Fatal Exposure

by Jamie Jeffries

  “Go to bed. I’ll stay here,” she said. “You wouldn’t hear your mom if she blew a trumpet.”

  She was right. Wanda was right. On the verge of exhaustion, he was no good to Alex. Dylan tumbled into bed in his clothes and was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow. It was eight p.m.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Thursday July 24

  Dylan woke when he fell out of his tree…that free-falling feeling everyone experiences sooner or later, especially under stress. A quick glance at his bedside clock showed he’d been asleep for about seven hours. It was now almost five a.m., and the sun would be up soon. The fact no-one had called chilled him. That meant Alex was still out there. Praying he wasn’t joining a recovery operation instead of a rescue, Dylan stumbled through a quick wash-up and pulled on some clothes.

  Was the search even focused in the right place? Dylan would give his currently-useless right arm for a clue about from where she had actually disappeared, and where she’d been taken. It could have been up in Maricopa County, for all he knew. Wells should get his counterparts in Maricopa to start a search there, too.

  Dylan was certain she’d been intercepted along her route home from school. Another line of inquiry should be whether she had made it to all her classes on Tuesday, though, and if anyone had seen her after her last class. Had Wells already done that? Another question for him. She’d been missing for just thirty-six hours, but that was more than enough time to die of heat stroke if she were unprotected. Getting a cup of coffee, Dylan unintentionally woke Ange, who was asleep on the couch.

  “I’m going again. You okay?”

  “I would be, if you hadn’t woken me up at the butt-crack of dawn,” she grumbled.

  “Okay, go back to sleep,” Dylan was filling his Camelbak with water and some energy bars to take with him. Ange had gone back to sleep almost immediately. He left, trying to be quiet.

  He drove past Paul’s house on the way out of town, but finding Jen’s car in the driveway, decided it wasn’t necessary to bother them this early. Especially with no news. A visit at this time of the morning would either panic Paul or give him false hope.

  The searchers had been out all night, for around ten hours, give or take. They needed a second shift, but he didn’t know of any other dogs to bring in. Dylan was worrying about that and regretting he hadn’t taken time for some kind of real breakfast when he found the staging area, a spot where someone had set up a couple of canopies for shade. Pulling off the road, he noticed one of them had a long table under it, where a group of people were sitting. He shut the car off and walked over, to find twenty or so people from town milling around, eating breakfast coming off a couple of grills, and talking about getting started.

  He found the reason for all his activity behind one of the grills. Tia Wanda was wielding a long spatula, serving up scrambled eggs and chorizo on warm tortillas.

  “Hungry?” she asked with no preliminary greeting, as if he’d been there all along.

  “Starved,” he answered as she pushed a tortilla at him. He caught it awkwardly with his left hand.

  “Oh, forgot,” she said. She snatched the tortilla back and plopped it on a paper plate, then piled the egg and chorizo mixture in the center, added a dollop of mayonnaise and another of salsa, then rolled the whole thing efficiently into a burrito he could handle with one hand.

  “Mmmm,” he moaned in appreciation as he wolfed it down. By the time he had it finished, she’d made another. “Thanks, but that’s enough, Tia Wanda. Don’t make me another.”

  “Fine. Starve yourself, I don’t care,” she grumbled. Dylan grinned and pushed his stomach out as far as it would go.

  “I’m not starving. I’m getting fat.”

  Her glance turned serious as she asked if he’d slept. “Like a baby. What’s going on?”

  “Second shift,” she said. “These guys will head out to start where last night’s group left off, just as soon as we can get them organized.”

  “What about dogs?”

  She lowered her voice. “Wells sent a cadaver dog today. I hope to God it doesn’t find anything.”

  Dylan couldn’t say anything to that. He hoped the same thing, but if Alex was out here and they didn’t find her today, chances were strong this dog would be the key by evening. He couldn’t entertain the thought. Alex had to be alive. She just had to.

