Tainted Trail

by Wen Spencer

  Max added his own style of growl. “That’s enough, Kicking Deer.”

  Jared released Ukiah’s arm. Whatever the sheriff thought of Ukiah’s condition, though, was carefully hidden away behind a policeman’s neutral facade.

  “We’ve lost a day.” Kraynak broke the silence. “We’ve got a lot to make up.”

  Kicking Deer backed up to give Ukiah room. “Lead the way, magic boy.”

  Ukiah knelt, ignoring the twinge of pain the action put through his knee and hip. He sorted through the confusion of footprints left by the search-and-rescue team to find Alicia’s trail. Luckily, the SAR team had fanned out, leaving her tracks fairly unmarred after the first twenty feet. While the narrow forest road had been somewhat visible from the cliff above, it was totally invisible now. Apparently disoriented by the fall, Alicia headed away from road.

  Several hundred feet from the cliff, he stopped, frowning at what her tracks told him.

  “What is it?” Max asked as the others caught up.

  “She stopped here for several minutes, moved forward a few feet, and then started off at another angle, faster, like she’s running from something.”

  “An animal?”

  He shrugged, unsure, and continued along her trail. Within minutes the truth was obvious. He hand signaled to Max to wait. “There’s a second set of footprints right over Alicia’s. A man was following her.” Ukiah backtracked the man’s trail, acting on a hunch. Disappointingly, yet as he expected, the track lead back to a slight trail coming down off the ridge. Ukiah returned to the others. “I don’t know how I missed him, but I think he was up on the ridge with Alicia. She might have been running from him when she fell.”

  Kraynak ground his teeth as he took out a cigarette and lit it.

  Max hissed out a curse. “Is she still heading away from the road?”

  Ukiah nodded.

  “I think we’ll just slow you down. Why don’t you take off, and we’ll follow in the Blazer.”

  Jared insisted on being able to tune into their radio link. Ukiah did a top-down check, making sure his body armor was fastened tight, that he had food, water, and his pistol.

  “I’m ready,” Ukiah said.

  “Be careful,” Max told him. “Don’t get too focused that you don’t see the danger.”

  Ukiah called the trail over his radio headset as he ran. “Alicia isn’t running, but her stride is long. She walks quickly. I don’t think she was hurt badly by the fall. There’s no more blood from her. She doesn’t pause long. She moves in a straight enough line. The man comes behind her, matching her stride. He wears boots, Timberlands, size ten. He is wearing blue jeans and a flannel shirt, mostly in blues. He walks easily, no brushing into trees or bushes; he is not in a hurry.”

  A few minutes later, he spoke again, slowing his run slightly so he had breath to talk. “I think she gave him the slip, though I don’t know how. She’s leaving a fairly obvious trail.”

  “For you.” Max spoke over the radio for the first time in a while.

  “Perhaps.” Ukiah returned to the point of separation, eyeing the man’s trail as it broke off. “The man starts to run. He’s tall, his legs are long, and his footprints are far apart. He seems fairly solid too, judging by the depth of his print. He’s a big man.”

  Over Max’s headset came the distant, explosive curse from Kraynak. This new information of a stalker could not come easy to Alicia’s uncle. Ukiah winced for Kraynak.

  A shimmering line of sun caught Ukiah’s eye. A hair dangled on a branch, so thin it was amazing that he could even perceive it, would not have except for the gleam of light on it. He plucked it free. A human hair. The dead cells gave up a vast store of information. Blond. Male. Blue-eyed. O-positive blood. Early thirties.

  Ukiah pocketed the hair and started again after Alicia.

  “She seems to know she has lost him. She pauses, turning, turning, I think she’s trying to get her orientation, figure out where she is. She starts forward again—still in the same direction. Perhaps she’s decided that just getting away from the man is the best course.”

  He ran, eyes on the ground, hurrying forward, ignoring his battered body, afraid of what he was going to find at the end. “She walks quickly, still not tired. She is in good condition.”

  “But she’s moving deeper into the park.”

