Bug Man Suspense 3-in-1 Bundle (89 page)

Nick pulled out a pen and a scrap of paper. “Call the local police and tell them what happened—this is their jurisdiction. Then call this number too—it's in Washington. Ask for Nathan Donovan. Tell him about Danny and explain everything to him—he'll know what to do.”

“You'd better get going,” Gunner said.

“I'm going now. I'm parked right across the street—I can be up there in a couple of minutes.” He turned to leave, then glanced down at the homely little messenger still staring up at him. “How do I tell him to go home?”

“Like this,” Gunner said, snapping his fingers and demonstrating the command.

Nick repeated the sequence and the little dog took off up the mountain.

Nick hurried across the street to the parking lot of the Skyline Motel, but when he got there he found the parking lot empty—there was no sign of his rental car anywhere. His mind raced—could he have parked it somewhere else? That was impossible. The Skyline was situated at the exact center of town and everything was within easy walking distance from there; it was the only place he had ever parked in the entire town of Endor.

A flurry of explanations flashed through his mind: Maybe he had inadvertently blocked a fire access and the car was towed away; maybe the rental car company had retrieved the car without notifying him; maybe Biff and his buddies from Endor High had hot-wired it and taken it out for a vengeful joyride. But he quickly rejected each potential explanation, because his mind told him that they weren't explanations at all—they were just wishful thinking. There was only one reason his car would be missing: Someone had stolen it, but he had no idea who.

Then he thought about the little dog again, and he knew why his car was missing.

He felt a cold chill flutter down his spine.

Alena wouldn't do that unless she's in trouble
, Gunner said.

He needed a car. He reached into his pocket, then let out a groan. His cell phone—he must have left it in the rental. He looked at the Skyline and at the ET&G across the street—all the lights were off. He looked back at the library. Gunner was still there—he had a car—it was the quickest way.

Nick turned toward the library and ran.

36

The winding road through the woods seemed endless—infinitely longer than when Nick drove it before. It had seemed to take forever to borrow Gunner's car—to explain the situation, to hurry up the hillside and get the keys from Rose. It all took far too long and he didn't have time to waste—and he had a bad feeling that Alena didn't either.

He knew something was wrong the instant he reached the chain-link fence. The gate was open wide. Alena would never leave it that way, and Nick was the only other person who knew the combination. But whoever took Nick's car didn't need it, because he had left the bolt cutters lying on the front seat in plain view.
Terrific
, he thought.
I give you transportation
and
a way in. Is there anything else I can do for you?
Now, as he approached the trailer, he noticed something else. The dogs should have gone wild at the sound of his approach just as they always did, but the sound they made this time wasn't furious or defiant—it was a strange cacophony of lamenting howls and whimpering wails.

Nick skidded to a stop and ran for the trailer. He saw Alena's truck still parked beside it, and for a moment he hoped she might be inside and all would be well—but then he saw the furry black lump lying lifeless and still in front of the trailer door, and he knew for certain that something was terribly wrong.

He threw open the trailer door and stumbled inside.

“Alena!”

He scrambled through the tunnel-like living room and into the bedrooms in the back.

“Alena!”

There was no one there.

When he stepped into the second bedroom he felt a crunch under his feet; he looked down and saw clumps of broken gypsum and shards of shattered glass covering the floor. He searched the walls and found the source—high up, near the ceiling. He ran back into the living room and looked at the wall on the opposite side; he found three jagged holes and three more that aligned with them on the exterior wall. They were bullet holes—someone had fired into the trailer three times.

Nick hurried outside and knelt down beside the lifeless dog. He combed his fingers through its thick black fur until he found a tangled wet clump on the animal's thick breast. He felt the spot and found another bullet hole—the huge dog had apparently been felled by a single large-caliber bullet through the heart.

Nick could see the whole picture in his mind: Someone had used his car to approach the trailer without raising Alena's suspicion. The three huge guard dogs would have detected the car in the woods and accompanied it into the clearing as always, but Alena had probably called them off—after all, it was only Nick. When the man finally had revealed himself, the dogs had attacked—and the man had fired point-blank.

He slowly rubbed the dog's fur again.
Acheron
—the leader—the one that always guarded the driver's-side door. Nick closed his eyes and shook his head. Did Alena have to witness this? Did she have to stand there and watch in horror as some stranger she thought was a friend destroyed one of her beloved dogs? It would have been like losing a child for her; it would have broken her heart.

But what happened next? And where was Alena now?

Nick got up from the ground and ran to the edge of the woods. “Alena!”

He listened, but there was no reply.

“Alena! It's Nick! It's all right, you can come out now!”

He waited but heard no sound from the woods. No one approached.

Where is Alena?

Nick knew that there were only two logical possibilities: Alena was alive or Alena was dead. Someone had wanted to find her badly—someone with a gun—and he was obviously willing to use it. He fired at least once into the dog and three more times into the trailer wall—he wasn't fooling around. But the shots into the trailer were high, almost at ceiling level. He was either the world's worst shot or they were only warning shots, meant to flush her out but not to kill.

Or meant to flush her out and
then
to kill. There were a thousand acres of forest up here; plenty of places to hide a woman's body where it might never be found.

Where is she?

If she was alive and nearby she wasn't answering—maybe because she was wounded or unconscious. But Nick knew that was unlikely; whoever the perpetrator was, he didn't come all the way up here just to wound her and leave her to identify him later. Though the thought made him sick to his stomach, his mind told him that Alena was most likely dead—but how would he ever know for sure?

