Tainted Trail

by Wen Spencer

  “A mature, level head”—Max took out his cigar case, flicked it open, and selected a cigar—“worldly knowledge, and a big gun I’m not afraid to use.”

  She laughed, showing sound, clean teeth. “How big is that gun of yours?”

  Max’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, and then he grinned. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  Sam’s smile widened. “If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

  Max idly flipped the cigar through his fingers as he narrowed his light gray eyes at Sam. Reaching some decision, he leaned back, unholstered his pistol, and carefully placed it on the table so it pointed at no one. “SIG Sauer Model P210, nine-round magazine in nine millimeter.” He kept his hand on it so even with a quick grab, Sam couldn’t pick it up.

  Sam reached behind her and pulled her pistol. Her gun had sleek lines and a molded grip. “Heckler and Koch P9S. Also nine in nine.”

  “Nice piece,” Max said around his unlit cigar.

  “You’ve got a nice rod there yourself.”

  “Some of us are still eating,” Kraynak grumbled, then muttered softly, shaking his head, “Gun-bunny foreplay.”

  Max and Sam blushed, and the guns vanished from the table.

  Ukiah frowned, feeling like he just missed something huge that everyone else could see, like he had suddenly gone blind to elephants wandering through the lounge.

  “I’m serious about the help,” Sam said. “I’ve been in Pendleton for four years. I know the locals and the area. If you need any help, give me a call. I’ll gladly trade information for local color.”

  She stole one of Max’s fries, popped it into her mouth with a grin, and strolled away.

  “Woof,” Kraynak said after the lounge door closed behind her.

  “Woof, woof,” Max said, picking up the business card and stowing it away.

  “You think we can trust her?” Ukiah asked.

  “I would like to trust her,” Max admitted with a grin, and then sobered. “You didn’t find Kicking Deer?”

  “He’s got a big, angry grandson that didn’t like me on sight. Apparently they’ve gotten a string of people showing up and claiming to be the Umatilla Wolf Boy.” Max’s eyebrows went up in alarm but relaxed as Ukiah continued with, “But they didn’t look like me.”

  “That’s weird,” Kraynak said.

  Ukiah agreed with a twinge of guilt. While Kraynak was one of his and Max’s best friends, they’d never revealed Ukiah’s alien origins to the homicide detective. Max and Indigo both stressed that the fewer people who knew the truth, the better. Luckily, being raised by wolves seemed to excuse most of his oddities.

  Speaking of oddities. “Another weird thing, Jared Kicking Deer guessed I was here to find Alicia—although from what Sam said, it’s common knowledge that two private investigators from Pittsburgh are flying in to look for her.”

  “There is that,” Max said, although his tone suggested that he didn’t believe it.

  Kraynak pushed abruptly away from the table. “We’ll check his priors tomorrow with the police, if Alicia doesn’t turn up.”

  “What did you two find out?” Ukiah asked.

  “We talked to the incident commander, Tim Winholtz,” Max said. “He seems to know what he’s doing. They had thirty people out looking today, but they didn’t turn anything up.”

  In rugged country, a broken or twisted ankle could strand a hiker on or near a trail. Searchers without tracking abilities could find such a hiker “lost” this way. Experienced hikers left markers when they ventured away from the trail. Alicia was experienced and intelligent. It boded ill that so many searchers hadn’t found her.

  “Any helicopter support?” Ukiah asked.

  Max shook his head. “They weren’t able to bring in the helicopter until late. That front that we flew through this afternoon kept them buttoned down all morning.”

  “It rained?” Ukiah asked. Rain would make tracking harder.

  “It just blew over,” Max said. “Strong gusts and overcast. Not flying weather. Not in the mountains.”

  “What’s the weather for tomorrow?” Ukiah asked.

  “It’s a fifty-fifty chance that it will clear up enough.” Kraynak said. “We’ll know tomorrow.”

  Max sighed, fidgeting with his unlit cigar. “Oh, hell, Kraynak, I hope we find Alicia tomorrow—open and shut.”

  “You getting a bad feeling about this?” Kraynak asked.

  Max nodded. “Real bad.”

