Striking Range

by Margaret Mizushima

  He noted that the chickens had water and feed, indicating that Sophie had already cared for her pets, though the hens had taken shelter now inside the coop. She’d been good about handling their care.

  His phone rang, and he snatched it from his pocket. Abraham again. Cole connected the call. “What did you find out?”

  “Eliza Greenfield says Tonya left this morning to go to her routine midwife’s appointment in Hightower. She had not started labor before she left. Even though Mrs. Greenfield hasn’t heard from Tonya all day, she said she hadn’t been worried because the baby’s father showed up yesterday and she believed Tonya was with him. So Tonya is unaccounted for, and she’s not answering her cell phone.”

  “Oh no.” Cole’s hopes sank like an anvil dropped into a lake. “Now what?”

  “Dr. McGinnis is at the scene, and an ambulance is five minutes away. There’s evidence that we’re dealing with a homicide. We’re going to transport the body to the ME in Byers County as soon as possible to get cause of death. I’ll have the Greenfields go over and confirm identification.” McCoy paused to draw a breath. “I’ve already activated the search-and-rescue volunteers to look for the baby. We need to search that entire campground, including inside RVs and campers, to make sure the little one isn’t out there somewhere.”

  It seemed like an astronomical job. “I’ll go help. Do you need the riders in the posse?”

  “No, the canvass would best be done on foot. There are buildings to search through as well.”

  Cole envisioned the vault toilets, toolsheds, and picnic shelters. “I’ll gather up all the flashlights I have and head out there right away.”

  “Deputy Garcia radioed in that black ice is beginning to form on the highway. Be careful.”

  “Will do.” His fatigued brain awhirl, Cole disconnected the call and headed back to the clinic to lock up. Poor Tonya. He hated to believe that the girl was dead but trusted Mattie’s ability to identify her. He thought of his own kids—they were safe and sound, tucked into their warm home with Mrs. Gibbs.

  But this comforting thought dissolved as parental concern kicked in. How would this impact Angie when she learned that her new friend’s cousin had been killed? He knew very little about this family who’d moved into town recently, and he wondered what they were really like. Eliza Greenfield had seemed unhappy and in pain. Was something wrong within the family? Was this kid, Ben, safe for Angie to be around?

  Suddenly his daughter’s first crush didn’t seem so cute and innocent after all.

  * * *

  Robo didn’t pause. He led Mattie up the path toward the shelter where Johnson waited with the hunters. Even as she reached the midway point, she knew she’d made a mistake. She hadn’t communicated their mission clearly enough to her dog, and he’d picked up the freshest scent at the scene. She knew where he was headed, but she needed to let the track play its course. She didn’t want to stop or correct him, because this was what he’d been trained to do. He knew his business, and she didn’t want to mess that up and confuse him for the future.

  Johnson looked surprised as she and Robo drew near. Robo breezed past him, out in front with Mattie trailing behind at the end of his leash. He went directly through the crowd toward Reagan Dawson, the man with the red beard. As Robo came at him, Dawson looked frightened. He threw out his hands as if for protection and stood up from where he’d been sitting at a picnic bench.

  Robo stared at Dawson and sat near his feet, while everyone else in the shelter stared at Mattie. She called Robo back, telling him what a good boy he was as she rubbed his fur and hugged him close to her leg.

  She spoke to Dawson. “Yours was the freshest scent near the body, and my dog picked up on it.”

  Dawson had lowered his hands, and he stammered a few times before his friend with the brown beard spoke up. Mattie remembered him as Wyatt Turner.

  “Reagan found the girl,” Turner said. “He was right there about an hour ago.”

  She’d suspected as much. “Who else was there?”

  Cutter Smith, the guy who’d been the driver, stood. “I was close, though I didn’t go as near as Reagan did.”

  Mattie knew it was best not to engage right now; she needed to move on. “All right. Detective LoSasso will need to speak with you, and we appreciate you waiting here.”

  “Okay,” Dawson said. Relief had replaced his fearful expression. “Your dog singled me out because I found the body?”

