to Max. She said it as if it was quite a bit of money. “Maybe as much as a half-million dollars. The houses weren't mansions, but they're insured at replacement cost.”

“So a fifty-thousand house, built new today, is actually a hundred-thousand-plus home.”

“More or less, plus all the appliances were at replacement, not depreciated costs. So you're talking three refrigerators, three stoves, three dishwashers, so on and so forth. What was there might have been twenty years old and the shit busted out of it, but the people paid for it to be replaced with new if the houses were burned.”

“Televisions, carpets, beds, clothes,” Max added to the list.

“The whole works. Each family had thirty thousand
dollars' replacement allowance. Then you get into the life insurance. One family was insurance-happy, and even the kids had policies.”

A hostess showed them a corner booth. Ukiah leaned against the wall, eyes closed, trying to shut out the flood. The waiter came up, wearing too much Polo aftershave.

“They've got a good beer selection,” Sam said, a familiar voice out of the dark rumble.

Max ordered Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and then asked if they had milkshakes.

“We have soda, unsweetened tea, hot tea, milk, and coffee.” The waiter's unfamiliar voice and breath tore through Ukiah's awareness like barbed wire, snaring and snarling all his thoughts.

“The kid will have a milk, and a bowl of whatever soup you have.” Max paused, apparently consulting the menu. “A plate of calamari rings, a shrimp cocktail, the langostino, and the breaded, smoked salmon, whatever that is.”

A song Ukiah had heard the day before came on the sound system, mourning a lost love, the words and tune now familiar. With the waiter gone, the tide of the information receded enough for Ukiah to open his eyes.

“I've heard that your client was definitely kidnapped,” Sam was saying.

Max's eyes narrowed, and his smile faded slightly. “How did you hear?”

“Police scanner.” Sam held up her hands to hold off Max's wrath. “Like I said, it's a small town. I figure if you three are staying in town for a while, we can join forces. I've got the contacts. The kid's a tracking wonder, and yes, it would be nice to have armed backup with kidnappers running loose.”

The waiter returned, forcing silence on the table as he thunked down glasses, beer bottles, and a steaming bowl of vegetable beef soup. Ukiah curled himself around his soup.

Max relaxed back into his seat, giving a slightly smug grin. “You're just wanting another peek at my piece, eh?”

Sam snickered, pouring out her beer. “Of course. So, we work together?”

“I'm not saying we wouldn't welcome the help.” Max poured his own beer. “But are you sure you're not haring off on a wild-goose chase? Alicia's disappearance might not have anything to do with your case. It would make it tough getting paid.”

“I've had a hunch about this since I heard the first all-points. Frankly, it looks more and more like I'm right.”

The waiter returned, doing a balancing act with plates of appetizers, bread, napkins, and silverware. He carefully set the food in the center of the table. Max snagged a piece of the fried fish and moved the plate directly in front of Ukiah.

“Are you ready to order dinner?” the waiter asked, his presence still grating. He'd had a cigarette since serving them—Marlboro 100s—and the traces of smoke leaked out with his breath. “Or should I come back?”

Max frowned at the menu and ordered the baked lemon-herb salmon, a salad, and decided to try the mashed baby reds. “They have twenty-ounce porterhouse, kid. Want it?”

Ukiah nodded, mouth stuffed with smoked salmon. Max ordered it rare, and picked out a baked potato as the side. He checked the menu, and added sautéed mushrooms and shrimp to Ukiah's dinner.

Sam ordered sautéed langostino without glancing at the menu. She watched Max edge the other appetizers in Ukiah's direction. “For one crazy minute, I thought we were going to share all that food.”

“If you want some, grab it now.” Max demonstrated with a calamari ring. “Much as I love it, I can't take this level of fat anymore. Goes right to the midsection.”

“Your midsection looks fine to me.”

Max covered another smug grin by sipping at his beer.

“So, do you have a photo of your client?” Sam helped herself to one of each appetizer.

Max reached into his pocket and pulled out his PDA. “I downloaded a few photos before we left.” As a hobby, Max took professional-level photographs. Despite of, or perhaps because of, his rampant paranoia, he could see and capture the inner beauty of people. It was as if he peered past all illusions.