Hunting Hour Read online

  He connected the call. “This is Dr. Walker.”

  A male voice boomed in his ear, making him pull the phone away. “Hello. Dr. Walker?”

  “Yes, this is Dr. Walker.”

  “Gus Tilley,” the man fairly shouted.

  Cole had done work for Gus before, although it had been quite some time since he’d last seen him. “Hi, Gus.”

  “I got a problem.”

  There was a long pause. When the man didn’t go on, Cole filled the gap. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Dodger. You remember Dodger?”

  “Your dog, right?” Tan and white, mixed breed, neutered male, medium size, friendly with strangers. He could conjure the dog better than an image of Gus. But then, that wasn’t unusual.

  “Yep. He’s got somethin’ in his ear.”

  “Can you see it?”

  “His ear?”

  “No, I mean the thing inside his ear. Have you taken a look?”

  “I can’t see anything, but he’s holding his ear funny, and he keeps scratching at it.”

  Cole thought of a grass awn, a wiry seeded-out stem that worked its way into a dog’s fur or crevices and could cause an infection after it burrowed in. The dog probably needed his attention, but it didn’t classify as an emergency.

  “It could be a grass awn, Gus. I could take a look at him in the morning.”

  “I . . . uh . . . I don’t know. Can you look in there tonight?”

  “The office is closed. Emergencies only. Do you feel like this is an emergency?”

  He answered quickly. “Yes, it is. He needs us to help him tonight.”

  Gus was a bachelor who lived up Soldier Canyon Road in a log cabin that sat on a small acreage near the national forest. He kept a few head of cows and a horse, which he’d called Cole out to work on for routine things like inoculations. Though an odd man, he seemed quite fond of his dog and the posse of feral cats that lived in the barn.

  The distress Cole heard in Gus’s voice tugged at him. “I’ll see him tonight if you think it can’t wait. How soon can you get here?”

  “I’m at the edge of town at the gas station. A few minutes.”

  So Gus had already driven the half hour into town from his home. No wonder he insisted on being seen. “I’ll meet you at the clinic.”

  Cole disconnected the call and went back into the kitchen, where the three women in his life were involved in a lively discussion. Mrs. Gibbs had picked up pad and pen while he’d been gone and was taking notes. Perhaps this simple party had become an extravaganza while he’d turned his back, and he hoped things hadn’t gotten out of hand.

  “Sorry, but I have an emergency at the clinic. Should only take twenty or thirty minutes, and then I’ll be back.” He scanned the three faces tilted his way and decided they all appeared okay with the news. He was in the clear. “You girls want to come with me?”

  “I’ve got homework, Dad,” Angie said. “Better not.”

  “I’ll go.” Sophie jumped up from the table and carried her dishes to the sink.

  Cole cleared his own dishes, thanking Mrs. Gibbs for dinner. He heard Angie offer to help load the dishwasher, but Mrs. Gibbs declined and told her to go ahead and do her schoolwork.

  “Grab a jacket, Sophie,” he said. “Real quick. Gus will be here any minute.” In fact, he heard the sound of a vehicle rattling past as he stepped into the garage and opened the door. Sophie trotted through the kitchen, dragging her jacket with one arm through a sleeve and Belle dogging her tracks.

  “Belle, you stay here,” Cole told the dog, making her stop in stride. The big dog sat and gazed longingly at the door with her ears low.

  “We’ll be back soon, Belle,” Sophie reassured her in a lilting voice as she followed Cole, shutting the door firmly so that Belle wouldn’t be tempted to challenge their decision.

  “Load up into the truck,” Cole said. “Gus just went by.”

  The clinic was only about two hundred yards farther up the lane, so Cole and the girls usually walked the short distance, but he didn’t want to keep Gus waiting. He opened the near door of his truck, which carried a mobile vet unit in the bed, and hoisted Sophie up into the driver’s seat, where she scrambled over to the passenger side.

  At the clinic, Cole recognized Gus and Dodger standing out front, waiting. One of Dodger’s perky ears was lopped over and rolled back, and even while Cole helped Sophie down from the truck, the dog sat and carefully dug at the inside of the ear with his hind paw.

