Текст книги "Dry Bones"

Автор книги: Craig Johnson

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

Still nothing.

I pushed past Dave and placed both hands on the knob of the dilapidated inside door.

“What are you doing?”

“Opening it.”

“Can you do that without a warrant?”

“If invited, yes.” I called out. “Hello, anybody home?”

A voice shouted from the other side of the building. “Sure, come on in.”

I pressed my shoulder against the facing and popped the door, swinging the thing wide as Dave stuck his head back in my line of sight. “You can’t do that; that was that FBI agent that said that.”

“Did you see him say it?”

“Well, no . . .”

I stepped into the crowded front room. “Then it’s a theory, huh?”

The Lake DeSmet Rock Shop had perhaps seen better days. There was an old cash register from the seventies that looked inoperable crouched on a vintage, oak-framed display counter that held a number of old rocks, minerals, agates, and a few of what appeared to be gold-panning kits.

Dave shrugged. “Jen kind of let the place go after her dad died, but she can’t seem to get rid of any of the stuff.” I stepped around the counter and picked up a phone by the cord. “I don’t think it’s connected—she uses her cell phone.”

I listened to it for a second and then hung it up on the wall cradle. “Well, it’s certainly not connected now.” I moved on to the noncommercial portion of the place and used an arm to part a beaded curtain. The windows had mustard-colored sheets draped over them, giving the room a dark but golden cast. The furniture was old, chenille-covered stuff from the thirties, with tattered Indian blankets thrown everywhere in a failing attempt to guard against the dog hair.

There was an opening to the right that revealed a kitchen, so I stepped in that direction but still didn’t see anything that looked out of the ordinary. There was a door leading to another storage area and possibly the back, and another across the main room that probably led to the bedroom.

The only newer items in the living room were a large flat-screen television and a desk with some electrical cords lying on the surface. I glanced around but couldn’t really see anything out of place or signs of a struggle. “Did she mention anything about going anywhere—staying with somebody?”

Dave stood in the doorway, holding the beaded curtain in his hands, evidently reluctant to enter. “No.”

“Did you check the museum?”

“I did earlier.” He shook his head. “She’s been disappearing a lot lately.”

“Call again.”

He pulled out his cell and hit speed dial. “If she was there, she’d have her cell phone on her.”

“Maybe she’s charging it in her van, which, by the way, doesn’t appear to be here.” There was a Northern Cheyenne Fancy Dance fan under a Plexiglas cover on a side table, and I removed the top to look at the thing. Ancient, the seed beads were encrusted with ash and the feathers tattered, but it was still beautiful.

“Don’t touch that!”

I turned to Dave. “Sorry. It’s sacred?”

“It’s poisoned is what it is.” He eyed me as I carefully replaced the top. “That one was recovered from the Peabody Museum at Yale. The things are coated with dangerous amounts of arsenic, lead, mercury, and other heavy metals. Back in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the museums used about a hundred different pesticides to keep insects and rodents from eating the things.”

I studied the artifact. “Where did Jennifer get it?”

“Hell if I know.” He gestured with his phone. “Nothing, just the answering machine.”

I started toward the door to the left that hung partially closed and pushed the thing open slowly—there was an old four-poster bed that had been slept in and an ashtray sitting on the nightstand, full of butts. There was a mess, but nothing to indicate foul play.

A large dog bed was on the floor by a dresser, a few chew toys lying about. I glanced back through the doorway. “She has a Tibetan mastiff, right?”

He nodded.

“Not here, either.”

“Hey, Sheriff?”

I glanced at the museum curator. “Was that you or is that McGroder?”

“McGroder, and it’s not a theory; I can see him.”

I stepped out of the bedroom. Mike was standing by the back door, his sunglasses in his hand. “You’d better come see this.”

I gave Baumann a look as I passed, but he seemed content to stay where he was.

