Thrill of the Hunt Read online

  Tom looked at Sandy lying naked on the bed. “Get dressed honey. I gotta go.”

  “Go! Where are you going?” Sandy asked, getting up as he tossed her a long, grey, sleeveless t-shirt from the laundry basket.

  “They found it at the bottom of Dead Horse Cliff!” Glen yelled toward the bedroom.

  Tom slammed the bedroom door closed.

  “You want me to go on out or -.”

  “Give me a few minutes damn it!” Tom yelled as he put his uniform shirt on over his tee shirt.

  Sandy looked at him questioningly as he tucked his shirt tail into his pants. “Honey, what -?”

  “Hunters found the Handling girl’s truck,” Tom answered, fastening his belt. “I have to go baby.” He kissed her as he picked up his gun belt from the dresser. “Lock the door,” he said, strapping the gun around his slender waist.

  “I will.” Sandy walked him to the door. “Hey, Glen,” she greeted, feeling the necklace.

  Glen looked at her in the t-shirt, “Sandy.” Seeing the braless shape of her breast through the shirt, he turned and looked at Tom.

  “Honey,” Tom turned to Sandy and kissed her. “Lock the door.”

  Sandy nodded. Watching her husband as he walked with Glen out to the car, she locked the screen door then shut the inside door and locked it.

  “Let’s go.” Tom said as he opened the passenger door of Glen’s car.

  “You aren’t taking yours?”

  “Why the hell do we need two cars out there?”

  “What if you get a call?” Glen asked getting in behind the wheel.

  “Then we’ll take care of it.”

  “I didn’t mean to catch you at a bad time.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Let’s go.”

  Glen started the car. “I don’t know where I’m going.”

  “West.” Tom pointed in the direction Glen needed to drive. “Who did you say it was that called it in?”

  “Tory Stoutman,” Glen said driving out of town. He took a second look at Tom, who was using the rearview mirror to comb his hair.

  “Tory Stoutman, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The kid’s got great hunting skills. I’ve never seen anything like him.” Tom moved the mirror back to where it had been. “He’s a lot better than Colton.”

  “I don’t know much about him,” Glen said, readjusting his mirror.

  “He’s only twenty-three, but he’s the best tracker in the country,” Tom stated, as he straightened the seatbelt. “Tory learned to track from his uncle who was an outfitter. The kid worked with him from the time he was six years old until his uncle died a few years ago. They use to hunt mountain lion without dogs. That’s the hardest prey you can hunt out here.”

  “You don’t hunt cats?”

  Tom shook his head. “I don’t imagine they taste very good, besides you’ve got to go further west to find them. He’s helped me find several lost hikers out here. I swear he can track across rock.”

  “Sounds like the kind of person you want in your hunting party,” Glen replied. He looked at Tom. “I never asked you, but you have any kids?”

  “What?”

  “You and Sandy.” Glen looked at the road. “Why don’t you have any kids?”

  “Because we didn’t want any. I had a couple with my first wife.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Too old be having kids. Hell she’s going to be forty-five in a couple of days and I’ll be fifty in November.” Tom glanced over at the speedometer. “Pick it up. You’re not going to church.”

  Glen pushed down on the accelerator. “I guess you kind of know how Garrett and Nancy Handling feel.”

  “Nobody can know how the Handlings feel. Not unless you’ve had a kid disappear.” Tom pointed at a dirt road. “Turn there.”

  “Kelly and I, we’ve been married two years now,” Glen said turning onto the road. “But she can’t seem to get pregnant. We just can’t seem to-.”

  “Try a different position.” Tom pointed ahead. “That fork in the road, take a left. It’s about ten miles out there.” He glanced over at the speedometer. “This thing can hit a hundred you know.”

  Glen pushed down on the accelerator, watching it as it climbed to eighty. “What would Lucy be doing out here? Her family’s ranch’s the other way, isn’t it?”

  Tom shrugged.

  “There’s nothing out here?”

  “What have I been telling you, Glen? And you’re asking me why these girls want to get out of this place.”

  “Maybe for the girls that work at The Club, but Lucy isn’t like them.”