  Wanda went on to tell him two more people in town had volunteered their dogs for the search, stretching them thin along the search line. The first SAR dog had to rest at least until dusk. He was exhibiting signs of stress his handler said meant he was upset he’d failed to locate the victim. Poor dog, Dylan knew just how he felt. He was regretting every minute he’d spent not searching since he’d learned Alex was missing. He couldn’t help but believe if he’d started sooner and kept at it, he’d have found her by now. Completely irrational, he knew, but that’s how he felt.

  ~~~

  Alex opened her eyes. Was it a new day, or had she only slept for a few minutes? Her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth, her lips cracked. It was all she could do to stop with one gulp of the last bottle of water. Still too much; that gulp should have covered two hours. In the tiny part of her brain that was still working, she knew she wouldn’t last the day if Joe didn’t come back. Not without finding more water.

  Alex tried to get to her feet, but orange clouds rolled over her eyes and she found herself on the floor with no memory of falling. It was cooler here than on the bench. Not much, but enough to suffer the discomfort of a hard surface for the relative cool of the floor. The storage area was just out of her reach. When she remembered she was looking for water, she inched toward the pantry like a worm. Using her feet to pump with what little traction she could get on the linoleum, she thrust her body painfully in the direction of the pantry.

  She didn’t think she had seen water in there yesterday during her search, only the two bottles in the fridge. But, with a mind that felt as if it were wrapped in thick cotton-wool, she reasoned she hadn’t been on the floor then. Maybe she’d missed something. It took a superhuman effort to scoot all the way to the pantry, and then she couldn’t open the door from her angle on the floor. Alex felt like weeping, but there were no tears. She tried to summon some saliva, parched, but choked on her own dry throat. She’d left the water bottle with the last few swallows on the bench. Must search the pantry before trying to get back.

  Reaching as high as she could and twisting awkwardly to accommodate the fact her hands seemed to be stuck together, Alex managed to pull herself to a sitting position. Rest, her body screamed, but it was the devil telling her that. I rest, I die. It was as simple as that. She had to keep going. In a minute, she gathered her knees under her and used the counter to pull up to a kneeling position. It was enough to allow her to reach the handle for the pantry door. No water in sight. Crushing disappointment threatened to overwhelm her.

  Her despairing eyes came to rest on a few cans of green beans and corn, and one large can of pineapple. Disappointed, weak and not thinking clearly, she almost missed it. That tiny corner of her brain, shrinking every hour without water, pricked her. The vegetables had water in them. Water tinged with the flavor of the food, which was unappealing even though she hadn’t eaten for as long as she could remember. But, it was water. It would help her last a little longer. She raked the cans to the floor, then sat and stared at them. How was she going to open them?

  One had a pull-tab top; a can of beans. Alex scrabbled at it with brittle fingernails and managed to open it a tiny crack. She couldn’t help herself—she drained the juice completely. Feeling a little better after the delicious warm liquid slid down her throat, she counted the remaining cans. She had bought another couple of hours, if she could find something to open the cans. Three of beans, two of corn, and the large can of pineapple. She hated canned pineapple.

  Too woozy to understand her body was shutting down, Alex searched her mind for the reason she was in this predicament. Why wa
s she here? Why wasn’t someone here to help her? Why wouldn’t her hands and feet work right? As she sank into oblivion, she had one thought that made her try to smile. Dylan’s arms around her. Dylan would help her.

  ~~~

  It was nearly eleven, and they had spread the search further to the north and south, skirting the deeply-carved mesa to the northwest of the airport. Last night’s search had covered the area from the highway to the edge of the mesa’s slopes, and into the deepest ravine in its east side. That represented about two and a half miles of north-south distance, and less than two miles at most to the west; still a lot of territory to cover in a proper search grid with only forty or so people and three dogs. They had advanced from the road to the mesa, then shifted to the north and retraced their steps, moving back and forth between the road and the mesa and covering every few yards at least twice. It was grueling work even in the cool of the night.

