Page 65 of The Forest of Lost Souls

Ears pricked and bodies tensed, Sherlock and Whimsey and Marple gaze up at Sam expectantly. They have the scent. They know the task. When they launch, one will occasionally be distracted to the length of its leash by a false or more interesting scent, but never three at the same time; the other two will draw the stray back onto the true trail, and their feverish enthusiasm will encourage one another into a heroic search effort.

At times during the hunt, Sam will be hard-pressed to keep pace with the dogs and will rein them in, much to their consternation. He can’t be burdened with a backpack and remain inadequate control of the shepherds. Vector’s crew carry water for the animals and their master, as well as for themselves and Vector. Sam has only Ziploc bags filled with chunks of jerky, distributed among his many pockets, to serve as encouragements and rewards for the dogs.

As the crown of the sun rises above the eastern crests, color spreads across the sky. Darkness retreats from meadow into forest.

With the end loop around his wrist and the master leash wound twice through the palm of his hand, Sam rewards the dogs with the word they desire. “Find.”

They’re off. The woman’s scent is everywhere, and initially the shepherds reel in concert back and forth across the yard, even into the taller grass of the meadow. Their sense of smell is thousands of times greater than Sam’s, nuanced beyond human comprehension. From all the spoor laid down since the last rain, they soon finesse that which is most recent, and Sam is running with them toward the trees behind the house, toward the foothills and the mountains beyond.

The dogs neither bark nor howl, lest they alert the quarry that an urgent pursuit is underway. With restraint that’s hard-learned for such ebullient and expressive creatures, they limit themselves to soft whines and whimpers of excitement, panting and snuffling as they lead Sam and the others to a break in the forest undergrowth and onto a twisting trail that deer pioneered and have maintained perhaps for centuries.

In the cool, crisp air, songbirds wake and warble. Ribbons of low mist spool among the trees, beading ferns, silvering moss, while the undergrowth rustles with life unseen. Thick columns of darkness stand everywhere, seeming to possess true substance,though as the sun ascends through the morning, most of the shadows will melt away.

Sam has always been comfortable in unpeopled woods, where there is no one to see him for the first time and gape at his ravaged face and press him with foolish questions. On this occasion, however, the forest seems fateful, as though one of the shadows will shape itself into a cloaked and spectral form, stepping forward to settle the debt it had meant to collect in Afghanistan.

53

THE HUNT BEGINS

No wolves are present when Vida wakes. Perhaps there were never any resting in the soft green bedding nature provided, although she thought she had sensed them around her when she’d briefly drifted out of the depths of sleep and into the shallows.

From the broad shelf on which she’d passed the night, grassland rises for maybe a hundred yards, broken by low stone formations like toppled monuments, leading to a renewal of the forest. This broad swath of open land is prime hunting ground for raptors, and even as the sun ascends into its fullness, what might be a red-tailed hawk appears in the distance, while a larger ferruginous hawk kites overhead in a widening gyre.

After her ablutions, after stretching exercises to get limber for what the day will require, Vida sits with a view of the forest below the shelf where she slept. She makes a breakfast of two PowerBars and a bottle of water.

What if sheisdestined to be a defender of the natural world, as José Nochelobo was in his way? What if, as the fortuneteller implied, Vida’s life is somehow a reflection of the mythical life of the Roman deity Diana, goddess of the moon and of all the creatures that hunt or are hunted? What does that mean? What does it entail? For one thing, she will be hunted by those who believe the natural world exists only to fatten their wallets or servetheir ideology, or to provide an excuse for them to rule others in the name of ecological virtue, and she will be justified in hunting them as they hunt her. A day of violence lies before her, whether she wants it or not, and she doesn’t want it.

Although she dreads what is coming, she has prepared for it. She might end up sprawled dead among blue wildflowers, although she won’t be the only corpse in that meadow. She has Nash Deacon’s gun, but rather than use it, she prefers to dispose of it in the wilds where it will never be found, never be associated with her. If she must kill those who are intent on killing her, if there is no law enforcement on which she can rely, she must not use guns that can be proved to have been in her possession.

At all costs, when this is finished, she must resume life in her uncle’s house from which they have harried her. The only future Vida desires is the past—the eighty acres, the small stone house, the books, the quiet, the patient processing of the placer mine gemstones, the visitation of wolves, the memories.

Dog voices. Not the howls of wolves. Sharp and eager. Quickly silenced.

Vida springs to her feet.

The search dogs are well disciplined. Although they must be hugely excited, she hears no sound from the pack after that brief spate of triumphant barking, which suggests they’re no more than two hundred yards below, screened from her by the ranks of conifers. She hasn’t expected dogs. But at the sound of them, she realizes they were inevitable.

She needs to move faster than she has intended; however, all things considered, the hounds are a positive development. Left to their own skills and instinct, the hunters are likely to lose track of her, requiring that she leave spoor so obvious that the men mightsuspect they are being lured into a trap, which they are. No matter how meager the signs of her passage might be, the dogs are certain to find them, know them, and never be distracted or misled.

She folds the wrappers of the PowerBars, inserts them in the empty water bottle, crushes the flimsy plastic, screws on the cap, and stows the condensed trash in a zippered pocket of her jacket.

She shrugs into her backpack, secures the strap at her waist, and stands listening. The dogs make no sound that she can hear, but they are still coming. She can feel them yearning toward her. They want her, but not to harm her, only to keep the promise they have made to whoever is their master. Dogs keep their promises, though the promises that people, in turn, make to them are less reliably fulfilled.

She turns away from her unseen pursuers and hurries up the grassy meadow toward the tree line.

54

A MAN IN NEED OF FIXING

After having brought all the gear to the searchers and after seeing them off with Sam Crockett and his hounds, Regis Duroc-Jersey is expected to remain at Vida’s house until Galen Vector returns with the confirmation that they have left her naked corpse for the delectation of whatever carrion eaters might strip the flesh from her skeleton and break her bones to taste her marrow, in some remote ravine where the time-bleached remains will never be found.

When Regis took the job with Terrence Boschvark, he didn’t expect to become an accessory to murder. If he didn’t expect it, he must have at least intuited the possibility. The first time that he found himself at risk of the crime regarding José Nochelobo, Regis wasn’t surprised. Now here he is again. There’s the motivation of great wealth, of course, as well as the expectations of his parents and the competition with his brother, Foster. But he could spend years analyzing influences, seeking the hinge moment when he swung into the dark side, yet arrive at no enlightenment. The heart is deceitful above all things. Rare is the man who knows the full truth of his own heart, and Regis is aware that he doesn’t possess that insight.

He spends some time in Vida’s library, reading the spines of the novels on the shelves. He is impressed by the wide spectrumof literature that interests the woman, especially since she never went to college. How then did she know what books were worth her time? Or perhaps none of these books are of the right kind. He ought to know if they are or aren’t. But he doesn’t. Here are entire collections of authors whose names are new to him. For the first time, he allows himself to wonder if Harvard failed him.

An approaching vehicle rackets through the morning. When he steps onto the porch, an SUV pulls to a stop and parks beside his Lexus. It’s a down-market brand he doesn’t recognize.

Wendy gets out of the driver’s door. Explosion of curly auburn hair. Flawless skin. Huge, limpid blue eyes. The pajamas with pink bunnies are gone. She’s wearing black boots and black jeans and a blue blouse with black epaulets. She looks more than ever like a character from Japanese anime.

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