FINDING THE LOST, Jeanne Tody Beroza [reading tree txt] 📗

“Hi there, what’s up?”

“We need you Cristi,” he said. “We’ve got a big one, in the park, and we’ve got a lost kid in the vicinity. Jana’s working Pine Ridge so you and Blaze are our only hope of finding this little girl.”


CHAPTER THREE:

“Oh God Charlie, I’m terrified of working Blaze anywhere near a wildfire. You know it’s a bad situation to put a dog into and the smoke clogs their nasal passages so they can’t smell anyway. I can help you try and find the little girl but can you assure me it will be safe for Blaze?”

“Christi, none of us can ever assure anything but we can do everything in our power to keep a scene safe for the dog and her handler. I’ll be right there with you and Custer County SAR has been called in so I think we’ll have Mike and Denny too. They are both used to working with Jana and her dogs and know exactly what to do. Between the three of us and you, Cristi, you’re no slouch with your own rescue skills, you know.

Anyway, between the three of us we are all trained in wildfire behavior, we’ll have gear for high angle cliff work, we are all in shape and can keep up with that road runner of a dog you have and we’ve all taken classes with you in lost person behavior. I think we’ll make a pretty good team and we might just be able to find this little girl and get her out alive.”

“I’ll come just as soon as I can, Charlie.” Turning him down was not something she was prepared to do. Just the sound of his voice telling her she was needed made her want to drop everything and go to him. He was willing to put himself in the path of a fire for her. She could do no less for him.

I can do this, she told herself. To him she said, “I’ll have to reschedule my clients. I’ll go home, load Blaze and take Gus to the neighbors. I’ll call you back when I’m on the road. You can fill me in as I drive.”

Once on Highway 385 heading north through the Wind Cave National Park towards Custer she called Charlie back. “We’ve been working on a case the last twenty four hours,” he said. “We’ve got the Custer County Sheriff’s Department and Park Security both involved and they’re talking about bringing in the feds.”

“What on earth?” she interrupted.

“Just let me tell you. I shouldn’t really be doing this. Information is being given out on a need to know basis but I think, with your special ability, you might be able to help if you know the whole story.”

“What’s so special you need me over anybody else?”

“Last night park security received a call to respond to the Grace Coolidge campground. A man in a black van had abducted a six-year-old girl off the playground. Her parents had sent her to play under the supervision of a ten-year-old brother. The brother saw the van drive by several times and then realized his sister was no longer on the swings where he’d seen her just a moment before. He ran to the swings and was told by other children that a man had picked her up and put her in the van. He’d had his hand over her mouth.”

“Oh no,” Cristi said. She could imagine the little girl’s terror and the boy’s anguish.

“There are so many people around that play area, you think he wouldn’t have had the nerve to grab a child, but he did and he got out of the area without anyone stopping him. The boy’s parents told the camp host who immediately called 211 emergency dispatch. Dispatch alerted the county sheriff. The host also paged park security. I was off so wasn’t involved in the first part of this case. I’m telling you the information I was given in this morning’s briefing.”

“The ten-year-old brother was able to provide a description of the van. He’d noticed a white line drawing of a mad wolf riding a motorcycle on the van’s rear window as it made several of its passes past the playground. He said it stood out against the black of the darkened windows. He also noticed the direction the van traveled when it left the area.”

“Just a minute, Charlie,” she interrupted. He heard the screech of brakes being applied heavily, tires sliding on slick blacktop, then nothing. He waited. He could do nothing but wait. In a minute her voice came back over the cell phone, “I feel sick. I’ll be back.”
“Are you okay, Cristi?” Charlie asked. When she didn’t answer, his voice got louder.

"Cristi, where are you? Are you okay?” He could hear Blaze whining in the back seat. What on earth, had she had a seizure or something, a vision? He could hear murmuring; her voice, low and shaky, was saying, “It’s okay sweetie, I’m all right now.”

“Charlie,” she said a minute later, still sounding fragile and a bit overwhelmed. She wiped her forehead and took a couple of deep breaths. “That was close Charlie.”

“What, what happened?”

“I almost ran off the road. You were talking about the van and all of a sudden I saw a black van right in front of me or I thought it was right in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and swerved so I wouldn’t hit it but the road in front of me was clear. I almost ran off the road into the middle of the prairie dog town. I think quite a few prairie dogs ran for cover when I swerved right for their burrows.”