  “She stops. She backs up. Something is in front of her.” Ukiah scouted forward and cursed. “He’s here. He got ahead of her and has been waiting. He stands with feet braced, so still, like a statue, sinking into the ground. He’s very, very patient to stand so long without moving—but when he does, he does not follow her. He turns and goes back.”

  “He just turns and goes?”

  “I don’t understand it, Max. Alicia has veered and gone down a trail through the creek’s undergrowth, she has to hunch down to run, but she scurries like a rabbit, sometimes on hands and knees. She must be afraid. Here’s a deer trail. She stands and starts to run. Here’s the man again, and she turns.

  “Alicia runs. Again the man turns, doesn’t follow. He’s going to cut her off again—Max, he’s herding her.”

  “Herding?”

  Ukiah needed to stop and pant out his explanation. “He’s getting in front of her, and forcing her to go the way he wants.”

  There was the rustle of paper. “Ukiah, I’ve got you on the monitor. Head after Alicia so I can see what direction she took.”

  Ukiah started down the deer trail after the running Alicia.

  “Oh, damn, Ukiah, the main road is in that direction. She was heading away from it, but now she’s pointed right at it.”

  Ukiah ran, despite the fact he was reaching the end of his strength, sickened by the realization that this drama took place five days earlier. No matter how fast he ran, he would not get to Alicia before she reached the road.

  And yet he couldn’t stop running.

  Minutes later, he hit the graded berm.

  “Oh, damn.” He stumbled to a halt, panting. “She’s at the road. There was a car pulled over, waiting. There were people here, standing still for a long time, waiting. Damn it, Max, she hit the road, saw the car, and probably thought she was saved.”

  “Maybe she was.” Max held out for hope.

  “No. No.” Ukiah groaned at what he could read in the torn earth. “They jumped her. She fought. They took her down to her knees, to her hands, to her face. They bloodied her. They lifted her up, and they put her in the car, and they drove away.”

  He followed as far as he could, limping now, but the dirt of the berm pounded out of the tires and the car moved on, unremarkable from the countless other cars that had traveled the highway since Monday. He finally gave up and sprawled out onto the hot asphalt, letting the heat bake through his worn body.

  Max’s Blazer came down the road, slowed and stopped a few feet shy of where he lay, protecting him from any oncoming traffic. He heard the county police car pull over to the berm, its tires crunching on the loose girt.

  Max and Kraynak got out of the Blazer, looked down the ribbon of empty road, and shook their heads. Kraynak sulked off, trailing the smoke of his Marlboros.

  “Come on.” Max tugged Ukiah up into a stand and helped him to the back of the Blazer. There, Max gave him a candy bar and made room for him in the cargo area. Rather than chewing, Ukiah simply let the chocolate melt in his mouth.

  “There.” Max shifted the climbing equipment into the backseat. “Lie down.”

  “I feel horrible that I’ve lost the trail,” Ukiah whispered, collapsing into the Blazer.

  “You did your best.” Max took out his map, unfolding it to study the whole, instead of the small area they occupied.

  Sheriff Kicking Deer got out of his car and came to stand beside Max, talking on his shoulder-mounted radio. “We’re out on 244, heading west back into Ukiah. The tracker says that she was forced into a car. Let Tim Winholtz know.”

  Max looked up from his map to gaze down the desolate stretch of road. “
They could have taken her anywhere. Pilot Rock. Pendleton. They could be all the way to Portland by now.”

  “We’re only going to find her,” Kicking Deer said, “if we can figure out who took her.”

  The Pittburghers stayed out from under foot while plaster prints of the tire tracks were made, photographs taken, and the whole area combed for evidence. Ukiah thought there would be none, for the people had waited with extraordinary patience. They had not paced, meandered about, smoked cigarettes, chewed gum, spat, or even rocked from foot to foot. They had stood at inhuman attention, sinking into the soft earth of the berm.

  “How did he do it?” Ukiah asked. “A million acres of forest, hundreds of miles of road, and yet he herded Alicia up onto the road right where a car was waiting. How did he do that?”

  “Radio and GPS,” Kraynak snapped from his far sulking point. “Like you and Max. The car could have coordinated with the field scout and been here, waiting.”

