Endangered (A Sam Westin Mystery Book 1) Read online

  “We didn’t find any evidence that he’s not.” He looked at her sideways. “You think someone took him?”

  “There was a man, I swear. And his father didn’t remember me.”

  “Maybe he will later. None of us are processing too well at the moment. It’s been a long, long, long night.” Pressing his index fingers to his eyelids, he rubbed in circles.

  Sam closed her own eyes, tried to relax the tension in her neck muscles. When she opened her eyes, she nearly jumped off her seat. Jenny Fischer stood less than a foot away, staring at her.

  “Will you find him?” The woman’s blue eyes burned with pain. She held out a hand in supplication. “You know what my baby looks like.”

  Sam took the woman’s cold fingers in her own warmer ones. She and Kent, lounging on a picnic bench, drinking coffee, must appear totally uncaring to this desperate mother.

  Kent stood, put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Everyone’s looking for Zachary, Mrs. Fischer. Fresh volunteers like Sam here are coming to take over for those of us who have searched all night. And we’ll all be back this afternoon after we’ve gotten some sleep.”

  Jenny withdrew her hand from Sam’s and twisted her fingers together, staring at some point in the middle distance.

  “I was trying to light the stove.” Jenny’s voice was hoarse. “I didn’t have my eyes off Zack for more than a minute.” She pulled a small orange toy from the pocket of her sweatshirt.

  Jenny held a tiny plastic truck with only three wheels. Sam blanched. Zack’s twuck. The little boy’s mother pressed a fingertip onto the empty metal axle. A drop of blood oozed out of her pale skin. Jenny didn’t seem to notice. “This was Zack’s favorite toy. I was always worried that he’d pull off a wheel and choke on it.” Her voice cracked.

  Her gaze returned to the same distant point. “How was I to know that something even more terrible could happen to my baby? Fred said that—” Jenny’s hand rose to her mouth. A tear slid down her reddened cheeks. “Oh God, did a mountain lion eat my baby?”

  Sam realized that Jenny’s eyes were fixed on the signboard near the pay station. It held a poster identical to the one Zack had noticed at Goodman Trailhead, the standard National Park Service flyer: what to do if you see a cougar.

  “No, Mrs. Fischer,” Sam said. “A cougar wouldn’t take a child.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kent’s jaw clench.

  “Kids wander off all the time,” she continued. “Sometimes they go farther than you can imagine.”

  Kent recovered. “Sam’s right. Last May a five-year-old chased a squirrel away from the picnic grounds. It took us twenty hours to find him huddled under a bush three-quarters of a mile away. He was hungry and thirsty, but he was fine.”

  The young mother’s eyes met Sam’s. “He was fine,” Jenny repeated.

  “I’m sure Zack will be fine, too.” Sam regretted the words as soon as they came out of her mouth. Who was she to be giving this mother trite assurances?

  “Zack will be fine,” Jenny echoed. She stumbled away as if under the influence of some mind-numbing drug, back to her husband’s arms.

  “God.” Kent shook his head. “If I ever have kids, I hope I never go through anything like this.” He stared at the ground and rubbed his fingers over his lips, hesitated a moment before asking, “Sam, you said you saw Leto and Artemis yesterday?”

  “Yeah. I got a great photo.” She tried to summon back the magic she’d felt standing beneath the rock bridge with the cougars looking down on her.

  “But not Apollo?”

  “Just the females. The photo’s on the SWF website.”

  “I told you about the tracks by the river. Apollo’s tracks.”

  He couldn’t think . . . No. “They’re just tracks, Kent.”

  “You said Zack went down the path by the parking lot. The search dog got really excited there, then lost the scent down by the river.”

  Had Zack turned down the path to the river? She would have sworn he ran toward the man.

  “Since it’s so dry now up on the mesas, most of the deer are in the valley.” Kent paused for a moment, then added, “So the cats are coming down, too.”

  “It’s only natural that the cougars come down for water,” she whispered. “That’ll change when the rains begin.”

  Her friend’s blue eyes were intense. “I think Apollo killed a poodle a week ago.”

  “A poodle?” She picked up her mug and took a sip. The tar didn’t taste any better lukewarm.

