Paddy Plays in Dead Mule Swamp (9 page)

These calls took so long that the
girls had not only made tea but had each finished off a mug by the
time I was able to talk with them again. They both seemed less
upset, but still on edge.

“Your grandfather is coming here,” I
began. “The police will have lots of questions, and I know he wants
to be with you.”

Star still seemed stunned, and just
nodded. Sunny looked confused and sat at the kitchen table with
Paddy at her side. Just then we heard a car coming toward the
house. It was good to have something to divert our attention. I
looked out and saw a Sheriff’s car slowing to a stop. A young
African-American man in uniform and a solid older man in a gray
suit got out and approached the house. I opened the front door
before they reached it, and invited them inside.

The uniformed man introduced himself
as Deputy Brown, and the other as Detective Dennis Milford. The
deputy looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him. I led
them into the kitchen. Milford took charge and asked for the
bracelet. Sunny still clutched it, but she held it out reluctantly.
The younger man captured it in a plastic evidence bag he produced
from somewhere and asked me to explain again how we had found the
item.

I couldn’t imagine there would be any
useful fingerprints or clues on the bracelet, given years in the
ground, a soggy trip in a dog’s mouth, and then being wiped and
held by three other people. However, I covered the basics of the
afternoon’s events once again.

Star tried to tell him that they were
just playing with the dog when he ran off, almost out of their
sight among the trees, started digging in the dirt and then began
to bark.

“How are you related to these girls?”
Milford interrupted.

“I’m not,” I answered. “Their
grandfather is on his way. He’s their guardian. And Angelica’s
father.”

“OK, we’ll wait until he gets
here.”

Milford pulled Brown aside and said
something to him, after which the deputy went out to the car, and
the detective sat down heavily at the kitchen table and clamped his
jaw shut. We sat there in uncomfortable silence.

The girls became tense and
increasingly frightened at the man’s gruff demeanor as the minutes
ticked by. I was more than relieved when I heard another car
approach. As soon as I said, “It’s your grandfather,” both girls
jumped up and ran toward the front door.

After that, things began to get a
little bit crazy. Len came inside with a girl hanging on each arm.
He looked tired. He sat on the couch, still flanked by the girls,
while they both talked at once, telling him about the afternoon.
Detective Milford came into the living room and began to ask Len
questions about Angelica that the girls had already answered. But
he needed to hear the answers from an adult.

Meanwhile, I heard more vehicles
outside, and stepped out on the porch. Another Sheriff’s car pulled
up, with two more deputies, followed by the Cherry Hill Police SUV.
I was more than pleased to see Chief Tracy Jarvi, with Tom Baker,
whom she sometimes deputized when extra help was needed. I went out
to meet them. Tracy has a rugged Scandinavian build, coupled with a
gentle manner that inspires confidence, making anyone who needs
help feel safe.

“Tom, Tracy! I’m certainly glad to see
you,” I said. “But I thought you didn’t have jurisdiction
here.”

“Remember, the law-enforcement
services help each other out on big cases,” said the
Chief.

“So far, it doesn’t seem as if the
detective even believes this means anything at all,” I blurted
out.

“Oh, he does. Did Milford come,
himself?”

“He’s inside.”

“Don’t worry. He’s not very
personable, but he’s competent.”

“That’s good to know.”

“I guess we’re gonna be lookin’ for a
body,” Tom chimed in. Tom is my friend Cora’s son. His English
isn’t good, and he always speaks too loudly because he is partially
deaf.

Tracy put her hand on his arm and
motioned for him to tone it down. “The girls are here. They’re
probably upset enough.”

We went inside and quickly learned
that Milford was getting people organized for a search of the
swamp. He wasn’t happy that he needed the girls to show him where
they had been, and he wasn’t happy at all that the dog might be the
only one who really knew exactly where the bracelet had come from.
Thankfully, he realized that Len would never be able to walk into
the woods, but Len assured him that he would trust me to accompany
his granddaughters. I wasn’t sure this was an honor I wanted to
accept for such a potentially gruesome job, but I knew it was
something I would have to do.

By the time everyone was organized for
a search, it was late afternoon. But summer evenings are long here,
and I knew we might be facing several hours of walking through the
edges of Dead Mule Swamp. Detective Milford asked me to put Paddy
on a short leash. When he found out that Sunny, a ten-year-old, had
been closest to the dog when the bracelet was found, he was even
less pleased. He didn’t seem to have much confidence in any of the
resources he had been provided. He sent Star back to the house to
stay with her grandfather and Deputy Brown, and she didn’t seem
sorry at being left out.

The ground was firm near the yard, so
there was no chance of finding footprints there. We had to either
trust that Sunny might recognize where she had gone, or hope that
an untrained puppy would figure out that he was supposed to lead us
to something he had found.

Nevertheless, within a few more
minutes, Sunny, Milford, Paddy and I were walking into the woods to
the northeast of my house, with two officers, plus Tracy and Tom,
following like ducklings in a row.

Chapter 15

We’d been instructed not to fan out
yet, not until Sunny thought we were near where the dog had been
digging. The detective didn’t want to scuff up the area until we
were more sure of what we were looking for.

Sunny started out with a lot of
confidence. She knew she had followed what was probably a deer
trail for some distance until it passed by a large cedar tree. She
said she had climbed the tree and watched Paddy for a while from a
low-hanging curved branch. From that perch she had picked another
landmark, a white birch tree with a double trunk that was deeper
into the woods on a little knoll. We hiked to the birch tree, and
this also took us closer to open water in the swamp. We couldn’t
see the water yet, but the ground was becoming soft in low
spots.