  Gus had changed since Cole last saw him. The tall, lanky man had grown even thinner, and his pale-blue eyes were sunken in his gaunt face. He’d let his sandy hair and beard grow long, both streaked with gray. Cole might not have recognized him if he’d met him on the street.

  As they approached, Cole introduced his daughter. “This is Mr. Tilley, Sophie. Gus, my youngest, Sophie.”

  Gus cast his eyes toward the ground and took off his battered and stained felt hat. Fingering the brim, he murmured a how-do-you-do, while Sophie chimed in with her friendly hello. Then the man slouched into an anxious-looking heap as he examined the area in front of the clinic, keeping his gaze on anything but Sophie.

  As Cole took in the man’s sagging clothes, shaggy beard, and sunken eyes, he wondered if he’d been sick. He turned to unlock the clinic door. “How have you been, Gus?”

  “I’m fine, Dr. Walker. You?”

  “Can’t complain. Let’s bring Dodger in here to the exam room.” Cole held the door open for the man to enter and then went to swing the exam room door wide as well. Sophie skipped across the lobby, following Gus and his dog and looking pleased with her evening adventure. She went to the far side of the room, grabbed a pair of latex gloves, and pulled them on, getting ready to work. Cole suppressed a smile.

  “Let me take a look at you, Dodger,” he said, holding out his hand for the dog to sniff. They’d met before at his place, and the dog seemed as friendly as he’d been on his own turf. “Can we lift him up to the exam table, Gus?”

  “I can do it.” Gus easily lifted the dog onto the table and held him steady in a light grasp. Dodger opened his mouth and panted. Nervous.

  “So it’s this ear, right? Can you hold his head for me, like this?” Cole demonstrated how he wanted Gus to secure the dog’s head, and then picking up his otoscope, he held the ear firmly so he could take a thorough look. The ear was reddened where the dog had been scratching, but he couldn’t see any foreign objects lodged in it. No grass seed or stem, no ticks, no mites. Nothing but the irritation.

  He reached for some antiseptic ear cleanser. “His ear looks irritated, but there’s nothing in there that I can see. I’ll clean his ears out for him. Maybe he once had something in it, and he’s gotten it out on his own. Or he reacted to some grass or something.”

  Cole squirted a small amount of cleanser into Dodger’s ear, set down the bottle, and rubbed the liquid into the ear canal. As soon as Cole set down the ear wash, Sophie moved forward to pick it up. She stood beside him, holding the bottle ready so she could hand it to him for the next ear. “I don’t think there’s anything in there now, Gus, but I’ll send this home with you so you can clean his ears out daily for a few days. If it doesn’t get any better, call me and I’ll take another look.”

  Gus watched Cole demonstrate how to clean and then wipe out Dodger’s ears. Using a low, conspiratorial tone, he asked, “Do you think somebody put something in his ear and then took it out?”

  The question surprised Cole. “Why would someone do that?”

  “Maybe they wanted to make him sick.” Gus shifted his eyes away from Cole, giving him a sidelong glance.

  “I don’t know why anyone would want to do that. Do you?”

  “To get at me.”

  “Why, Gus? Are you having trouble with someone?” Cole was thinking of a neighbor dispute. They weren’t unheard of out in the woods. People squabbled over boundaries, water rights, fences, you name it. “A neighbor?”

  Gus shook his h
ead, his gaze darting away from Cole’s each time he tried to hold onto it.

  “Do you think someone did something to Dodger’s ear?” Cole asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Gus said, and he appeared to be backpedaling. “Probably not.”

  “Because if you do, we could have someone from the county humane society investigate. There are laws about injuring an animal on purpose. You don’t have to put up with it.”

  Gus shifted his feet. “I don’t know. Don’t want that.”

  Cole had finished washing Dodger’s other ear. “Let me take one more look in that ear and make sure we didn’t dislodge something when we cleaned it.” Both ears were bright pink after the cleaning, and Cole still found nothing.