McGroder stepped back through more tables piled with rocks before stopping in what appeared to be a mudroom that was lined with old, paned windows that had been nailed together. “The door was ajar.” The agent tucked his regulation Ray-Bans in his jacket pocket. “Honest.” Pointing to the steps outside where it looked like someone had taken a hammer, or a rock for that matter, to a piece of electronics, he leaned against the back doorjamb. “I think that’s what’s left of a desktop computer.”

I kneeled down and picked up the pieces. “Have you got people who can patch it back together and get the information out of it—video files, specifically?”

He shook his head, doubtful. “I’ll have Jarod look at it, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope.”

My attention was drawn to a collection of brown drops on the chipped linoleum, about the amount that might be held in an eyedropper.

McGroder’s voice echoed my thoughts. “You thinking what I’m thinking?” He took a step toward me. “I mean I haven’t been in the field for a while, but that is what I think it is, right?”

10

“I’m trying to figure out who would benefit from both Danny Lone Elk’s death and Jennifer Watt’s disappearance.”

Lucian sipped from the plastic cup that had been on his tray but ignored the so-called food and glanced at his granddaughter, Lana Baroja, who stood with Henry, both of them leaning against the wall. “I’m tryin’ to figure out who benefited from you lazy bastards not bringing me anything to put in this horseshit orange juice.” He placed his book on his chest and looked at the cup. “God, that tastes nasty. What is that, Tang? Damned astronauts should’ve left that on the moon.” He held the cup out to me. “Here, taste this.”

Clever that way, I declined. “No, thanks.” I sat back in the visitor chair and listened to it squeal in protest. “I guess you didn’t learn anything from this last experience, huh?”

“What, to not drink poisoned liquor?” He gestured toward the Bear, watching him with a bemused expression. “Indians’ve known that for centuries, right?” The old sheriff’s eyes dropped to his tray, and he made a peace offering. “You want some . . . hell, I don’t know what it is, Ladies’ Wear, but you can have it if you want.”

The Cheyenne Nation shook his head. “No, thank you.”

Lana pushed off the wall and crossed to put a hand on Lucian’s shoulder. “I’m getting out of here so that you fellows can talk shop.”

I got up with my hat in my hands, uncomfortable at having taken her seat, even at her insistence. I guess I was looking tired. “How’s the Basque bakery business?”

She smiled at my mention of her going concern. “Like everything else, picking up with the tourists.”

“Good.”

“We’ve got an impromptu jazz trio on Friday nights, and I hear you do a mean Ramsey Lewis impression of ‘Wade in the Water.’”

I stretched my fingers as if covering a few octaves. “I don’t know—my fingers are getting a little stiff these days.”

“You should stop by.” She moved to go but then paused and looked at me. “Did you know I bought that house that’s been for sale forever—the Victorian on the corner of West Hart over by the golf course?”

Aware that she had received a healthy inheritance from her grandmother a few years ago, I knew her sole financial future was not tied to the bakery. “The Buell Mansion?”

She looked embarrassed. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it a mansion, especially with the work that has to be done.” She playfully slapped my shoulder and pointed a warning finger at the Bear, who pointed one back at her like they were a matched set of crossed sabers. “Take care of my grandfather; he’s the only family I’ve got left.”

I watched her head out the door and turned to look at the old sheriff. “She’s coming up in the world, huh?”

He shrugged. “Wants to remodel the carriage house behind the place and move me in there.”

“Sounds like a good deal.”

He frowned. “I like my freedom.”

I studied the man who’d been born when automobiles had been a novelty. “Um, I don’t think she’ll put a curfew on you.”

“I guess if you can’t get rid of the family skeleton, then you might as well give it a place to live.”

I waited a moment and then asked, “How are you feeling?”

“Fit as a fiddle and ready for love.” He picked up The Middle Parts of Fortune by Frederic Manning, and looked at me. “Why’d you come in here?”

