by Mary Deal
Mimie lunged and pulled the leash out of Buck's hand. He took off after her. They converged and immediately heard the pups whining. Mimie barked. The pups came out from behind the rock pile. They wore their leashes, dragging them along. Their faces and legs were sopping wet and they shivered. They had been drinking water in the canal. When Sara tried to grab Latte, both dogs ducked back behind the rocks.
Isidoro went around the pile from the left and Buck went around the right. Buck slipped in the wet soil and almost fell into the canal. “Damn it!” he said. He came up with mud all over him. Mimie stood barking. The pups managed to climb up the back of the rock pile, coming over the top to the ground to stand in front of Mimie.
The dogs no longer seemed like pups. They were developing the gaunt, intimidating features common to pit bulls. Their present actions proved their maturing personalities.
Strangely, Latte rolled over and scooted around on her back and came up even muddier. Choco barked, just stood and barked.
Esmerelda and Fredrik arrived last. Esmerelda bent down to attend to the pups and screamed in surprise. Her knees buckled and Fredrik had to hold her up. He and Johanna helped Esmerelda to a sitting place on the rock pile. She could only point.
Sara bent over to see what might be wrong. Latte scooted on her back again. Choco sat, stared up at her, and beat his tail on the ground. As Sara reached for the pups, she saw a large white stone among some bigger rocks. Unlike the other rocks, it was fairly smooth. Choco stood and wagged his tail again. He began to paw the ground.
“There,” Esmerelda said, pointing toward Choco's feet.
Sara knelt down to see what caused Esmerelda to nearly faint and came face-to-face with a human skull.
Chapter 28
The skull lay at the edge of the rock pile, half-covered with small stones and dirt. The nose area and below had collapsed and filled with soil.
Choco again pawed the ground and barked.
Sara bent again to pull him aside. “Oh!” she said, jumping back. Two long bones lay impacted in the soil beneath his feet. Choco sniffed and looked up at her again.
Isidoro saw the bones too. “Everybody back,” he said and immediately began snapping photos.
Johanna bent down to take a look and then straightened and reached for her radio. “We'd better get the spade brigade out here.”
Everyone needed to vacate the area in order to preserve what little evidence may have worked its way to the surface. As Esmerelda turned to leave, she said, “Thank heaven. That's not my Orson. He went missing in Placerville.”
The pups pranced and nipped at Mimie's heels and played, dragging their leashes, all the way back to the yard. They had enough sense to avoid danger until they heard friendly voices and Mimie's bark, or detected her scent in the air. It was strange that two pit bulls, a breed that had aggression genetically in-bred, had not chosen to attack the person who tried to take them. Or, maybe they had, and scared him off.
Johanna approached with another brown bag and wearing gloves again. “I'll take those leashes,” she said before anyone could touch them. “Might give us some prints.” She also knew how to approach a pit bull and offered the back of her hand in a non-threatening way for them to sniff. When they did, she began to pet them. “Tell me which dog is which.”
Sara pointed and gave their names. Choco and Latte sat patiently watching Johanna's every move as she first claimed Choco's leash and placed it into a bag and scribbled: Choco - Red. Then the other in another bag: Latte - Green.
Cool dampness permeated the early morning. They sat in the cars to await the detectives. Buck retrieved some old rags from his truck and dried his clothes as much as possible, then wiped down the pups as they shivered. He fashioned a couple of lengths of rope as leashes and finally put the dogs into his truck to dry and warm up.
Fredrik zippered his jacket and stood outside, displaying less interest in the dogs than he had at the hospice.
Two detectives arrived. They questioned each person separately and then asked each to wait in the cars again. The longer they waited, the more the cold morning air added discomfort.
Johanna sat in the patrol car writing her report. She received a call but Sara couldn't make out the chatter. Johanna kept nodding. A couple times, she glanced in their direction. Her expression was one that said they had some answers. When she finished the conversation, she jumped out of her car and ran into the house. In a moment she came outside and headed straight toward the Jaguar. “Sara,” she said, motioning that she should come out of the car. “Can I talk to you?”
“Is it Pierce?” Sara asked, jumping out. “How's Pierce?”
“First, let me say this,” Johanna said when they were out of earshot of the others. “It was Rohypnol.”
“What is that?”
“You don't know about Rohypnol?” She looked over at Fredrik and stopped talking when it seemed that he might join them.
“Tell me.”
Johanna motioned that they move farther away from the others. “It's the date rape drug. Your urine sample was full of it. Word outa' the hospital lab indicates tests spiked big time on the chromatograph.”
“What about Pierce?”
“They tested his blood and got a hint of it. Ended up using a catheter to get his urine.”
“So how is he?”
Johanna shook her head. “In a coma.”
Sara choked back tears. Buck had been watching and came over and wrapped his arms around her shoulders.
“Tell me something,” Johanna said, shifting into an investigative mode. “That stuff you two drank? Anything different about it?”
“It's my own punch mixture, a concoction I learned in the Caribbean. We mixed it with mineral water.” Sara paused, remembering. “Wait a minute. Mixing it with water made it a little bland for me, but Pierce said it tasted a little salty.”
