The drop-off was fairly steep, more so than he’d expected. Even with his light ranging before them, the gloom of the overcast night plunged the area outside his beam into blackness. The grass was slick from the light mist, making his boots slip and slide as he struggled to maintain balance on the way down. Bogart’s pants of excitement were the only sounds for a few seconds. Then the gurgling sound of moving water reached them from below.
He gave silent thanks that it wasn’t raining hard or they might have had a flash-flood situation to worry about. However, if the child had been tossed from the car, she could be anywhere, even in the creek.
He shoved that thought from his mind. The mother said the child was in the backseat, in a car seat. He and Bogart would start with that.
Overhead the sounds of emergency vehicles closed in. Red and blue lights flashed in the sky overhead. James didn’t pause. Survival often came down to mere seconds.
Finally, his flashlight picked up and gleamed off the rear bumper of the SUV. His spirits went into a nosedive at the sight. Hard to believe the mother had survived. And that a baby might still be trapped in the wreckage. The thought reengaged his focus.
He moved his light back and forth to pick up more details as they approached. The impact had smashed the front of the SUV and it had rolled onto its passenger side on the bank of the creek, its front bumper nosed into the water. The driver’s door winged open into the night, like a wounded bird struggling to right itself.
Bogart sprang toward the vehicle. They had tracked and saved accident victims before.
James pulled from his belt a handheld thermal-imaging device. If the baby was alive the device would pick up her body heat as an infrared image amid the twisted metal.
He held his breath for a second, listening alertly for sounds of life as Bogart nosed around. All he heard was the wet swoosh of the water ahead, and the distant sounds of traffic and overhead voices. Nothing remotely like a baby’s cry.
A second later, several slats of light forked down around them. A moment after that, a single big klieg light shattered the night, throwing him and the vehicle in stark relief like performers on a stage.
“Hey, fella! Stop where you are. Raleigh police!”
James glanced back over his shoulder into the blindness of white light and held up his badge. “Officer Cannon, Charlotte-Mecklenburg K-9 unit. My partner and I are searching for a missing baby. Permission to continue.”
Before he could receive a reply, Bogart jerked hard on the leash, almost toppling James as his feet slipped in the wet mud of the bank. He didn’t have to wonder. Bogart was onto something. Bogart didn’t lunge toward the vehicle but veered to the right, out of the ring of light made by the overhead beams. James tried once to correct him but Bogart was straining so hard on the harness that James decided to let him lead.
He hurried along behind his dog, moving quickly along the grassy bank to a place where some low-hanging tree branches obscured his view of the ground.
Then James heard it, faint sounds like that of a car radio heard across a parking lot. Bogart was moving toward the brush along the bank, some thirty feet from the wreckage. As James ran behind him, he aimed his infrared device in that direction.
An image appeared on the water’s edge. It was a small signature, smaller than Bogart’s form as the dog rushed forward to reach his goal. The image could mean the child, even if injured, was at least alive. Or it might be the signature of any of a number of nocturnal creatures that made the riverbank their home. The last thing he needed was for Bogart to get into a scuffle with a nutria or a raccoon.
As if he had read James’s thoughts, Bogart slowed suddenly, his steps becoming tentative as he approached his goal. That gave James time to switch out his image scanner for his flashlight, and aim it at the place Bogart signaled.
Dressed in a fluffy pink jumpsuit, baby Mariah lay in a pile of muddy leaves, looking dazed and unhappy.
James’s heart did a little squeeze of joy. “Got her! Get the EMTs down here!”
Bogart, for his part, immediately went up to sniff her and then turned to look at James. Mariah chortled in delight when she spied the dog, and leaned forward as if to try to grab for him.
He called Bogart away. “Fuss. Da. Gute Hund! Platz.” Bogart accepted the praise and then the order to sit and stay. “Bleib.”
James crouched down next to the baby girl, who immediately began to cry. “Mariah? It’s okay, Mariah.” He touched her carefully, aware that she might have injuries he might not be able to see. “I’m James. People are coming to take you to your mommy.”
Light leaped up over them, capturing them in the glare. He turned to find a group of uniformed officers and two EMTs with gear making their way down the incline toward them.
*
“You really are a hero.”
James gave Shay a doubtful glance as he pulled into traffic that was being diverted away from the accident site. She’d waited very patiently while he’d talked to Raleigh authorities and then changed out of his rain-soaked clothing for the sweatshirt he now wore.
“I mean it. You found a baby in the dark, all by yourself.” She was staring at him with eyes wide with admiration. “That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever witnessed.”