Page 29 of You'll Be Sorry

We think we found…Well, best come see for yourself.

So now Mandy returned to the Collins property barely twenty-four hours after her initial welcome, zipping up her heavy jacket and unloading two battery-operated rapid deploy lights, courtesy of the fire department. She’d just shut the hatch on her police SUV when Raquel appeared from behind the house.

“The dog found it,” she stated without preamble. Raquel was wearing a coppery-colored puffer jacket and rabbit fur headband in deference to the biting late-November chill. Leave it to the woman to somehow look glamorous even at a potential crime scene.

“The dog?” Mandy asked.

On cue, a pale, square-headed canine appeared.

Mandy nearly dropped one of the aluminum-shrouded lights. “You have a dog?”

“I prefer the term ‘canine opportunist.’ He appeared on our front porch this morning. Theo is already in love.” Raquel regarded her intently. “We took him to the vet. Relatively good health, but no ID chip. She advised us to ask you if you recognized him. Tell me, Chief, do you recognize him?”

Mandy definitely got the question behind the question. She honestly felt too flabbergasted to speak. A light-coated Lab-ish-looking stray. What were the odds?

This evening was getting stranger and stranger.

“Let’s start with your discovery,” she said at last.

Single-shoulder shrug. “Follow me.”

The dog led the way. Nothing ironic about that, Mandy thought as she marched past the house to the collapsed barn, then beyond.

She could just make out a faint glow coming from the ground about fifteen feet ahead. Next to it appeared to be a pile of discarded dirt-caked wooden planks.

“Where’s Theo?” she asked.

“Hi, Chief!” The shouted reply came from below, as in from the dimly illuminated pit.

“What the fuck?”

“I haven’t touched anything, I swear. I’m not a total idiot,” he called back.

Raquel and the dog were already peering down in disapproval. “It’s true,” Raquel said. “He’s only an idiot half the time.”

“I heard that!”

“Get out!” Mandy was beyond flabbergasted and now genuinely pissed off.

“You bring the light?”

“Get out!”

Tugging at the rope snaking past her feet.

Mandy mumbled a few more disparaging terms, then set down the battery-operated lights and fired them to life. The RDLs were surprisingly powerful for their modest size, perfect for illuminating crime/disaster/emergency scenes of all kinds. She placed one to the right side of the pit, the second on the left. The opening appeared slightly sunken in the earth, the granite edges still spotted with clumps of meadow. A little adjustment here, angling there, and she caught Theo in full glare just as he emerged from the hole, gloved hands tight around the rope he must’ve used to rappel down.

“Wow, that’s perfect!” he exclaimed, reflexively lifting one arm to block the high-powered beam, then immediately teetering off balance. Raquel grabbed his arm and tugged him onto terra firma, muttering some ill-tempered phrases of her own.

The dog settled onto his haunches and took in the show.

“All right, start from the beginning.”

Both Theo and Raquel pointed at the dirt-caked mutt.

“Such a good boy,” Theo gushed.

“Not keeping him!” Raquel corrected.