“Butler?” The voice cuts into dreams of whipping along a forest path on an ATV.
“Butler?” Then, “Goddamn it,” and a brusque hand lands on my shoulder.
I bolt awake, blanket falling free. Dalton is on my balcony, looming over me.
“Huh? Wha—?” I shake off the confusion and start to rise, then realize I’m dressed only in my panties. I pull the blanket to my neck as I get to my feet.
“What are you doing out here?” he says.
“I…” I blink hard and look out at the still-dark forest, my brain refusing to find traction. “I couldn’t sleep. And wolves. There were…” I trail off, realizing how silly that sounds, but he nods, as if this requires no further comment.
“You’d better have your service revolver under that blanket,” he says.
I blink harder. Then I realize Dalton is standing on the balcony. My balcony. In the middle of the night.
“Wait,” I say. “Did you break into my—”
“I have a key. You weren’t answering the door.”
I yank the blanket higher and peer into the dark night. “Tell me it’s not eight A.M. already.”
“It’s not. We have a problem. First, though, if you’re out here at night, you’d damned well better have your gun.”
“Why?” I wave over the side of the balcony. “Do we have flying monkeys in the forest, too?”
“Keep your gun at your bedside. Always. That’s an order, Detective.”
I shake my head. “I’m not being difficult, Sheriff. Therapists call it a hypersensitive survival instinct. If I have a gun and I see a threat, I could use it to defend myself before I fully process the extent of that threat.”
He snorts.
“And no, that’s not my excuse for what I did down south. But if I’d had my gun out here, there’s a good chance I would have shot you.”
He shakes his head and walks back inside, saying, “Get dressed. Come down. Hastings is missing. Someone saw him heading into the woods two hours ago. We need to find him before he gets himself killed.”
* * *
We step outside, and Dalton hands me a lantern. A blast of bitter wind hits me, and I pull my jacket tighter.
“You want to grab something warmer?” Dalton asks.
“I’m fine.”
“Let me rephrase that: Get the hell back inside and put on something warmer, Butler.”
I obey. I’m grabbing a sweater when I remember seeing a bag of what had looked like outerwear with my supply boxes. I dump it and find gloves, a hat, and boots, all much thicker than the outerwear I brought. I scoop up the hat and gloves and hurry outside.
Anders has joined Dalton on my front porch. My first thought is, I have a front porch? Followed by, My front porch has a chair—I could haul that up to the balcony. I shake off the whim and yank on my gloves as I greet Anders. Dalton is already on the move, disappearing into the dark.
“Rule number one for working with Eric: keep up,” Anders whispers as we jog after the sheriff. “Two years later, I’m still trying.”
Dalton has headed around the rear of my house. He’s moving fast along that strip of yard, as if this is his secret road past the traffic-jammed streets of Rockton.
When we reach him, I say, “Can I make an observation?”
He snorts. “Well, that’s a fucking stupid question. I hired a detective, not a mime.”
“It’s an observation that might question what we’re about to do.”
“Still a fucking stupid question. If I wanted someone to blindly obey everything I say, I’d have hired another army boy.”
“Thank you, Eric,” Anders says.
“Though, on second thought, Will, blind obedience might be a step up, considering you never read those files.”
“Not going to drop that, are you?” Anders said.
“Nope. Butler? Talk. And if you ever have an idea about an investigation and you don’t tell me about it…”
When he doesn’t finish, I say, “Trying to figure out how you could enforce that without mind-reading skills?”
Anders chuckles. Dalton looks over, sees my smile, and nods.
“Yeah, it’s unenforceable,” he says. “So I won’t threaten. But you get the point. I hired a detective because I expect ideas. I’m tired of doing all the thinking in this department.”
“Ouch,” Anders says.
“That’s not an insult.” A few more steps. “Not really. I could use more thinking from you, Will. You’re smart enough, so there’s no excuse other than that you’re accustomed to following a commanding officer. You’re a good soldier. I need that. I also need more.”
“You know what neither of us really needs at two A.M., Eric? Brutal honesty.”
Dalton stops short. I think he’s going to comment on that, but he’s scanning the darkness.
“You got the militia up and out?” he asks Anders.
“I’m a good soldier, remember?”