  “He did.” There were a few murmurs of admiration for her dog from others in the crowd, who seemed impressed.

  Mattie scanned the group. “Thank you all for your cooperation. We’ll be searching this area, and we’ll need for you to return to your campsites after Detective LoSasso and Deputy Brody are finished talking to you.”

  She didn’t tell them they would be searching their trailers, campers, and RVs. No need to give them warning so they could hide anything.

  “How did the girl die?” one of the campers asked, his deep voice resonating from the far side of the shelter.

  “We don’t know at this point,” Mattie said, searching him out.

  He was a large man with a dark, heavy beard and dressed in camo, and he persisted in trying to get information. “Did someone kill her?”

  Mattie stared at him for a few beats. “And your name, sir?”

  “Dusty Spencer,” the guy said, clasping his hands at the front of his big belly. “From Nebraska.”

  The three guys she’d stopped yesterday were from there as well, and for that matter, so was Tonya. Another coincidence? She swept her hand in a gesture that encompassed the threesome but spoke to Spencer. “Do you four know each other?”

  Spencer shook his head, as did Cutter Smith. “No, ma’am,” Spencer said.

  “I have no information that I can share with you right now, Mr. Spencer. You’ll have a chance to talk with Detective LoSasso soon.” Mattie turned away to leave the shelter with Robo. As she passed Johnson, she spoke to him in a low voice. “Be sure Stella talks to Mr. Spencer as well as the other three who found the body.”

  Johnson dipped his head in a nod.

  The wind was coming from the northwest, and for Robo’s sake, she wanted to start downwind with the scent coming toward their faces. As she jogged off toward the southeast, red-and-blue strobe lights flashed from the highway. Headlights pierced the snowflakes as an ambulance turned into the parking lot.

  Mattie felt relief that the young woman would be secured inside the ambulance soon, out of the elements. It seemed like a small thing, but somehow thinking about it gave her comfort. She hoped the baby was alive and sheltered from the elements too, away from this cold campground, safe and sound in a warm place where they would eventually find it.

  A Timber Creek County cruiser that Mattie knew would be driven by Garcia followed behind the ambulance, turning in right behind it. Reinforcements were starting to arrive. She radioed Brody as she continued down the path, and his voice crackled to life from the transmitter at her shoulder.

  Mattie spoke into the mic. “Garcia has arrived.”

  “He’ll help you search.”

  “I’ll get him started.”

  “Volunteers are on their way,” Brody said before they signed off.

  At that bit of news, her relief factor ramped up quite a bit. She hurried toward Garcia, who met her halfway up the path. Built like a fireplug, Garcia had quite a few years on him, but no one on the force could fault his endurance. He might be slower than some, but he could hike a trail to its end.

  “Good to see you.” Mattie held her flashlight beam low, away from his eyes.

  “We think there might be a baby out here, Mattie?” His voice carried his concern.

  “It’s possible. It’s up to us to make sure there’s not.” She faced the campground, pointing toward the southeast side. “I’ll start on that edge so Robo can face the wind. I’ll sweep the grounds and the buildings that I come to. You start on the opposite side. Knock on doors and question t
he campers.”

  “Do I tell them we’re looking for a baby?”

  Mattie considered it for only a moment. “Yes. Ask if they’ve heard a baby cry or any sounds of struggle or cries for help from the woman who was found dead. Make note of anyone who seems to act evasive or suspicious, and Stella will follow up.”

  “So this is a homicide investigation?”

  “Looks like it, and we’re treating it like one.”

  “Okay, then. Radio if you need me.”

  “Same.” They parted ways, and Garcia hurried up the path toward the northwest side.

  After jogging fifty yards to her edge of the campground, Mattie patted Robo’s fur, chatted him up, and prepared him for another go. “Let’s find someone,” she said, sweeping her arm out to encompass the area. “Search!”

  Robo trotted out, sniffing the wind this time, reassuring Mattie that he would be looking for someone besides Dawson. Some dogs trailed people by scenting the air, while others tracked with their noses to the ground—and some dogs were able to do both. Robo fit into the latter group. It made him all the more valuable when searching for humans, whether a missing person or a fugitive.