Johanna dropped her arms to her sides and rolled her eyes, like she knew with certainty what had happened. “What about the color?”
“What about it? It was seven juices mixed.”
“Someone's got an old stash of dope then,” Johanna said. “Stuff on the streets these days turns liquids blue.”
“I'd have noticed.”
“Detectives are confiscating everything out of your fridge.” Johanna nodded backwards toward the house. “And the bottles and mugs you two had drinks from.”
Sara mustered her concentration. “We ate Chinese food too. The containers are in the garbage can in the workshop.”
“Rohypnol is usually mixed with fluids.”
“Okay, so it wasn't the take-out. I fed some to the dogs, even gave them a drink of the bottled water we bought.” Someone had to know about the use of drugs and how much dosage to give. “That idiot could have killed us,” Sara said.
“Maybe that's what the person tried to do,” Johanna said. “Only the dogs got the best of him.”
Isidoro came out of the house with his camera, many sealed brown bags, and Pierce's backpack and cane. Johanna told him about the food containers in the workshop garbage can and he retrieved them for examination anyway. She turned over the bagged stuffed animal and leashes to him as well.
“They're getting lots of prints,” Isidoro said. He turned to Sara. “You'll have to come to Headquarters and leave a set so we can rule yours out.”
“Oh, great,” she said. “My contractor and his workers have been all over the house.”
“No workers here for a while,” Johanna said. “You'll have to vacate the premises till the investigation is finished.”
“Cold case detectives will be investigating that skeleton at the back too,” Isidoro said, nodding toward the end of the field.
Johanna shifted her stance as she made notes. “This whole area is now a crime scene.” She motioned from the house to the field. “Although it may be two separate crimes we're dealing with.”
Johanna accompanied Sara back inside the house to pack her bag. She would stay with Buck and Linette again. Sh
e looked at her computer and sighed heavily. She was well into her new project and beginning to finally make headway with it. She grabbed her backup DVDs and decided to purchase a laptop. As she left the house, she wondered how she would be able to stay there by herself once the investigations were completed. The cold case murders, that haunting dream, and the noises around the house; now an attempt on hers and Pierce's life—with someone having gotten inside—told her it wouldn't be safe to stay at home alone anymore.
Buck had to go home and change, then go to work. Sara located Daphine working early at her store and asked her to make the trip to Sacramento with her. Daphine was so concerned she dropped everything and ran for her car, asking myriad questions on the phone along the way.
The pups refused to get into the car so that Esmerelda could take them home. Finally, Fredrik yanked the ropes to drag the pups closer. They pulled against the ropes, resisting, warily watching Fredrik. Then carefully, one by one, he picked them up and dropped them on the floor at the back seat as if begrudging soiling his hands. That seemed normal for a man of Fredrik's stature with dirty dogs. However, throughout the events of the morning, Fredrik exhibited a certain mysterious frustration and Choco and Latte had stayed clear of him.
Chapter 29
Isidoro met Sara at the hospital and found a desk to finish writing his report. He waited while the ER doctor examined her. After the exam, he said, “You can ride with me to Headquarters.” He sounded insistent.
“Am I a suspect?” Sara asked. It was the second time she felt they might be seeing her that way.
“Not that I know of.” He smiled as if realizing his gesture of friendship had been too aggressive.
“Then Daphine can drive me.”
During the trip to be fingerprinted, and then driving back to the hospital with Daphine to check on Pierce, Sara said, “This can't be happening to me.”
“Sounds more like one of our wild stories when we were kids,” Daphine said.
They found Pierce in a private room adjacent to the Intensive Care Unit. The charge nurse was reluctant to give information to non-family members.
“We are his family,” Sara said, hoping to get away with the pretense.
“We're perfectly aware of his background. He's been a patient too many times.” Then the nurse's voice softened. “I will tell you this. With the condition he was left in after the lightning incident, anything might take him, just like that.” She snapped her fingers softly. “I'd be saying prayers for this poor soul.”
When they entered the room, the first thing they noticed was that Pierce's face was sunken.
“They took out his teeth.” Still, Sara had to smile.
“What's that about?” Daphine asked.
Sara flashed a perfect exaggerated smile.
Daphine looked at her teeth and squinted. “You got your teeth crowned,” she said softly. “I meant to tell you, your dentist did a great job.”
Sara flashed another silly smile and waited. Finally, she said, “Me, too.”
The lights went on in Daphine's eyes. She kept her voice low but asked, “You? You wear falsies?”
They sat on opposite sides of Pierce's bed and watched the monitors. Daphine's mood changed, she had tears in her eyes. She slipped a hand around one of Pierce's hands. Even if Pierce was just a friend, as Daphine claimed, Sara saw pain in her eyes.
She studied Daphine and remembered that once, as young teens, she came to visit and they walked out into a field and talked and kicked at clods of dirt. They found fresh road kill, a jack rabbit, and Daphine dug a hole in the dirt with her bare hands and pushed the rabbit into it with a stick and dragged dirt over it with her shoe. To her, it needed a proper burial. Now, here was Daphine, taking Pierce's ills upon herself. It was a long time in coming, but Sara finally understood the meaning of Daphine's reaction and the ancient burial ceremony.