  “They would have needed practice to pull it off this flawlessly,” Max said.

  “Ex-military,” Kraynak guessed.

  “It would explain their orderliness,” Ukiah said. As an ex-Marine, Max lived at a level of military clean that amazed Ukiah’s mothers.

  “Maybe,” Max said. “Maybe there’s a lot more missing hikers than anyone knows.”

  Alicia had managed to leave one sign of her kidnapping. Somehow, while her assailants wrestled her to the ground, she had slipped her college ring off, pressed it into the dirt until it was almost invisible. It had been a chance in a million that anyone would ever find it, for the search for her had centered around the campground, now ten miles away.

  Jared Kicking Deer had found it, shifting gloved-covered fingers through the dirt in hopes of any evidence beyond impressions in the ground. He dropped the ring into a small plastic evidence bag and brought it to Kraynak to identify. “It’s hers. Those are her initials engraved there. Alicia Caroline Kraynak. ACK.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jared said quietly. “Were you in contact with Alicia prior to her disappearance?”

  Kraynak knew where the question was leading, and talked about his last conversation with Alicia. She had been happy and excited, and gave no indication that someone was stalking her, waiting for a moment to get her alone, to make her vanish.

  “She had a daily planner,” Kraynak told Jared. “It’s back at my hotel room. I looked through it briefly last night. It might have something in it.”

  Jared noted the diary into his case tablet. “I’ll get it later.” He tucked away the small pad and glanced over at Ukiah, who was limp with exhaustion. True worry got past the cop facade. “Will he be okay?”

  “He needs some more food,” Max said. “And lots of sleep, but he’ll be fine.”

  Jared accepted it as truth with a slight nod and a lessening of the worry. “He does good work.” He started for his car. “I’m going to drive back to the campground and question the other camper.”

  “She shouldn’t be left alone,” Kraynak stated.

  Jared frowned, then nodded. “People around here leave their keys in the car and their houses unlocked. I hate the thought that a girl can’t be safe alone in my county, but you’re right.”

  “If you don’t mind, we’ll tag along and see what Rose says.” Max looked around at the desolate stretch of road. “There’s nothing here for us.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Bear Wallow Creek Campground, Ukiah, Oregon

  Friday, August 27, 2004

  Rose shook her head, a hand covering her mouth as if to keep a sob or scream trapped within her, her eyes huge black buttons of fear. Her terror wreathed her like perfume. Ukiah put space between him and her fright as the others questioned the geology student; he was too tired to shield himself from its effects.

  He glanced into the tent and experienced a bolt of surprise that the tent was half empty, stripped of Alicia’s items. Then he remembered that Kraynak had packed her stuff the night before, intending to take Alicia straight home after this experience.

  “No, no, there was no one,” Rose murmured from behind the imprisoning hand. “We talked to people, but no one seemed dangerous. No one was scary.”

  “We’ll need a list of everyone Alicia might have spoken with prior to her disappearance.”

  Rose’s eyes went a little wider. “I have no idea who she talked to. When we went into town, we would split up. She would go to the library, the bead shop—I don’t know where. I went to the post office, the ice-cream shop, and the bookstore. We took turns doing the laundry. The only place we went together was the grocery store.”

  Ukiah looked away from her alarm, wearily studying the ground. Time, wind, and dew had eroded Wednesday’s massive number of footprints down to a rumpled mass, and only Rose’s and one other person’s now crisply marked the campsite. Judging by her footprints, Rose had spent most of the day sitting at the picnic table, doing the same paperwork she had been working on when they arrived. The other person, in comparison, had walked from the parking lot to the tent, entered the tent, and then returned to their car.

  He frowned as he realized that all of Rose’s tracks to the tent were from the morning, and the stranger had been in camp within the last hour. If the person came to see Rose, why no tracks to the picnic table? If Rose hadn’t been at the picnic table when they arrived, why not look around for her? He crossed the campsite to crouch wearily beside the tracks and examined them closer.

  What he found pulled a growl out of him.

  “What did you find, kid?” Max asked.

