The Dog Who Knew Too Much (6 page)

Whoa. I went still, ears up. Sounds came from behind the trees where the trail disappeared: snap of a twig, skittering of gravel, a human voice, either a woman’s or a child’s.

Meanwhile, Anya was looking at her watch. “How much longer do you think we’ll have to wait?” she said.

Bernie checked his watch, too. This was the cheapo watch. Bernie’s grandfather’s watch, our most precious possession, was back at Mr. Singh’s pawnshop. Great guy, Mr. Singh, and I can listen to him talk forever, almost like music, and there’s often lamb curry on the stove. Even goat, once or twice! A treat on top of a treat, if you see what I mean, although actually I don’t quite. Not important. The important thing was Bernie studying his watch and saying, “Six or seven miles, call it seven, likely on the move an hour after first light, averaging maybe …” He looked up. “Probably should have been here by now.” Anya got
a worried expression on her face, and Bernie quickly added, “But the trail may be rougher than it looks from here, and they could have stopped for a snack—twelve-year-old boys, and all.”

“So I won’t worry,” Anya said.

“Nothing to worry about.”

Total agreement on my part. By this time I could feel approaching footsteps under my paws, and also heard a boy say, “This rise?” and a man answer, “The next one. Almost there.” I glanced at Bernie and Anya: no reaction. Then I looked back at the trailhead benches: no reaction there, either. The bug woman was spraying herself again. The rest of them seemed bored. The human ear is a funny little thing—sometimes not so little: one of the dudes at the trailhead had the real big stick-out kind—but what were they for, exactly? I lay down and waited. My ear to the ground, of course, hearing lots of
thump thump thump,
heavy-footed sounds of humans when they’re tired. I took a nice stretch, getting my front paws way out front. Hey! That thing where they start vibrating happened. So weird. I tried to make it keep happening, too late remembering that that always stops it, which is what went down. Sometimes not trying is the way to go, Bernie says. He calls that the Zen way, why I’m not sure. We took down an identity thief—no clue what that was about—name of Howard Zen sometime back, but he tried—tried real hard, in fact, all grunting and pouring sweat, especially when I had him by the pant leg, which was how we always knew the case was closed, me and Bernie.

Time passed. After a while, Anya cocked her head to one side. We do the same thing in the nation within, but much, much sooner, as I hope I’ve made clear. “Do you hear something?” she said.

Bernie cocked his head, too. A very nice sight, Bernie with his
head cocked like that. Had to love Bernie. “Nope,” he said. “It’s just the wind.”

Wind? I raised my head. There wasn’t a breath. But while my head was up, I saw a kid come around the curve up the trail, a dusty sort of kid, baseball cap on sideways and carrying a backpack. I rose.

“Hey!” said Anya. “They’re here!”

She started walking toward the boy, but not fast, so it probably wasn’t her boy. Bernie trailed behind her; I got myself right beside Bernie. Now another kid rounded the curve, and another and another and another, me losing count, and then a man with a bandanna wrapped around his head, and after that nobody. None of them, not the kids or the man, seemed to be at all in a hurry: they were kind of dragging their feet, not so much the way people do when they’re wiped, more like when they don’t want to go where they’re going, Charlie for a haircut, say. So: they wanted to stay on the hike longer? That was my only thought.

Now, from behind, down at the trailhead, came voices: “There they are.” “Is that Tommy?” “I see Preston. Preston! Preston! Hi!” That sort of thing. The distance between us and the hikers kept shrinking. Now I could make out their faces. None of them looked happy.

“Which one’s Devin?” Bernie said.

“I don’t see him,” Anya said.

“How many are in his tent?”

“Five, I think.”

“One two three four,” said Bernie, counting with his finger; Bernie’s hands are beautifully shaped, the nails clean and shining. “He must be lagging behind.”

The first kid approached.

“How was the hike?” Bernie said.

The kid didn’t say anything, just kept going. The other kids passed by, all silent. Then came the man in the bandanna. By that time, there was plenty of distance between us and the top of the rise, but no one else had appeared.