  Gus lifted his dog down to the floor, both of them looking relieved to end the procedure. Following the two into the lobby, Cole went to the backside of the reception desk to enter the visit into the computer and settle up the charges. He could hear Sophie begin spritzing the exam table with antiseptic spray, cleanup being her favorite part of working at the clinic. He knew she would wipe the table until the stainless-steel top shined.

  After paying his bill, Gus turned to leave, leading Dodger across the lobby to the front door.

  “Let me know how he’s doing tomorrow, Gus. Give me a call sometime in the morning.” Cole followed him outside.

  “I will, Doc. I’ll keep an eye on him tonight.”

  It looked like Gus needed rest more than Dodger needed someone to worry over him. “Just get some sleep. Dodger will be okay.”

  After following Gus outside, Cole watched him load the dog into his truck cab and drive away. The lop-eared Dodger took his seat on the passenger side, his silhouette in the back window.

  Gus seemed stressed or nervous or . . . something, Cole thought. Something seemed off, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  Chapter 3

  Her arm still around Robo, Mattie knelt beside the girl’s body, taking in the details. She let herself slump forward, sharp pebbles digging into her knees. This was the third dead body Robo had found in less than a year. If their mission was to reduce crime here in Timber Creek, they weren’t doing a very good job.

  Brody’s knees popped as he squatted beside the girl’s head. Neither of them touched the body. “Blue lips. Suffocation?”

  “Asthma attack? Or something worse.” Mattie gestured toward Candace’s face and then her hands. “Several scrapes on her face. Something abrasive against it. And look at these fingernails. Broken. Scrapes on her hands too. She fought.”

  A pit opened in Mattie’s stomach. Someone killed this kid.

  “Yep. Better treat this one as a homicide,” Brody said, his voice pitched so low, it was a growl.

  “What about this posing?” Mattie said, nodding toward the girl’s hands crossed upon her chest.

  “Someone who knew her.”

  She wondered if it could be more than that. “Someone who might have cared about her?”

  “Maybe.”

  Mattie roused herself and scanned the area. The rocky outcropping surrounded them, blocking sight from all directions but skyward. It gave her a hinky feeling. Someone could be hidden, watching. “Do you think the killer is still around?”

  Brody stood and scanned the area. “Doubt it.”

  “Robo could probably find his trail, see where he went.”

  Brody nodded. “Do it.”

  Mattie stood and gestured away from the girl’s body, encouraging Robo to sniff the perimeter around the site. “Can you find the bad guy, Robo? Find the bad guy. Search.”

  Patrol dogs didn’t always need a scent article to track someone, especially if the target was fleeing the scene of a crime. The guilty often emitted a sweat that left an odor dogs could pick up readily, and Mattie hoped that would be the case here.

  “Do you need backup?” Brody called to her as she followed her dog downhill.

  “You’ll have to stay here until the others come.” Mattie threw the words over her shoulder. “Follow me when you can.”

  Robo showed no hesitation, putting his nose to the ground and trotting away from the gravesite, telling Mattie that whoever left Candace under the brush must have also left a strong scent trail. Maybe this wasn’t a stone-cold killing. Maybe Candace’s death had horrified the person responsible. Someone who knew the child and cared about her enough to pose her in that peaceful way. The thought made her nauseous, and she focused her full attention back on Robo.

  Smoker’s Hill was a bare hogback, with its sloping side nestled up to the high school and a ridge running along the top. Robo headed down but away from the school, farther south beyond the area where she’d observed signs of a struggle. Skirting around cactus, yucca, and sagebrush, he continued downhill while Mattie jogged behind, keeping an eye on the terrain at her feet while glancing ahead to spot a possible ambush. Chances of someone lying in wait seemed slim; she supposed the fugitive she was tracking would have tried to put as much distance as possible between him and the girl’s body.

  It didn’t take long for Robo to reach the bottom of the hill, and he came to a stop at a rusty barbed wire fence that ran along the barrow ditch beside Highway 12, the major highway in and out of Timber Creek. When Mattie joined him at the fence, he crouched and began to crawl under the bottom strand. She pulled it up to give him more space below the sharp barbs. Once he was clear, she pushed the strand downward so she could squeeze between it and the middle one. A barb poked her in the back and caught her khaki coverall as she scooted through. She pulled away from it, hearing the fabric rip. No matter. She was used to getting tears in her uniforms while following Robo, and Mama T, her foster mother, helped her mend them.