“Isaac said he could run a quick analysis on the blood flakes we found at the Lake DeSmet Rock Shop and get us a preliminary, so I thought we’d check and see if you were dead yet.”

“Not yet.” The gimlet gleam returned to his eyes as he set the WWI memoir on the nightstand. “Make you a deal?”

“What?”

“Get me out of here, and I’ll help you with the case.”

Just what I needed. “I’ll think about it.”

He set the plastic cup down on the tray with a flair of finality and crossed his arms. “Then the hell with the lot of you.” He glanced around as the Cheyenne Nation moved to the window and sat on the ledge. “Where’s my damn leg?”

Henry smiled. “I do not have the slightest of ideas.”

The room was silent for a while, and then Lucian leaned toward me in a conspiratorial manner. “C’mon, get me out of here. It’s just that observation shit. Hell, you don’t stay in here for more than twenty minutes, and I been in here bein’ observed for over twenty-four hours.”

“No.”

He didn’t move but his voice dropped a few octaves, and he attempted to sound innocent. “I’m gonna start causing trouble.”

I turned and looked at the Bear, both of us knowing the width and breadth of the type of trouble of which Lucian Connally was capable. “Lucian, it’s not up to me. What if I took you out of here, and you had another attack on the sidewalk?”

He worked his jaw. “There’d be a great deal of celebration in some quarters.”

“Not from your granddaughter.” The first lesson of sheriffing—when in doubt, defer. “If Isaac says you can go, then you can go.”

“All right then.” Satisfied with the track of the conversation, he leaned back onto his stack of pillows. “Lot of blood?”

“A few drops.”

“Any other traces?”

“Nope.”

He thought about it. “No drip, spray, or splash?”

“Nothing.”

He ruminated on the scene he hadn’t seen. “That’s queer.”

“I thought so, too.”

“Thinkin’ somebody just cut themselves beatin’ the livin’ daylights out of that computer.” I nodded and let him continue to think. “So you got the Highway Patrol out on the girl’s vehicle?”

“Yep.”

He shook his head. “Well, it ain’t gonna do you a hell of a lot of good either way; them triple A with guns couldn’t slap their ass with a patented ass-slapping machine.” He thought about it a while longer. “You want my learned opinion on this?”

“Sure.”

“Runner.”

I crossed my scuffed boots and studied him. “I thought about that.”

“Got served a subpoena by the FB of I and figured she was going to have to testify against her friends over there at Jurassic Park.”

“The High Plains Dinosaur Museum.”

“Pile of bones in an old carpet store is what I call it. Whatever. She took that vehicle of hers and has it parked in the middle of nowhere. Hell, she’s one of those archeology types, so she’s sittin’ out there somewhere with a pith helmet, a piña colitis, and toilet paper.” He glanced up at Henry. “In my experience, a woman won’t go anywhere there isn’t toilet paper.”

I looked back at the Bear, who shook his head at the malapropism.

The old sheriff continued. “I bet if you check the grocery stores around here, they’ll tell you that she loaded up and headed out for the territories.”

“What about the blood?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe that dog of hers killed a pack rat back there or something.”

I shook my head. “There would have been more of a mess.”

“Well, maybe somebody butchered a western cottontail.”

The door opened, and the chief of medicine entered the room and adjusted his glasses, but before he could say anything, Lucian spoke. “Isaac, I gotta get out of here.” He gestured toward me. “The current sheriff and full-time layabout and his redskin sidekick need my help.”

The old doctor glanced at us. “Is that true?”

Both Henry and I answered simultaneously and with a great deal of emphasis. “No.”

He shook his head at Lucian and adjusted his glasses. “It’s blood, all right.”

“How old?”

“Less than twenty-four hours.”

I turned to look at Henry, who in turn looked at Isaac. “Human?”

“Within the ABO group with two distinct antigens and antibodies, B-type. With my limited facilities it could also be another primate, but here in Wyoming monkeys are rare so the chances of that are slim.”

