Suddenly, the huffing stopped. The forest went still, too quiet. And then it came—the long, baying call of a hound on the scent, and the snap of branches as Jed crashed through the underbrush on the slope high above. Breathing hard, Rafe followed.
He used his hands to climb a couple of the steepest ridges. As he levered his body over the rim of a nearly vertical ledge, he saw his dog about a hundred feet ahead, frozen in place, ears stiff. On his feet again, Rafe approached carefully, soundlessly. If the damn dog had cornered a grizzly, their day was about to turn crazy. The hunting knife Rafe carried wouldn’t be any good against a hungry bear.
But when he reached Jed’s quivering black-and-tan flank, he realized that the whitetail buck lying only six or so yards away wouldn’t be any kind of threat at all. He was already dead.
Not only dead, but decapitated.
Sickened, angry, Rafe crouched a few feet from the carcass, surveying the gory scene. This was a shameful waste, however he looked at it—good venison left to buzzards, wolves and coyotes, or a magnificent animal destroyed. Hunting for sustenance was one thing. Hunting solely to capture a set of antlers to decorate the family-room wall was something else altogether, at least in his book.
But this particular kill was also a crime. Deer season didn’t start for another week, and taking an animal before that date constituted poaching, as did taking an animal without a license and without tagging it to indicate the hunter had stayed within his quota. The Fish and Wildlife guys would want to know what had gone down, so Rafe mentally cataloged the details to include in his report. Whoever made the kill knew what they were doing—one round, straight through the buck’s chest to his heart, had dropped him like a stone.
As Rafe walked a circle around the dead deer, Jed stepped close enough to sniff at the body. If he’d been part of a pack, he might have taken his share of meat.
“But you’ve got good manners, right?” The dog came back to his side and Rafe rubbed his ears. Then he snapped on the leash. “Got any ideas what direction this guy took off in, Jed? We might as well see where he went.”
They circled again, with Jed’s nose close to the ground. At a point almost directly opposite the way they’d come up, the dog veered away, following a scent. Rafe let him lead, hoping this wasn’t a wild-goose chase. Jed didn’t always choose the right trail to follow.
The slope in this direction was easier, the tree cover thinner. Jed followed a trail back down into the foothills, onto the bank of a creek running through an aspen grove. He put one paw in the water then backed up, with a low whine in his throat. Rafe saw the marred ground on the other side of the stream, where the hunter had landed his jump. “Good job, buddy. We’ll get over there, too, see if we can track the bastard down.”
They crossed farther upstream to avoid confusing the hunter’s prints. Not that they’d be any help—the guy had slid backward when he landed, smearing whatever pattern was on the bottom of his shoes. Jed picked up the scent again and bounded forward, leaving Rafe nothing to do but follow.
The aspen grove bordered a wide meadow filled with pungent sagebrush and the windblown arcs of tall, gray-green grass. Now the hunter’s path was visible as a dark line of crushed plants. Rafe released Jed’s lead and pursued the trail on his own.
The line gradually curved to the west, where a thick stand of pines edged the open field. When the tall brush ended, the trail seemed to end as well. Jed zigzagged between the trees, doing his best to pick up a scent, looking more and more worried as the minutes passed.
But Rafe, listening to the wind, had picked up voices. He called the dog to heel. “Which way, buddy? Where are they?”
In response to his whisper, the bloodhound headed roughly south. Signs of human intrusion appeared—a soda can against the foot of a lodgepole pine, a paper napkin blown into a spiny shrub’s branches, a circle of burned grass where some idiot had built a fire. Rafe cursed the stupidity, and moved on.
By the time he and Jed reached the voices—and the pair of trucks parked in a clearing just off the road—Rafe had collected beer bottles and empty condom packets in a discarded plastic bag, along with food wrappers and paper products. He didn’t need to evaluate the assembled company to realize that this was a popular teen hangout. And somehow he wasn’t surprised to find Bobby Maxwell in the center of the group.
They’d heard him coming, because he made no attempt to be quiet. About half a dozen faces were turned his way when Rafe stepped into the clearing.
Bobby raised a soft-drink can in greeting. “Fancy meeting you here, Deputy! Come join our picnic.” A pretty girl sat by his side on the tailgate, trying and failing to hide how nervous she was.
In the next truck bed, a towheaded boy leaned back against a silver metal toolbox. He glanced at Jed, who was still casting around the clearing, investigating scents. “Nice-looking dog, Deputy. What are you hunting?”
“A trash can,” Rafe said, holding up the bag of refuse. “This where you spend your Sunday afternoons?”
“Sometimes.” Bobby swung his legs—still in his Sunday pants and shiny boots—back and forth from the knees. He’d ditched the tie and folded back his starched shirt cuffs. “You might’ve noticed, we’re not exactly living at the center of the social world.”
“Who are your friends?”
“Megan Wheeler.” Bobby touched the top of her head with his drink can. “Dan Aiken, Racey Taylor, Jerry Heath, Kim Rawlins. Anything else you need to know?”
Rafe reached into a juniper shrub and pulled out a recently emptied beer can, still wet with condensation and scented with yeast. “I might like to know who sells beer to underage kids on a Sunday.”
Bobby’s angelic expression wasn’t intended to fool anybody. “I wouldn’t know. I’m a decaf diet-cola man, myself. Dan swears by guava juice.”
“Makes my hair shine,” the boy said, rubbing a hand over his head. Bobby and friends laughed…except for Megan, who still looked worried.
Straight answers from this crowd were unlikely, but Rafe decided to take one shot. “Seen anybody else around this afternoon?”
“No, sir.” Bobby leaned back on his elbows. “Nobody but us nature lovers.”
They were being careful to avoid giving him any concrete reason for suspicion. Without probable cause or a bona fide warrant, he couldn’t search the vehicles for alcohol, an illegal kill or anything else. And Rafe didn’t doubt that Judge LeVay and Robert Maxwell would, between them, discount even the strongest probable cause.
“Enjoy,” he said, approaching Bobby as he lounged in the truck bed. He set the bag of trash on the tailgate, between the boy’s knees. “And rub up that shine on your halo by dumping this where it belongs.” Whistling for Jed, he turned his back on the group and headed for the trail that would take him back toward town.
“You can count on us,” Bobby yelled after him.
Rafe heard the triumph edging his tone. “I know I can,” he called over his shoulder.
The important question being…for what?
DURING THE NEXT WEEK, the game warden got two more reports of poached bucks farther up in the mountains. Bobby Maxwell came into town every night about eight-thirty and drank until the bar closed or the bartender threw him out. Dan Aiken was with him, more often than not. Eavesdropping in the diner, in the general store, in the grocery market, Rafe learned that those two, along with Jerry Heath, hung out together like the Musketeers. And got into almost as much trouble.
He heard them himself, racing their trucks down Main Street at midnight between Thursday and Friday. They roared past him just as he reached the intersection in his own truck. Bobby gave him a grin and a salute as he flashed by. Then, with a squeal of tires that dragged sparks from the asphalt, the three vehicles wheeled off into