  Tom nodded. He didn’t have to have someone point that out to him.

  “That’s the reason you think she’s still around here, isn’t it?’

  Tom nodded, “Why else would she stay?”

  Four

  Sitting along the desert road were three pickups. A man sitting in back of one of the pickups waved at them then tapped on the cab glass. As the pickup started cross country the other two followed it.

  “Follow them,” Tom ordered.

  “Where are they going?”

  “Just follow’em.”

  After a ten minute drive, the pickups pulled into a grassy creek bottom, where a dark blue pickup sat and stopped. Mitch Ihnen, who was sitting on the tailgate waiting, stood and closed the tailgate. “About time,” he snapped as Tom and Glen got out of the car.

  “Has anyone checked inside that truck?” Tom asked, as the hunters from the other pickups walked up.

  “We recognized it right away and thought we better call you,” an older man answered. He looked over at a metallic brown pickup, the front of it half buried in the ground, then back to Tom. “Lucy Handling was a great kid. I’m not interested in seeing her dead.”

  “None of us are, Jerry.” Tom looked at Glen. “This is Jerry Mustafa, he’s an outfitter. My deputy, Glen Norman,” Tom introduced. “Haven’t you been out here or flown over this area recently?”

  Jerry shook his head, “Can’t say I have. Hunting season’s just got a good start. And with fuel high as it is, I’m not flying around for something to do.”

  Tom looked at the brown pickup. “Glen, why don’t you and me, go have a look.”

  “Long ways up there,” Glen said looking up at the cliff, as they walked toward the pickup.

  “Uh-huh.” Tom looked up at the rocky cliff, where the pickup had obviously came over the edge. A three inch diameter tree that had been growing out the side of the cliff had been snapped from the truck’s fall. It hadn’t just fallen off the cliff, but had momentum when it went over the edge.

  “Kind of unusual that she’d drive off over a cliff way out here in the middle of nowhere isn’t it?” Glen asked. “She’s lived out here all her life. She surely knows the area.”

  Tom walked up to the pickup.

  “Why would she just drive off over a cliff?” Glen asked looking at the front of the pickup buried in the ground.

  Tom looked inside the truck. There wasn’t anything between the seat and the accelerator pedal. Not to say a prop couldn’t have been removed after the fall.

  “Maybe she didn’t.” Tom looked back to where the hunters stood watching. “Tory!” he yelled and motioned to a young man with light brown hair. Walking up to Tory, Tom met him before he got to the pickup. “Lucy Handling isn’t in the truck.”

  “She what?” Tory asked, looking beyond Tom to the pickup.

  “I want you to see if you can track her. If she got out of the truck and started walking, I want to know which direction she went.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Approaching the pickup, Tory stopped and looked at it. Studying the ground, he walked up to the pickup. His experienced eyes searched the ground around the driver’s door. He walked around to the passenger side and frown. “I can’t.”

  “Why?” Tom asked.

  Tory shrugged, “There ar
en’t any tracks! There isn’t any sign that anyone ever got out of it or was around it. I mean...” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Tom, it’s hard to tell how long it’s been out here.”

  “Not that long.”

  “How do you know?”

  “There isn’t any blood in the truck.” Tom observed ignoring his question. “If she was in this thing when it went over that cliff, there’s a good chance she’d got hurt if it didn’t kill her. She’d got a bloody nose on the steering wheel or something.” Looking through the open window inside of the pickup, Tom found the girl’s purse between the seat and door. Reaching through the window he pulled it out.

  “I guess we know she didn’t leave town,” Glen said, looking at the purse in Tom’s hand.

  “So where is she?” Tory asked.

  Tom turned and looked at the hunters. “Anyone got a chain so that they can drag this thing in?”

  “I got one,” Russ answered. “Where do you want me to put it when I get it back to town?” Russ asked, dragging a log chain to the back of his pickup bed.

  “Put it in old man Hanson’s junk yard.”

  “Shouldn’t forensics look at it?” Glen asked.

