by Donna Ball
“She’ll be lonely,” Melanie protested.
I ushered her through the door. “She’s got Mischief and Magic.”
“But—“
“No more buts.” My mother used to say that to me a lot. “You’re getting a free lunch and hot chocolate. Live with it.”
Melanie pouted as she fastened herself into her seat belt. “My dad is bossy, too. That’s why my mom hates him. She says he’s a control freak.”
I darted a glance toward her. “I’m sure your mom doesn’t really hate him.”
“Yeah, she does. You should hear them fight every time he comes to pick me up.” She shrugged. “That’s why I started staying at school on the weekends. It was easier than listening to them fight.”
I had no idea what to say to that. At all.
At noon on a Wednesday there were not many cars parked in the Christmas tree farm lot, and Walt was sitting inside the pay stand with his feet up, drinking coffee. When I asked if anyone had found a cell phone, he shook his head.
“I’m pretty sure I lost it at the top of the cut-your-own lot,” I said, “in the weeds toward the back.” I fished one of my Dog Daze business cards out of my pocket and handed it to him. “If anyone finds it, will you give me a call?”
He glanced at it and tucked it into a receipt pad. “Sure thing.”
“You know,” said Melanie, “if you left it turned on, we could call the number and maybe hear it ringing. That way you could just follow the ring.”
I stared at her in amazement, and Walt grinned. “Smart kid.”
“Do you mind if we go up there and try it?” I asked.
He waved us on with a “Good luck.” And Melanie and I hurried back to the car.
There was only one attendant at the top of the lot—the dour-faced man who had been so interested in Cisco—and he gave us a hard look as we went by. I ignored him and followed the path past the parking area to the end of the lot, bouncing over the rutted ground until we reached the row where we had found our Christmas tree. My theory was that the phone had either fallen out of my pocket while I was cutting the tree, or while I was chasing Cisco. So this seemed like a good place to start.
Cisco was panting so excitedly at the sight of all the greenery—and very possibly remembering his happy bunny-chase—that I didn’t have the heart to leave him in the car. I snapped on his leash and held onto it tightly as we started down the row of stately evergreens.
“Okay,” I told Melanie, “let’s start here. Dial this number.” I gave her my cell number and waited until she had punched it into her phone, listening intently.
There was absolutely no one on the mountaintop but us. Brilliant puffy clouds drifted over a cobalt sky and the air was still and cold. There wasn’t even enough breeze to stir the trees. I listened, and heard absolute silence.
Melanie shrugged. “Voice mail,” she said, and disconnected.
“Okay, let’s try over there.”
We walked to the end of the grove, stopping every now and then to try again, and reached the brambly field with the trailer parked at one end of it. To my surprise, there was a beat-up, oddly familiar-looking pickup truck in front of the trailer today. I knew that Walt employed seasonal workers, and wondered if one of them might actually be living in that wretched place.
“Okay,” I said, “if it’s not around here, it’s just not here. Let’s give it one more try, then head back. I’m hungry.”
Cisco pulled at the end of the leash, sniffing the ground intently, and I let him. Sometimes a dog just has to be a dog, and I was sure the ground was saturated with the smell of rabbits. Melanie dialed again, and I listened for the ring, but what I heard was not at all what I expected. The sound carried clearly on the cold air, and it was coming from the pickup truck.
Melanie said, “Sounds like a baby crying.”
I said uneasily, “I think someone is living in that trailer.”
I did not know why that should make me uneasy, but I recalled I had gotten the same bad feeling the last time I had been here. When you’ve worked with dogs as long as I have, the one thing you learn is to listen to your instincts. And my instincts now were making my scalp prickle.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get some lunch.”
I started to turn, and then the door to the truck opened. A female voice, sounding a little frantic, called, “Nick, hurry up, can’t you? The baby is crying! I think she’s cold!”
I stared at the truck, suddenly realizing why it looked so familiar to me. The last time I’d seen it, it had been parked on my porch. And I saw the girl get out of the passenger door, holding a small, wailing bundle close to her chest. The breath left my body as all the pieces fell into place.