  He leaned closer. “According to the owner, it was a teacup poodle, one of those itty-bitty furballs. A hawk or a coyote could have picked it off. But it might have been a cougar. There wasn’t enough left to provide many clues.”

  She screwed up her face. “You found it?” A gruesome vision of scattered doggy curls and bloody jeweled collar rose up in Sam’s thoughts. Someone's beloved pet, gone forever.

  Kent dipped his chin and said in an even lower voice, “Nobody else knows.”

  “A poodle, maybe. But a cougar taking a kid?” she said. “It’s not likely.”

  “Not likely,” he agreed. “We’d have found remains by now.”

  Sam shuddered at the thought. Her mind switched to another track. “Zack might not even be in the park now. If the man at the end of the path wasn’t Fred Fischer . . .” She couldn’t bear to finish the sentence.

  “There’s only one exit from the valley, and we had that gate closed ten minutes after the parents called. The gatekeeper said that nobody had driven out for forty-five minutes, and we’ve checked every car since then.” Kent set his cup on the picnic table and yawned. “So, until there’s evidence to the contrary, we’ve got to look for Zack in the park.”

  “There’s a little kid lost out here somewhere.” He yawned again. “He’s probably cold and terrified, and all I can think about is breakfast. A Denver omelet. Ham and cheese.” He shook his head and then tilted it back, covering his eyes with dirt-encrusted hands. “I’m bad.”

  She put a hand on his arm. “Real bad.”

  A van pulled into the gravel parking space alongside the campsite, followed by a station wagon. Teenagers, adults, and dogs piled out in a frenzy of shouting and barking. The humans wore blue T-shirts with an Explorer Scout insignia on the front and search and rescue printed on the back. The dogs sported the same designs on their blue packs.

  A sharp whistle interrupted the commotion. Thompson positioned himself beside the troop leader. The superintendent’s gray hair was matted at the crown from wearing a park service helmet all night. Beside her, Kent reached up to feel his own hair.

  “Yours is okay,” Sam murmured. “And I don’t want to hear a word about mine.”

  “There are around twenty volunteers coming in from Las Rojas, too. They should be here any minute,” Kent said. He stood up. “I’m taking off.”

  “Find that omelet.”

  “Find that kid.” He retreated with a trio of uniforms to a park-issue vehicle and drove away.

  A stack of posters lay on the table under a flashlight. She helped herself to one. The chubby-cheeked laughing toddler stared out at her from the yellow paper. missing. In the grainy photo, dark blurs of clothing surrounded the child. A woman’s hand lay protectively on Zack’s shoulder. A hasty enlarge-and-crop job.

  Sam studied the cherubic face. The little boy looked so happy in the photo.

  “Please be okay,” she whispered.

  4

  Sam’s search assignment was the valley campgrounds and trailhead parking lots.

  “But those places have already been searched,” she pointed out.

  “Humor me,” Tanner told her. “The Explorers can beat the bushes. We need adults talking to campers, assessing the possibilities down here.” The woman looked around to make sure nobody was listening to the exchange, then lowered her voice a notch. “I heard about your encounter with Zack in the parking lot, about the unidentified man. Worse things happen to kids these days than getting lost.”

>   Sam was unsure of how to respond. “I’ll keep my eyes and mind open.”

  “You do that.” Tanner gave her a slap on the shoulder that sent her staggering from the campsite.

  The Rescue 504 scouts fanned out onto the hillsides. Their singsong calls chimed across the valley as they worked through their assigned sectors. From the western rise, a female voice yelled “Zachary!” A male voice echoed from the east: “Zack!”

  She started her own search with the trail where she’d last seen Zack. Taking the left fork, she walked to the river, across from where Kent had sighted Apollo’s prints. The muddy soil was crisscrossed by hundreds of prints from boots and dog feet. There was no way to tell where little boys or cougars had walked. She studied the rippling river for a long while, pacing its banks, looking for anything out of place caught in the rocks at the bottom of the shallow water.