  Now, with the temperature approaching one hundred already, Dylan and the others at the south end of the mesa were debating whether to follow the same methodology, or send someone back for off-road vehicles to follow the numerous Jeep trails criss-crossing the desert there. Considering the mesa was backed by others in brutal badlands to the west, and there were so many places where deep ravines were cut into them a precise grid just wouldn’t work, Dylan was in favor of the latter. So was the handler of the cadaver dog, who came up to consult with the knot of searchers just as a three-wheeler dirt bike reached them with a new supply of water and energy bars.

  They stood talking about the pros and cons of continuing to shift to the south while sending for others on bikes to cover the trails into the badlands. When the dog lifted his head and began crooning, they all turned to the handler, who was looking at the dog intently. “What is it, Blue?” he asked.

  In response, the hound pulled against his lead, and the handler looked up with a worried expression. “He’s got something.”

  Dylan’s heart sank, and he gulped. “What do you do now?”

  “Let him off the lead,” he said. “Blue will find the target and then come back to lead us there.”

  Dylan asked the driver of the three-wheeler to wait, since they would want to send a message back about what the dog had found, once they knew. There was little or no cell phone coverage out here.

  The handler let Blue off his lead and the dog immediately bounded off toward the southwest, leaving the sharp curve in the roadway where they’d congregated. From exploring as a teen, Dylan knew there was another turn in the road in about half a mile, where it rounded the point that cut off the route directly to the west of their current location. At the end of the point, the Jeep trail tacked back to the northwest. If the dog was getting a scent, whatever it was most likely lay within half a mile.

  “Kyle, why don’t you head back and ask someone to send as many people as they can round up on dirt bikes? Zach, if you’ll wait here to let them know what they should do, I’d appreciate it.” No one questioned Dylan’s authority to hand out these assignments. He was grateful for that. There was no time to argue over who was the leader. The dog handler, whose name he hadn’t asked, was already a hundred yards down the road. That left Joe Morales and Dylan to catch up to him, in case he needed some help.

  They set out at a slow jog, knowing it was dangerous to run any faster with the sun beating down on them. At least Dylan had a hat. All Joe had was a bandanna, folded into a triangle with one point hanging down his neck and the other two securing it with a knot.

  “Hey, Joe,” Dylan panted. “When did you join a gang?” His jibe was lost on Morales as he slowed to a walk.

  “Can’t run anymore, ‘mano,” he said. Dylan slowed, too, letting him catch up. “Do you think it’s her? I remember Alex, from school. Cute, for a white chick.”

  More than cute—beautiful. What would she look like when they finally found her? Dylan’s gorge rose as he imagined her body bloated and stinking in the sun. Even if she was alive, if she’d been out in the sun all this time she’d have severe burns. He shook his head to erase the image, and started jogging again. He left Joe walking doggedly behind.

  Ahead, the dog handler had stopped, and beyond him the dog was returning from wherever it had been. Dylan reached the handler before the dog did. When he got to them, the dog circled, nudged his handler’s hand and whined. The handler gave him a drink of water from a collapsible bowl he’d tucked into a shoulder bag, and then said, “Go back.” Immediately, the hound turned and started trotting down the road just a few feet in front of them, looking back every few yards to see if they were following. Just as the road started to curve back toward the northwest, the dog left the roadway and followed a faint track that continued southwest. Rounding a hillock, Dylan and the handler were greeted by the sight of a body, too large to be Alex, Dylan thought. He heaved a sigh of relief, drawing a strange look from the handler.

  “Stay,” he told the dog, and began walking toward the body.

  “Wait. Don’t go any closer. Look.” Dylan pointed to something he’d just noticed—clear tire tracks, too narrow for a full-sized pickup or SUV. “That looks like quad tracks. We need to get a CSI team in here before they get obliterated. Watch where you walk.”

  The handler nodded, chose a different trajectory, and stepped gingerly to the body. “It’s a male,” he said, eliciting another sigh of relief from Dylan, before he added, “Hey! I know this guy. It’s Joe Hendricks.” That’s when Dylan began to shake. If the corpse was really Joe—and Dylan had no reason to disbelieve the dog handler—then a whole series of unanswerable questions needed answers, and fast. The first one, where was Alex? This was too big a coincidence not to be related, but how was it related? Had Joe taken Alex? Or had someone else somehow taken both of them? Either way, Alex was still in mortal danger if they didn’t find her soon. And that’s if Joe, or whoever killed him, hadn’t already killed her.