  Robo went along the road with his nose to the ground, stopping ten yards away and sniffing in all directions. Then he came back and sat at the edge of the highway. Dead end.

  The guy must’ve parked his vehicle here. If he’d parked right, he’d have entered the driver’s side. But who knew? Speculation wouldn’t get them very far.

  But the tire tracks left at the side of the road might.

  “Good boy.” Mattie patted Robo firmly on his side while he leaned against her legs. He raised his head and bumped his nose on the pocket of her utility belt, the one that held his treat for completing a mission—a yellow tennis ball.

  She heard a car coming toward them on the highway, so she pulled Robo into the barrow ditch to watch it cruise past. White four-door sedan, Buick, two passengers—a man and a woman. She made a note of the license plate number in her pocket notebook, despite knowing there would probably be no need to follow up. They were most likely just travelers on the road, not killers. Though traffic on this road was typically sparse, the body up on Smoker’s Hill made her more cautious about people passing through town. She would keep an eye out.

  “What’s up?” Brody asked as he made his way down the slope to the fence.

  “Dead end. But I’m certain the person we want got into a vehicle right here. Maybe on the driver’s side, which could mean he’d left it here during the time of Candace’s death. We found some tire tracks.”

  “Let’s secure this area. Detective LoSasso is calling in the crime scene unit from Byers County, and they can take a mold of this track.”

  Robo nudged her utility belt again. Having learned how much his routine meant to him and how important it was to give him what he expected, Mattie leaned forward to pat him on his side. “I need to throw the ball for Robo.”

  “I’ll put up the tape. Check back when you’re done.”

  Mattie led Robo a safe distance from the highway to a grassy area near an abandoned adobe building, him dancing at her feet while she pulled out his tennis ball. With her heart breaking for Candace, Mattie began to play with her dog.

  Robo wore a silly grin as he loped back toward her with the ball locked between his sharp white teeth. He’d finished growing since they’d become partners and had fleshed out, now tipping the scales at about one hundred p
ounds. He was the most handsome German shepherd she’d ever seen, his glossy black coat lush and thick, highlighted with tan markings.

  Her stomach churned as she thought about the posed corpse, suggesting that whoever did it had cared about the dead child. Someone like a parent.

  Burt Banks smelled of booze. And he wasn’t home with the kids like he was supposed to be. So where was he? It made her sick to think a father might kill his own child, but this guy had to be their number-one suspect, at least at this moment.

  She threw the ball until Robo’s interest flagged and then stored it back in its pocket. After leaning over him, ruffling his fur, and giving him a long hug, she told him it was time to go back to work. He trotted beside her at heel, tail waving, and looking for all intents and purposes ready to go. It seemed that his boundary testing, something common with these intelligent dogs, had ended—at least for now.

  Brody had stretched crime scene tape from the fence posts to a spike he’d placed near the asphalt, creating a boundary to protect the tire tracks. While she’d been playing with Robo, she’d noticed several locals stopping to talk to him, and he’d waved them all away. She’d also noticed he’d written down license plate numbers as they drove off, telling her his radar was operating on full alert like hers.

  Reminding Robo to heel as they crossed the road, Mattie joined Brody on the other side. “I want to take Robo back along the scent trail and flag any footprints we can find,” she told him.

  “Sounds good.” Brody extracted his cell phone from his shirt pocket. “I’ll inform Sheriff McCoy. He and LoSasso are at the gravesite, and I’ve told them about the tracks here. When the CSU gets here, they’ll work the gravesite first. Garcia’s on his way to stand guard down here, and I’ll come up as soon as he arrives.”

  Mattie nodded and led Robo back to the wire fence. After crossing through, she began the patter to rev him up and then asked him to search for the bad guy so he would lead her back along the scent trail. She’d never tried this kind of challenge before, asking Robo to go over a scent trail twice, but it was similar enough to one of his other skills—backtracking a thief’s trail while searching for evidence—that she hoped he’d know what to do.