“Nice dog,” said Crowe, wiping a hand on the seat of her pants.
“I'm minding him for a few days.”
“Dogs are good company.”
“Um.”
Obviously, she'd never spent time with Boyd.
“I had a talk with the Wahnetah family. Daniel still hasn't returned.”
I waited while she sipped her soda.
“They say he stood about five-seven.”
“Did he complain about his feet?”
“Apparently he never complained about anything. Didn't talk much at all, liked to be alone. But here's an interesting sidebar. One of Daniel's campsites was out at Running Goat Branch.”
“Where's Running Goat Branch?”
“Spit and a half from your walled enclosure.”
“No shit.”
“No shit.”
“Was he there when he went missing?”
“The family wasn't sure, but that was the first place they checked.”
“I've got another sidebar,” I said, my excitement growing.
I told her about the discriminant function classification placing the foot bones closest to those of Native Americans.
“Now can you get a warrant?” I asked.
“Based on what?”
I ticked off points by raising fingers.
“An elderly Native American went missing in your county. I have a body part fitting that profile. This body part was recovered in proximity to a location frequented by your missing person.”
She cocked an eyebrow, then did her own ticking.
“A body part that might or might not be related to an aviation disaster. An old man who might or might not be dead. A property that might or might not be implicated in either situation.”
The hunch of an anthropologist who might or might not be the spawn of Satan. I didn't say it.
“Let's at least go to his camp and look around,” I pushed.
She thought a moment, then looked at her watch.
“That I can do.”
“Give me five minutes.” I gestured at Boyd.
She nodded.
“Come on, boy.”
The head came up and the eyebrows puckered.
A ping in my mind. The dead squirrel. My line of work makes me unusually sensitive to the smell of putrefaction, yet I hadn't detected a trace. Boyd went ballistic at ten yards.
“Could the dog ride along?” I asked. “He's not cadaver-trained, but he's pretty good at sniffing out carrion.”
“He sits in back.”
I opened the door and whistled. Boyd bounded over and leaped in.
Eleven days had passed since the Air TransSouth crash. All remains had been taken to the morgue, and the last of the wreckage was being hauled down the mountain. The recovery operation was winding down, and the change was evident.
The county road was now open, though a sheriff 's deputy protected the entrance to the Forest Service road. The families and press were gone, and only a handful of vehicles occupied the overlook holding area.
Crowe cut the engine where the road ended, about a half mile beyond the cutoff to the crash site. A large granite outcropping lay to the right. Clipping a radio to her belt, she crossed the gravel track and walked the uphill side, carefully studying the tree line.
I leashed Boyd and followed, keeping him as close to me as I could. After a full five minutes the sheriff cut left and disappeared up the embankment into the trees. I gave Boyd his head, and was dragged along in her wake.
The land climbed steeply, leveled off, then shot downward into a valley. As we moved farther and farther from the road, the trees closed around us, and everything started to look the same. But the landmarks given by the Wahnetah family made sense to the sheriff. She found the path they'd described, and from it a small dirt road. I couldn't tell if it was the same logging trail that passed by the wreckage field or another similar to it.
It took Crowe forty minutes to locate Daniel's cabin, set among beech and pine at the edge of a small creek. I probably would have walked right past it.
The camp looked as though it had been thrown up in an afternoon. The shack was wood, the floor dirt, the roof corrugated tin, extended in front to provide shelter for a makeshift bench beside the door. A wooden table and another bench sat to the left front of the shanty, a tree stump to the right. Out back I could see a pile of bottles, cans, tires, and other refuse.
“How do you suppose the tires got here?” I asked.
Crowe shrugged.
Gingerly, I cracked the door and stuck my head inside. In the gloom I could make out a cot, an aluminum lawn chair, and a collapsible table holding a rusty camp stove and a collection of plastic dishes and cups. Fishing gear, a bucket, a shovel, and a lantern hung from nails. Kerosene cans lined the floor. That was it.
“Would the old man leave his fishing gear if he planned to move on?”
Another shrug.
Lacking a real plan, Crowe and I decided to split up. She searched the creek bank while I walked the surrounding woods. My canine companion sniffed and peed contentedly.
Returning to the shack, I secured Boyd to a table leg, swung the door wide, and propped it with a rock. Inside, the air smelled of mildew, kerosene, and muscatel. Millipedes skittered as I shifted objects, and at one point a daddy longlegs high-stepped up my arm. I found nothing to indicate where Daniel Wahnetah had gone or when he'd left. Or why.
Crowe reappeared as I was poking through the refuse heap. After toeing over dozens of wine bottles, cracker tins, and Dinty Moore beef stew cans, I gave up and picked my way out to join her.
Trees whispered in the wind. Leaves sailed across the ground in a colorful regatta, and a corner of the corrugated tin rose and fell with a scraping sound. Though the air felt dense and heavy, there was movement all around us.
Crowe knew what I was thinking. Without a word she pulled a small spiral-bound atlas from her jacket and flipped through the pages.
“Show me,” she said, handing me the book.
The map she'd chosen was a close-up of the piece of Swain County in which we stood. Using elevation lines, the county road, and the logging trails, I located the crash site. Then I estimated the position of the courtyard house and pointed to it.
“Here.”
Crowe studied the topography around my finger.
“You're sure there's a structure back in there?” I heard doubt in her voice.
“Yes.”
“It's less than a mile.”
“By foot?”
She nodded, a slower motion than usual.
“There's no road I know of, so we might as well go overland.”
“Can you find it?”
“I can find it.”
We spent an hour threading our way through trees and brush, up one ridge and down another, following a track that was clear to Crowe but invisible to me. Then, at an ancient pine, its trunk knotted and worn, we emerged onto a path that even I could recognize.
We came to a high wall, vaguely familiar from my previous visit. Every sense sharpened as we moved along the mossy stone. A jay cawed, shrill and strident, and my skin seemed to tighten on my body. There was something here. I knew it.
Boyd continued to amble and snuffle, oblivious to my tension. I wrapped the leash around my palm, tightened my grasp.
Within yards, the wall made a ninety-degree turn. Crowe rounded the corner and I followed, my grip so tight I felt my nails dig into my palm.
The trees ended three quarters of the distance up the wall. Crowe stopped at the verge of the woods and Boyd and I caught up.
Ahead and to the left I spotted another walled enclosure, the rock face rising in the distance beyond. I had my bearings. We'd approached from the rear of the property; the house lay ahead of us, its back to the escarpment. The wall we'd been skirting surrounded a larger area I hadn't noted on my first visit. The courtyard was within the larger enclosure.
“I'll be damned.” Crowe reached down and released the safety on her gun.
She called out as I had done. Called again.
Eyes and ears alert, we proceeded to the house and climbed the steps. The shutters were still closed, the windows still draped. I was gripped by the same sense of foreboding as on my first visit.