Lucian pushed his rolling tray away. “Well, thanks a lot, Doc. You just shot my theory in the ass.” He looked at me, snapped his fingers, and pointed one at me like a gun. “She got a pet monkey?”

“No.”

He dropped the weapon and turned back to Isaac. “What the hell else can you tell us?”

Isaac pulled his ever-present clipboard up and pretended to read from it. “Female, blonde, approximately twenty-six to twenty-eight years of age . . .”

“Damn, you’re kidding.”

He lowered the clipboard. “Yes, I am.”

Lucian turned to me. “You know, the smart-ass quotient in this county has sure gone up since you took over.”

I stood, and Lucian cleared his throat, which forced me to direct my attention to the doc, as much as I was trying to avoid it. “Isaac, he wants to know if you’ll release him.”

“Please.”

I stared at him, hoping I had misheard. “What?”

“Please get him out of here this afternoon—I’ve got two RNs in this wing who are threatening to put him out of their misery.” He gestured toward the door. “If he stays any longer, I really can’t vouch for his safety.”

 • • •

“So, what are you going to do?”

Sharing the information that my son-in-law had been killed might not have been prudent, but it didn’t seem right not to tell him, as Lucian was Cady’s unofficial great uncle and ersatz grandfather. “Wait for word from Philadelphia to see if there’s anything odd about what happened.”

He sat back in his seat as I made the turn on Fort and drove on toward the first grocery store on the way toward the mountains. “I don’t have to tell you what I’d do if somebody shot my son-in-law.”

“No, you don’t—you’d go to Philadelphia and shoot somebody whether it was the right person or not.”

“Makes you feel better when you shoot people . . . You ought to try it sometime.”

I pulled up and waited at one of our three stoplights. “I’ve shot people before, old man, and the last thing it ever made me feel was better.”

He turned and looked at the Cheyenne Nation. “What do you say?”

“Leave him out of this.”

He nodded as he turned back in the seat. “That’s just what I thought.”

“When I first started out, you taught me to make sure I was right and then go ahead with all of my abilities. Well, this is the make-sure-I’m-right part. I’m not going to go kill a man because I’m angry about losing Michael.”

“The son of a bitch has already got an irrevocable contract out on you, and you don’t think that’s reason enough to go exterminate his ass?”

“If I go after him, it’ll be for a specific reason and not a general feeling.”

“Well, till that time, you and yours are going to be marching around like tin bears in a shooting gallery.” He glanced back at the Bear. “No offense.”

Henry rumbled, “None taken.”

I pulled my truck into the grocery store lot and saw the SAVE JEN! banner on the side of the building.

The old sheriff leaned forward, looking through the top of the windshield in the other direction and pointing toward the towering fork and spoon with the words SETTINGS FOR YOUR TABLE outside the IGA where we sometimes shanghaied jurors for court duty. “I remember around the Fourth of July back in ’60 when Robert Taylor backed his Cadillac into that sign.”

“No, you don’t.”

He turned to look at me, the indignation sharp in his eyes. “The hell I don’t; it was a big ol’ boat of a thing, white convertible with a red and white interior.”

I pulled my truck up in front of the sign and parked. “You might remember the car, but you don’t remember the incident because you weren’t there.”

He unclicked his safety belt, pulled the handle on the door, stepped out with his new four-prong cane, and then opened the suicide door for Henry, who slipped out but left Dog inside. “And how the hell do you know that?”

Having climbed out myself, I came around the front and joined them on the sidewalk. “Because I was there, and it was later than that. I remember because he was filming a movie called Cattle King.”

He shook his head, looking up at the bulbs that ran the circumference of the kitschy sign. “Nope, you didn’t start working for me till in the seventies, after Vietnam.”

“That’s right, but before that I witnessed Robert Taylor backing not only into this sign but also into Ida Purdy’s husband’s ’57 Apache pickup.”

We started toward the front of the grocery store, and I slowed to allow Lucian to keep up.

