“Goddammit,” he muttered. “You’re right.”
Angie smiled. “Good man. You want to call Riordan anyhow? Just to cover your ass?”
“Not particularly, but I guess I have to.” He pulled the phone from his belt and dialed the prosecutor. “So,” Vickery began after a few throat-clearing preliminaries, “we think we’re closing in on the bones . . . I hope so, too. But we have a slight wrinkle, and I figured you’d want a heads-up . . . Well, unfortunately, the damn dog didn’t pay too much attention to county lines and jurisdictions when he went sniffing around, if you catch my drift . . . What I mean is, we’ve tracked the dog as far as the Apalachee County line. If we want to keep tracking him the rest of the way to his hunting ground, we’ve got to cross into Miccosukee County . . . Yes, sir, I’m sure about that. I’m looking at his paw prints right now where he came across the creek from Miccosukee. Exactly, that’s Sheriff Judson’s county . . . I know, I know—Judson does put the ‘dick’ in ‘jurisdiction,’ doesn’t he?” Vickery forced a laugh. “Well, we just didn’t know—the GPS track from the collar didn’t show us the county lines . . . Yes, sir, you’re right, you’re absolutely right. We should’ve taken a closer look. But we didn’t. So here we are, out here in the middle of nowhere. Out here in the middle of a search that we think might lead to something . . . With all due respect, sir, I disagree. I believe we ought to keep going . . . No, sir, I don’t want to start a shooting war with the sheriff. But I also don’t want to let a hot trail go cold . . . No, sir, I don’t think it can wait till tomorrow . . . Look, whoever killed Pettis took the collar off the dog. You’re aware of that, right? . . . No, sir; no, sir, I am not condescending to you, I’m just making sure you’re aware that the collar’s gone . . . So the killer might be able to download the same data we’ve got, cover the same ground we’re covering.” Angie had made this same argument to Stu; now, she shook her head doubtfully and appeared about to interrupt him, but Stu held up a hand to shush her. “No, sir, I don’t know that to be a fact, but I just don’t think we can afford to take that chance, can we? What I do know is that if we spend twenty-four hours kissing the sheriff’s ass, our chances of finding whatever’s out here in the woods get worse, not better . . . I understand that this puts you in a tough spot, and I wish the dog had stayed in his own damn county, but he didn’t. If you tell us not to go on, we won’t, but I hope you won’t do that . . . All right, thank you, sir. . . . You’ll call the sheriff? Okay, I appreciate that . . . Yes, sir, I’ll be sure to keep you posted . . . I guarantee it—you’ll be the first to know if we find anything . . . Sorry to put you on the hot seat. Thank you, sir. Talk to you soon.” I had never heard so many “sirs” in such swift succession, but they seemed to have helped. Vickery hung up, blew out a long breath, and shook his head. “Well, that was fun.” He turned to the group and put on a smile. “Okay, people, let’s find a way to cross Moccasin fuckin’ Creek that won’t get us drowned or snakebit.”
The steep, narrow notch where Jasper had crossed the stream looked risky, so Angie asked for volunteers to seek out an easier place to cross. She recruited two to jog upstream and another two downstream. “Turn around in ten minutes,” she instructed, “whether you’ve found a good crossing or not. We don’t have time for a big detour.” While they explored, we studied the detailed maps Nat had printed out for us. On the other side of the creek, the dog’s track was practically a beeline for half a mile or so, then it reached a spot where he seemed to loiter and explore. “That, I’m hoping, is where we might find something,” she said.
Her phone rang—an incongruous, startling sound, deep in the woods as we were. “Hi, Nat. What’s up? . . . Really? No kidding? . . . Hang on a second. Let me put you on speaker, so Stu can hear, too.” She flipped open the phone and pressed a button. “Nat, you still there?”
“I am,” came the computer analyst’s voice.
“Okay, back up and start over, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m getting data from the tracking collar again. Remember, I left the receiver in the fire tower and rigged it to a satellite link? So if I got a signal from the collar again, it would send the new data to my computer?”
“I remember. Go on,” Vickery prompted.
“A minute or two ago, I started seeing the collar again. Looks like it’s on a county road, about four miles south of Pettis’s place. Moving away fast—sixty, seventy miles an hour. It’ll be out of range again in a second.”