  Most patrol dogs were trained in tracking and apprehension, and Robo was no exception. At one hundred pounds, he turned into a battering ram when he hit a bad guy at full speed. But tracking was tracking, no matter what the need, and sometimes Robo served double duty in search and rescue. Mattie rarely worried that he would get confused and try to bite a missing person at the end of his search, since Robo’s apprehension command was “Take ’em” and that’s what turned him into a shark, homing in on a fugitive to bite and hold. Besides, he’d also been trained to call off from a bite before it happened.

  But tonight, with him dressed in Kevlar, she knew she was giving him mixed messages, so she thought keeping him on a leash was important, even though it slowed their search. She jogged behind him, guiding him through trees and picnic shelters, stopping to use her flashlight to search trash cans and dumpsters when they came to them. With dread building in her chest, she tore at the dark trash bags to open them inside the receptacles. Wearing leather gloves for warmth covered by a pair of latex gloves for cleanliness, she rifled carefully through wrappers and discarded paper products stained with food, hoping to avoid discarded needles. She found nothing but trash.

  At the first vault toilet they came to, she opened the door and let Robo inside, following him in as she diminished her breath to mere pants to try to cut the smell. But Robo didn’t seem to mind, and he swept the empty area around the covered toilet. Years ago, a kidnapped toddler had been found alive and abandoned down in the vault below a toilet like this in a Colorado campground, and Mattie knew that a copycat was always a possibility.

  She opened the toilet lid and shined her light down into the vault, illuminating excrement and paper enough to see that the chamber was halfway full but no infant had been placed on top. She tried not to gag at the thought of what that image might look like as she lowered the lid and moved Robo outside to resume their search.

  At this rate, it might take all night to search this entire campground, but she wouldn’t give up until she assured herself that the baby was nowhere on these premises. She owed that to the young woman she’d met … could that have been only yesterday? What had happened to Tonya since then?

  Her cell phone signaled an incoming text, and she paused to strip off her glove to check it. It was from Detective Hauck, and it consisted of one word: Fentanyl.

  Mattie knew it meant fentanyl was the drug that had killed John Cobb.

  She stuffed her phone back in her pocket and resumed her search. Cobb’s death had taken a back burner to Tonya’s. Finding the baby was top priority now.

  TWELVE

  Cole arrived at the campground as the ambulance was heading into the campsites, the high-profile vehicle swaying on the gravel road. He parked his truck beside Mattie’s SUV and followed the red taillights on foot as the ambulance drove up the incline. A skiff of snow now covered a layer of ice, and he slipped on the treacherous footing, forcing him to slow his pace.

  Deputy Johnson gave him a salute of recognition as he passed the first picnic shelter, and Cole waved back. The deputies in the county seemed aware that he was part of the sheriff’s posse and therefore allowed to proceed into areas not open to the public. Cole guessed he’d paid his dues, considering the many times he’d helped with body retrieval during this past year.

  He squinted against the snowfall, scanning the area to look for Mattie but not finding her. The ambulance lumbered through trees into the far reaches of the campground, sound from its engine muffled by the accumulating snow. Cole felt the isolation of this spot, and it made him flinch, wondering if it had been used as a body dump. Was it even possible that Tonya Greenfield had been murdered? If so, who would do such a thing to a vibrant young woman and her unborn child?

  Flashlights up ahead filtered through the pine boughs, meeting the headlights of the ambulance to illuminate the scene. People clustered around a yellow tarp, which had apparently been used to cover the body. Mattie wasn’t among them.

  Stella looked up to greet him as he approached. “Cole, thanks for coming out in such terrible weather to help.”

  Ken Brody acknowledged him as well. “Doc,” he said, as he extended a handshake.

  “Sheriff McCoy said he needed volunteers to search the campground. Do you know where you want me to start?”

  “Deputy Garcia has started canvassing the area,” Stella said. “Could you take charge of assigning volunteers to work various quadrants of the campground as they get here? Mattie and Robo are already out there searching the bushes. We need people to search buildings and talk to the campers. Ask if they’ve heard or seen anything, that sort of thing.”