He looked at me. “You know, I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I became aware of you.” As we stood there, the automatic door slid open and he walked in like he owned the town, which he pretty much had for nigh on sixty years. “Where are the pickled pig’s feet in this damned place?”

A long-haired teenage bagger at the checkout raised a fist. “Save Jen!”

I raised a fist in return and watched as Evelyn Clymer, an elderly woman who I remembered used to work at the hardware store but must have changed jobs, smiled at the old sheriff. “Hello, Lucian. We heard you had a stroke?”

He limped toward them. “I did, but it must’ve been a backstroke because here I am.”

The coy smile remained on her lips. “Well, I know that to be the truth.”

The teenager looked Native, and when he turned I finally realized who he was, even though his hair was pulled back and he wore an apron. He spoke to the Bear first. “Nahkohe, what’s up, innit?”

“Just prowling, Taylor, and you?”

The young Lone Elk leaned against the counter and gestured around him. “Living the dream.”

He glanced at me. “Didn’t know I had a job at the market?”

I shrugged. “No, I just figured you ran away for a living.”

“I mostly walk into town.”

“That’s close to twelve miles.”

He smiled. “I run it most times.”

Evelyn rested an elbow on the check-writing stand, propped up her pointed chin with a freckled hand, and glanced over Lucian’s shoulder at us. “Something tells me this is a business call.”

The old sheriff turned to me. “What’s her name?”

“Jennifer Watt, blonde, about five-seven, midtwenties, might’ve been in here in the last day or so?”

Evelyn shook her head. “Nope, doesn’t ring a bell, but I don’t know everybody—especially this time of year.” She reached behind her and picked up a phone. “Dan, the sheriff and his bodyguards are down here.” She hung up, and we watched as a middle-aged man in glasses approached from the offices to our left. “They’re looking for a young woman by the name of Watt.”

The manager, Dan Crawford, pulled up and raised a fist. “Save Jen!”

I returned the salute; this stuff was wearing me out. “First name Jennifer, works out at the High Plains Dinosaur Museum.”

He continued nodding. “She was in here when we opened this morning at six. I thought it was kind of strange in that most people aren’t usually in that big of a hurry to buy groceries.” He motioned toward the youth. “Taylor was here and spoke with her a long time, as I recall.”

We all turned toward him, and he looked pretty unsettled. “Toilet paper—she bought a lot of toilet paper.”

I avoided Lucian’s eye.

 • • •

“It’s a large county.”

Dino-Dave leaned forward and looked at the map unfolded on the hood of my truck, the fuzzy edges of where it was folded betraying its age and use. “I’d imagine you want to concentrate on the areas where we’ve had digs, the places she’d be most acquainted with?”

The breeze was picking up, and the tail end of the storm that had hit us the day before was subsiding only to kick up its heels a little at the end. I glanced back at the vague shimmer of platinum light that was being swallowed by the mountains, and began wondering if it really was over. “Exactly what I was thinking.”

“There’s the dig on the northern part of the county that’s associated with the University of Montana.” He pointed to a different area on the map. “This one is south, down near Powder Junction on property owned by the University of Wyoming in that red Hole-in-the-Wall country.” He stood up straight. “If I was looking to get away from everyone . . .” He glanced at McGroder, his arm hanging over my side-view mirror. “. . . you know, till things cooled down, that’s where I’d go.”

Lucian added his two cents’ worth. “Hell, it’s where Butch and Sundance holed up.”

I noticed Dave didn’t mention the site where Jen had been discovered. “Why not the Lone Elk place?”

“That’s a working ranch—there are people on it.” He pointed back at the map and the site farther south, tapping it with a nail. “That’s where I’d be.”

“Yep, but is that where you would be if you were Jennifer?”

He looked up. “Well, you have a point; she does have a connection to Jen.” He glanced at me. “The tyrannosaur, I mean.”

“Right.”

“She found it, after all.”