  Around her neck she wore a yellow Explorer Scout bandanna, and her right arm was encircled by an armband with the troop’s insignia and the words search party. In spite of the official paraphernalia, she received a lot of dirty looks as she peered into cars and tents. The scowls softened when she handed posters to the park visitors, asking them if they’d seen a blond two-year-old in a Winnie-the-Pooh sweatshirt and red pants. Even a Mexican woman who spoke little English quickly understood the gist of the poster.

  “Ay, Madre de Dios,” she sighed, crossing herself.

  Sam had swapped her heavy backpack for the smaller knapsack she used for day trips. In it, she carried notepad and camera just in case she ran across something worth capturing. The two-way radio was zipped into the outside pocket, the volume tuned to its lowest setting. She heard the scoutmaster report in now and then, as well as the rangers talking. A fender-bender backed up traffic at the north gate. Another theft had been reported at Miller Bend Campground. Normal park activity didn’t stop just because a little boy was missing.

  During her stint as a seasonal ranger, Sam had participated in two wilderness searches. She was not accustomed to inspecting places where hundreds of people tramped every day. Tracks were impossible to sort out. She scrutinized cars, peeked into each stall in the restrooms, including the men’s, much to the surprise of one gentleman who hadn’t answered when she knocked on the door. She’d lifted the lid on each garbage can, climbed into two Dumpsters, examined and collected litter from beneath cars, picnic tables, and ditches beside the road.

  By noon, she’d decided that people were pigs. No, she corrected herself. That was an insult to porkers everywhere. No pig left a wake of debris like your average Homo sapiens.

  Children were everywhere in the campgrounds. A good percentage of them appeared to be less than four years old, and at least half of those were blond. They ran up the paths, rode tricycles on the loop road: how could an observer tell which child belonged to which parents? She’d certainly never questioned whether the man at the end of the path was Zack’s father.

  “Miz Ranger.” A middle-aged camper motioned her over. He gestured at his picnic table. “I had everything right here last night.”

  “What?”

  “Someone stole my grapes. And a half wheel of Camembert and a fresh loaf of French bread.” Folding his arms, he glared at her. “Now what am I supposed to do for food?” His foot tapped impatiently on the ground.

  A kid was missing and this loser wanted to know what he was going to eat for lunch? It was no wonder she hadn’t made the cut for a permanent job in the park service. She didn’t have the patience for this.

  “Keep an eye out for this missing boy.” She slapped a poster down on his picnic table. “And I’m not a ranger.”

  Another visitor quizzed her about howling noises. Just coyotes, she told him; no wolves in this part of the country. No point in mentioning Coyote Charlie: tourists might not think he was the comic-book figure the rangers did. Odds were that nobody in the valley campground could hear him up on the plateau, anyway.

  She was on her hands and knees peering beneath a big RV when the door suddenly swung open. The sharp aluminum corner gouged her back before clanking to a stop against her knapsack. A big man hastily jumped down onto the cement block that served as a step. He grabbed the door, swung it shut. “Sorry,” he said breathlessly. “The dang closer thing’s broken.”

  By the time she stood up, his tone had changed from apologetic to irritated. He thrust his belly forward, distorting the image of Mickey Mouse on his tight blue T-shirt. “What the heck you doin’ down there, anyway?”

  She rubbed her back. Scraped but not bleeding. “I’m looking for a missing kid.” Peeling a crumpled poster from the roll, she held it out to him. “He disappeared last night.”

  An odd expression lingered in the man’s eyes as he examined the photo. The hair on the top of his head was a thick and unvarying brown, but the thinning sides showed multiple threads of gray. Didn’t the guy know how silly a cheap toupee looked?

  His fingers moved on the edges of the page, caressing the paper. His tongue flicked out, swiped wetly over thick lips. A warning prickle crawled across the back of Sam’s neck.

  “Have you seen Zachary?” she asked.

  “That his name?”

  Clearly printed at the bottom, she thought with annoyance, taking a step closer to point it out. Something crunched under her foot. A blue plastic block. Two red ones and a yellow lurked nearby. She scooped them up. “These yours?”

  He stared at them for a long moment. “LEGOs,” he finally said.

  He took the colored cubes from her, his fingers clammy against her palm. Holding the blocks to his chest, he gave her a tentative smile. “For the grandkids.”

  Did that also explain the Mickey Mouse T-shirt? “Where are they?”

