Diane Davidson - The Main Corpse

Twenty minutes had elapsed, and Marla’s heartbeat, if not her humor, was in good shape. I took a deep breath. “Okay, look. You were attacked by a bald person. Maybe it was Albert. Maybe it was someone else. Tony’s vanished. I think our only hope is to go back to the campsite. The Furman County Sheriffs Department has access to just one bloodhound these days – “

“Oh, yeah!” Arch interrupted. “The police in Aurora asked to borrow that dog a couple of weeks ago, and the handler’s been involved down there, so they haven’t been able to work that dog up in the mountains – “

“Are you kidding?” Marla exclaimed.

“Look, Marla,” I protested, “it’s our only hope.”

“What is our only hope?” she squealed. “Going back to that damned campsite? In this weather? To look for what? Besides,” she added sarcastically, “I thought Arch’s dog was retired. Something about how he’d become untrustworthy. Please tell me I’m wrong.”

Jake, sensing he was being discussed, began to whine. Perhaps the canine was smarter than I was giving him credit for.

Arch piped up, “Jake just had trouble with three trails last year! It was because the department got a new handler who didn’t know what he was doing. Jake was mistreated and got all nervous. The department thought his smeller was off. But Tom and I know that isn’t true.”

“I think we should try to track Tony’s movements,” I said. I added mentally, And rely on Jake’s smeller not being off.

“Mom’s finally beginning to understand what Jake can do,” Arch said with an eagerness that made me uneasy. “See, even with the trail going to the creek, we should be able to locate the body. In the water, I mean. All that stuff in movies about prisoners getting rid of their scent? You know, by wading in a stream or something? That is completely wrong. You leave your scent in the water just as much as you do on the ground. See, bloodhounds can follow the trail along the creek – “

To my astonishment, Marla burst into tears. “My life is hell,” she wailed.

“Please stop,” I murmured. “Please don’t, you’ll just – “

“Who is trying to ruin my life?” she bawled. “What did I do?”

“Don’t try to talk,” I told her gently. Bo pulled into the far right lane and slowed slightly until we came to a lighted green highway sign.

“All right, listen to me,” the general began, as he peered through the mist. “Goldy’s plan is good. We go to the site. We track Tony to the last place he was seen. Maybe he was kidnapped. We track him to where a car j picked him up. Or say he was killed, thrown in a ditch. . Ditto. Then whoever did it must be the one who planted the evidence implicating Marla. Arch, you said you and Tom have worked with Jake. You don’t think the dog’s unreliable, do you? We’re all telling the truth here, young man.”

“Okay, look. Jake had a couple of problems our first time out,” Arch admitted. “He got confused by a pool scent. But he did better after that.”

“My number-one priority on this trek is to keep everyone safe,” General Bo announced fiercely. “With you first, Arch. I promised your mother. You take care of Jake. I’ll take care of you. Okay?”

“All right,” Arch replied angrily. “You don’t need to baby me.”

I said, “We’re just looking for clues that De Groot and Hersey might have missed. And to track Tony’s last movements. Maybe with Marla gone, the sheriffs department will search a little harder for Albert.”

I looked tentatively at Marla. Her face was set in deep doubt. No point in discussing any more until we got to the site. But to do that the fastest way, we had to go into Aspen Meadow and turn onto the state highway that led to Blue Spruce and the Grizzly Creek campsite.

We rounded the lake. I held my breath as we began the descent to the light on Aspen Meadow’s Main Street.

“Christ,” muttered General Farquhar. He pointed and I felt my heart clench. The law, it seemed, had already arrived on my street. Two patrol cars, lights whirling, were double-parked by the turnoff to our home.

The light at the intersection of Main Street and the highway leading to Blue Spruce and Grizzly Creek changed to red. With no place to turn around and the light against him, General Farquhar rocketed the Jeep through the intersection. He swerved wildly around a Volvo with a Kansas license plate, then barely missed a pickup truck as he plowed down the left lane. I guessed he was trying to find enough room to make a U-turn. He finally careened onto the sidewalk in front of the Aspen Meadow Cafe, plowed down a bush, and gunned the Jeep back up Main Street. Behind us, a siren sounded.

At the light, an enormous Safeway truck lumbered into the slow, tortuous turn toward the lake. The Jeep tires squealed as General Bo darted wide around the truck. The truck driver, confused by the Jeep’s sudden appearance, braked. All traffic was suddenly blocked as we zipped through the narrow opening made by the truck. Bo veered left, heading west on the highway. Belatedly, the truck driver let loose with his horn. Drivers on three sides joined in the cacophony.

“What was that about keeping everybody safe?” I yelled. No one listened to me.

When we had gone less than a hundred yards, General Farquhar gunned the Jeep up the grass-covered hill next to the road. We slammed through a flimsy wire fence and careened across private property. For the next ten minutes, the general took us through two more yards and then across back roads until we came to the acreage of Furman County Open Space property. We met with some strange looks and barking dogs, but no police cars and no angry-tempered Coloradans wielding .357 Magnums. Thank heaven.

“Do you know where we’re going?” I asked, once we were on a pathway that cut through a county-owned meadow. Bo did not answer. The overgrown, muddy path was sort of an off-road road. The Jeep wove around rocks and smashed back through someone else’s fence before returning to a rural paved road that eventually intersected the highway leading northwest out of town. Maybe he did know where he was going.

We drove the next forty minutes in near silence. Carl’s Trout Pond, High Country Auto Repair, and Blue Spruce all whizzed past. The road climbed until a sign swathed in tendrils of mist announced we were driving through national forest. At seven-thirty, we would have less than another hour of daylight. It was extremely unlikely that the police would still be at the campsite. When Tom had a team of investigators at the scene of a crime, they rarely stayed past a few hours, long enough to take photographs, make a videotape, and collect evidence.

At a dirt road where a collection of dilapidated signs stood propped like abandoned rakes, General Farquhar finally slowed. The rusty markers with their skewed arrows named a host of camps, picnic areas, and campsites that included Grizzly Creek. Grunting, Bo negotiated the razorback turn to get onto the dirt road. We jolted over a wooden bridge. Less than a foot below us, muddy, swollen Grizzly Creek teemed and foamed.

After crossing the creek, we wound swiftly upward through national forest. Occasionally, the fog cleared, revealing vistas of rock-strewn steppes and hillsides dense with evergreens. Stands of lovely white-skinned aspens randomly interrupted the green. We came into a narrow canyon where lodgepole and ponderosa pines stretched up bluffs on either side of the road. There were no cars, bicycles, or hikers. I dreaded the prospect of all the unknown territory out there – even more than I feared arriving at the campsite.

“You need to show me where you turned off,” General Bo told Marla, and she pointed mutely to a still narrower, unmarked dirt road. We rocked through muddy ditches, turned and once again found ourselves next to Grizzly Creek, this time heading upstream. We paralleled the bloated waterway until it disappeared upward into a ravine. The water crashing over rocks roared so loudly we could hear it inside the car. We pulled up to a rough parking area lined with logs. Marla drew in a ragged breath. Arch leaned forward to peer outside.