  Ukiah winced. The last time Max had a bad feeling about a case, Ukiah got killed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Bear Wallow Creek Campground, Ukiah, Oregon

  Wednesday, August 25, 2004

  They took I-395 out of Pendleton an hour before dawn, running nearly straight south by the GPS. After passing through a small town called Pilot Rock, the road began to climb through bare, rolling hills. All signs of civilization fell behind, except for the unbroken fence that paralleled the highway on either side. From road edge to horizon, the vegetation stayed at a constant four-inch height. After years in Pennsylvania, where chest-high weeds and scrub trees would spring up if not constantly cut back, the landscape seemed otherworldly and almost lifeless.

  They had traveled nearly thirty miles before pine trees appeared. The trees started deep in the steep valleys, scattered and few. Slowly, as they drove farther south, the pines increased and crept up the sides of the hills until they blanketed everything.

  During the next thirty miles, they passed only one or two houses and a handful of dirt turnoffs. The first true intersection was the lonely road back to the town of Ukiah. Only two signposts marked the crossroad. The first signpost merely labeled I-395 as it continued and the crossing road as State Route 244. The second sign read UKIAH and pointed eastward, down 244, though nothing seemed to lay in that direction.

  “They left out signs for you, kid,” Max said to Ukiah, but his eyes were on Kraynak, who had grown silent and tense during the trip.

  Kraynak’s eyes narrowed at the desolate crossroads and the road that had been empty of all other traffic. “Damn it! Alicia couldn’t have found a place more fucking isolated.”

  “We’ll find her,” Max said quietly.

  It was odd that Ukiah could remember the town he was named after perfectly, and yet completely wrong. The city of his memories was large, imposing, loud, and frightening. Three streetlights shined on the same exact buildings, only now the structures appeared few, small, and rustic.

  The tin man made out of welded parts, marking the only gas station, had terrified him as a child. Why? Even with his perfect memory of his terror, he couldn’t recall the mindset that viewed the metal scarecrow with horror. It looked quaintly harmless to him now.

  The lone bar, decorated with a hundred pair of antlers tacked to its wood siding, made him laugh. Even the junkyard seemed pitifully tiny. And then the town was passed. At forty miles per hour, it had taken less than a minute to drive through it and back into wilderness.

  “I thought it was bigger.” Ukiah turned to watch the town vanish behind them. “It seemed bigger.”

  “You had nothing to compare it with,” Max said. “You’re used to Pittsburgh. Of course it seems smaller now.”

  Bear Wallow Creek Campground was fifteen miles out of Ukiah. The only building they passed, once clearing the outskirts of the town, was abandoned and collapsing. They arrived as the gray of predawn set in. A narrow dirt road crept through a series of primitive campsites, showing no water or electric hookups. The bus that served as base camp for the Umatilla County search-and-rescue team sat wedged into one of the campgrounds. Kraynak’s tan Volkswagen van with Pennsylvania plates sat parked across the narrow lane from the bus, seeming horribly out of place.

  They climbed out of the rental car, yawning and stretching in the chilled morning. Ukiah breathed deep the mountain air, filling his lungs with the sense of home. This was what he remembered. This was all he remembered before his Mom Jo caught him: the steep hills and mounta
ins; the clear, cold air; and the firs, towering so straight and high that one looked and looked and looked to see their tops.

  If he was the Kicking Deer boy, he had lost every memory of the flat, treeless farm on the reservation.

  “Let’s check in and then gear up.” Max headed across the loose gravel parking lot, his footsteps loud in the silence.

  Tim Winholtz was a lean thirty-year-old who barely looked up from his maps when they entered. He held a bulky satellite phone to his ear, shaking his head as he listened.

  “Bad news?” Max asked.

  “Oh, the forecasts are changing, but just for the bad. No helicopter support for the day.”

  “This is my partner,” Max said.

  Ukiah took the cue and held out his hand. “Ukiah Oregon.”

  “You’re kidding. Like the town?”

  “Yeah. My adopted parents named me after the town.”

  “So you grew up around here?”

  “I guess.”

  “What tribe are you from?”

