I watched the back windows for signs of curtains moving, but no further movement disturbed the morning calm. “I don’t think it’s anything,” I said, with more confidence than I felt.
Fifteen minutes later we saw a big dog burst out of the barn and go sprinting across the front yard. Nathan stepped into view for a moment, but the dog disappeared into the woods and kept on going.
“Looks like a dog got out,” Greenberg said, watching the show through the telescope. “The tall guy looks pissed off.”
I was using Greenberg’s binoculars now, which had a much bigger field of view than the telescope. It was getting close to noon, and it was hot in the little hollow between the two big rocks. I wondered if my dogs needed water. I was about to slide my way out to them when I saw a flash of metal through the trees below the cabin.
“Vehicle,” I announced.
Greenberg looked up to see where I was pointing the binocs and then swung the telescope in that direction. “Well, looky here,” he said. “The high sha-reef himself.”
“Mingo?”
“Yup. I can see him through the windshield. Apparently he’s allowed to drive on the grass, because he’s coming right up to the cabin.”
We watched as the sheriff’s patrol car drove up the meadow to the front of the cabin. Nathan came out of the barn to meet him. We couldn’t see whether Grinny was on the front porch because the cabin blocked our view. Nathan and M. C. Mingo talked for a minute, and then Nathan opened the left rear door of the cruiser and removed a young child, none too gently.
“Boy or girl?” I asked.
“Girl, I think, although with all that hair in her face… she’s done something wrong, the way Nathan’s manhandling her.” He kept his eye glued to the scope. “This thing have a camera port?” he asked.
“Yes, but no camera,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Lemme see if this fits,” he said, fishing in his vest pocket while keeping his eye on the scene below. He produced a small digital camera. “Screw this onto the top and shoot some pictures of Mingo talking to these bad-asses.”
I took the camera and tried it. The threads were wrong. “No go,” I said.
“Shit,” he replied. “Whoa-here comes the Big Mamu.”
I watched M. C. Mingo, Nathan, and the child, all standing next to the cop car in front of Grinny’s cabin. Then something large took over the image. It was Grinny Creigh’s ponderous backside, coming down off the front porch, one haunch at a time. Her head still looked too small for that enormous body as she shuffled painfully down the grass to the police car. She put her tiny little hands on her massive hips and bent down to address the child, who appeared to be terrified. At one point the child tried to run and Nathan restrained her by her hair. He pushed the kid back in front of the angry woman.
The tongue-lashing went on for almost a minute, and then Grinny did a strange thing. She stepped forward and, hooking her forearms under the child’s armpits, pulled her up into an ample embrace.
“I guess they made up,” Greenberg said.
But I wasn’t so sure. “Can that kid breathe?” I asked quietly.
Greenberg watched and then swore. It became obvious to both of us that Grinny’s embrace was anything but motherly love. We could barely see the girl now as Grinny hugged her to that huge, soft belly, but we could see her hands and feet struggling to escape those meaty arms. Grinny bent further forward and then really gripped the little girl’s body. Nathan and M. C. Mingo watched from a few feet away, Nathan with what appeared to be clinical interest, while M. C. seemed to be studying the ground until it was over. Grinny finally straightened up and threw out her arms in a dramatic gesture, and the girl’s limp body dropped in a heap of skinny arms and legs at her feet. Grinny nudged the body a couple of times with her foot, causing the girl’s head to loll like that of a broken doll. Then she turned to go back into the cabin. I thought I saw her glance up at the rocks, but the binocs were not strong enough to really see where she was looking.
Nathan helped the sheriff roll the child over, and then Mingo cuffed her hands behind her back. Together they loaded her into the patrol car’s backseat. They talked for a minute, and then the sheriff got in the car and drove back down the hill. Now he seemed to be in a hurry.
“Mother fuck!” Greenberg whispered. “She just kill that kid?”
“I thought so until Mingo cuffed her,” I said, swallowing hard. “Now I think she just smothered her until she passed out.”
“Damn. I wish I had a picture of that.”
“The kid would have been invisible,” I said. “But, man! What are these people doing?”
“Well, now we know all we need to know about M. C. Mingo,” Greenberg said.
“We have to report this.”
“Wanna go now?”
“We should wait till dark,” I said. I couldn’t get Grinny’s final glance upward out of my mind. Something wasn’t quite right here. Then it came to me.
“You know, maybe we should get out now,” I said.
Greenberg looked over at me and raised his eyebrows.
“She damn near smothered that kid,” I said. “Right out there in the open. Where anybody could see her do it, including any watchers up here on the ridge. Why would she do that in full view?”
“Because she never did see us?”
“Or because she’s already sent for reinforcements.”
“How?”
“Who knows?” I said. “Cell phone? Landline telephone that we don’t know about? Ham radio? Homing pigeon?”
Greenberg took another look through the telescope. “Homing dog, maybe?” he said softly. “You’re the dog man-is that possible?”
“Hell, yes,” I said, and we started breaking down our gear. Five minutes later we crawled on our bellies out from between the big rocks and up to where my dogs had been stationed. I was hoping that the pines in front of us would conceal our movements, aided by the fact that the eastern slopes of Book Mountain would be moving into sun shadow as the afternoon progressed. We made no sound as we moved through a deep bed of pine needles until I gave a low whistle to summon the shepherds from their hides above the big boulders. They came at a run, and I gave them some water. Then we headed back across the eastern face of Book Mountain, trying to keep trees and other vegetation between us and anyone watching from down at the cabin.
It took us a half hour to reach the first firebreak lane, where we stopped to catch our breath. I drank some water and gave the rest to the shepherds, who were panting pretty hard. We were going to have to cross the open firebreak to keep going down and across the mountain, and even though it was overgrown with chest-high weeds, we would be clearly visible from the heights above. The woods on the other side were denser than what we’d been toiling through, and those shadows were inviting.
“Any better way across this?” Greenberg asked, as I gauged the hundred-foot-wide clearing and felt the forested ridges towering above us.
I shook my head. “We can stay in the woods, but that’s the way we need to go to get back down to the lake. Cross this and then move parallel to it. We can wait for dark, but they might use dogs to find us. I’d rather be out on the lake after dark than still up here.”
Greenberg sighed. “So,” he said. “We just run for it?”
“I’ll send the dogs across first to make sure no one’s over there in the woods,” I said. I summoned the shepherds, deactivated their bark collars, and sent them across the open space of the firebreak. Once into the woods they looked back at me and I gave them the hand signal for a down. They dropped obediently into the tall grass.
“Love that shit,” Greenberg muttered.
“I’m going to move right fifty yards and then do a little broken-field running. If there are shooters up behind us, I’ll try to make it hard. Once I’m out in the middle, you break out here and go straight across.”
“Divide the targets,” Greenberg said. “Good move.”