“Oh, my God,” I said softly. “Ashleigh.”
___________
SIXTEEN
I turned quickly to Melanie. “Wait here,” I said and started toward the trailer. But I hadn't taken a full step before it struck me: I was doing it again. I was accustomed to giving commands and having them obeyed and to going my own way without the encumbrance of someone who could not be counted upon to take care of herself. But I couldn't just leave a nine-year-old girl alone in a pine grove while I confronted a runaway and a possible kidnapper. I rethought quickly.
“Give me your phone,” I said, and transfer Cisco's leash to her hand as I took it and dialed 9-1-1. “Come on, we've got to talk to that girl in the truck. Hold on to Cisco. Don't let him jump.”
The dispatcher answered as we plowed through the weeds toward the trailer. “Rita, it's Raine. Listen, I'm at Walt Akers' Christmas Tree Farm, at the top of the cut-your-own lot. I can see Ashleigh Lewis. She's in Lester Stokes' blue pickup truck and it's parked in front of an old trailer in an empty field. I'm going to try to keep her here, but I need you to get a squad car out here just as quick as you can.”
I was walked fast and Melanie huffed to keep up with me. “Is that girl a criminal?” Her eyes looked twice as big behind the glasses. “Are the police coming?”
Rita said, “Hold on a minute, Raine.”
“I can't hold on! I–”
Cisco was starting to leap and lunge as we drew close to the trailer, and Melanie stumbled to keep up with him. I quickly disconnected and grabbed the leash, but Ashleigh had already noticed me. She tried to duck back into the truck but I increased my stride and called, “Ashleigh?” I drew Cisco into a sharp heel and leaned down to whisper to Melanie. “I'm just going to talk to her. Stay with me. Stay quiet.”
“Hi,” I said, trying not to breathe hard as I came up to Ashleigh, pushing aside the thorns and brambles that clung to my coat. “I’m Raine Stockton. We met at the hospital yesterday. You were with my friend Ruth Holloway, remember?”
She placed a protective hand over the baby’s head and regarded me with a defiant look on her face, but her eyes were pure deer-in-the-headlights. Quickly they flickered from Cisco to Melanie and then back to me. I transferred the leash back to Melanie. “Wind it around your hand like I showed you,” I told her. My eyes were on Ashleigh. “Keep him in a Sit. You're a good trainer. You can do it.”
I gave Cisco the palm-out hand signal for "stay", and I took a few steps forward, watching Ashleigh. “You know just about everyone in this county is looking for you, don’t you?” I said gently. “They think you kidnapped the baby.”
Behind me, Melanie said. “Holy cow! A kidnapper.”
The tiny wails were hiccupping with fatigue now, and Ashleigh pressed the baby closer, awkwardly swaying back and forth to soothe it. “I didn’t kidnap anybody,” she returned shrilly. “They can’t take her!”
“I know that,” I said and came closer. “You can’t kidnap your own baby, can you?”
She looked at me with an awful flood of horror and guilt in her eyes, and she held the baby so tightly to her chest that tiny little choking sounds started to come from the depths of the blanket. I surged forward, but she released the ferocity of her grip and the whimpering became more ordinary. A big t
ear rolled down Ashleigh’s cheek. She ducked her head to the blanket to hide it. “I didn’t know,” she said brokenly. “I didn’t know what to do. I thought—I knew if my dad found out—I couldn’t let him find out. I just couldn’t.”
She looked at me with eyes that were filled with torment, desperate for forgiveness, and I nodded with a slow and horrible understanding. The bloody sheets in the bleach-filled tub were not evidence of a murder, but of a birth. The phone call I had overheard, begging for help…
“You put the baby in the duffle bag,” I said, “and sneaked her into the manger when no one was looking. What did you do with her while you were at school?”
“I put her in my closet with the radio on in case she cried. I didn’t know what else to do. It was warm and I wrapped her in lots of blankets. I didn’t know what else to do.”