  “Who?” He looked around him.

  “The grandkids?”

  “They’re not with me today.” He turned to go back into the camper. “But thanks for asking.”

  A very strange man. She placed her hand on the door beneath his. “Could I trouble you for some water, sir?”

  He turned, one foot on the camper threshold, one on the makeshift step. “What?”

  She smiled. “A glass of water? It’s a long way to a drinking fountain. You do have water inside your camper, don’t you?”

  “Inside?” The man’s pale eyes darted nervously to her face and then down to his own hand on the door handle. “Well, I mean, it’s just that it’s really messy.”

  “No problem.” She pulled the door out of his hand. “I’m not the housekeeping police. I’d really appreciate it, Mr.—?”

  The man stepped up and turned toward her. “Wilson, the name’s Wilson.” He gestured for her to enter.

  It was no easy task to squeeze past Wilson. The fleshy roll of his belly brushed against her back like a soft warm pillow. Was he actually leaning into her? She stifled an urge to flinch.

  In the kitchen, freshly washed pans and a couple of plates were set out to dry on a kitchen towel. Wilson opened a cabinet door and reached for a glass. Sam spotted familiar yellow and blue boxes on the upper shelf.

  “Ah, animal crackers,” she said.

  A rush of color flooded the man’s face. “For the grandkids,” he mumbled. He filled the plastic tumbler with water from the tap and handed it to her, swiped at the few drops that had splashed onto the counter with a dish towel. “But the kids aren’t here.”

  “I’m all by my lonesome this trip.” That tentative smile again. His large hands fiddled with the dish towel, wringing it into a twisted rope.

  Sam sipped her water slowly as she surveyed the camper. More LEGOs were spilled across a Formica tabletop. Toys. Animal crackers. Mickey Mouse. But no kids in sight.

  Near the door, a blue jogging suit—nylon-knit pants and hooded jacket—hung from a hook. Dried dirt darkened the elastic cuffs of the pants, and another patch of the crusty material speckled a sleeve. River mud? She suddenly found it difficult to swallow. She felt Wilson’s gaze on her, but when she raised her eyes, his quickly flitted away.r />
  A calendar adorned the wall over the table. Miranda, 5:00, VFW was scribbled into the square for today’s date. At the rear of the camper was a double bed, neatly made, its cotton cover tight with corners tucked under, institution-style. Hardly messy.

  Wilson stretched out the dish towel, pulled open the undersink cabinet and hung it on a peg to dry. From another peg hung a small red baseball cap.

  Sam felt as if the air had been sucked out of the room. “That cap. Is it yours?”

  Wilson studied it as if unsure of how it had gotten there. “No,” he finally said. “I found it down by the river, when I went for a walk this morning. Why?”

  “The missing child was wearing a red baseball cap.” Could the search parties have missed Zack’s cap down by the river? She doubted it. She tried to breathe normally. Wilson, in his blue jogging suit, could easily be the man she’d seen at the end of the path. The bulge she'd noticed in silhouette could have been the hood pushed down behind his neck.

  “A hat like this one? Really? Oh my.” He wrung his hands.

  “Can I have it? I’ll take it to the rangers.”

  He reached for it reluctantly. “Well, sure, of course, if you think it might help.”

  She took it from him. The red fabric was damp.

  “I washed it. It was dirty, and I thought, you know, maybe one of my grandkids would like it, so I rinsed it off.”

  Again the grandkids.

  His gaze fell on the glass in her hands. “If you’re done—”

  She handed him the empty tumbler. “Thank you, Mr. Wilson. If you see Zachary Fischer, please tell a ranger.”

  After he closed the door behind her, she tucked the baseball cap into her knapsack, then walked to the rear of the RV. A blue Volkswagen Beetle was attached to a tow bar behind the rig. She wrote down the license on the car’s back plate along with the RV’s number. As she walked away, she caught a flicker of movement as the curtain at the kitchen window dropped back into place.

  She stopped outside the campground and used her phone to call the ranger station about Wilson. The woman who answered didn’t seem too excited. “Yes, ma’am,” she responded in a honey-coated Southern drawl. “Thank you for the tip.”