He looked across the clearing at the kennels.

He raced back into the trailer, through the living room and into the first bedroom, and pulled the cotton pillowcase from the bed pillow. He held it by one corner and hurried it back out to the kennels.

As he approached the first kennel, he spotted another form lying dead and still on the concrete pad, and his heart skipped a beat—for a split second he thought it might be Alena. But the form was too small— it was another of Alena's precious dogs. The other dogs in the kennel were seated in a circle around it, as if they were keeping vigil.

He draped the pillowcase over a post and moved from kennel to kennel, searching through the dogs for one in particular; he found her in kennel number three. She was a mottled gray mongrel with only three legs; she was a drab and forsaken-looking beast; she was a deformed and damaged animal—but she also happened to be the finest cadaver dog Nick had ever seen. Trygg knew every inch of these woods; she had spent years wandering over them every night in search of Alena's father.

But tonight was different—tonight she had to find Alena.

Nick opened the kennel gate a few inches and pointed at Trygg. “Come!” he commanded, but the dog didn't respond.

“Come on, girl! Let's go! Come on! Come to me!”

The dog just stared.

Nick tried to imagine what Alena would do. He remembered her operant command, the one that always preceded the actual instruction. He snapped his fingers once—but he had no idea what to do next. What gesture or motion commanded the dog to “come”? He snapped his fingers and wiggled one finger—nothing. He snapped his fingers and pointed to the ground at his feet—nothing. He snapped his fingers and backed up, waving both arms like a man parking a 747—the dog sat down.

He was starting to get angry. This was one of the most talented dogs on the planet, but it couldn't understand a simple spoken command— a command that even a moron like Bosco could probably comprehend. Nick felt like a stupid tourist in a foreign country who didn't know a single word of the language; all he could do was shout in English and hope that his listener would somehow figure it out.

He opened the gate wider; if the dog wouldn't come out on her own, Nick would just have to go in. The idea seemed simple enough in his mind: He would just walk over to Trygg, hook one finger under her collar, and pull—the dog would get the idea and follow. And the other seven dogs would just sit politely and watch their companion being manhandled by a stranger, after which they would all lick Nick's face and present him with a framed certificate for a job well done.

Idiot.

They were dogs—
big
dogs—
trained
dogs, and he had no idea what they were trained to do if someone dared to invade their private domain. Whatever it was, it probably wouldn't be pretty. He remembered Acheron taking him by the throat and pinning him to the ground—what part of the body were these dogs trained to attack? Nick closed the gate a little; he had body parts he would rather not see in a dog's mouth.

Nick just stood there, helpless and frustrated, wondering what to do next.

In desperation he swung the gate open wide and looked directly into Trygg's eyes. “Okay,” he said, “I don't speak your language and you don't speak mine—but I'm a smart guy and you're a smart dog, so we should be able to work this thing out. I know you don't speak English—at least I don't think you do—but your master trained you to understand some very subtle gestures and expressions and body language. So I'm just going to talk to you the way I would anybody else, and I'm going to use the same inflection and the same mannerisms I normally use—and I'm just going to hope that you'll somehow figure out what I mean. You ready? Okay, here goes: I'm afraid something has happened to your master— to Alena. I'm afraid she might be dead, and if she is, you're the only one who can find her. I need you to come out of that kennel and help me, and I need you to do it right now. I want you to come out of there and sit right here beside me—see where I'm pointing? I want the rest of you dogs to stay where you are—that means you and you and especially you, big guy—this is just between Trygg and me. Okay, Trygg, that's my whole spiel—now it's up to you. Are you going to help me or not?”

He put his hands on his hips and waited. A few seconds later Trygg trotted out of the kennel, circled around behind him, and sat down by his side.

Nick started to say, “Good dog,” but somehow it sounded insulting. Instead he said, “I knew you'd listen to reason. Let's get to work.”

He took the pillowcase from the kennel post, wadded it into a ball, and held it under the dog's nose.

“I hope this helps,” he said. “I know that you're trained to find dead people—but I'm hoping she's less than dead.”

Trygg sniffed at it for a few seconds, then looked up at Nick as if to say, “Got it.”

Nick walked to the edge of the woods, then turned and looked back. He pointed into the trees and said, “Go find her. If her body's around here, that's where it'll be. Go ahead, girl—take me to her.”

But Trygg rose and trotted down the road a little and stood perfectly still, staring into the distant darkness.

Nick walked to the spot and looked around. Trygg was a cadaver dog, not a search-and-rescue dog—she was trained to detect the telltale odor of blood and bone and decomposing human tissue, but the ground seemed undisturbed and Nick saw no sign of fluid or tissue anywhere around.

“What is it, girl? Is there something here—something I can't see?”

Nick hooked a finger through the dog's collar and pulled—Trygg resisted. He tugged harder until the dog reluctantly followed him to the edge of the woods. He led the dog into the trees a little and released her again—she immediately turned and trotted back to the same spot in the clearing, where she again stood staring down the road.

Nick didn't understand. The dog showed no interest in the woods at all, though that was surely the place anyone in his right mind would have chosen to hide a body. He looked down the road—was there something there? If so, he would have surely passed it on the way up. He walked down the road a little but still saw nothing. He turned to the dog and made a big shrugging gesture with both hands.

“I don't get it,” he said. “There's nothing here—at least nothing I can see. What are you trying to tell me?”