  Dylan couldn’t get his head around the question of whether Alex had killed Joe, although he knew it was an equally valid question. Under what circumstances had Joe been killed? When? Why? Too many questions, and not enough time. They needed to find Alex immediately.

  “Looks like an execution,” the handler called, making Dylan realize he’d just assumed a murder. “Single gunshot wound, close quarters, between the eyes.” Dylan winced. He hadn’t liked Joe lately, but it was a brutal way to go. Except for the fact it was a single shot, it sounded like the handler had called it right. The cartel seemed to prefer two shots, one to the base of the skull, another a few inches higher. If it had been done that way, no one would have been able to recognize the face. This seemed more personal, somehow. What had Joe done to meet his end this way? More importantly, how did Alex get involved, and where was she now?

  Joe Morales arrived at that moment, and Dylan let him rest a minute before sending him back to Zach’s position to report to whoever arrived there next. While he waited for someone else to relieve them at the scene, he asked the dog handler his name.

  “Cody,” he said, holding out his hand. He was sitting on a rock that looked none too comfortable to Dylan, scratching his dog behind the ears. The dog leaned into him in apparent ecstasy, based on the blissful expression of its face.

  “Cool dog,” Dylan said. “What made you train him to search for cadavers instead of live people?”

  “It just worked out that way,” Cody replied. “But, he will find live people if there aren’t any dead ones to locate.”

  “Serious?”

  “Yeah. Oh, do you want him to keep looking for the girl?”

  Dylan stared at him. What kind of stupid question was that? He got it. “Find it,” he said to the dog. Blue looked at the corpse and back at Cody as if to say, ‘what, you want more?’ But he dutifully got up and lifted his head, walking toward the road. Then he came back, and Dylan figured he’d given up.

  Blue walked toward Joe’s body and sniffed at his boots, then put his nose to the ground and started back toward the road. This time, he s
niffed the air again, and started north.

  “I don’t get it. Is he an air-scent dog, or a ground tracker?”

  “Both. If he can’t get the scent in the air, he searches for it on the ground. Usually he’s better at air-scenting.”

  “Did he get a sniff of Alex’s clothes?” Dylan asked, belatedly remembering the scent articles.

  “Yeah. I don’t know whether finding Joe here made him forget the scent. We haven’t been working SAR that long.”

  Great. An inexperienced dog. Probably any dog could have found Joe. Could this one find Alex?

  ~~~

  Stupid. Cody told him the dog would come back if he found anything. Dylan followed the dog anyway. It would waste less time. Alex didn’t have any time to waste. If the dog found her, Dylan would be right there. But the dog was fast, much faster than Dylan in the blazing afternoon heat, now around one-hundred and fifteen.

  Before long, he couldn’t see the dog anymore. Was Blue just around a bend in the road, which he’d been following since he left Cody and Joe’s body? Or had he left the road when Dylan wasn’t looking? He didn’t dare go further. The dog would return to Cody, not come looking for him, if he’d passed it already. Despite the fact there was no shade anywhere, Dylan sat down on the side of the road to wait. He might have been half a mile from where he’d left Cody.

  Half an hour after he sat down, facing back the way he’d come, Blue burst out from between a creosote bush and a saguaro, maybe ten yards from where he sat. Dylan called him, but he tore down the road toward Cody with what looked to Dylan like purpose. He jumped to his feet and ran to where the dog had come out, noticing the tracks similar to those at the scene where Joe’s body had been dumped. He checked his cell phone for signal. No luck. It was flickering between one bar and No Service. He stopped, backed up while watching the screen, and managed to find one bar.

  Dylan quickly composed a text to Tia Wanda, telling her about where he’d left the road and where he thought he was going, then pressed Send and prayed there was enough signal for it to get through. He started north, toward a narrow ravine cut into the mesa in front of him, following the tire tracks when he could see them and beating back and forth until he found them again when he lost them.