With the advent of a siren coming closer, but still far in the distance, Walt’s blood pressure rose. He had specifically ordered otherwise, and it was only as the siren passed and faded to the north that he realized the cruiser was on another call. Beatrice loaded herself with cheat grass as she spun her loops in the meadow, snorting and hurrying to pick up the lost scent, Walt looking on from a distance, not crowding her, but prepared to follow. As he looked up, he saw thousands of acres of national forest, acres that by now the mountain man knew well, had exploited for the past few months. It gave the man a decided advantage, whereas Beatrice provided Walt a counterpunch.
Hindsight was nobody’s friend, least of all his. He could see now the unspoken pressure he’d put on Gilly Menquez to deliver; he would have to live with the outcome, while Gilly would not. Could begin to see how he’d allowed the evidence to form unwarranted suspicions, wondering how much of his own feelings had colored those suspicions. Standing alone in the meadow, he felt an urge to cry out, a need to beg forgiveness, though from whom he couldn’t be sure.
He withdrew his BlackBerry and checked the missed call. Dispatch. He double-checked his radio; still not working even with the added elevation. He called in, his temper getting the better of him.
“Emergency Services,” answered the outwardly calm woman’s voice.
“It’s Fleming. Where’s the backup?”
“We have an ambulance on site, Sheriff. As to the patrols… It appears all but Huxley rolled to Carey on that drowning. Huxley was the other side of Galena. He’s on his way south to your twenty.”
Budgetary concerns had lowered his swing shift to six officers in four cruisers. He cursed the commissioners for pulling the dollars out from under him, and his own deputies and dispatch for allowing a patrol void to occur. It wasn’t the first time a group of bored deputies had bunched up.
Walt’s office rang the Ketchum Police Department as well. “Ketchum?”
“Four-car pileup with fire and injury at the saddle intersection. Two patrols on site. We need your ambulance up there A-SAP. I called them off just now.”
Walt hadn’t seen the headlights leaving, his attention on Beatrice. “I need backup, Gloria.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I need those areas blocked and searched as we discussed. This is a homicide suspect, Goddamn it,” he flared, revealing a rare display of emotion. “I want every on-call deputy up here. I want anyone and everyone we’ve got, right now. Do I have to spell it out for you?”
“Copy that. Initiating the call tree.”
It was a not-too-subtle stab at Walt by a very alert dispatcher. Gloria knew her stuff and he’d been wrong to dress her down. All that had been required of him was to order the call tree instigated. His outburst hadn’t helped anyone.
“Thank you,” he said.
It caught her off guard.
“No problem, Sheriff.”
“Make it happen,” he couldn’t help adding. He disconnected the call.
His flashlight followed Beatrice’s apparent random looping as she began to define the pattern and Walt knew to move in her general direction. However her olfactory process worked, it eventually led to a smaller, tighter pattern from which she shot out in a straight line, suddenly fixed on the scent. That moment quickly approached, and as she got a faceful of the trail left by the killer, she looked back to make sure Walt was paying attention. She actually looked proud of him as she found him coming up behind her and she tore excitedly to the edge of the meadow, looked back once more, and dropped out of sight. For a moment Walt lost his equilibrium: when he’d last seen her, she’d been nose to the ground, aimed back down the hill toward the Engleton estate.