Pettis looked at her dubiously. “I know he’s right here, Miss Angie. I’m lookin’ at him. And I know that receiver’s right here. I’m lookin’ at it, too.”
Angie laughed good-naturedly. “Okay, this isn’t a very good demonstration. You willing for us to put it on Jasper, so you can get a better idea how it works?” Pettis frowned. “It’ll just take a minute,” she cajoled.
“And you’re sure it won’t hurt him?”
“It won’t hurt him a bit. I promise.”
“Well. All right, then. If he’s willing. Jasper, you willing to try that thing on?”
Angie handed the collar to Pettis. “Jasper, set on down,” he said. The dog sat, and Pettis strapped it on, frowning and shaking his head. “I sure wouldn’t want to wear it,” he said. “Jasper, you sure about this?” The dog cocked his head, and Pettis laughed. “Well, if you don’t care, I reckon I shouldn’t care.”
Angie said, “So, does he like to chase sticks?”
“Who, Jasper?” Pettis guffawed. “Jasper likes to take naps. You want to track him takin’ a nap?”
She smiled. “You particular about what he eats?”
“Well, I don’t much like it when he brings skulls into the bed,” Pettis said. “Besides that, I don’t much care. He’s a dog, you know?”
Angie opened the back door of the truck again and leaned in. When she emerged, she had a hamburger patty in her hand, which we’d procured at McDonald’s on our way. “Hey, Jasper,” she cooed, waving the burger near him. The dog’s head snapped around and his nostrils flared. “Want a treat?” She made another quick pass with the burger near his nose, too quick for him to make a grab. “Want it? Huh, Jasper, you want it?” She waved the burger back and forth as she said it. The dog’s eyes were locked on the burger like a fighter plane’s targeting radar, and his head swiveled in perfect sync with the movement of the patty. “You ready, Jasper?” She cocked her arm back. “Go get it, Jasper!” With that, she flung the burger across the clearing and into the brush. The dog tore after it. “See,” she said, pointing to the screen. She’d zoomed it in as close as it would go. The small dog icon, which had been superimposed on the triangle, suddenly flashed to a new position, halfway across the screen. As Jasper snuffled his way through the bushes, the icon moved every five seconds. Then, after a brief pause that was punctuated by loud smacking noises in the underbrush, the icon made its way back to the triangle, arriving shortly after Jasper did.
“Okay,” Pettis conceded, “looks like it works, close up, anyhow. How far away can that thing see him?”
“Seven miles, says the company that makes it,” said Angie. “That’s if the terrain’s flat and there’s nothing in the way between the collar and the receiver.” She scanned the flat terrain around the cabin. “We might need to find a piece of higher ground to get better line-of-sight reception. Anyplace nearby that’s higher up?”
“Hell, yeah,” he said. “How about a hunnerd fifty feet higher up? There’s a old fire tower right over yonder.” He pointed. “I’d check the stairs and the floorboards pretty careful before I trusted it, but it looks to be in pretty fair shape, at least from the ground.”
Angie cocked her head, much as the dog had done a few minutes before. “So you’re willing for us to track Jasper for a few days, see where he goes, see if he brings another bone back from one of those places?”
“Sure, why not,” he said. “On one condition.”
“What condition?”
“If he shows you where the rest of them bones are, you’ve got to give him another hamburger. Sound reasonable?”
“You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Pettis.” Angie laughed, and they shook hands. “We’ll get somebody out here to check the tower later today. Oh, we’ll need to change the battery in the collar every couple days. Is that okay?”
Pettis scratched his stubble again. “That might require some additional compensation,” he said. Angie looked worried. “Better make it a cheeseburger.”
“You and Jasper drive a hard bargain, Mr. Pettis. But you’ve got me over a barrel. A cheeseburger it is.”
He grinned. “Pleasure doing business with you, Miss Angie.”
* * *
Breakfast anytime, promised the marquee of the Waffle Iron, a glass-fronted cinder-block diner on the main street of Sinking Springs, the tiny county seat of Bremerton County. The sign appeared to date from the 1950s or early ’60s; the diner’s name was outlined in script by glowing tubes of neon, and so was the profile of a cartoonish chef, who wore a puffy white hat and served up a golden neon waffle. Underneath the sign’s offer of breakfast were two alternatives: Lunch Specials and Fried Cat. It was only when I did a double take that I noticed the word Fish tucked on a separate line underneath. The fried cat must have been pretty tasty, because the parking lot was packed fender to fender with pickups and SUVs.
After our errand at Pettis’s, Angie and I had returned to explore the ruins of the school further while Vickery mined the courthouse records for information about the reform school, or old-timers who might still remember it. We rendezvoused with him shortly after dark in the Waffle Iron’s parking lot.