  “I don’t know.” In June, he discovered that he understood the language of the Nez Percé tribe, which he had in common with the Pack. It was the first human language Coyote learned, and thus all his Gets knew it. It was unlikely, however, that Ukiah could have remained hidden from the Pack all this time if he had lived with the Nez Percé. The Kicking Deers were Cayuse, a tribe he and the Pack knew little about.

  Max rescued Ukiah from the conversation. “Daylight’s burning! We’ll keep in touch with you, Winholtz. Come on, kid.”

  “Good luck,” Winholtz called as Max hustled them back out of the mobile command bus.

  The volunteer search-and-rescue team members started to arrive in their personal cars as he and Max did their traditional wrangling. The small GPS tracer went on without question; it was vital in keeping them together during the tracking. Max insisted on the bulletproof vest and the voice-activated two-way radio. Ukiah managed to talk Max out of the headset-mounted camera and his pistol. Max backed down on the gun only because by the strict letter of the law, their Pennsylvania concealed-weapon permits weren’t valid in Oregon; chances were good that they would encounter at least one police officer helping out on the rescue mission. Ukiah covered up his body armor with a black T-shirt labeled across the back with PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR, BENNETT DETECTIVE AGENCY in large white letters. He added a matching windbreaker to keep out the morning chill.

  Max tested the volume levels on the radio, then checked to make sure that Ukiah’s tracer showed up on the GPS system. “Okay. We’re ready to go.”

  Alicia’s campsite was just beyond the Volkswagen. Just a campfire, picnic table, and the Kraynaks’ four-person tent, it still had a homey, lived-in feel. Bear Wallow Creek bordered the small patch of land; it was so narrow he could have leapt across the stream, so clear he could see fish darting in the shadows. Across the stream, the hills climbed steeply upward, heavily wooded with tall firs. The Oregon wilderness seemed almost parklike, clear where in Pennsylvania there would have been tangled undergrowth.

  The other grad student, Rose, was slightly older than Alicia and much smaller. She sat at the picnic table, her hands hugged around a mug of steaming coffee, dark circles bruising her eyes from lack of sleep and worry.

  “It was so cold out last night,” Rose whispered into her coffee. “I hope Alicia kept warm.”

  Kraynak looked away. “Can you—can you tell Max and Ukiah what you told me on the phone?”

  “We normally only go out together,” Rose started quietly. “We’ve been doing a field map of this quadrangle as part of my master thesis. It’s the whole reason Alicia was here—Pitt doesn’t allow solo field trips because of safety.”

  Rose shifted forward her right foot and pulled up her pant leg to show off a bandage wrapped tightly around her ankle. “I twisted my ankle on Sunday, not badly, but it still hurts to walk. Alicia didn’t want me to put weight on it. She said I might hurt my ankle worse when a day or two of rest would completely heal it. We were planning to leave on Friday, and it’s a three-day drive home without cruise control. If my ankle doesn’t heal, I won’t be able to help drive home. All we had left was to double-check some of our findings—we could have even left early. Monday morning Alicia went out, alone, and didn’t come back. I feel so guilty.”

  Ukiah wondered if it was sexist of him to assume that Rose had nothing to do with Alicia’s disappearance just because she was a woman. Certainly if she had been a man, he would have examined her for blood traces first.

  He glanced guiltily at the woman. She was tiny, lucky to be five foot and break the hundred-pound threshold. Freckles bridged her nose. Laugh lines surrounded her dark eyes that were now filled only with concern and growing dread. It seemed unlikely, almost impossible, that she could have killed five-foot-eleven Alicia and hidden her body.

  Ukiah listened to Max and Kraynak question Rose as he ducked into the tent. Alicia’s ghost presence hovered inside: her scent, her DNA, and his memories of her attached to nearly everything in sight. Her sleeping bag lay smoothed flat on a surplus army cot, pillow on one end. Ukiah lifted her pillow, and found one of his T-shirts. At one time, the T-shirt had been identical to the one Ukiah was currently wearing. Alicia had torn the collar and sleeves off the shirt, and apparently was using it as a sleeping shirt.

  When did I give this to her? he wondered, and then remembered.