I thought about the overhang where we’d taken cover until the flash flood had flushed us out. “Has she ever gone down there and stayed?”

He nodded, thoughtful. “Well, we practically lived down there when we were working the dig, but with the animosity that Randy and his family have shown lately, I find it hard to believe that she would be back down there.”

A niggling feeling was working at the back of the reptile stem in my brain, the part of me that was closest in lineage to Jen, the tyrannosaur. “Give me those exact coordinates, and I’ll have Saizarbitoria use a GPS to find this spot and we’ll go ahead down to the Lone Elk place.”

I noticed the acting deputy attorney standing to the side of my truck and looking none too patient. “Sheriff, if I might? I need a word.”

“Make it a short one—I’ve got a missing woman on my hands and a little over four thousand square miles in which to look for her.”

He stepped closer and looked up at me with a severe expression. “You missed the press conference.”

“Excuse me?”

“The national outlet press conference I arranged.”

“I’m not aware of having said that I would be there, Mr. Trost.” I thought about the conversation I’d had with Joe Meyer and attempted to suppress my temper. “I’m sure you’ll understand when I say that the importance of a missing woman supersedes any obligations I might have to you.”

“Some random woman.”

I stared at him. “Excuse me?”

“This is some random woman who’s missing?”

I stood there for a moment more and then began folding my map. “Not that it matters in the random scope of things, but the woman happens to be Jennifer Watt, the paleontologist who discovered Jen, the fossil remains that are the centerpiece of your investigation.”

He was held in check by this information for a moment and then turned to McGroder. “Why was I not told this?”

The special agent frowned. “Um, because we just found out about it.”

He turned back to me. “The press conference was embarrassing.”

I stuffed the map in the interior pocket of my jacket, nodded, and started for the door of my truck. “I know that; I’ve been to your press conferences before.”

 • • •

Lucian fumbled with his pipe and tobacco bag but then remembered he was forbidden to smoke in my truck. “Who was that asshole?”

“Somebody I’m supposed to be nice to.”

He nodded. “Well, you’re doin’ a hell of a job.”

Henry leaned up between the seats. “Why are you thinking the Lone Elk Ranch?”

I navigated the truck off of the main road and headed out of town south by southeast. “Because, when you hauled us out of that overhang in that back-door canyon, I noticed there were the remains of a campfire, and it looked like someone had done some work to make the place habitable.” I wheeled off the road and slowed my acceleration. “In all the excitement of potentially drowning, I kind of forgot about it.”

The Bear’s eyes went to the windshield and the clouds, tinged mercury of all things, swelling above the hills of the high plains. “You are thinking that she is staying out there periodically?”

“Somebody is.”

“Or you think that whoever it is that is impersonating Danny might be living out here?”

“That’s a theory. All I know is that somebody’s staying out here and we’re looking for somebody who we’re assuming wants to stay out of sight, so whether it’s her or somebody else, maybe we can get some answers.”

We discussed the finer points of the investigation until I slowed and pulled up to the gate that led to the dig and stopped.

Lucian looked between the two of us. “Well, why are we sitting here?”

I gestured ahead. “Somebody has to open the gate.”

The old sheriff looked at the Bear, who made no attempt to get out, and then back at me. “You two sons-a-bitches are gonna make the one-legged man open the thing?”

Neither of us said anything.

“I’ll be damned.” He pulled the handle and climbed out, taking his cane with him and slamming the door. “I would like to point out that I almost died and was in the hospital no more than a day ago.”

“I am assuming there is a reason you wanted to get rid of him?”

“McGroder made some calls, and he says that Tomás Bidarte is in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.”

He nodded his head and then became motionless, like a hunter in a blind. “Should I be looking for my passport?”

We watched as Lucian made a show of opening the gate and dragging it aside, ever so slowly. “Nope, I’m sticking to my guns. I just wanted you to know.” I pulled the truck forward and stopped, watching the old sheriff through the rearview mirror. “We could leave him, but he’d probably shoot at us.”

