Burning Ridge

by Margaret Mizushima

  “The key is the silver one beside the truck key,” Cole told him, throwing open the back door as soon as the sheriff parked. “I’ve got Robo. Go ahead and open the doors into the surgery room.”

  Relieved that his respiratory equipment was now seconds away, Cole hoisted Robo out of the back seat and carried him through the lobby into the surgery room. He laid him on the stainless steel surgical table and positioned him on his back. Grabbing a cannula, he opened Robo’s limp jaw, positioned his tongue out of the way, and performed the intubation. Within seconds, he hooked up the oxygen, made sure that the knob for passing the sedative was set to off, and let the machine start sending life-giving air to Robo’s lungs.

  As he watched the dog’s chest rise and fall in a regular pattern, he thought, Okay, buddy, you’re safe for now. But where is she? Where’s Mattie?

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Cole didn’t have time to waste. He’d bought a reprieve by using the respirator, but Robo was far from medically stable. He needed to know what drug had been injected into this dog and what he could do to reverse its action.

  McCoy was on his cell phone. “Send Johnson over with it now. Tape off the yard. Avoid going in there until I can get back with Detective LoSasso.”

  After ending the call, McCoy turned to Cole. “Garcia found a dart in the grass by the house, and it’s on its way here. I should get back to the scene, but do you need me to help you?”

  “Riley can help until I get Tess to come in.” Cole began securing Robo to the table with straps to keep him from falling off in case of seizures. “You can take my truck.”

  “I’ll go back with Deputy Johnson after he brings the dart. What does Robo need?”

  Cole listened to Robo’s heartbeat and felt reassured that it was still steady and strong. “He’s heavily sedated, either with a drug overdose or with something that suppresses his breathing. I have some anesthesia reversal drugs on hand, but I need to know what I’m dealing with to determine what to use.”

  McCoy glanced at the machine that was breathing for Robo. “Is he stable now?”

  “For the moment. But I don’t know how long that will last, whether there are side effects to what he’s been given, or whether the drug’s done any permanent damage to his brain or heart. The sooner we can get this state reversed, the better.” He looked at Riley. “Can you stay beside him while I search for options?”

  Although pale, the teen appeared to be back in control of her emotions. She stepped forward to follow through with what she’d been asked.

  “Let me know if anything changes or if he starts to move, okay?” Cole said.

  Riley nodded.

  Cole called Tess, waking her from sleep, and she agreed to come as soon as possible. He hurried to the office to power up his laptop.

  Johnson arrived with the dart, which had been sealed into a clear, plastic bag labeled “Biohazard.” The sheriff turned the baggie to study the dart’s front and back, and then laid it on the desk beside Cole’s computer. “Cole, Deputy Johnson and I both have to go back to Mattie’s house. I want to leave this dart with you, but I don’t have a spare officer to stay and keep it within the departmental chain of custody. I want to swear you in as a Special Deputy.”

  Cole glanced up from his computer. “Now?”

  “Right now. Do you accept the duty of maintaining this evidence and keeping it within your possession until it’s returned to another law enforcement officer?”

  “I do.”

  “You are officially appointed. Call me with an update when you can.” And with that, McCoy and Johnson hurried out the front door.

  “Is Robo still the same?” Cole called to Riley through the pass-through.

  “Yes. He hasn’t moved.”

  Cole picked up the bag and examined the dart. It was exactly like the ones used by the wildlife department: heavy gauge, one-and-a-quarter inch, steel needle; four inch plastic cylinder that contained the dosage; and an orange plastic, daisy-shaped flight stabilizer at the rear.

  With the tranquilizer delivery system confirmed, now he needed to figure out what drug had been in the cylinder. His first thought was BAM, the drug the wildlife department used to sedate wild animals. BAM was actually a combination of drugs, and they planned to use it on the mountain sheep in a few weeks. Unfortunately, though Cole had ordered the kits that contained the reversal agent, he hadn’t received them yet.

