A False Dawn

THIRTEEN

The next morning I drove with Max to near the spot I had parked when I found the girl. Was her name Angela like Reverend. Jane said? She was now a body under a sheet in the coroner’s cold storage filing cabinet tucked away like another crime statistic.

Max followed me to the spot where I’d found her. I knelt down and began to search the area. Max sniffed blades of grass. She seemed to sense that something was wrong here. Deer tracks, wide and deep. The deer had been running. Had the deer been frightened by the person who had killed the girl?

“Let’s see where these came from, Max.” She ran ahead, barking and wagging her tail. Max and I were now backtracking, following a trail in reverse hoping it might lead to the start of how the girl got to the river.

We were within seventy-five feet of the road when Max stopped. This time the fur rose along her spine, a whine coming from her throat. She found a single shoe, a woman’s shoe. It had a high heel and a closed toe. I took a pen from my shirt pocket and lifted the shoe from the ground. It was the shade of cherries. No brand name.

I held the shoe with a handkerchief and carefully poured some of the contents from the toe area into one of the Ziploc bags I’d brought. The soil trickled out of the shoe like coal dust. Holding it to my nose, I could detect the faint odor of phosphates, possibly manmade fertilizers.

I lowered the shoe back where Max had found it and looked around for a second shoe before calling Detective Slater on my cell. “I found what I think may have been one of the victim’s shoes.”

“Where? Under your car seat?” Slater asked.

“It’s where you should have found it if you’d searched the crime scene the right way.” I fired back, regretting my comment the instant I said it. “Look, Detective Slater, she wasn’t wearing shoes when I found her. This shoe is another two hundred yards north of the river, near Highway 44. Maybe she lost it running from the perp. Maybe she’d been in his car. Or she could have been some poor kid in the wrong place at the wrong time hitching a ride. The shoe’s here. I’m leaving it and any other evidence right where I found it. Come get it.”

I could almost hear his mind crunching through the phone. “I’ll be there in an hour. Don’t touch anything. And don’t leave.”

“I wouldn’t think of it, Detective. Did you get an ID on the girl?”

“No, but we have the autopsy report.”

“You took a DNA sample from me. I know there was no match. But I don’t know exact cause of death or who she was. I was hoping you could tell me that.”

“Stay put until I get there.”

“I’ll make this easy. I’ll tie a white handkerchief on a tree limb next to Highway 44. You pull off the road and walk about seventy-five feet straight north from the tree and you’ll find the shoe. But you won’t find me. Do your own police work, Detective.”

I hung up. Max had vanished. “Max!”

Silence.

There was the noise of something moving in the brush. “Max, where are you?” Nothing. Then there was a sound you never forget — the sound of a rattlesnake.

“Max!”

I stepped around a large pine tree and stopped. The snake was as thick as my arm. Body coiled, ready to strike. The eyes trained on Max like heat-seeking weapons. They were dark, polished stones. The snake’s tongue tested the air in flickers of black.

“Max! Stop!” I blurted. She paid no attention to my command. Here was an animal she’d never seen, and it was shaking a new toy. Playtime with death.

The next few seconds switched to a film gate of macabre slow motion. Max’s nostrils quivered. She froze, mesmerized by the unblinking dark pearls. The snake coiled tighter. Head poised to strike.

“Max move!” My scream sounded distant. The strike was a blur.

The snake was dying before it could bury its fangs into Max’s face. An arrow had gone right through the rattlesnake’s head, impaling it in the ground. Its body wrapped around the shaft in a death grip, the rattle growing quiet, softly caressing the yellow quill feathers as constricting muscles and nerves died. The black pearls seemed to stare somewhere beyond Max.

I turned around as Joe Billie stepped from between two tall pine trees.