Dalton ignores the sarcasm. We’re right on the edge of the woods. He’s still stopped. I start to speak, but an abrupt raised hand stops me.
“He’s listening,” Anders whispers. “The wind speaks to him.”
The deputy gets a look for that. Then Dalton starts walking again and says, “Butler? Talk.”
“Right. Okay, so you said Hastings took off into the woods, but I’m questioning the logic of that, given what he saw on that autopsy table. Even if he doesn’t realize it might have been cannibalism, the sight of someone presumably ripped apart by wild animals is not going to send him running into the woods, is it?”
“Your suggestion?”
“That he’s still in town. He’s a petty little man who is not above sending you on a wilderness goose chase at two A.M.”
“Good,” he grunts. Then he keeps walking into the forest.
“Good but wrong?” I say.
“Good call on character. Hastings is a weasel. Fifty percent chance he’s done exactly what you said. Which is why I have the militia searching town.”
“Oh. So you’re a step ahead of me.”
“I’d be a lousy sheriff otherwise.”
“But you still think he could be in the woods. May I ask why?”
He motions for us to stay back while he hunkers down at the forest edge to examine something.
“Because the locals don’t always believe us about the woods,” Anders answers for him. “It’s like saying the moat is filled with man-eating sharks and killer electric eels. Some think we’re lying about the danger to keep them inside.”
“But Hastings saw the corpse.”
“And might be telling himself we did that to the body.”
“What? That you or Dalton butchered Powys postmortem? Why?”
“To keep folks out of the woods. As a scare tactic, it’d be senselessly extreme and stupid, not to mention revolting and barbaric, but you heard Hastings—to him Eric is a savage with a badge.”
Dalton’s on the move again. We’re following.
“I know there aren’t any pets in town,” I say. “But wouldn’t it be good to have a dog for tracking?”
“Don’t need it,” Anders says. “We’ve got Eric.”
Dalton shoots him the finger and keeps walking along the forest’s edge. He stops abruptly and crouches again, and now I realize what he’s doing—searching for signs of where someone might have entered the woods.
When I say as much, Anders nods. “There are only two maintained paths heading in, but there are smaller walking trails if you know where to find them. Running pell-mell into the forest is crazy. Following one of those maintained paths is also crazy, unless you’re looking to get caught fast.”
We look over to see that Dalton has disappeared.
Anders sighs and calls. “Yo, boss! We missed the nonexistent signal. Follow or wait?”
No answer. Anders glances at me. “That means follow. You eventually learn to read the code. It’d be easier if we just equipped him with signal lights. Red for stop. Green for follow. Yellow for ‘take a guess and get your head bitten off if you’re wrong.’ Except it’d probably be stuck on yellow most of the time.”
“I heard that,” Dalton calls back.
“Good. And yes, we’re following.”
I don’t see the path until we’re on it. I’ve hiked before. But my idea of a path is a groomed trail wide enough to ride a bike on. This is barely a slice through the trees; branches catch me on both sides. Even the worn dirt underfoot vanishes as the trees close in and the ground becomes a carpet of dirt and needles.
“Patrol check?” Dalton calls back.
“He’s asking about the daily militia patrols,” Anders explains. “They report in to me. One thing they look for is signs that someone went into the woods.”
“Patrol check?” Dalton repeats, with an added snap.
“I’m using a teaching moment. It’s the only way Casey will learn anything. And the patrols haven’t found evidence of a wanderer in three days.” He glances at me. “That tells Eric whether the signs he’s picking up could be from another day. It’s not impossible that someone wandered off without us knowing it, but we’ve got a good catch ratio. High penalties for wandering—combined with regular escorted trips. Means there’s no excuse for breaching the perimeter.”
“Why not erect a fence?”
“There was one, years ago. First a wooden fence. Then a barbed-wire one. Followed by some high-tech generator-powered boundary-marking system. The last just plain failed—it took too much power, and it broke down easily. What Rockton learned from erecting fences, though, is that they don’t make people feel safe; they make them feel like captives. Folks breached that fence far more often than they breach our marked perimeter. They prefer us to treat them like responsible adults and say, ‘Look, we don’t want you wandering in the woods for your own good.’ With ninety percent of them, that’s enough. It’s the other ten that give us grief.”