Beyond the birch tree, Sunny wasn’t
sure where she had gone. She said she’d just followed the dog and
forgotten about paying attention to where she was. I cringed when I
heard this; I knew all too well that this area could be dangerous.
But I’d never considered that the girls would go exploring off the
trail. We were lucky one of them hadn’t gotten lost.

Paddy and I were put in the lead, and
I was instructed to let the dog show us the way. I tried to follow
these instructions, but Paddy didn’t seem to understand what was
expected of him. He kept looking at me and falling into step beside
me. We’d been working on the “heel” command and it was associated
in his mind with the leash. We weren’t leading the way to
anywhere.

“All right,” barked Detective Milford.
“We’ll spread out from this tree. Did you go toward the water from
here?” he asked Sunny.

“We must have, because Paddy was right
near the edge of some deep water when he was digging.”

“That’s helpful, at least,” Milford
admitted. “Stay in groups of two, but I’ll keep the girl and the
dog with me.”

I assumed I was included with the dog.
We continued straight east, while the two Sheriff Deputies veered
southeast. Tracy and Tom angled to the northeast. We walked
silently for a few minutes, until Sunny said, “I don’t remember
this place at all.”

We had reached the edge of some open
water with standing dead trees breaking from the surface and
clawing at the sky. There was a small island about a hundred yards
away. On the shore, practically at our feet, was a small broken
rowboat, turned bottom-up. It had once been painted red, but was
now weathered and mostly gray. I had no idea there was water deep
enough to float any sort of boat so near my house. I had assumed
any ponds were very shallow backwaters, but I now realized we must
have come close to the river itself. Sunny was curious about the
boat and while she looked it over I scanned the shore and saw a
rectangle of old cement blocks that could have been the foundation
for a tiny cabin. I wondered if we were still on my land or in the
State Forest.

Far to our left I heard Tom’s voice,
almost a bellow. “... here. ...dog tracks,” were the only words we
could make out.

“Good.” Detective Milford clipped the
word, but he looked pleased as he began to stride north along the
water’s edge. We followed. “Where does the State Forest land start
in here, Ms. Raven?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. I haven’t had time to
explore over this way yet. I own a strip all the way to the river,
but we may be north of it, now, and I didn’t know anything about
that little camp back there.”

The ground was becoming softer the
farther we walked, and we passed a wooden stake pounded in the
ground with orange flagging tape tied around the top. Milford
stopped to look at it. There was lettering on the wood done with
permanent marker, and he read, “’NE CORNER RAVEN.’ Guess the camp
is yours. This isn’t.” He lifted an arm in the direction we were
heading. “Now we’ve got to call in the DNR.”

He pulled out a cell phone and pushed
some buttons. I thought he was calling the Department of Natural
Resources directly, but instead I heard him say, “Chris? Yeah, come
north. Send Paul back to the car to radio in and find out how we
contact the DNR folks on Saturday. We’re probably on state land.”
He clapped the phone shut and jammed it back in his
pocket.

We heard Tom yell again, and we walked
toward the voice. Suddenly, Sunny said, “I was here, I’ve seen that
funny branch.” She pointed to a tree with a limb that must have
been bent in some ice storm years ago. “Paddy was over there.” She
pointed toward the water. The dog perked up his ears.

Now we could see Tom and Tracy, who
were walking toward the water. We were following the crumbling
sandy bank, and both our groups would soon converge at one place.
Paddy began to whine and pull at the leash.

“Don’t let him loose,” growled
Milford. “Who knows how much damage has been done already.” He
seemed to realize what might be about to happen and stopped
suddenly. “You and the girl stay here.”

I did not want to be left out of the
discovery phase of this project, but I didn’t want Sunny to be
confronted with some gruesome find that might haunt her for the
rest of her life, either. We stood still and waited.

I watched Tom, Tracy and Milford join
forces. They pointed to the ground. I could see some raw, eroded
sand near the water line. The downpour we’d had last Sunday might
have caused some sort of washout which had exposed something.
Milford and Tracy squatted down and moved their hands around as if
they were casting some sort of spell. It was strange to watch with
no accompanying words. Tom pulled a roll of yellow police tape out
of his pocket and began stringing it between trees.

“What are they doing?” asked
Sunny.

“That means they’ve found something
that is important, and they are marking an area they want people to
stay out of.”

“What will they do next?”

“It depends on what they’ve found.
We’ll have to wait some more.”

“I have to go to the bathroom. I
usually just go in the woods, but there are a lot of men around
here.”

“OK, let me see if we can go home.” I
was glad enough to have a reason to leave. Staying there without
being allowed to participate left me feeling completely useless.
“Detective,” I called.

Milford returned to where we were. He
motioned me to one side. I handed Paddy’s leash to Sunny and told
her to hold him tightly. He said to me, “We definitely have a body.
Just a skeleton—been here a long time, but it’s arranged neatly; it
was buried on purpose. Something disturbed an arm, probably the dog
getting that bracelet. Can you take the little girl back to your
house?”

“I think we can manage,” I
answered.

“Don’t let the Leonards go home yet.
I’ll have more questions.”

“All right. What should I tell
Len?”

“The truth. Just keep in mind we don’t
know anything about whose remains these are, for sure.”

Sunny and I easily found our way back.
We passed the officer named Chris and told him to just keep going
and he’d find the others. Sunny handed Paddy’s leash to me and then
took my hand, like a small child. She was quiet until we reached
the white birch tree.

“It’s my mother, isn’t it?”

“We can’t be sure yet, but I’m afraid
it might be. How does that make you feel?”

“Kinda scared. I never thought about
her much. She’s just always been gone, but now it feels like she’s
everywhere.”