NEBRASKA
Even without the barbed wire Maggie thought Dawson Hayes still looked fragile in the stark, white hospital bed. She felt an odd connection to him and couldn’t shake how his eyes had pleaded with her, depended on her.
This morning his arms were wrapped in blood-stained bandages. An IV tube snaked from the back of his hand to a machine. She and the sheriff were told that a gastrointestinal tube had been removed from his throat so he might be a bit hoarse. And that they shouldn’t push him to talk too much.
The scratches on his face looked raw against his pale skin. The bandage on his neck hid a wound that seeped. But the thing that bothered Maggie most was that the boy still looked scared.
Sheriff Skylar had insisted he direct the interviews with the teenagers. They were kids from his area. He knew many of their parents. They’d feel more comfortable talking to someone they knew rather than a state patrolman or an FBI agent. She agreed, letting him believe that in doing so, he had won a major concession, when in fact, Maggie didn’t actually have official approval to proceed as lead investigator.
She had left a message for her boss, Assistant Director Raymond Kunze, but she hadn’t heard back from him yet. She already knew what he’d say: “Hand it off to the locals. You have a conference to attend.”
The “locals,” Maggie had discovered in the meantime, would be either the FBI field office in Omaha, two hundred and eighty miles away, or the Forest Service in Chadron, which was two hundred miles away. Kunze wouldn’t comprehend that distance, nor would he care what difference losing the first twenty-four hours could make.
Besides, detouring her to visit the site of a cattle mutilation was, no doubt, only a favor he had been repaying, one of those courtesies that government officials gave each other. Maggie suspected Kunze hadn’t intended for her to give any of it more than a cursory look and write the obligatory report that would be his proof of repayment. If he had intended for her to actually create a possible profile of the cattle mutilators, he certainly would have included many more of the details in the file.
Truth was, it didn’t matter. Maggie didn’t want the case. She’d never been a lead investigator. Her job had always been to assist law enforcement agencies at their request. She was the outside observer, the specialist who could be objective and catch details that might otherwise be missed. She liked being the outsider.
Earlier she’d decided to stay long enough to make sure as many pieces of the investigation—especially the collecting and processing of evidence, including witness accounts— was placed in the hands of officials who could properly take over.
So she didn’t argue with Sheriff Skylar.
She didn’t like hospitals—who did? She wanted to be back at the crime scene. That’s where Donny Fergussen was. At Maggie’s request, he was meeting a State Patrol crime-scene unit. They’d go over the area again, widen the perimeter, cast several footprints, and collect any other remaining traces that the tarps hopefully had preserved. She would much rather be out there than with Sheriff Skylar. Witnesses were notoriously inaccurate, and a bunch of teens tripping out on salvia would probably be worthless narrators of what had happened last night in the forest.
But Maggie wanted—no, she needed—to see that Dawson Hayes was okay.
“Dawson, I’m Sheriff Skylar. Your dad used to work with me.”
Maggie studied the boy’s face, watching for signs of recognition. If he knew the sheriff there was no relief in seeing him. Was he worried about being in trouble?
Skylar didn’t wait. He pulled a chair from the corner and placed it beside the bed. As he sat down directly in the boy’s line of vision, he threw a thumb over his shoulder and said, “This is Agent O’Dell from the FBI.”
Dawson’s eyes swung up to hers then darted back. It was enough for Maggie to see his panic was real now.
She remained standing and stayed by the door where she could watch not only Dawson but Skylar as well. When Skylar told her he wanted to conduct the interviews, it was because the teenagers would be “less rattled” with someone they knew. So she was surprised when he began by saying, “We know about the Taser, son,” immediately putting the boy on the defensive.
Earlier the sheriff couldn’t wait to tell her he had already traced the serial number on the Taser back to Dawson’s father who used it for his job as a security guard at a meat-processing plant outside of North Platte. Skylar had explained that the gun was standard issue at the plant and all he had to do was check their database. Possession of the Taser seemed to be Skylar’s smoking gun, so to speak, though there was no evidence it had caused any of the injuries.
Maggie would quickly regret not changing the subject.
“Did you shoot any of your friends with the gun, Dawson?”
“No, absolutely not.”
“Come on, Dawson. I know it was fired. You might just as well fess up. We’re going to find out the truth soon enough.”
The boy’s eyes looked up at Maggie, to Skylar, then back to Maggie, staying with her for a beat longer, imploring her as though she might be the more understanding one.
“I shot at … something,” he said.
Instead of leaning in for the explanation, Skylar sat back and shook his head like he had heard this before and didn’t have the patience to hear it again.
“So what was it you think you shot at?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t really get a good look. It had red eyes. Maybe a wolf.”
Now Skylar jerked forward, surprised.
“A wolf? You sure it wasn’t a coyote? Maybe a cougar? Hank said there’s a big cat of some sort in the forest. They’ve had sightings. But wolves? We haven’t had wolves in this area since I’ve been here.”
“I don’t know. I guess it could have been a coyote or cougar. It was big. And white.”
“White?” Skylar sat back and shook his head again. No longer interested. “A white wolf or cougar.”
“It pounced at me. I shot at it. I’m pretty sure I hit it.”
“There weren’t any animal tracks,” Skylar told him, his arms crossed over his chest.
The sheriff wore a flannel shirt this morning, a black-andred plaid that somehow made him appear bigger. Maggie realized the sidearm strapped at his waist probably had something to do with the appearance, too. Last night she hadn’t seen any weapon under his jacket.
The boy looked at Maggie again, but she had nothing to offer. There had been plenty of footprints all over the sandy floor of the forest but no animal tracks, at least none the size of a wolf or coyote or cougar. The pine needles could have disguised an animal’s presence, but a wounded animal would have certainly left prints.
Then Maggie remembered. The girl named Amanda had been bitten on her arm. Could it have been an animal? What did she say about it? “He bit me.” Last night Maggie hadn’t thought to ask. It seemed a minor issue compared to the girl’s shock and the other teens’ injuries.
“Dawson, I’m disappointed. I didn’t expect you to lie when two of your friends are dead.”
“It’s true. It was watching from the brush when the fireworks were going off. It had red eyes.”
“Fireworks. Right.”
Last night, while they were being treated, some of the others had mumbled something about fireworks or a light show. Hank had been within a mile of the teenagers’ campsite and hadn’t seen any display, nothing close to fireworks or a laser-light show like the teens described. It could have been the salvia.
At some point Maggie would need to fess up about the plastic bag Lucy had found. She was hoping to have it analyzed before handing it over with the other trace evidence. If Skylar had kept the existence of drugs a secret during a previous investigation, she wouldn’t risk him doing it again. She certainly didn’t expect any of the teenagers to offer up information about the drug.
Perhaps Skylar read her mind.
“What kind of drugs were you tripping on?” he asked.
“Excuse me?”
“You kids might think I’m an old man, but I’m not stupid. I know you weren’t in the forest at dusk sitting around drinking soda pop. Not the first time you’ve been out there either, is it?”
Maggie had to give the man some credit. Sometimes this type of interrogation opened a spigot when the subject felt guilty and just needed an extra push to spew out a confession or give up some vital information. But this would not be one of those moments. Maggie didn’t think Dawson Hayes looked guilty. He looked scared.
When the boy met her eyes this time, his eyes stayed on her. She saw the panic soften and give way to a spark of recognition.
“You’re the one who found me,” he said.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“You should have just let me die with the others.”