“I know it’s not funny but, really, it was kind of humorous, if you could have seen me headed for the side of the road and the prairie dogs scampering out of my way. I pulled over. I’m not sure if I passed out for a moment but I got light-headed and dizzy. I’m okay now.”

“You saw a van that wasn’t there? Was it a vision?”

“I’m pretty sure it was. Ahh, you said the van had a wolf riding a motorcycle on its back window. The right back window, right? Did it also have one of those white line-drawings of a little boy peeing in the grass on the other window?”

“It did. Did you just see that?

“I did. That’s good, right? Maybe I’ve got some kind of connection to this guy or maybe to the little girl if she was in the van.”
“Do you feel any connection?”

“I don’t, not right now. Maybe I’ll get more later but I hope it isn’t while I’m driving. What were you telling me before I interrupted? The guy drove away with the little girl and the authorities were alerted, then what?”

“Park staff set up roadblocks trying to steer him onto Highway 16, heading to Custer. They weren’t sure if he’d gotten off on a dirt road or not. They kept closing roads down but none of us saw the van. Sheriff’s deputies shut down all exits from Hwy. 16 in and around Custer, and were waiting in the town itself. We also had deputies and highway patrol officers driving the roads in the park looking for the van.”

“Finally about 0500 this morning, I was back at work by then having been called in to help look for this guy, we were figuring he must have gotten away from us when one of the sheriff’s deputies returning to Custer saw the van sitting in the dirt parking lot of that little restaurant/camping place just outside the park. You know the place with all the old covered wagon bodies set in a circle?”

“Wagons West?” she said.

“Yup, the deputy went inside and he was sitting in there, at a table, alone, drinking coffee and eating breakfast. The guy was stupid. He left the van sitting with its tail-end toward the road.”

“Lucky for us.”

“Yes, lucky for us. The Sheriff took him into custody and has been interrogating him ever since. The only thing they can get out of him is that he “got rid of” the girl down some back lane in the pines.”

“Do they know if he hurt her, or if she’s still alive?”

“They don’t know anything yet but they’re working on it. When you get here you might be able to help us. I have her pajamas and a stuffed animal she sleeps with. The clothes will give Blaze her scent if we can find a trail but I thought they also might retain a little of her aura or energy. I thought, you know, maybe you’d get a feeling for where she is or what she’s seeing. You’ve done it before.”

“Oh Charlie. I know you want to find her. So do I, but we can’t count on anything from me. Can’t you get them to do something to this guy, offer him a deal or whatever, so he’ll tell us where he dropped her?”

“I’m not in charge of interrogation, Christi. I’m only in charge of looking for the little girl. We’ve got a fire in the Bismark Lake/Bob Marshall/Stockade Lake area. We didn’t have a storm last night so we’re thinking this fire was man-started. We think it started in the woods between the drive into Bismark Lake and the drive in to Bob Marshall. We are staging on the beach at Stockade Lake so you can find me there.”

Christi visualized the area in her mind as she drove. Bismark Lake was a federal recreation area. It had a nice campground in the pines overlooking the southern half of the kidney-shaped, man-made lake. When one walked along the rocky shores of Bismark Lake, they were treading upon the timeworn heart of the hills. Granite, once uplifted and then eroded over eons of time gave way to bits of soil and plant debris. In this marginal soil settling between the soaring cliffs, pines, grasses and wildflowers grew. It was a wild and rough area befitting national forest status.

Camp Bob Marshall was actually a little settlement of log cabins inhabited by Boy Scout troupes several times a year. A lodge, dining hall, bath buildings, counselor cabins and sleeping cabins for the campers were lined along a dirt road that ran through the middle of the encampment right down to the lake’s northern shore. This was also federal forestland and butted up against Custer State Park Forest.

Christi valued these areas not only for their sheer beauty and the joy she felt each time she walked among sixty-five million year old granite spires, but also for the sheer diversity contained in a small area. At either site she could train using water, cattails, wooden walkways, swamp along the creek that fed the lake, camp sites, cabins/buildings, forestlands, grass lands and then the huge, tumbled rocks, ledges and cliffs the dogs seemed to love.

Both of these federal sites were located on the north side of Highway 16, just across from Stockade Lake with its beautiful secluded campgrounds, boat launches, beach, hiking trails and heavily treed ridges and draws. The entrance to Cattail Point Peninsula where she had been training on Monday was directly across from and between the two camp access roads.

Now as she turned east out of Custer she could see the column of black smoke climbing into the heavens. The trees in this beautiful area were burning. How could someone have deliberately set out to destroy something so precious?

They’re