“You done talking?” Dalton asks.
“I don’t know. Are you going to start talking?”
“Sure, I’ll talk. We want Hastings to hear us, right? So he can find us and spend the rest of the night tied to a goddamn tree.”
“Okay, you can stop talking now, boss. We need to be quiet and listen.”
Another flashed finger.
I whisper, “Is he serious?”
Anders nods. “Punishment for running? Spend a night out here tied to a tree. Course, we keep an eye on them, but they don’t know that.”
I should be horrified. But it is a fitting punishment, one that’ll teach them why they don’t want to be out here, as I’m sure every whistle of the wind becomes the howl of rabid canines.
I wouldn’t mind spending the night out here. Preferably not tied to a tree. I’m remarkably at peace in these woods. Maybe that’s because I’m a city girl—I don’t fully comprehend the threats I’d face. I think I do, though. I’ve never romanticized wild places. There’s danger at every footfall here, walking through dense, pitch-black forest, our lanterns kept purposely dim so our prey won’t see them.
Our prey.Interesting way of putting it.
I’ll just say that I don’t feel what I expected to in these woods. I don’t feel fear. I don’t feel loss of control. I felt an odd exhilaration, as sharp and biting as the wind, but as refreshing, too, like whipping along on that ATV, knowing a single missed branch or rut could send me flying, but enjoying the challenge and, yes, the danger.
Even the smells surprise me. Conifers and soil and rainwater and greenery and the occasional whiff of musk, like we’re downwind of invisible woodland creatures. I hear them, too, scampering and calling and rustling and bolting. Dalton knows exactly what each sound is and whether the creature making it is big enough to be Hastings, and he stops for those but ignores the others.
I’m fascinated watching him track. I remember Anders saying Dalton has lived here all his life, and I can see that now, his comfort in these woods, the way he moves as sure-footed as I would down a city street.
Eventually, though, Dalton loses the trail. He backs up and double-checks, and I ask if there’s anything I can do to help. He doesn’t answer, and Anders shakes his head, nicely telling me not to interfere.
Five minutes pass of Dalton pacing and examining and even squinting into the treetops. Then, “Fuck.”
After a few seconds of silence, Anders says, “Can we buy a few more syllables, boss?”
“Trail ends there,” Dalton says, pointing.
I walk to the spot and peer around.
“I, uh, don’t think he swung through the trees,” Anders whispers when he sees me squinting into the dark treetops.
“No,” I say. “But I noticed Sheriff Dalton—”
“Call him Eric,” Anders says. “Please. Otherwise, you set a bad precedent.”
“Okay, well … Eric looked up, and I realize what he was checking. The tree cover is unusually dense here. That explains why the ground cover is unusually sparse. Which means there aren’t any signs to show which way Hastings went.”
“Just say that, then,” Dalton says.
“Teaching moment,” Anders says. “Which I appreciate. Okay, so the solution is to split up. I know you hate that, Eric, but we’re all armed, and this patch isn’t more than a few hundred square feet. No one’s going to wander off and get lost. Right, Casey?”
“Right.”
Dalton grumbles, but it is the efficient next step, and he assigns us directions. Then he says to me, “We’re looking for prints, crushed moss, broken twigs. If you see any, call me over to make sure it’s not just an animal.”
We get to work. The toughest part? Checking for signs of passage without leaving them yourself. Wait! I see a footprint! It’s a boot, about size six … er, never mind.
I move slowly and methodically. I want to impress Dalton. I won’t deny that. I’m a woman, and I’m a visible minority, which means when I made detective and zoomed up to major crimes, people blamed affirmative action. I’m accustomed to proving that I got my position because I deserve it.
I find prints, but they’re all animal. As for broken twigs or crushed undergrowth, my section is the barest—not by accident, I suspect. Dalton can be an ass, but he’s an ass in support of the job, not against it. In other words, he isn’t going to hand me a challenging segment to check so I can screw up and let Hastings escape.
Without vegetation to examine, I cover my strip quicker than the others, despite moving slowly. I’m near the edge when I find a spot with bent twigs, as if something large passed not long ago. I’m looking for prints when the wind flutters through the trees, and out of the corner of my eye I catch sight of something white. Too white to be natural in this forest.