  He carried both laptop and dart into the surgery room where he could relieve Riley. He set them down on a countertop and tapped the drug reference words onto the keyboard. He quickly located an official site for BAM and opened the webpage.

  Scanning through the information, he zeroed in on its effects. It worked quickly, provided low-level sedation for two to four hours, and was often the drug of choice because it allowed relaxed respirations—no “frozen chest.”

  Studying Robo, he processed the information. Frozen chest was a good description of this dog’s condition, which meant that either a different drug had been used, or Robo had been given an overdose. Which is it?

  “What can we do to help him?”

  Riley was apparently growing impatient with doing nothing, but Cole wasn’t ready to inject another drug into Robo’s bloodstream just yet. He scrolled down to the section that talked about reversal of the drug. “I’ve got to do a little bit more research. Hang in there, kiddo.”

  BAM could be reversed with two different drugs, one of which Cole kept in his drug inventory for reversing horse sedation for surgery, but he didn’t have the other drug on hand.

  He took out his cell phone and dialed Ed Lovejoy. Using his shoulder to hold the phone to his ear, he began typing in more reference words, searching for opioid sedation for animals. No answer from Ed. Instead of leaving a message, Cole disconnected and redialed. A list of websites popped onto the screen, and he clicked a link to one of them.

  “Come on,” he muttered as he listened to the phone ring. No answer. He redialed.

  He found an article that talked about an opioid called thiafentanil oxalate, a drug he’d never used. He skimmed through the list of websites again and found one with the drug insert information; he clicked on it.

  “What?” Ed Lovejoy’s angry voice boomed from the receiver.

  “Ed, this is Cole Walker. I’ve got an emergency and need your help.”

  “Gosh darn it. What time is it, Doc?”

  He wasn’t calling to deliver a time update. “Do you have any BAM kits on hand?”

  “No. I thought you were supposed to order those.”

  “They’re not in yet. You don’t have any left over from another project?”

  “No. If there are any left over, the state supervisor keeps those secured in his office.”

  Tucker York, Cole thought. At the same time, he scanned the drug insert that was displayed on his computer screen. “Have you ever used thiafentanil oxalate, Ed, brand name Thianil?”

  “Not on anything I’ve worked on. You have to keep that stuff out of the human food chain.”

  “What do you know about it?” Cole had swept down to the “warnings” part of the insert. The drug could cause slow breathing and cyanosis, which accounted for Robo’s blanched gums.

  “It’s dangerous stuff,” Ed was saying. “You have to be trained to use that shit. And wear gloves and a mask when you do.”

  “And to reverse it?”

  “I don’t know. I hear that without reversal, coming out of that stuff can be ugly.”

  Cole became aware that Tess had arrived when the front door opened and banged shut. At the sudden noise, Robo’s whole body jerked on the table, making Riley flinch and her eyes widen.

  The Thianil insert label warned that the sedated animal might react to sudden noise. Bingo! This has to be the drug!

  Robo’s paws began to paddle against his restraints, in what looked like the onset of a seizure. Cole’s window of time was closing. He had to make a decision. “Gotta go, Ed,” he said before tapping the end button and pl
unking his phone down on the desk.

  Tess came into the room, took one look at the situation, grabbed a stethoscope from the countertop, and placed its resonator on Robo’s chest to monitor his heartbeat. Looking relieved that someone else could take over, Riley stepped back against the wall, hugging herself.

  Cole skimmed to the “antidote” section—naltrexone hydrochloride. The drug he had in stock for equine surgeries. Now, the dosage—ten milligrams for each milligram of Thianil. He had no idea how much tranquilizer had been injected into Robo.

  He hurried to the locked cabinet where he stored sedatives while he ran through a mental calculation, converting the amount used for an animal weighing as much as a horse to a lower dose suitable for this one-hundred-pound dog.

  Tess called out Robo’s heart rate. Too fast. He was going into tachycardia.

  Cole drew the dosage into a syringe. “Intravenous,” he said to Tess.