  The rain started suddenly and hard, a typical early-June Pittsburgh downpour. Mist rose from the hot asphalt as the rain sheeted down. The foyer door to Max’s Shadyside mansion—which doubled as the company’s offices—opened and then slammed shut.

  “Hello?” Ukiah called from the kitchen, putting his lunch dishes down on the granite countertop.

  “It’s me!” Alicia came laughing down the front hall into the kitchen, dripping wet.

  “You’re soaked!” Ukiah laughed with her.

  “It’s glorious! Come on!” She caught his hand, skin warm and wet, and tugged him out the back door and into the warm rain.

  It was wonderful; there was something intimately maternal about the wet warmth, as if the whole world embraced them. They stayed outside until he was thoroughly soaked, laughing, stomping in puddles, and dancing. Alicia hugged him, raindrops glistening in her eyelashes like diamonds.

  Oh, yes, she needed something dry afterward, so he loaned her the T-shirt, a pair of clean boxers, and the use of the second-floor laundry room. She must have kept the shirt.

  Ukiah laid his cheek against it. The T-shirt held Alicia’s scent, healthy and clean, no hint of violence, no drugs, nothing that would bring on a collapse on the trail—just Alicia.

  “You got any idea which direction she headed?” Max asked Rose outside the tent.

  “No, none. She got up early. She told me to sleep in, that she’d be back before dinner, and walked out of the tent. I heard her walk off, but I was already going back to sleep.”

  Under the bed was a collection of shoes: a colorful plaid pair of tennis shoes, low-heeled sandals, a worn pair of moccasins. He examined them for size and wear. Alicia was a woman’s size nine with a walk that wore down the outside heel of her shoes first.

  “The search-and-rescue people kept asking yesterday, as if I knew and just forgot I knew. I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask. I should have asked.” Exasperation mixed with guilt in Rose’s voice.

  Plastic milk crates made makeshift bookcases. The diverse selection of notebooks, magazines, and paperbacks were all tucked into Ziploc freezer bags of various sizes. The two Hillerman mystery novels were Alicia’s, as was a fat, tapestry-covered daily planner. He took the planner out, unsnapping the leather band that kept it closed. The book all but exploded, stuffed to overflowing with inserts and paper.

  He flipped through the planner. There was a notepad in the back, a plastic pouch containing small fossils, a business card holder, an address book—yes, he was listed under the “O’s” with smiley faces around his listing—a paper pouch for receipts,
and a photo album. The photographs included several school photos of Kraynak’s daughter, Sasha, a family portrait of the Kraynaks—Alicia included, one each of her dead parents, a trimmed Polaroid of Max prior to the graying at his temples, and three pictures of Ukiah himself—ages thirteen, seventeen, and twenty according to his driver’s license and the date they were taken.

  In his last two pictures, he hadn’t aged more than a couple days. In comparison, Sasha’s school photos showed the change that a year made in a child. Why had no one ever noticed how alien he was? Or had they, and just never commented to him?

  Most of the planner’s bulk, however, was made up of a fat day-per-page calendar covered heavily with yellow notes and one red flag marking last Sunday. Ukiah checked Monday, found it blank. He flipped through Tuesday and Wednesday and found them blank too. He flipped backward for a few days. Alicia filled the pages with her life; nothing sinister seemed to lurk under the surface, waiting to snatch her away the moment she was alone. He put his thumb to the edge of the pages and ruffled them by so each page registered in his sight only a second, and he counted back the days by odd numbers. No pages were missing.

  “She had a phone with her,” Rose was saying. “I thought if she got into trouble, she’d call for help.”

  Ukiah closed the planner, struggled a moment to get it snapped tight, and replaced it into the plastic bag. On top of the crates, he was only mildly surprised to find her jewelry case. Alicia never wore makeup; she flattered her vanity with earrings. Gems, semi-precious stones, and minerals dominated the collection. Many he recognized as ones he had seen her wear. There was a new influx of stone animal fetishes, dreamcatchers, and other Native American–influenced earrings. He closed the lid. Her jewelry-making tools sat in the box under the jewelry case, along with bags of various beads and wires.

  “Are you sure she has the phone with her?” Kraynak was asking. When Rose answered that she was positive, Kraynak asked why.