  “She was here. The woman driver of the kidnapper’s car. She was here within the last hour.”

  “Here?” Rose squeaked. “One of them was here while I was gone?”

  “Where did you go?” Jared asked.

  “The rangers came up and asked me to come to the office with them. There were some forms that they needed filled out. I just got back only about five minutes ago.”

  “Miss, I don’t think you should stay here today,” Jared said quietly. “Could you pack your things and we’ll take you into town.”

  She nodded. “I want to go home.”

  They waited until she was out of earshot.

  “Why did they come back for her now?” Kraynak wondered quietly. “She’s been out here alone since Monday morning.”

  “Which was stupid of us!” Max snapped. “We should have moved her to the hotel the first day!”

  “With Rose here safe,” Jared guessed, “it seemed more likely that Alicia was merely lost.”

  “Why not take them both?” Kraynak whispered.

  “There were other campers here Monday and Tuesday,” Max reminded Kraynak.

  “And herding two people through the woods would have been nearly impossible,” Ukiah said. “Wolf packs usually only pick one animal out of a herd.”

  “They came for Rose as soon as we had proof Alicia had been kidnapped,” Max said. “They’re tying up loose ends.”

  “Damn it!” Kraynak swore. “The police scanner!”

  Jared looked puzzled, so they explained their theory on how the sniper knew where to find Ukiah. “And I reported in that Ukiah found the kidnapping site. Everyone in the county with a scanner knows.”

  “We should have thought of it beforehand,” Kraynak said. “Thank God Rose wasn’t here when the kidnappers came for her!”

  They packed all the camping equipment into Kraynak’s Volkswagen van, which Alicia had used instead of her own small car. They made a small convoy pulling of out the campground, Jared leading in his cruiser, then Kraynak and Rose in the van, and finally Ukiah and Max in the Blazer.

  Max was silent for the ride back to Pendleton. Ukiah slumped in the passenger side, exhausted but too unnerved to sleep.

  As they pulled into the hotel’s parking lot, Max gave a deep sigh. “Kid, could Sam Killington have been one of the kidnappers?”

  Ukiah recalled the long-legged blond woman. “No, wrong shoe size. I think she’s about an eight,
and the tracks were fives. The kidnapper wore tennis shoes, high end, probably considered walking shoes or cross-trainers. Sam had on hiking boots both times I saw her.”

  “And the others?”

  “I think the rest were men.”

  “Good,” Max murmured, then, as a grin spread across his face. “Well, speak of the devil.”

  Max toggled down his window, and the wind spilled into the cabin, bringing Sam’s scent of leather, gunmetal, female sweat, and Obsession perfume. She swaggered across the parking lots flipping a keyring around her right index finger in a jangle of metal. “Hi, guys! Can I interest you two in a proposition?”

  “Proposition away,” Max grinned, half-leaning out his window.

  “Thought you might be interested,” she said with a wink. “Let’s do dinner and swap information. That is”—she glanced past Max to Ukiah—“if you’re up to it.”

  Max looked to Ukiah. Ukiah would have preferred to order room service, followed quickly by sleep, but there was no denying that Sam could be the key to finding Alicia. She knew the area. With snipers and multiple kidnappers roaming the area, they were safer traveling as a team. So Ukiah nodded.

  “We’re up to it.” Max told her.

  They followed Sam on her Harley across town. On the way, Ukiah called and let Kraynak know where they were heading. Kraynak had volunteered to drive Rose to the airport for the evening flight. He told them to eat without him.

  A neon sign in the window marked the restaurant, a cowboy hat with the word STETSONS. Of the four parking spaces beside Stetsons, two and a half were taken up by a pickup truck and a badly parked station wagon. Sam tucked her Harley into the short third space behind the station wagon, and Max pulled into last space. She was pulling off her helmet when Ukiah opened his door and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  Sam paused, helmet cocked over her shoulder, frowning at him. “Where’s the crutches?”

  “I told you that I heal quickly,” Ukiah said, though he felt far from well. His entire body ached as if someone had beaten him with a baseball bat. He had pushed himself too hard, ignoring his body completely during the day’s tracking.