The Dog Who Knew Too Much (10 page)

The creek grew twistier and narrower and flowed faster; at the same time our path steepened. I came so close to making—what would you call it? a connection?—yes, a connection, between all those things. Was I cooking or what?

We passed through some woods—mostly more of those Christmas trees—and came to a small clearing, Bernie huffing and puffing a bit. He sat on a log. I sat beside him. The white-streaked mountain peak rose in the distance, maybe closer now. In between stood a series of ridges, growing bluish the farther away they got.

“Did he really bring the kids all this way?” Bernie said. “And we haven’t even reached the mine yet.” He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and first finger. I never liked seeing that, not sure why. “But it’s always possible that …” His voice trailed away, so I didn’t find out what was possible. Fine with me: one thing I’ve learned in this business is that lots and lots of things are possible. “Either that,” Bernie said, “or we’re on a wild goose chase.”

Whoa right there. Did Bernie just say we were on a wild goose chase? I’d waited so long for this moment, wanted to go on a wild goose chase more than anything.

“Chet! Knock it off!”

Oops. Was that me standing up, my front paws on Bernie’s shoulders, almost pushing him off the log? Yes, my paws for sure, nice and big, one mostly black, one mostly white. A mistake, and I corrected it immediately.

“What’s with you?” he said, tossing away a button that had somehow come loose from his shirt. “Did you hear something?”

As a matter of fact, I did hear something at that moment, the unmistakable
whap-whap-whap
of chopper blades. I’d even been up in a chopper once, so I knew the sound from the inside out. Hey! Does that make any sense? Probably not.

“You do hear something, don’t you?” Bernie said. He cocked his head, ear to the sky. I love when he does that. Bernie has very nicely shaped ears, not that small, so even if they can’t do much, they’re still nice to look at. “Don’t hear a thing, myself. There’s the creek of course, and maybe a bird was singing a minute ago, but—”

WHAP-WHAP-WHAP.
A chopper roared in at treetop level, zoomed over us, tilted a bit, and circled.
WHAP-WHAP-WHAP.
Bernie heard it now, no doubt about that. The human face does a sort of cringing thing when real loud noises start up, like someone’s going to hit them. Not that Bernie would ever cringe—and anyone who ever did hit him, and we’ve had a few who tried, got paid back good—but I could tell. He waved at the chopper. It tilted the other way and flew off.

“Rescue,” Bernie said, “probably dropping a team at the campsite.” He checked his watch. “Should be more coming
on foot, all experienced people. Plus other positives, like clear weather and plenty of drinking water. So why don’t I feel good about this?”

Bernie didn’t feel good? That was a surprise. I gave him a little bump. We moved on.

The sun was high overhead when we reached a slope where there were no more trees. The footing was all broken-up flat rocks, kind of tricky for Bernie. Also that strangeness about the air, like I couldn’t fill up even with my deepest breath, was getting stronger. What else? The creek had thinned out to a trickle. We followed it to the base of a cliff where it disappeared, or maybe not completely, since it seemed to be bubbling right out of a hole in the rock.

“Pure spring water,” Bernie said, in between huffs and puffs. He gathered a double-handful and splashed his face. “Ah.” He looked around. “Imagine what life was like back then.”

I didn’t quite get that. What about right now? Life was pretty good, no? But Bernie had reasons for everything, so I tried to imagine some other life. No other life came to mind. Bernie made a little shrugging motion, adjusting the pack. We started working our way along the base of the cliff, and soon, in a shadowy spot under an overhang, spotted some white stuff, white stuff that reminded me of the white streaks on the mountain.

“Snow, big guy.”

Snow? I’d heard of it, of course, seen it lots of times on TV during the divorce, when for some reason Bernie had really gotten into skiing videos. The snow sent coldness up into the air. I sniffed at it. Snow went right up my nose! I sneezed. Bernie laughed. I licked at the snow. It turned into water on my tongue, although
not much water. Bernie picked some up and patted it—hey!— patted it into the shape of a ball. Yes! One thing about Bernie: just when you think he’s done with amazing you, he amazes you again. Now, after all this time, I was just finding out he could turn snow into a ball. I knew what was coming next, one of my favorite feelings.