The man reached us, slowed down. He was a small, muscular dude, carrying a heavy-looking pack like it weighed nothing.

“Where’s Devin?” Anya said.

He turned toward her, but not quite meeting her gaze. “I, um, better talk to Ranger Rob first.”

“Oh my God,” Anya said. “Has something happened to Devin?”

The muscular dude licked his lips; that’s something I always look for. Perps do it just before they’re about to screw up, but was this guy a perp? Wasn’t he a hiking guide? Maybe I’d missed something. “I don’t think I’m authorized to say anything,” he said, and turned to go.

Bernie stepped in front of him. “You’re the trip leader?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Brock something or other?”

The dude’s face turned red. “Turk Rendell,” he said.

“Well, Turk,” said Bernie, saying the name Turk real, real clear. “This is Devin’s mom. Where is her son?”

Turk’s eyes went to Anya, back to Bernie, then toward the ground. “He, uh, seems to have, like, wandered off.”

“Wandered off?” Anya said, her voice rising, high and sharp. “What are you saying?”

Turk licked his lips again.

“You lost him?” Bernie said.

Turk nodded.

Anya’s eyes opened wide. She covered her mouth with her hand: women do that sometimes, the reasons not clear in my mind. Then her face went white, just as white as corpses you see if you work a job like mine. Bernie took her arm. She would have screamed otherwise: you could feel it coming.

Ranger Rob had an office in the biggest cabin. Huge steer horns over the door and lots of wood smells: a real nice office. There was a big map on one wall and Bernie, Anya, Ranger Rob, and Turk Rendell stood in front of it.

“We were makin’ pretty good time,” Turk said. “Camped thereabouts Thursday, not long after six.” He jabbed a finger someplace on the map; he had stubby fingers, not at all like Bernie’s, and the nails were dirty.

Ranger Rob leaned closer to the map. “The clearing east of Stiller’s Creek?”

“Yeah,” Turk said. “Set up, got a fire goin’, chowed down, everyone sacked out by nine. Roused ’em at dawn”—he turned to Bernie—“boys in the tent, me in the open ’less it’s raining, and they filed out. No Devin. First, I thought he’d gone off to take a—you know, relieve himself, but after a few minutes we started callin’ and lookin’ around. Long story short, we spent the whole day searchin’ both sides of the creek, all the way down to the Slides and all the way up to the old mine, and, uh …” He shrugged.

“So Devin’s been missing for over a day and a half,” Bernie said.

Turk gazed at the floor. “See, what I figured was he’d gotten up sometime in the night—the relievin’ himself theory, just changed a little bit—and then lost his way back. So he couldn’t
have gone far, which is why we kept lookin’, stead of hikin’ right out and raising a more general, you know … alarm. Plus we didn’t meet anyone the whole time, no one I could send back with a message. Can’t leave the kids, of course—that’s rule one.”

Turk, eyes down, missed the look Bernie was giving him, maybe a good thing. “Suppose you’re right,” Bernie said, “and Devin got lost in the night. Wouldn’t he have called out for help?”

“You’d think,” said Turk.

“You would,” Bernie said. “But no one heard anything?”

Turk shook his head.

Ranger Rob cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about your boy, sir. But I think Turk did fine in a difficult situation. Once he realized they weren’t finding him, he got back fast as he could. Those kids were dead on their feet.”

“Devin’s not my boy,” Bernie said. “I’m a friend.”

“Oh,” said Ranger Rob. “On the list it said parents.”

“Devin’s dad is coming,” Anya said. She glanced at her watch.

“I’m also a private detective,” Bernie said.

Ranger Rob took a step back, his eyes still on Bernie, but in a new way.

Bernie didn’t seem to pay attention to any of that. “Chet here is one of the best trackers in the West,” he said. Ranger Rob looked at me. I looked at him. “I assume you’re calling in the authorities,” Bernie said, “but I’d like to get started right away.”

“Started on a search?” Ranger Rob said.

“Correct,” said Bernie.

“Appreciate your willingness to help,” Ranger Rob said, “but our budget—”

“Right now you have bigger worries than your budget,” Bernie said.

