C. Box - Endangered

“Not far, I don’t think.”

“Tell him to hurry,” Wentworth said in the background.

She didn’t, but Joe said, “Wentworth better keep his mouth shut or you’ll both be there all night.”

He heard her shush her partner.

As Joe laced on his boots in the mudroom, his phone lit up again. Reed.

“Mike,” Joe said.

“Are you sitting down?”

Joe braced for it, whatever it was.

“After you left this afternoon, the dispatcher got a 911 call. The reporting party said she heard about April through someone she knows at the hospital, and she recalled seeing a man she identified as Tilden Cudmore force a girl matching April’s description into his vehicle on the highway yesterday morning. She said she didn’t call it in at the time because she thought maybe Cudmore was her father and the girl was a runaway or something.”

Joe tried to process what Reed had just told him.

“Who made that call?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know,” the sheriff said. “She wouldn’t identify herself to the dispatcher.”

“But you think it was legitimate?”

“Yeah,” Reed said. “We’ve had run-ins with Cudmore a few times. He’s a survivalist type who lives by himself in a trailer out in the county. He’s a real piece of work. There have been rumors about him cruising the highways, driving well below the speed limit, like he’s looking for somebody, but we couldn’t hardly pick him up for that.

“Anyway, I sent a deputy out to his place, but he wasn’t home and his Humvee was gone. The deputy happened to look in the man’s dumpster and he found a purse inside with April’s ID. There’s also a backpack and some clothing we hope you can identify.”

Joe said, “Tilden Cudmore. You’ve thrown me for a loop.”

“Join the club,” Reed said. Then: “Here’s the address. I’m on my way out there now.”

—

JOE KNOCKED AND OPENED Lucy’s bedroom door. She was still on the phone with Sheridan.

He said, “Get dressed and bundled up. I need your help. They may have found some of April’s things and you’ll be better at recognizing them than I am.”

“Did Dallas Cates have them?” Lucy asked.

“Some guy named Tilden Cudmore.”

“Who’s he?”

“I have no idea,” Joe said. “But we’re going to find out.”

5

Tilden Cudmore, fifty-two, lived alone on a sagebrush-covered swale by the wastewater treatment plant six miles west of Saddlestring. From the county road, Joe saw the pulsing lights of the law enforcement vehicles, so he knew where to turn.

He and Lucy passed under a wrought iron archway that was strung with bleached-white animal skulls, a naked and shackled storefront mannequin made to look as if it were being frog-marched to meet its fate, and a tattered DON’T TREAD ON ME Gadsden flag that rippled in the cold, light breeze.

“This place is creepy,” Lucy said, her eyes wide.

Joe grunted a response. He tried not to think of April being brought here the night before. That shackled mannequin alone, if she had seen it, seemed to foretell a horrible fate.

Lucy hugged herself. No doubt she was spooked, Joe thought. While Sheridan often used to ride along on his patrols and had experienced crime scenes, raucous elk camps, and sometimes tense confrontations, Lucy had never been eager to accompany him into the field. He understood. Lucy preferred happy situations and happy people, while Sheridan was intrigued by the procedures involved with law enforcement. Joe appreciated the differences in the way each girl was wired since birth.

The two-track entry road to the dark trailer was muddy and rutted. Old ranch equipment—broken-down tractors, a hay-baling machine, a slumped-over wooden wagon—lined both sides of the path. Unlike many remote ranches that had a graveyard of broken machinery and trucks, it was obvious someone had deliberately placed the equipment there, just as someone had erected the archway and wired on the skulls. Sheriff Reed’s van, as well as two county SUVs, were parked in front of a ramshackle double-wide trailer that looked like a flatbed had backed up and dumped it off years before. There were dead trees on the windward side of the structure and a litter-strewn front yard. A hand-painted sign was mounted on the front of the trailer near the door that read:

STAY OUT

SURVIVORS WILL BE PROSECUTED

Joe noted a ten-foot chain-link enclosure on the side of the trailer. The gravel floor of the cage was covered with feces, and lengths of chain snaked through the gravel. Obviously, Cudmore housed dogs there.

Dulcie Schalk’s Subaru Outback sat off to the side.

Joe wheeled in and killed the motor. He said to Lucy, “How about you stay in the truck until I figure out what’s going on?”

“Okay.”

She seemed to be in no hurry to get out. He reached over and patted her shoulder before opening his door.

Dulcie was in the middle of a heated conversation with Deputy Boner. Sheriff Reed was in his wheelchair between the two of them as if he were a referee.

“What we’ve got here is an illegal search,” Dulcie said to Boner. “You entered private property without a warrant and went through his garbage. I could see Judge Hewitt rule that whatever you found here is inadmissible as evidence.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Boner said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I drove out here in response to a call to ask Mr. Cudmore some questions about his whereabouts yesterday. The subject wasn’t home, and as I was heading back to my vehicle, I heard what I thought was a baby crying.”

That silenced Dulcie, and she looked to Reed. Reed was noncommittal.

“The crying sound was coming from the dumpster,” Boner said, pointing toward a dented metal box on the edge of the lot. “I thought it sounded human, so I had probable cause to look inside to make sure there wasn’t anyone in imminent danger.”

“He had probable cause,” Reed said, nodding his head.

“A crying sound?” Dulcie asked, skeptical.

“Turned out to be a cat,” Boner said. “There was a cat in there. But it sure sounded like a baby crying.”

“And where is it now?” Dulcie asked.

“As soon as I lifted the lid, it ran away.”

“And this evidence you found was just sitting on top in plain view?”

Boner looked over at Reed, then said, “Sort of.”

Dulcie moaned. “What does that mean?”

“I shined my light in there and saw some fabric poking out of the garbage. So I kind of pushed some trash aside.”

“Think of his state of mind,” Reed said. “At this point, he was still thinking baby , not cat .”

Dulcie asked Boner, “What color was it? The cat, I mean.”

Boner hesitated a second before saying, “Black.”

“A black cat,” Reed echoed.

“With white feet,” Boner said, as if just then recalling the detail.

“Did you and the sheriff cook this up together?” Dulcie asked, but her tone had softened.

“Would we ever do anything like that?” Reed asked. Then, looking up, he said, “Hey, Joe.”

“Mike.”

“I’m glad you’re here. We’ve got a couple of things to show you.”

“That’s why I brought my daughter Lucy,” Joe said. “She knows April’s clothing and such.”

He winked at Dulcie. “We would have gotten here sooner,” he said, “but I had to slow down to let a black cat cross the road.”

“Hmph,” Dulcie said, shaking her head. But she didn’t continue with her objections.

—

AFTER JOE WAS ASSURED by Boner and Reed that nothing Lucy would see should upset her, she joined them near the dumpster. The items Boner had found inside were displayed on a blue plastic tarp and covered with a clear sheet of plastic. Evidence numbers and tags were already attached and the display was ready to be photographed. Beads of moisture dotted the outside plastic from snowflakes that had melted on it.