Bernie reared back to throw. He has a great arm—pitched for Army, in case that hasn’t come up yet—and can fling a ball a long, long way.
Whoosh.
The snowball rose high in the sky. I took off after it, this bounding run I have when quick starts are needed. The snowball, sparkling against the blue sky, came arcing down. I caught up to it at the last instant and snatched it out of the air. But what was this? It broke apart and kind of vanished, leaving me with a cold nose; very different from any other ball I’d fetched.

I turned back toward Bernie, and as I did noticed a big dark hole in the face of the cliff. I could see some thick wooden beams inside, and beyond them just shadows and darkness. This was an old mine. We’d been in lots, me and Bernie. It was one of our hobbies, if hobbies meant things we did that made no money and annoyed Leda.

Bernie came up, gazed at the mine. “No way Turk took them inside, is there?”

Not sure where Bernie was coming from on that one, although I remembered Turk very well. In fact, his scent was strong at the moment; the scents of the kids were pretty much gone.

Bernie went to the mouth of the mine. “Devin,” he shouted. “Devin.”

No reply. I sniffed the air, smelled nothing of Devin at all. Bernie unslung the backpack and was taking out the headlamp when he spied something on the ground, maybe a tiny scrap of
cloth. He picked it up. Yes, a tiny scrap of cloth. I’d seen something like it, and not long ago. It came to me: the name tag on Devin’s sock.

I could see writing on this one, too. Bernie read it aloud. “Devin Vereen,” he said. “Oh, Christ.” He put on the headlamp. We entered the mine.

TEN

C
areful, big guy,” Bernie said.

That was rule one when it came to exploring old mines. There were other rules, too, but they didn’t come to mind at the moment.

Bernie approached one of the support beams. “You just never know about these places.” He gave the beam a little shake. “Seems solid enough.” From somewhere up ahead came a thump, muffled but heavy, like part of the ceiling had collapsed. “Hmmm,” said Bernie. Hmmm was always a sign of Bernie doing some serious thinking. He gave the beam another shake. No surprise there: Bernie was a great thinker, always came up with the exact right idea. We listened, heard nothing this time, and kept going. That’s what being on the job’s all about.

Some mines we’d explored were almost roomy, with rusted-out railroad tracks and lots of old equipment lying around. Others were so small we could barely squeeze through. This one was in between. We walked side by side, following the spreading light cone from Bernie’s headlamp. Dust came swirling by, almost like
it was flowing out of the mine, and turned golden in the light, a beautiful thing to see.

The floor, ceiling, and walls were solid rock, the surface rough, hacked-at, and reddish. I smelled copper, often the case in old mines, and some human scents, too, but faint and confused. Copper always made things difficult, one of the things you learn in this business. We passed the last support beam—Bernie stopped to read aloud something carved in wood: “Bonanza Bill, June seven, 1876, keep the hell out”—and right after that things began narrowing in around us. Bernie had to stoop a little, but not me, meaning I could go faster, which I did—always best to be in front, of course—and—

“Hey, Chet—where are you?”

Whoa. Had I gotten a little too far ahead of Bernie? I seemed to be beyond the cone of light. I waited. Beyond the cone of light, yes, but that didn’t mean I’d stopped seeing. A little way up the line, for example, the tunnel split in two, one of the openings looking real small.

Light came wobbling up and found me. Bernie, stooping more on account of the ceiling getting lower, rested a hand on my back and peered ahead. “Left or right, big guy?”

Left or right: not the first time I’d heard that question, but I hadn’t made much progress in figuring out the meaning. So, probably not important, our success rate being what it was at the Little Detective Agency. The cases we’d cleared! I could think of two without even trying.

We moved forward, reached the split. Bernie aimed the beam at both openings, and we looked down two tunnels, one big, one small. Bernie reached into his pocket, took out the baggie that contained Devin’s sock and held it open for me. Like I needed
reminding! But I took a sniff or two: I’d never want to hurt Bernie’s feelings.

“Chet?” he said.