  She grabbed one of Robo’s front legs, holding it still. Cole grasped the foreleg and applied pressure to occlude the vein, relieved when he saw it plump up beneath the dog’s short leg hair. He inserted the needle and pulled back on the plunger to make sure he was in the vein. Blood flowed into the syringe cylinder, and he injected half the dosage into Robo’s bloodstream.

  Holding his breath, he secured the syringe to Robo’s leg with strips of medical tape in case he needed to inject more of the medicine into the vein. Now it was white-knuckle time—all he could do was wait and see if the antidote helped or made Robo’s condition worse.

  In the first quiet seconds of waiting, a nervous flutter began to ripple his gut. There’d been no time to take in the fact that Mattie had gone missing and what that might mean. But he knew her well enough to know one thing for certain—she only would have separated from this dog at gunpoint.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Awareness crept into Mattie’s consciousness, fading in and out. She floated, unable to see. Darkness. Swaying. She was dangling, head down. She struggled to lift her face so that she could see, but the messages sent by her brain failed to reach her muscles.

  Nausea penetrated the inky oblivion. She was going to be sick. She struggled to right herself, but couldn’t budge. She smelled horse—the deep, musky scent of hay and grain. Leather creaked. A shod hoof struck against a rock.

  Gradually, it dawned on her that she was draped over a saddle on top of a horse. Its rolling gait made her gag. Robo! Is he okay? But her mind slipped away, back into the safety of not knowing.

  * * *

  Robo’s paddling motions had quieted. Cole kept one eye on him while he dialed Sheriff McCoy. “Let’s get a heart rate,” he murmured to Tess.

  McCoy answered. “What is it, Cole?”

  “Have you located Mattie yet?”

  “We haven’t. We’re searching for her. How is Robo?”

  “I’m trying an antidote, but he’s still unresponsive. Will you call me as soon as you know anything about Mattie?”

  “I’ll keep in touch to the extent that I can.”

  A wave of frustration hit him. “Keep me in the loop, Sheriff. Mattie’s like family to us.”

  McCoy paused and then said he would call back later. Cole ended the call with a promise to do the same when he had news about changes in Robo.

  As soon as he disconnected, Tess gave him details on Robo’s heart rate and oxygen level. Oxygen was normal—the respirator was doing its job. Heart rate had slowed, a positive response. Cole tapped Robo’s eyelid and was rewarded with a blink reflex, sluggish but better than nothing.

  He pushed half of what was left of the dosage into Robo’s vein.

  “What’s this about Mattie?” Tess asked, her face creased with concern.

  Keeping watch over Robo, he filled her in on what he knew, which was precious little.

  “Oh, dear,” she murmured. “Mattie would never leave this dog alone like that.”

  Cole glanced at Riley. She sagged against the wall, shivering. He wondered how she’d come to be at Mattie’s house and decided he would question her later.

  He tapped Robo’s eyelid again and got a healthy blink reflex. Robo began to gag and chew at the intubation tube, sending Cole into overdrive.

  “He’s coming around,” he said to Tess, at the same time pushing the last of the antidote into Robo’s vein. He grasped the syringe, jerked off the small piece of medical tape he’d used to secure it, and withdrew the needle from the vein.

  Robo’s chest heaved, indicating he was starting to breathe on his own. Cole unhooked the intubation tube from the respirator while Tess turned the knob to shut it off. The beautiful sound of strong and steady exhalations whooshed through the short tube that was still secure within Robo’s trachea.

  Moving fast, Cole deflated the cuff on the intubation tube, unwrapped the tape that held it in place, and withdrew the tube entirely. At this point Robo’s eyes opened, and he started to struggle against the safety restraints. “Let’s unstrap him.”

  They released the straps on both sides of the table. Gripping Robo to keep him from falling, Cole skirted the surgical table to get behind the big dog. “Stay back,” he warned Tess. “He could bite.”

  Robo wouldn’t mean to, but his bite-reflex might be strong before he became fully aware of his surroundings. Risking a bite himself, he clasped Robo around the chest and transferred him to the floor in one smooth movement. Then he backed away to give the dog the room he needed to fully recover.

