As soon as his coffee was gone, his grandmother grabbed her purse. He looked over at her. “Do you want me to drive you somewhere?”
She shook her head and smiled at him. “Nope,” she said. “You go ahead and take the truck. I’m taking my car.”
He frowned. “I’m really struggling with that,” he said. “I’d be more than happy to rent a vehicle.”
“We’d be quite insulted if you did,” she said, putting an end to the discussion.
As she walked out and got into her car, he thought about that, wondering how his grandparents had such a great method of handling everything. He laughed. They used guilt and wielded it like a sword. Still, he got into the truck and pulled out, using his cell phone’s GPS to help him track backward to the rescue center.
As soon as he parked outside and walked in, the woman looked up at him in surprise. He just shrugged and said, “I’ll start tracking the dog from here. I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be around for a little bit.”
She nodded slowly.
“And you didn’t see anything else?” he asked. “You didn’t think of anything?”
She shrugged and said, “No. I don’t know anything about it. Like I said, there was a fender bender going on outside, but, other than that, I don’t really have anything to offer.”
“Do you happen to know who was involved in the fender bender?”
She shrugged. “Nope, I sure don’t.”
“Did you call the police about the dog?”
“I did, particularly because this wasn’t an ordinary stray or a surrender. This was a dog we had been asked to board for safekeeping.” Her tone was wry. “And I do have the name of the detective I spoke with.” Walking over to her desk, she riffled through a bunch of paperwork and handed him a card. “This is who I spoke to.”
Taking a photo of the card, Greyson smiled, returned the card to her, and said, “Thanks. I’ll contact him and see if he’s got a file open.”
She looked like she was relieved at the idea and happy to push it off her plate. “If there’s nothing else, I have a bunch of cages to clean. How’s Leo doing?”
Taking the hint, he nodded, then smiled. “Leo is now a well loved member of the family. Thank you for your time. And again, if you hear of or think of anything—” Then he walked outside.
He walked over to the far side and took a look at where the dog could have gone. There was definitely a green space here, and, if she had wanted to get over the fence, she easily could have. And, since he’d already seen tufts of hair over the top that would match Kona’s coat, he was pretty damn sure the dog had jumped free.
Most people didn’t realize what kind of training these War Dogs went through and just how agile and physically fit and strong they were. In this case, the dog did have damaged ribs, but apparently she had healed. However, they were retiring her after four years anyway. So, if she had made it up and over that fence on her own, she was probably doing just fine now. But this wasn’t the kind of animal they wanted to have running around loose.
He walked to the outside of the pens, where he’d seen the hair, and, from there, he stopped and studied the area. Obviously there were no tracks. No footprints left to be seen at this point. But what he did surmise was that the dog had headed toward the road. The trees were dense and thick, but, short of the dog having a reason to run and hide, she would normally head toward a more open space. Now, if there had been an accident at the time, what would she do? A loud bang or crash could have been the reason the dog bolted from the pen.
He quickly sent Badger a message, asking if the dog was struggling with noise aversion. Because that could explain why she had bolted. If that were the case, she would have gone in the opposite direction. With that, he turned 180 degrees, studied the area, and started walking. He didn’t see anything initially, but then, as he curved back around to the road, he saw a bit of hair snagged on the bark of a tree trunk. He took a photo of it, sure that it was likely from the same dog. He kept following the trail. It took a bit more time to track down the next bit of hair, but it was back at the road. He pondered that, as he crouched where the dog hair had caught on a few leaves and branches. It looked like the dog may have stood here for a few moments because a fair bit of fur was here, as if Kona had paced.
Greyson pictured a scene where Kona paced back and forth, maybe whined, disturbed by something. If there had been an accident, it might have been enough to have set Kona off too. Moving quietly and low to the ground, Greyson came to a point where the fender bender most likely occurred, as he did see a bit of plastic off to the side that looked like it came from a headlight cover to a small car. He assumed that the dog had seen this accident, but then what? Greyson turned and looked toward where the car would have been, looked back toward the shelter, and instinctively turned to the right.
“Yeah, you’re not going back into the cage. You don’t want anything to do with the vehicles, but you stayed here for a reason. Why?” That fascinated him. “Was there something about the people you didn’t like? Was there some sort of a confrontation that bothered you?”
He moved down the road on the sidewalk, looking for any other signs that the dog had gone this way. Very quickly he found another twig with hair on it and another. By the time he had gone several miles, he realized the dog had headed off in this direction and was still going. He didn’t know where the dog was destined for, but they were now quite a ways from the shelter.
This didn’t appear to him like anybody had stolen the dog. It seemed to him like the dog was on her own mission. He kept following along the sidewalk, and, when he lost track of the hair again, he stopped, then backtracked to where it was and searched the area again, finally coming up to a spot where it looked like the dog had laid down in the grass.
He found just a bit of her undercoat dusting the surface by a shrub. He sat down beside it, where the dog would have been, and looked. A house was across the road, set back on a bigger driveway. As he watched, a truck backed down the driveway and took off on the road. A good size dent was on its bumper. Probably lots of vehicles sported those. Didn’t necessarily mean it was involved in the fender bender on the day Kona disappeared. He looked down at the spot where the dog had been.
“Something about this bothered you, didn’t it, girl?”
He realized he was giving human traits to the animal, but it felt right. So, if that is the case, where are you?
With the truck gone, he freely walked up the driveway, looking for a ready excuse in case somebody questioned his presence. He did a search of the front yard and didn’t see any sign of the dog hair. Then he headed around the back, where he found trees and brush behind a yard. It had been tended at one time but was currently a bit overrun. So either the person here didn’t really care about gardening or was renting.
He checked through the edge of the gardens and, sure enough, found tufts of hair caught in little bits and pieces. So you came here? He quickly wrote down the address and sent it to Badger. He would prefer to have a contact in town, and that thought reminded him that he hadn’t contacted the cops yet.
Hearing a noise, he slipped into the trees and crossed over to the neighbor’s yard. He watched as that same truck came bombing up the driveway again. It parked, and a big male walked out. He wore jeans, work boots, and T-shirt. He stormed into the house, obviously upset about something.