Sometimes I waited to see what Bernie would do. Sometimes he waited to see what I would do. This was one of those. The problem was the absence of Devin’s scent in either direction. If Bernie thought Devin was in here, then he was, but I couldn’t catch the slightest whiff. Coppery smells were stronger, confusing me more, plus there was now some watery smell, and on top of that, the way scents sometimes stacked up on one another, a real strange smell, kind of like the burned air thing you get after lightning strikes. All of a sudden my mind made itself up, just like that, and I ducked into the small tunnel.

“Chet? Wait—there’s no way I can foll—”

I moved on. That was my job. Bernie shone the light behind me. I followed my shadow. It stretched out, getting longer and bigger. I was huge! Then it disappeared. Why? I glanced back—I can twist my head far around if I have to, a real advantage in a place like this tunnel, with no room to turn my whole body— and saw the light, now shining on a side wall. I’d gone around a kind of bend, and was now in darkness again. The lightning-strike smell got stronger. I slowed down, not liking that smell one bit, even thinking about curling up in a ball. Not that I was afraid or anything like that, but I knew something was about to happen.

And when it did, just a moment or two later, it turned out to be hardly anything at all. Just … what? A very tiny trembling of the ground under my feet? Something like that, here and gone in no time. Then, from not too far away, came a thud that reminded me of the time Bernie was building the patio out back and dropped one of the flagstones. He’d pulled his foot back in the nick of time—that expression comes from this real fleet-footed
perp named Nick Beezer, but I really can’t go into that now, except to point out he was fleet-footed for a human, not the same thing as being fleet-footed period, no offense—and the flagstone had broken and the pieces had bounced around. I heard some of those rocky, bouncing-around sounds here in the small tunnel. And then, farther along, a shaft of light appeared, very much like what you see when you’re casing a house at night and some perp inside opens the door. Dust was boiling in that shaft of light. I closed in for a better look.

Well, well, well. A small section of the wall had caved in, and beyond it lay an open space. Not a very big open space, with hacked-at walls and piles of earth and rock, plus more boiling dust. This was a sort of chamber, with light coming in from a very small hole—no bigger than my head—in the rocky wall on the far side; not headlamp-type light, but the real daytime thing. I squeezed through the gap in the near wall, crossed the floor, climbed on top of a rubble pile and peered through the hole.

Hey! I saw the world outside, specifically a steep slope, and at its base an old falling-down cabin, way too ruined for anyone to live in, except that a pair of denim overalls hung on a line. I watched those overalls swaying in the breeze for a while, then turned back toward the little chamber. Light—this nice, strong daylight—was shining on the opposite wall, revealing a thick … seam? Was that the word? Yes, because when we explored old mines, Bernie often said, “Keep your eyes peeled for a seam of gold, big guy. We’ll find it one day.” Never mind that the peeling eyes thing had always made me feel uneasy; the point was I now had in my sight a thick seam that gleamed and glistened in a golden way. I moved off the rubble, my plan being to stand up real tall and lick that golden seam, just so I’d know for sure. I’d licked gold once before—a story all about a watch of Leda’s that
I won’t go into now—so I’d done my homework. But before I could get to the wall, I caught sight of something from the corner of my eye.

I knew a human skeleton when I saw one—we’re not beginners, me and Bernie—but it always gets your heart racing. This particular skeleton, lying partly under the rubble, which was maybe why I’d missed it, had no flesh at all on it, or hair: a first for me. And also: no smell, not the faintest whiff. I went closer. The skull rested on its side. This was what lay behind the human face. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Laughter is one of the very best human things, and a kid’s laughter the best of the best—you should hear Charlie when I take him for rides on my back—but there’s a kind of nasty laughter that some humans use—never Bernie—just to be mean to other humans. And when they’re getting ready to laugh that nasty laugh, the expression on their faces is just like the expression on the face of every human skull I’ve ever seen, including the one in front of me. That almost led me to another thought, but not quite, and this wasn’t the time. I sniffed around the skeleton—still smelling zip—and came to the bony hand. Shaped like a hand, yes, but most of the bones weren’t connected, and lying right in the middle was this small rock. A bumpy, golden rock, golf-ball size.