  “Do we look like we have forensics around here?” Tom asked. “We’re miles away from anyone, in case you haven’t noticed. Which means we have to solve crimes the old fashioned way.” He looked up at the cliff as Russ backed his pickup in front of Lucy Handling’s. “Let’s go have a look up there.”

  “You callin’ Garrett and Nancy to let them know you found her truck?” one of the other hunters asked.

  Tom looked at him. “Yeah, Drake. I’ll tell’em.” He looked at Russ. “When you hook onto this thing, try to not touch anything inside of it. I’ll call Mac Cappola and see if I can’t get someone to try and lift some prints off it.”

  “You gonna have him bring his dogs out here?” Jerry asked.

  “That’ll be up to him.”

  “I don’t know about this, Moratelli. We might have to load it,” Russ, who was down on the ground looking under the front of the pickup, stated.

  “Just, do what you have too to get it into town.”

  “Why don’t you put it in my hanger? At least until someone looks at it,” Jerry suggested.

  “Long as it isn’t in your way,” Tom replied.

  “It won’t be in my way.” Jerry looked at the front of the pickup and shook his head. “There ain’t nobody could have walked away from this, you know that, Tom.”

  “Hell, I think the engine’s broke loose from the frame,” Drake said looking underneath the pickup. “Looks to me like the engine’s on the ground.”

  “Sure is,” Tory agreed, looking under the pickup. He looked at Tom. “It must have snapped the mounting bolts when it hit the ground. We ain’t pullin’ this thing anywhere.”

  “Do what you have too,” Tom replied, as he walked Jerry to the side. “I can use your help.”

  Jerry nodded, “What do you need, Tom?”

  “I want you, me and Glen in the air tomorrow morning. We’ll see if we can’t find something from up there.”

  “You don’t really think she’s alive out here, do you?”

  Tom shrugged. He didn’t want to comment.

  Jerry frowned, “All kinds of things out here eat something that’s dead you know.”

  “I know. But I have to try and find her.”

  “What time do you want to go up?”

  “First thing in the morning.”

  “First light. You get out of bed that early, Moratelli?”

  “We’ll be there.” Tom turned and started walking to the police car. “Glen, let’s go have a look on the hill.”

  “More like a mountain,” Glen commented looking at the top of the cliff as he walked to the car.

  “However you want to look at it.”

  * * * *

  “So how’d it get the name, Dead Horse Cliff?” Glen asked, as he walked around looking at the ground for foot prints or tire tracks.

  “Who the hell knows?” Tom said, looking over the cliff at the pickup, trying to figure where it had gone over. “Someone probably found a dead horse up here or the dumb thing fell over the cliff.” He frowned. Whatever tracks had been there were gone, either blown away by the wind or brushed away by someone. “We’re not going to find anything up here.”

  “She’s been missing a while. Four months in this environment.” Glen looked over the edge at the pickup below. “I imagine it can do strange things out here.”

  “Actually, it preserves stuff pretty well, but that truck hasn’t been there that long,” Tom said as he walked to the car.

  Glen after at him. “How do you know?”

  “I’ve been out here looking for her. And that truck wasn’t there. Let’s go.”

  “Why didn’t you say that earlier?” Glen asked, opening the car door.

  “Some things some people don’t need to know. Be out at Jerry’s airstrip at seven tomorrow morning.”

  “Where’s that?” Glen asked, starting his car.

  “North of town.”

  “You really think we’re going to find anything from up there?” Glen asked, as he drove down the steep slope to the road.

  “What do we have to lose?”

  “Nothing, I guess.”

  “I’ve looked everywhere I know to look. The only thing I haven’t tried is the dogs.”

  “Dogs?”

  “Mac Coppola has a team of dogs he uses to hunt people down. I’d have asked him to bring them in earlier, but I didn’t know where to have them start looking and they were busy looking for a bunch of lost boy scouts around the Arizona state line.”

  “So when were you out here?” Glen asked, reaching the bottom of the hill.

  “Right after she disappeared. Several of the locals get together and come out here and shoot. I thought maybe she’d come out here by herself and got hurt.”

  “That was good thinking.”

  “Yeah, well she wasn’t. And that truck definitely wasn’t.”

  “So someone has her.”