There was a silence. Then Ranger Rob nodded, a tiny movement: any tinier wouldn’t have been noticeable at all.

Bernie said, “We need Turk, supplies for three days, and a satellite phone if cell service really doesn’t reach out there.”

“It doesn’t,” Ranger Rob said. “We’re right on the edge here in camp, as I mentioned. And I’m afraid we don’t have a satellite phone. It’s never been necessary, if you see what I mean.”

Bernie didn’t: I could tell from his face.

SIX

W
e walked out of the cabin, me, Bernie, Anya. “This is so horrible,” Anya said.

Bernie didn’t say anything.

“I was against the whole idea right from the start,” she said.

Bernie nodded.

“Everything Guy does turns out so—” She made an angry gesture with her hand, sort of like smacking the air. Then her eyes got damp and a tear or two came spilling over her lower lids. “Just tell me it’s going to be all right,” she said.

Bernie shifted on his feet, looked real uncomfortable. Even though I knew she was a bit uneasy around me and my kind, I moved closer to Anya and stood beside her, just touching. I felt her hand on my back. Sometimes humans pat you without knowing they’re doing it. This had the feeling of one of those, as though the hand was acting on its own. Nothing crazy about that: my tail does the same thing.

Anya wiped away her tears on her sleeve. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it’s stupid to ask that.”

“It’s not stupid,” Bernie said. “And we’ve got a lot going for
us.” He glanced at the sky. “Weather’s good. And it’s unlikely Devin’s far from the campsite—when they get lost in the woods, most people end up walking in circles.”

Anya perked up a little. “Is that true?”

Bernie nodded, but was there a slight hesitation? We’d been on plenty of search-and-rescues, and I didn’t remember that walking-in-circles thing. “Plus we’ve got Chet,” he added. And we had Bernie, too. His brain was one of our most important assets. So maybe I had heard the walking-in-circles thing before.

Anya looked down at me. Our gazes met. Her eyes dampened again. “Please,” she said, so softly I almost didn’t hear, meaning real softly. No worries: that was my thought. We’d bring her boy back and that was that. I gave myself a good shake. What were we waiting for?

“Have you got a picture of Devin?” Bernie said.

“Why do you want that?” said Anya.

“Standard procedure.”

“But aren’t I coming with you?”

“The picture’s to show any hikers we might run into,” Bernie said.

“I want to come.”

“Do you have any backcountry experience?”

“None.”

“Then you’d only slow us down,” Bernie said.

“But—” Anya began.

Bernie interrupted her. “And wouldn’t it be better if you’re here when your ex-husband arrives?”

Anya gave him a long look. “That’s pretty acute of you,” she said.

Didn’t quite get that one. Bernie shrugged. Maybe he didn’t get it either.

Anya took out her cell phone, pressed some buttons, held up the screen. “Here’s Devin,” she said.

Hard to see from my angle, but I glimpsed a long-haired, round-faced, unsmiling kid. What else? One of those snub noses. I knew that expression from a snubnose .32 I’d taken off some perp, name escaping me at the moment, but we’ve still got that little gun in the office safe.

“A nice-looking kid,” Bernie said. Anya’s lower lip trembled. “The camp will have a computer and a printer.”

Anya nodded and walked toward the office.

Bernie and I went the other way, toward the tents, big tents, and each one flying a flag. We stopped in front of one of them, stood before the closed flap. Bernie checked the flag, and then called out, “Number seven? Anybody home?”

No answer. But I could hear breathing inside. I moved closer to the flap. Bernie raised it, letting in a flood of daylight. The boys inside—same ones who’d returned with Turk—looked at us, all of them squinting against the light.

“Boys?” said Bernie. “I’m Bernie Little, and this is Chet. We’re headed out to find Devin, but first we could use some help from you.”

The tent was real messy, clothes and gear all over the place. The boys lay on cots. One cot was empty. None of them spoke.

We stepped inside. Bernie smiled. “What are your names?” he said.

They remained silent. Humans have a right to remain silent. You hear a lot of talk about it in my job. No offense, but this is a right humans hardly ever take advantage of.