  Robo flopped a couple of times before he could right himself. He paused for a few seconds, looking around to take in his surroundings, and then gave his head a mighty shake. Though Cole was tempted to kneel beside him, he stood back, waiting for Robo to adjust to his environment on his own.

  In all his years of practice, he’d never been so relieved to watch a recovery. The antidote had worked exactly as it was supposed to, reversing the action of the opioid and restoring Robo’s ability to breathe and move within minutes.

  Robo anchored his front feet and pushed the top half of his body up to sit, resting for a brief moment before standing with a quick lurch. He shook his whole body, including his tail, his feet lifting from the floor in small hops. When he finished, he focused on Cole and offered a half tail wag before sweeping the room with his eyes. He trotted toward the exit, alternating between nose down to sniff the floor and nose up to sniff the air.

  Cole felt certain he was searching for Mattie.

  “Well, that was a miracle,” Tess murmured.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Riley asked, her voice thick with pent-up emotion.

  Deciding it was safe to approach now, Cole went to Robo and bent to stroke him gently on his side. “Let’s ask him,” he answered in a quiet tone. “Are you going to be okay, buddy?”

  Robo looked up at Cole, waved his tail a couple beats, and then focused his stare on the door, lifting one paw to scrape it in a request to be let outside.

  Cole continued to pet him in long, firm, soothing strokes. “I think he’s going to be fine, Riley. Thank goodness you found him when you did. He wouldn’t have lasted on his own much longer. How did you happen to be there?”

  Riley looked at Cole for a second before letting her gaze slide away. “Mattie told me to come over.”

  He’d been around teenage girls enough to know when one wasn’t being as truthful as she should. He gave her his stern dad face. “Are you sure? She told you to come over this late at night?”

  Color infused the girl’s pale face. “Well, she said she’d call in ten minutes, but when she didn’t, I tried to call her. She didn’t answer, so I rode my bike over to her house.”

  Cole nodded, watching Robo and thinking this version sounded closer to the truth. Robo waited patiently beside him, willing the door to open with his eyes, and Cole bent to place his stethoscope against his chest to listen to the strong, steady heartbeat for a minute. He felt confident that the opioid had been neutralized and all of the dog’s systems had returned to normal.

  While he w
as listening to Robo’s chest, another thought occurred to him. “Riley, I need to look at your cell phone logs. I need the time that Mattie texted you and the time that you called her. That will lock in the gap of time when Robo was sedated.”

  And when Mattie went missing, he thought. Dread washed through him as the inevitable conclusion hit. When Sophie went missing a month ago, he’d vowed he’d never let someone he loved get taken from him again. But he had a bad feeling that’s what had just happened.

  Riley looked embarrassed as she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. “I might have called her more than once.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Let me jot down the times.” He reached for the phone, and Riley gave it over with reluctance. He imagined it held information that she considered private. “All I want to look at are your texts to Mattie and your call log.”

  When Cole went to the countertop for notepad and paper, Robo gave up on the door and trotted around the room, giving everything a cursory sniff. He whined, darting back to the door to paw at it before dashing around the room again.

  Cole located the string of texts to and from Mattie. The last one from Mattie told Riley she would call in ten minutes, after she took care of Robo. He recorded the time the text had been sent—10:10 PM. The call log showed five calls from Riley that Mattie didn’t answer, one right after the other, starting at 10:30. A twenty minute gap of time.

  As he dialed McCoy, he watched Robo search the premises for Mattie’s scent, the dog acting more and more distressed.

  The sheriff answered immediately, and there was an edge of anxiety in his typically calm voice. “Yes, Cole. Any news?”

  “We reversed the drug. Robo’s up and moving around.”

  “Thank goodness.”

  “Riley and Mattie had been texting this evening, and we can narrow down the time that Mattie stopped answering her phone.” Cole couldn’t bring himself to say the words “went missing.” He explained the time gap between texts and calls.