Through the years, Sara lived with a feeling of isolation and loneliness. She attributed it to being far from home and shrugged it off because home in the Delta was full of sad memories. The new life she made for herself in the Caribbean was good enough without having to be perfect.
Sara looked again and saw that Daphine had placed both hands around Pierce's hand. A sweeping feeling of helplessness came over Sara. She reached for Pierce's other hand and held it, and finally realized she was capable of caring for someone else instead of shying away. She closed her eyes and bowed her head.
Chapter 30
Later that evening, Sara remembered something that jolted her upright in bed. That long bone sticking up out of the gravel bar in Snodgrass Slough.
Now she wouldn't sleep. She climbed out of bed.
The long bones that the pups found. They were the same type of bone, human femurs with rounded heads at the hip ends.
Linette, who had been up late working on her bookkeeping, must have seen her light and knocked.
When Sara finished telling her about the bones, Linette said, “You'd better tell Johanna so they can take a look.”
Two days later, Sara and Valeriano were in one boat leading the way. Johanna, working overtime that morning, accompanied deputies in another boat. One deputy had suited up to dive.
The deputies eased their craft alongside. Sara held a float between the boats to keep them from jostling together.
“The gravel bar stuck up out of the water,” Val said. He kept the boat moving slowly, to find the find exact spot. Twice they found gravel near the riverbank. Twice, the deputy dove and found nothing.
“We may never find it,” Johanna said. “The currents wash things in and then washes them out.”
“You sure you saw a human bone?” the deputy in the boat with Johanna asked.
“It looked just like the femurs found on my property.”
By then, they had attracted a flotilla of on-lookers. Though in full uniform, Johanna still flashed her badge and motioned with a sweep of her arm for them to keep their distance.
Val guessed at another location. The deputies eased close along at the base of the levee in hopes the bone might have lodged somewhere in the tangled growth of tree roots and low-lying shrubs. Johanna scanned through binoculars. If one bone had been there, maybe they would find other parts of a skeleton.
“This is pointless,” Johanna said after they had been out a couple of hours. She motioned that they call off the search.
Snodgrass Slough wound and twisted and even split off north of Locke. Eventually, one leg emptied into the Delta Cross Channel, which joined the Sacramento River. If the bone washed into the river, it might never be seen again.
“By the way,” Johanna said as they stood on the dock waiting to hoist out the deputies' boat. “No prints on those leashes.”
“Not even mine?” Sara asked.
“A lot of smudges. Covered with grime too. The dogs had been into that muddy canal.”
The next morning, after having a confusing vivid dream of finding more bones, Sara borrowed Buck's truck and made a special trip to Sacramento to purchase a handgun.
“What's that one the deputies use these days?” she asked.
“That's a Sig Sauer semi-automatic,” the storeowner said. “Too much gun for you. You can't get approved to own one anyway.” He selected a gun out of the glass counter. “Here, try this one.”
The gun was so small that it could be nearly hidden inside her palm. She didn't need to blow off her own fingers if she had to use it. She needed to feel secure with a weapon she might need to fire. “What about that one?” She pointed inside the showcase.
The storekeeper glanced at her and back to the gun. He raised his eyebrows and then brought out the pistol. “A .38 Smith and Wesson. Used to be called the Police Special. They've since moved on to those semi-automatics.”
If the Smith and Wesson had been good enough for the police, it was good enough for her protection.
“There's a ten-day waiting period,” the storekeeper said.
Surely, he didn't think she would kill someone in
the heat of passion. “I understand that,” she said. “Training. Where can I get some training?”
#
An early summer turned the Delta into a cooker. Heat waves wriggled up from pavements and turned the roads into mirages. Patches of asphalt melted into sticky tar. Ski boats, cabin cruisers, and fishing boats, glutted the waterways. Boaters who enjoyed gunk holing in secluded coves found themselves in crowded waterway subdivisions as more and more boats sidled in for anchorage. A steady stream of yachts sailed back and forth between the San Francisco Bay area and Sacramento. Drawbridges continually raised and lowered for tall masts, causing lines of cars and crop hauling trucks to wait on the levees. Vehicles overheated.
Preparations for the July 4th celebrations were readied. Neighborhood fireworks started early. Smoke and the odor of gunpowder drifted thick in the air.
Daphine arrived early at the Alden's house to stay with Sara. The Aldens planned to attend the fireworks extravaganza.
“Wish we could just stay home and watch the fun,” Linette said, gesturing toward their big screen TV. She and Buck were involved in community affairs and obligated to attend a few functions.
Sara and Daphine chose not to celebrate. The Fourth of July was all about independence, and Pierce, whom they loved, lay trapped in a body that wouldn't respond.
Chapter 31
“Did your battery go dead?” Buck asked the next day as he tapped his head. “Why the heck did you bring that thing here?”
“Eew!” Linette said. “Buck didn't even carry a gun when he was in the Air Force.”
Buck took her into the master bedroom and opened the bottom drawer of a chest inside the walk-in closet. “That thing stays in here till you take it home.” He grabbed an old tee shirt and threw it over the holstered gun and box of bullets.