  “That or they had her,” Tom answered. “I’m not so sure they still do, especially after that trucks shown up.”

  “Why get rid of the truck now, why not earlier?”

  Tom shook his head, “I don’t know. Maybe he’s dumped her body out there somewhere and wants us to think she stumbled away from the truck and died.”

  Glen nodded, “So we’ll probably find her dead.”

  “Probably.”

  “Whoever’s taken Lucy, he’s probably responsible for taking those other girls too.”

  Tom looked at him, but didn’t say anything.

  Five

  Unlocking the door, Sandy walked into the café, then locked the door. She looked out the window and waved at Tom, as he watched to make sure she got in all right. Glancing up at the clock, Sandy walked into the back room and took a clean apron off the hook. Turning around she jumped. “God, Colton! You scared me.”

  “Didn’t mean too.” Colton Hornbaker was a middle-age man in his late fifties. He looked at Sandy with cold, steel blue eyes. “It’s kind of easy to sneak up on you, ya know that?” he said.

  “You’re usually out hunting or something.”

  Colton smiled at her with plaster white teeth as he blocked her exit. “You’re here kind of early. Isn’t this your birthday?”

  “It’s Saturday. Tom dropped me off on his way to work. Excuse me.” Sandy stepped past him, careful not to brush up against him, and flipped on the lights in the dining area.

  “You’re opening this early?”

  “No,” she said as she tied the apron around her slender waist, noticing that Colton already had the coffee made. “But the others will be here shortly.” Picking up a tray with salt and pepper refills, Sandy walked over to a table. “I figured you were out hunting.”

  Colton shrugged as he turned away from her, looking in a
mirror, he checked his short, graying, blonde hair. “Wasn’t much of a hunt.”

  “I guess that depends on what you’re hunting,” Sandy said, filling a pepper shaker, not turning her back to him.

  Colton nodded as he filled his coffee cup. “Why are you two up so early? You don’t usually get out of bed till you have too. Or is it starting to get old?”

  Sandy frowned moving to the next table.

  “How long you two been married now?”

  “Tom and Glen are going up with Jerry Mustafa this morning,” she said, checking the salt and pepper shakers on the next table.

  “What does Tom need with an outfitter? He’s a good hunter.”

  “Unlike you,” she said as she walked to the next table, “Tom can’t take time off from work to go hunting.”

  “I guess he isn’t hunting then?”

  “No, he’s working.” Sandy tried to unscrew the lid off the salt shaker. “Some dim wit.”

  Colton walked over and took the salt shaker from her. “I heard they found Lucy Handling’s truck yesterday,” he said, un-screwing the lid. He handed it to her.

  “Yeah they did. Thanks.” Sandy filled the shaker with salt.

  “So they found her, huh?”

  “She wasn’t in it.” Sandy picked up the pepper shaker. “That’s why they’re going up in the plane, to try and find her.”

  “They aren’t going to find her,” Colton said, as he walked up to the counter.

  Sandy looked at him, watching as he took a drink of his coffee. “Why do you say that?”

  “She skipped town like the rest of them, don’t you think?”

  Sandy moved to the next table. “If she’d skipped town, don’t you think she would have driven her truck?”

  “I suppose.” Colton sipped the coffee. “Maybe after the accident she wondered off and got lost.”

  “Tory couldn’t track her if she did,” Sandy said, filling another shaker.

  “Yeah, well the kid’s good, but he’s not the best tracker around,” Colton spouted. “So that’s what Tom thinks, huh? That she’s wondered off and got lost, and that’s why they’re going up in the plane, to see if they can’t find her?”

  Sandy shrugged. Colton was asking a lot of questions that she wasn’t sure she ought to be answering. “I guess, I don’t know.”

  Colton smiled. “Thought you always knew what Tom was thinkin’?”

  She wasn’t saying anything else about it. If he wanted to know, he could ask Tom.

  “That Stoutman kid thinks he’s a pretty damn good tracker. But I could teach him a thing or two.”

  Sandy looked at him as she screwed the lid on a salt shaker. “If you’re so good, why haven’t you won the money and awards he has?”