Part 3
The patch remained sealed in an evidence bag while Ben made calls.
By midafternoon, Black Alder Timber had denied employing dogs at any company site. Its operations office claimed the patch might belong to a subcontractor and suggested the men who visited Eli had acted without authorization.
Ben listened, wrote down the response, and ended the call.
“They answered quickly,” Eli said.
“Too quickly.”
The next morning, Ben returned to Kestrel Ridge with Eli and Rook. Hannah objected to the dog making the trip, but Rook had become restless the moment Eli brought out his winter boots. When the truck turned onto the forest road, the Shepherd sat upright and watched every bend.
The cage had been tagged and covered with a county evidence tarp. Snow had drifted against the pallets, softening the edges of the scene.
Rook would not approach it.
He stepped from the truck, sniffed once in the cage’s direction, and moved downslope instead. Eli followed on a twenty-foot lead, allowing the dog to choose his pace. Ben came behind them with a camera and field kit.
Rook traveled through the trees in a route that made little sense until Eli noticed what he was avoiding. Beneath the snow lay shallow depressions where traps had previously been set. Frayed cable marked several trunks at ankle height. In two places, small branches had been cut and placed to funnel movement toward a narrow opening.
The dog was not wandering.
He was following a map learned through pain.
Near a fallen spruce, Rook stopped and touched his nose to the bark. A pale groove circled the trunk where a cable had rubbed away the outer layer. He continued another fifty yards, then sat beside a mound of branches left from an old windstorm.
Ben began removing the top layer. Beneath the branches, a gray plastic lid appeared.
The storage tote had been buried in a shallow hollow and covered with slash. Inside were six steel traps, coils of cable, two handheld radios, fuel receipts, and several memory cards sealed in plastic. Serial numbers had been filed from the traps.
A narrow field ledger lay beneath the equipment.
Ben did not open it immediately. He photographed the tote in place, marked the coordinates, and called the regional Forest Service office. After describing the find, he was instructed to secure the area and wait for an evidence team.
Rook had already moved away.
He stood near a granite outcrop twenty yards uphill, pawing once at a crack between two stones. Eli crouched and shone his light into the opening. Something dark lay wedged inside.
He pulled on a pair of gloves and carefully worked it free.
It was a leather collar.
The material had stiffened in the cold. A brass tag hung from the buckle, one side scarred beyond recognition. On the other, three lines remained legible.
MILO
BA-K9-1
Rook lowered his head and smelled the collar. His ears folded back. He did not whine or pull away, but his breathing changed, each breath shorter than the one before.
Eli placed the collar in a clean evidence bag.
Ben stood beside him, jaw tight. “That answers one question.”
“Not the important one.”
No remains were visible near the rocks. Ben expanded the scene perimeter and requested a wildlife officer with a trained search dog. Eli led Rook back toward the truck before the additional teams arrived.
Halfway to the ridge, Rook stopped at a creek crossing. A camouflaged trail camera had been mounted high on a pine, angled toward the only stable path through the ice.
Ben photographed it and removed the memory card.
They spent the afternoon in a small conference room at the sheriff’s office with a Forest Service technician. Most of the images showed darkness, weather, or wildlife. Then trucks began appearing.
The photographs covered nearly four months. Flatbeds entered Crownline National Forest after sunset and left before dawn, carrying fresh-cut logs beneath tarps. Several trucks displayed removable Black Alder placards. Others had no company markings.
Rook appeared in dozens of frames.
At first, he wore a harness and stood beside the access road. A cable attached him to a tree. Later images showed him limping, his left leg held above the ground. In the final sequence, two men removed the harness and loaded the dog into a pickup.
The next frame showed the cage on Kestrel Ridge.
The men’s faces remained obscured by hoods and darkness, but the truck’s license plate was visible.
It belonged to Wade Jessup.
Ben placed a still image beside the paperwork Wade had brought to Eli’s cabin. “He told us the dog ran away.”
“He was hoping nobody would ask where.”
The field ledger arrived after the federal evidence team processed the ridge. Its pages contained dates, truck numbers, load weights, coded initials, and terse notes about weather and patrol schedules. Rook and Milo appeared only as K1 and K2.
K1 stopped appearing in early December.
The last notation beside his designation read: LOST—RIDGE.
K2 continued for six more weeks. The entries tracked food, alert drills, and the worsening condition of his leg.
On the final page, next to the date Eli had found him, someone had written:
K2—WEST CAGE. NO SHOT. LET COLD CLOSE IT.
No one spoke for several seconds.
Ben checked the date again, though there was no possibility of misunderstanding it.
“They didn’t abandon him,” he said.
Eli looked through the office window. Rook lay beneath the bench in the hallway, facing the exterior door. – “No,” Eli replied. “They scheduled him…”
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