As Lucian hobbled closer, Henry got out of the truck and held the door for him, a chivalrous act that I didn’t quite understand until he let Dog out with him and then closed the door.

Lucian rolled down the window, looked at him, and then at Dog. “Where the hell are you and Rin Tin Tin going?”

The Bear ignored him and looked around on the broken turf, grass, and sagebrush. “The ground is still wet, and there are tracks where someone has driven in here recently.”

I rose up and looked, and indeed, there were tire tracks going through the gate and veering to the right. He kneeled down and looked in the direction of the tread marks. My eyes played over the area where we’d parked and been shot at before. “That’s not in the direction of the site.”

He stood and started walking toward the hills the other way with Dog in tow. “No, and more important . . .” He raised a hand and pointed toward a plume of dirty smoke that was spiraling up from the other side of the ridge. “. . . that is more smoke than a campfire would make.”

“That ain’t smoke signals.” Lucian inclined his head toward the darkening sky as the Cheyenne Nation and Dog took off at a good pace, and then turned to look at me. “That’s a vehicle fire.”

I pulled the truck down into gear and gassed it in an attempt to keep up with Henry and Dog, who were able to take a more direct route over the rock ledges.

Lucian gripped the dash and braced his good leg against the transmission hump in an attempt to stay upright. “Damn, this is rough country.”

“Why would you drive out here?”

He shrugged. “To escape a speeding subpoena.”

As we pulled around the edge of the ridge and started toward the source of the smoke, I could see tracks where the van must’ve been intentionally driven off one of the cliffs into the canyon. “Oh, no.”

Staying to the right I was able to park pretty close and watched as Henry and Dog stopped at the edge to look down and then disappear over the brink.

Throwing the door open, I followed and could see the old Chevrolet, billowing in flames, lodged in the rocks below with the driver’s-side door hanging open. I scrambled after Henry and Dog and then fell on my butt and slid down a scrabble heap.

The heat from the fire was tremendous, but the majority of the flames were toward the front of the vehicle, making it unlikely that the tank had blown.

Veteran of numerous vehicle fires, I was aware that the majority of them aren’t like the ones in the movies; in actuality, the tank melts and then the proper mix of fuel and air combusts since it’s the vapors that burn and not the liquid. When they go, an exploding gas tank is more like a flash, not making it, at close range, any less dramatic or dangerous.

I yelled at the Bear as he tried to get closer to the open door. “Henry, don’t!” Dog, hearing me, retreated immediately, but my friend was less well behaved. Raising an arm, he attempted to get nearer, but from my perspective, there was no way anyone could be in the gutted hulk and still be alive.

Sliding the rest of the way down, feeling the waves of heat, I collected Dog by his collar and moved down to where the Bear was. “You see anybody?”

He shook his head. “Difficult to say.” He moved toward the front and tried to see through the shattered windshield, but like me, could see nothing. “She had a dog?”

“Yep.”

He scanned the surrounding area. “Most of the time animals are thrown free or find a way to get away, but they will generally stay in the immediate vicinity.”

I glanced down at Dog. “If there was another dog around here he would’ve been aware of it.”

“Yes.” Henry watched the fire.

“What are you doing?”

His eyes flicked toward mine. “Smelling.”

I immediately caught his meaning. The smell of burning human flesh is particularly pungent, and you can usually make out the one stench from all others. I couldn’t smell it, but generally his senses were finer tuned than mine. “Anything?”

“No, but that does not mean she is not in there.”

I moved next to him and gripped his shoulder in an attempt to get his attention. “When that tank melts, we’re going to be in a bad place.” I glanced back up the cliff and could see Lucian standing there with his cane, silhouetted by the last rays of the day making their final eight-minute trips from the sun. I raised a hand to the side of my mouth and yelled to be heard above the roar of the fire, “Call it in and get the fire department out here!”