My heart lurched at that, and she went on, “But I couldn’t keep her there. I knew if my daddy came back, if he found her…Nick came and took us to his brother's house and he said we'd be safe there, but I didn't feel so hot, and I didn't have diapers or bottles or anything, and if anybody saw me buying them, or Nick either, they'd know, and I couldn't stay there forever, hiding. So I decided to leave her in town, where somebody would be sure to find her, and then I’d run away. I had my mother’s wedding ring, I took it out of my daddy’s truck the night before, and I thought I could pawn it for some money, maybe a bus ticket…”
“But you lost it in that hunter's truck. You stole his wallet.”
She nodded miserably. “But there was only about fifty dollars in it. Nick said the sheriff was looking for me, and I didn’t have enough money to run away…And then my dad was dead and it didn’t matter anymore, don't you see how funny that is? None of it mattered anymore!” Her voice rose with hysteria and her eyes had a wild look. Behind me, Melanie had gone absolutely silent. I didn't dare look around to check on Cisco.
“But the police were so mean and I was so scared, and they said they had already put Nick in jail and they didn't even know what I had done yet…And then when Ms. Holloway took me in, and then when the county gave her my baby—my baby—and she was right there in the house with me… it was like a sign from God, you know?” She looked at me helplessly, her eyes swimming. “A sign from God. I had to take her, don’t you see? She’s mine and she’s come home to me and we have to be together. ”
“Oh, Ashleigh,” I said. How could you argue with a sign from God? “You’re fourteen years old. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. You can’t even get a job without a guardian’s permission, and who’s going to take care of the baby while you’re in school? Ashleigh, you’ve got to think this through. You tried to do the right thing for your baby once. It’s not too late.”
She was shaking her head before I finished speaking. Tears were streaming down her face. “Nick is going to get a job. He’s sixteen. We’re going to go out west, we’ve got money now—we’re going to have money—and I can take care of her. I love her, and I’m her mother, and she’s all I’ve got left, the only family I have. It’s going to be fine, we’re going to be fine, and you can’t take her from me!”
“Ashleigh—”
Behind me the door of the trailer burst open and Nick roared, “Ashleigh, get in the truck!”
We both whirled. The baby started screaming. Cisco barked. Melanie exclaimed, “Hey! It's the kid from the drug bust!”
Nick stood at the open door with a cardboard box in his arms and a smell like burning plastic wafting out behind him. His eyes were filled with terror and rage. He shouted at Ashleigh, “She’s the one with the damn drug dog! Go! Go!”
He plunged down the steps and Ashleigh scrambled to get inside the truck and I saw, incongruently, that the box was filled with baby Jesus figurines. I made a split-second decision. I was close enough to grab Ashleigh or at least the baby. But that would mean leaving Melanie and Cisco, who were on the driver's side of the truck, vulnerable and exposed to Nick. I dashed around the front of the truck toward Melanie just as Nick pushed by with the cardboard box, shouting to Ashleigh, “Get in the truck!”
Another man appeared at the doorway of the trailer and yelled, “Hold it right there, kid, and I mean it! You ain’t going nowhere!”
“We had a deal!” Nick shouted at him. He tossed the box in the back of the truck just as I reached Melanie and grabbed Cisco's leash from her hand. She watched with big eyes as Nick wrenched open the driver’s door. Ashleigh stood paralyzed, staring at him in horrified disbelief while the baby screamed in her arms and Nick yelled at her, “Get in!”
“You think I don’t know what’s going on?” The man with rage in his face lunged down the steps of the trailer. It was the man from the trailer park who had asked if Cisco was a drug dog. The man who had been manning the netting stand when we were here the last time. The man they called Dusty, who carried a knife strapped to his belt. “I cut you a deal, trying to be a nice guy, give you a break, the next thing I know you got drug dogs sniffing around here. You narced on me, didn’t you kid? Didn’t you?”
“Back off, Dusty, I’ll run you over, I swear I will!”
Ashleigh was half-in and half-out of the truck, clutching the screaming baby tightly to her chest, her face terrified. The truck engine screeched and roared to life. With a single lunge, Dusty grabbed Ashleigh, his arm beneath her throat and pulled her away from the truck. He had a knife in his hand.
