J Jance - Queen of the Night

On his side of the car, Bozo whined. “Smells good, doesn’t it,” Dan told him. “We’ll stop at the next wide spot in the road and have that sandwich.”

That opportunity came a few miles later as they neared Komelik. The turnoff where he had noticed activity earlier seemed to have had several visiting vehicles since he had stopped to look at the tracks on his way south.

That seemed as good a reason and place to stop as any. Leaving Bozo in the vehicle, Dan squatted in the road and examined the new tracks that overlaid the old ones. He could pick out another pair of sedan tracks along with another vehicle, probably an SUV. It was possible that the vehicles might belong to illegal traffickers of some kind, but with the dance going on only a few miles away, it could mean something as harmless as someone stopping off to have a few beers without drawing the attention of the Tohono O’odham Nation’s Law and Order.

“Come on,” he said to Bozo as he opened the door and unfastened the dog’s harness. “We’ll eat later. Let’s go have a look.”

Just then the moon finally crested the mountain, and the desert lit up in a wash of silvery light. Distant strains of music from the dance, mostly a faint drumbeat, traveled on the still night air. Other than that, the night was quiet. Eerily quiet.

Dan could smell something-a flowerlike perfume, although he couldn’t imagine what kind of flower would be blooming way out here in the middle of nowhere. The two things taken together-the strange scent on the air and the silence-struck Dan as odd. Bozo, too, seemed uneasy. He growled softly and the hackles rose on his neck. Attuned to his dog’s every mood, Dan reacted accordingly as the hair on the back of Dan’s neck rose as well.

“What is it, boy?” he asked. In answer, the dog whined again.

“Let’s go see.”

Keeping hold of Bozo’s leash, Dan moved forward. A quarter of a mile into the desert, Dan caught sight of a vehicle, a Chevrolet Blazer with Arizona plates. It sat parked just behind a small white sedan. That meant that the people in the two vehicles were here together. It also meant that if something bad was going on, Dan could be outnumbered two to one or more, although really, Bozo’s presence evened those odds.

Despite the pair of vehicles and the probable number of people, there was no sign of laughter or conversation in the vast moonlit wilderness, and no sign of movement, either. That was another oddity. If people were sitting around drinking beer, there would be talking and laughter and, most likely, cigarette smoke as well.

Dan approached the Blazer warily. The back passenger door was open. Glancing inside, Dan caught sight of a child’s booster seat of some kind and a child’s plastic pinwheel. On the floor were a pair of tiny tennis shoes, but there was no sign of a child.

“There’s a little kid out here somewhere, Boze,” Dan said reassuringly to the dog. “So it’s probably okay.”

But Bozo didn’t act like it was okay. The dog was still on high alert, which meant Dan needed to be on alert as well.

In front of the sedan, Dan caught sight of the first real sign of trouble. Two women’s purses lay open and empty in the ground, with a collection of stuff-lipsticks, papers, photos, ID cards, and credit cards-scattered all around. He also spotted two men’s wallets.

There were two purses and two wallets. That told Dan that he had stumbled on a robbery-a robbery with at least four victims. Was it still in progress? He touched the hood of the sedan. It was still warm, as in daylight warm, but the engine had been off long enough to cool down. That meant that the vehicle had been parked here for some time.

Far more wary now, Dan drew his weapon but kept a tight hold on Bozo’s leash. “Quiet,” he whispered to the dog. “Heel.”

Leaving the debris field and the Blazer behind, dog and man stepped forward again. Ahead of them in the desert he saw a glow that wasn’t moonlight and wasn’t firelight, either. It was possible he was seeing lights from another vehicle-the bad guy’s vehicle-but the light was more diffuse than headlight beams would have been. No, the glow came from some other source, and it wasn’t all in one spot. Parts of it seemed to flicker a little while another part was steady, but there was still no sound at all, nothing but an unnerving silence.

Dan knew that whatever had happened was bad. His first move should have been to turn around, return to his Expedition, call in his position, and radio for help. But he also knew that help of any kind was miles away. If there were people here who were being held against their will, he, Dan Pardee, was their only hope. Waiting for backup could take too long.

Walking silently, Dan and Bozo rounded a thick clump of mesquite. Beyond that they caught sight of some of the light source. On either side of a rough path and set about eight feet apart were glowing luminarias. They had been lit for some time. The small candles in the sand-filled paper bags were beginning to sputter and go out. Some of them had already done so.

Dan knew that luminarias were used mostly in celebrations, so this event, whatever it was, had started out as a party of some kind, a party that had gone terribly wrong. Beside him, Bozo strained at his leash. The dog’s ears were pricked forward, his body tense.

Dan knew that perps were often more scared of facing dogs than they were of facing weapons. For one thing, bullets could go astray. Dogs, on the other hand, hardly ever missed their target.

Right now, the only thing Dan and Bozo had going for them was the element of surprise. It was possible that the bad guy was long gone. It was equally possible that he had relieved his victims of some booze in addition to their purses and wallets and was now passed out somewhere nearby. There were plenty of stupid bad guys out there-ones who got drunk or high before they bothered getting away.

Dan had utmost faith in Bozo’s innate sense of what constituted danger and what did not. His response to threats was immediate and unrelenting, complete with biting jaws and snapping teeth, but he posed no peril to people who were harmless. That was part of what made Bozo so valuable. Some dogs can sniff out tumors or sense oncoming seizures. In Iraq, Bozo had demonstrated an uncanny ability to sense danger-to perceive and unmask a potential suicide bomber hiding inside a woman’s burka.

He was doing the same thing now. Kneeling down, Dan released the catch on Bozo’s collar.

“Show me,” he whispered.

Most police dogs are trained to charge forward, barking a warning as they go. Not Bozo. He sprang forward, silent and lethal, and went racing down the candlelit path with Dan behind him in hot pursuit. Unlike the dog’s lightning paws, Dan’s feet made an ungodly noise, enough that he might well waken whomever was sleeping.

So much for surprise, he thought.

Bozo disappeared over a small rise. Before Dan could clear it, he heard a bloodcurdling scream-a child’s scream. Dan topped the rise in time to see movement. A small flash of white raced away from him into the desert, still screaming.

The child, Dan thought. The child from the car seat. A terrified child.

“Down,” he shouted at Bozo. “Leave it!”

The dog dropped to his belly as though he’d been shot. Most of the nearby luminarias had gone out. Dan paused long enough to extract his flashlight from a belt loop. As soon as he turned it on, he saw the first body. A woman, an Indian woman from the looks of her, lay facedown on the path several feet ahead of him. Hurrying to her side, he knelt and felt for a pulse. There wasn’t one. He could see a small wound in the middle of her back, but under her he could see the pool of blood from an exit wound that had had soaked into the dirt. She hadn’t died immediately, but he knew she had bled out shortly after being shot.