  “All right,” Cole said, his eyes drawn to the lump covered by the tarp. “I’ll go back down to the parking lot and catch folks as they arrive.”

  “Before you go, are you up to taking a look to see if you can identify the deceased?” Stella asked.

  He’d suspected they would ask that of him, and he approached the task with both dread and the desire to make sure the young woman was indeed Tonya. “I am.”

  EMTs dressed in protective gear had unloaded a wheeled stretcher and were carrying it around the ambulance. Brody squatted beside the tarp and uncovered the girl’s upper body while Cole moved closer. Curly red hair matted and wet from exposure, pale skin that looked frozen and hard as alabaster. He knew from experience that this image would haunt him for months, one of the downsides of working with the sheriff’s department.

  “It’s Tonya Greenfield,” Cole said, lifting his eyes to meet Brody’s. “Or her identical twin.”

  Brody nodded and covered the girl’s face again. They both stepped back to let the EMTs place her in a body bag and transfer her to the stretcher. Cole turned away, saying to Stella, “I’ll go down to meet the volunteers as they arrive.”

  “The first wave should be here any minute,” Brody said.

  Feeling sad and unsettled, Cole trod back downhill to the parking lot, carefully making his way through the ice and snow. Where is Tonya’s baby?

  And despite desperately wanting to know the answer to that question, he hoped the infant wouldn’t be found out here in this campground. No newborn could survive these conditions.

  * * *

  Several hours after beginning her search, Mattie trudged through about four inches of snow toward her unit with Robo and Cole at her side. The cold front had blown through and the storm had passed. The air was still, and stars popped in the sky as the clouds cleared—but the temperature had fallen to well below freezing for the first time in the season, and their breath hung in the air.

  Though the accumulation of snow wasn’t deep, the layer of ice that lay beneath it made for treacherous conditions on the highway, and Deputies Garcia and Johnson had left earlier to respond to pleas for help from stranded motorists. Campers had returned to their
shelters, and after Tonya’s body was loaded for transport, Stella and Brody had begun their rounds to question them, which they’d not yet completed.

  Once again, the Timber Creek volunteer search-and-rescue squad had proven itself invaluable. Despite the cold, wet weather, ten people had shown up, Garrett Hartman included, and they’d scoured the campground in teams of two. Mattie and Robo had also combed through the entire area, and Mattie could now end their search knowing that there was no baby out here to be found.

  That knowledge didn’t answer the question uppermost in everyone’s mind, and she voiced it now to Cole. “Where is that baby?”

  “I wish I knew. I’m afraid it might have died.” Cole sounded tired and discouraged. “But I think we can rest easy that we’re not leaving a live infant out here to suffer.”

  “Me too.”

  Cole took hold of her elbow as they crossed a particularly slick patch of ice where the sleet had formed a thicker layer near the edge of the parking lot. Unimpaired by the hazardous footing, Robo trotted toward the back of the unit, looking eager to load up.

  “He’s probably covered twenty miles today,” Mattie said. “I fed him earlier, but I bet he’s hungry again. I’ll give him more food, and he can eat while I wait for Stella and Brody to finish up.”

  With his gloved hand, Cole brushed snow off her SUV to reveal a layer of ice covering the car’s surface, windshield, and windows. “It’ll take some work to get this off. Let me have your scraper, and I’ll get started.”

  His truck was also coated. “I’ll be here longer than you will, so I’ll start my vehicle and turn on the defroster,” she said. “Let’s clear your truck first.”

  “Good idea. I’ll start my truck too and then sit with you inside your car so we can warm up while we talk.”

  Mattie opened the rear hatch, and Robo hopped inside. She unbuckled and removed his search harness and Kevlar vest, finding the fur beneath smashed flat but dry. She ruffled it up for him, giving him a good scratch and massage as he stretched. His sides looked sucked in around his belly, the look of a working dog when he’d been at it all day. She always kept food and fresh water for him in her unit, because she never knew when they would have to work late.