Everything happened in a matter of seconds. The first thing that flashed into my mind was, That could have been me or Melanie, if I had run the other way when Nick came out. I began to wonder if there really was such a thing as guardian angels. Cisco started barking excitedly and lunging at the leash. I pulled him back, holding on to Melanie, trying to stay clear of the truck, which had started to roll backwards. Dusty shouted, “I’ll off her, I swear I will, and your brat, too! Just like I did her old man when he crossed me! You don’t want to mess with me, kid, I got nothing to lose!”
Ashleigh screamed, “Nick!” The baby wailed. Nick looked out of the window of the truck, his face stark-white and his eyes wild with fear.
Cisco’s barks became high and frantic. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of movement from somewhere behind the trailer, and I realized with a shock of dismay and horror what Cisco was barking at. This was the moment. This was the disaster that had been waiting to happen. This was the consequence of my lazy training habits and Cisco's lack of impulse control. He saw Buck behind the trailer, and nothing—not all my strength, not all my prayers, not all the angels in Heaven—could stop him from leaping to the man he loved.
I cried, “Melanie, run!” I jerked mightily on the leash with both hands and tripped over the uneven ground. The leash flew from my hands and Cisco flew from my grasp, racing directly into the path of the oncoming truck. I screamed, “Cisco!”
Melanie cried, “Hey!” and scrambled after Cisco. I lurched for her and grabbed only air. Brakes squealed; dirt and gravel flew. I screamed again. Dusty looked from me to the oncoming dog to Nick, but what he did not see was Buck, stepping quietly out from behind the trailer with his gun drawn.
Melanie yelled again, “Hey, Cisco!” and Cisco turned his head in response to her voice. When he did, she turned and ran back toward me. Cisco chased her, just as he might be expected to do, and both of them bounded into my arms. At some point, I was actually able to draw a breath, my heart started beating again, and I heard Buck say, “Drop the knife, Harper.”
Nick, with panic in his eyes, slammed the truck into gear and it shot forward. He fought the wheel for control as the truck bounced across the rutted ground toward the dirt road that led down the mountain. But he only made it about twenty yards before a patrol car, with a single blast on its siren, pulled out from the shelter of the tree rows and blocked his way. I could see the cloud of dust that another police car, fast approaching, kicked up in the distance. By the time I looked back at Buck, Dusty was in handcuffs and Buck was saying, “Dusty Harper, you are under arr
est for the murder of Earl Lewis, and for manufacturing and trafficking in controlled substances. You have the right to remain silent…”
“Holy cow,” Melanie said, big eyed. “It’s a real drug bust!”
My knees started to turn to jelly. I sank slowly to the ground, one arm around Melanie, the other around Cisco. “Your dad,” I managed, my whole body shaking, “is going to kill me.”
***
Within minutes, the mountaintop was swarming with police cars. Nick was in one, Dusty was in another, and Ashleigh was sobbing in a third. Deputies moved in and out of the trailer, removing equipment and product. Peggy Miller arrived in an SUV with Ruth and Jack Holloway. The car had barely stopped moving before Ruth tumbled out, dressed only in jeans and a sweater with house slippers on her bare feet. Her expression was frantic and she looked neither right nor left but ran straight for the sound of the crying baby. Almost as soon as the baby was transferred to her arms, the wails diminished into weary, gurgling whimpers.
Melanie took it all in with confident, eager absorption. “It’s a meth lab,” she informed me. “We should have figured. Meth labs account for up to twenty percent of the gross income in rural populations. Lucky it didn’t blow up,” she added matter-of-factly. “We’d all be ka-powy.”
Once again, she left me without anything at all to say.
Buck came over to me, greeting us with a pleasant nod and a tip of his hat. “Afternoon, ladies,” he said, glancing around. “Shopping for a Christmas tree?”
“What are you doing here?” I demanded hoarsely. “You couldn't have gotten here this fast. I only called five minutes ago.” My throat was still dry, and every time I thought about Cisco and Melanie dashing into the path of that truck my hands started to shake again. To hide it, I kept them tightly wound around Cisco’s leash, which did not discourage him from making anxious, happy sounds in his throat and trying to leap up on Buck.
