Part 3
Warren raised the radio to his mouth.
“Ellis to dispatch. Possible abduction, injured victim unaccounted for. I need additional units and EMS staged at the old mill lot. I’m sending my coordinates.”
He gave the nearest access point and described the route he’d taken. Dispatch read the information back, her voice brisk and clear through the speaker.
The first units were close. She estimated eight minutes to reach him on foot.
Warren placed the phone in a separate evidence bag. The puppy followed it with his nose, then went to the far edge of the clearing and looked back.
“We’re getting people in here,” Warren told him. “Just a minute.”
It was the first time he had asked the dog to wait for something that mattered. The puppy returned, circled him, and went back to the same spot. His front paws shifted continuously in the leaves.
Warren used the interval to mark the location of the purse and the blood without walking over the tracks. He sent photographs to dispatch and asked that the medical crew bring equipment suitable for a difficult carry.
The screen on his phone showed the time. He checked it again after what felt like several minutes and found that less than one had passed.
The puppy came back to his leg.
Warren rested his hand lightly along the uninjured side of the little body.
“I know.”
A branch cracked behind them.
Warren turned, his hand moving toward his holster, then lowered it when he recognized the woman coming through the trees.
Detective Celia Vance ducked beneath a limb, followed by two patrol officers. A burr had caught near her collar. She pulled it free as she crossed the clearing, already studying the ground.
“Tell me what you’ve got.”
Warren showed her the phone through the bag, then directed her attention to the blood and the path beyond it. He kept his account short: the puppy on the street, the cloth, the zipper piece, the emptied purse.
Vance crouched beside the drag marks.
“More than one person came through here.”
“That’s how it looks.”
One of the patrol officers photographed the stained leaves. The other moved around the edge of the clearing, watching the woods rather than the ground.
Two more officers arrived a moment later. Vance assigned them to secure and document what had already been found while she and the first pair continued with Warren.
Then she looked down at the puppy.
“And he brought you all the way in?”
“Every turn.”
Vance extended a hand, keeping it low. The puppy moved closer to Warren instead, then faced the deeper woods and gave a short, impatient bark.
She withdrew her hand.
“All right. We won’t hold him up.”
Warren stepped toward the place where the puppy had been waiting. The dog moved at once.
The officers followed in a loose line, leaving room around the disturbed earth. In the thick shade, they switched on their flashlights to examine the ground without bending over every few feet.
Warren could hear Vance behind him, relaying the direction of travel and asking dispatch to keep the medical crew ready. Ahead, the puppy slowed to sniff, went several paces, then lifted his head.
No one talked for a while.
The route curved around dense brush and descended gradually. Here and there, Warren caught another damaged fern or a length of scraped soil. The trail wasn’t continuous enough that he would have trusted himself to follow it quickly without the dog.
Vance came alongside him where the space widened.
“Doesn’t look old enough to have learned any of this.”
“He hasn’t,” Warren said. “I think he’s taking us back.”
She looked at the puppy again, then ahead into the trees.
He was still moving, but the effort was showing. His hind legs made small corrections each time he crossed a root. Warren wanted to pick him up. He also didn’t know whether carrying him would interrupt the only clear direction they had.
He stayed close enough to help when the ground became rough.
The puppy stopped beneath a leaning sapling.
Warren raised a hand. The others halted.
The dog’s muzzle lifted. He sniffed once, then again, turning to his right. Before Warren could crouch, he slipped through a dense patch of brush.
“Right side,” Warren said quietly.
They pushed after him. On the other side, the land fell away in a steep, shallow-sided hollow. At its rim, the puppy was barking down toward a fallen tree.
Warren found a stable place to descend and went sideways, catching a trunk with his left hand. Loose stones shifted beneath his heel. Behind him, one officer warned the others where the soil was breaking away.
The puppy scrambled down by a different route and ran to the fallen tree’s far side.
His barking changed there. The small pauses disappeared. He clawed at the bark, turned toward Warren, and barked again.
Warren hurried the last few feet.
The tree’s upturned roots had formed a low pocket beneath them. Dead limbs and leaves had collected in the hollow, obscuring most of what lay inside.
Vance knelt at one end while the other officers checked the surrounding ground.
“Recent drag marks here,” she said. “They end against the roots.”
The puppy was trying to squeeze beneath a branch. Warren caught it before it could rake across his back and lifted it away.
“Hold the light here.”
Vance shifted her beam. Warren reached in and moved a second limb, then a mat of leaves tangled around it.
A woman’s hand lay palm-up in the hollow, the rest of her arm disappearing beneath the roots…
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