Every head in the diner swiveled in our direction when we entered, sizing us up frankly and reminding us clearly that we were outsiders. Angie and I ignored the stares; Vickery took the opposite tack, nodding and waving amiably at various patrons, as though they’d greeted him in a friendly way. We ran this visual gauntlet to a back corner of the diner, where a booth had just opened up. As we slid onto the plastic benches, Angie and Vickery with their backs to the wall, the clatter of silverware and chatter of conversation gradually resumed.
The waitress who came to take our order was young, slightly plump, and pretty. I saw her taking the measure of the three of us — glancing at our ring fingers, considering whether Angie was married to either Vickery or me. She must have decided Vickery was fair game, because when she asked for his order, she flashed him a dimpled smile that was orders of magnitude brighter than the token one she’d given me. She held the pen a few inches above the order pad and tilted her head slightly to one side, raptly waiting his decision. “And what would you like, sir?”
Vickery slowly removed the cigar from the corner of his mouth. “I’m open to suggestions,” he said. “What would you say is the tastiest thing on the menu?”
The waitress reddened slightly, but her smile broadened. “I’d say it depends on what you’re in the mood for.”
I saw Angie’s eyes roll in disgust. She turned to Vickery and laid a hand on his arm. “Do tell us, darling, what you’re in the mood for.”
Vickery glared at her. “I’m not sure, sweetheart,” he said, “but weren’t you planning on having a little humble pie for dessert?” Angie laughed, and the waitress — undone by the exchange — dialed down her demeanor from flirtatious to businesslike. Angie ordered the chicken-salad plate, Vickery got fried eggs and bacon, and I decided to try the fried cat.
As the waitress scurried away to put in our order, Vickery nibbled his cigar briefly, then took it out and frowned at it. The tip was crumbling, and flecks of soggy tobacco clung to his lips and tongue. He laid the cigar across the ashtray, pulled a few napkins from the black-and-chrome dispenser, and swabbed his mouth. “So tell me, Doc,” he said, “what put the ‘forensic’ in anthropology for you? How come you’re hanging out with cops instead of fossil hunters or museum donors?”
“One thing led to another,” I said. “Early in my career — while I was still working on my PhD dissertation — I spent summers in South Dakota, excavating old Indian graves for the Smithsonian. It was pretty quiet out there; big ranches, not many people. Not much excitement for the police, either. DUIs, mostly; occasionally a burglary or barroom fight or some cattle rustling. So we got a fair number of visits from the sheriff’s deputies and the state police. They’d come by almost every day — just to make sure we were okay, they said, but mostly they were bored, and we were the most reliable entertainment around. So
whenever they’d come by, we’d show them what we were excavating that day, or bring out something interesting we’d found a day or two before — scalping marks, bashed-in skulls, whatever.”
“So instead of the bookmobile,” Angie cracked, “y’all were the bonemobile.”
“I guess we were.” I laughed. “One of the skeletons became kinda famous, and we had cops coming to see him from half the state. It was an adult male in his forties — no spring chicken, by Plains Indian standards. He had an arrowhead embedded deep in his right femur, about halfway between his hip and his knee. Right about where his thigh would’ve been gripping the ribs of a horse, riding bareback.”
“Cool,” said Vickery. “You think he bled to death? Or died of infection?”
“Neither.” I grinned. “That was what was so interesting about it. The bone had healed and smoothed around the arrowhead — remodeled, we call it — which meant that he’d lived for years after being shot with the arrow. It was so deep they couldn’t get it out, so they just cut off the arrow, and he carried the point around in his leg for years. Probably hurt like hell for a long time, maybe for the rest of his life. Then, five or ten or twenty years later, he got clubbed to death — back of his skull was completely crushed — maybe because he couldn’t run fast enough when some Sioux came after him with a battle-ax.”
“Wow,” said Angie. “That’s a great show-and-tell exhibit. Beats the pants off our plaster casts of Ted Bundy’s teeth. I’d sure come out and take a look, if I were a South Dakota deputy. It’s like the History Channel meets CSI.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Listening to the bones, hearing the story they can tell, even if the story’s two centuries old. Anyhow, one day, a South Dakota state trooper who’d seen the arrowhead skeleton came back out to the site. This was back before cell phones were everywhere, mind you, and there was no way to get ahold of us except to come out there in person. We were way off the grid.” Vickery nodded. “So this state trooper comes out. Corporal Gustafson, I think his name was. No, wait; that’s almost it, but not quite. Gunterson. Yeah, Gunterson.” I gave my head a shake. “Funny how I can dredge up that guy’s name after thirty years, but can’t remember where I left my pocketknife this morning. Anyhow, Gunterson asks if I’d be willing to take a look at a skeleton that a cattle rancher’d just found.”