Tainted Trail Read online

  His grand exit was defused by a candy striper pulling him aside at the end of the hall. Their whispered conversation involved lots of head shaking on the part of the sheriff, and curious looks in Ukiah’s direction on part of the candy striper.

  A gray-haired phlebotomist came to take his blood. So far, his blood had been gathered into cotton swabs and had either died or swarmed back as barely noticed gnats.

  He eyed the test tubes with a sense of helplessness.

  “Please don’t take my blood.”

  “Honey, I have to take your blood.” She swabbed his arm clean with alcohol. “Have your folks signed something saying your blood shouldn’t be taken?”

  He puzzled over the question. Folks? His moms were here? He realized that this was one of those legal-age issues. “I’m not a minor.”

  “You aren’t?” She applied a tourniquet to his arm. “How old are you, honey? Sixteen? Seventeen?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  She laughed. “You’re going to be carded until you’re forty. Now, it will just pinch a little. If it really bothers you, look away.”

  “Can I sign something that says that my blood shouldn’t be taken?”

  She tsk’ed at him. “We just take a little to make sure you’re all right.”

  So he had to watch unhappily as she filled two vials with his blood and pressed stickers to them. What was the lab going to think of the creature-filled vials? He was still wondering what the blood would turn into when the candy striper suddenly darted into his area. She was only fourteen or fifteen, a Native American with black hair in braids, and huge dark eyes. Her nametag labeled her as ZOEY.

  “Here!” she gasped, pressing the still-warm vials into his hand. “Jared’s taking me home in a minute and if he catches me with these, he’ll kill me!”

  He sensed his blood inside the vials, changing already to something that could exist outside of his body. He tucked them quickly out of sight, under the sheets. “Jared?”

  “He’s my brother, but he acts like he’s my dad!” She rolled her eyes, and then looked at him with such curiosity that it fairly shimmered out of her. “You’re him, aren’t you? The Umatilla Wolf Boy! Jared doesn’t want to believe you, but he never has believed in anything. Grandpa says that all of you is alive, so I figured that they shouldn’t test your blood. I stole some of your stickers from the nurse’s station and stuck them on Billy Cosgrove’s blood. I’m not sure what he’s in here for, but I don’t think it’s too serious. When they can’t find his blood, they’ll just draw more.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She grinned impishly. “Don’t mention it! That’s what family is for!” She suddenly hopped up to lean over the rail and kissed his cheek. “See ya!”

  And she was gone, dashing away.

  Cautiously, Ukiah checked the vials. The purple-topped vial held a small salamander, twisting in the tight confines. The tiger-striped-topped vial had a praying mantis. He freed both of his blood creatures and held them loosely in either hand. He felt their tiny pricks of anxiety at being separated from him. With a sense of relief, they reverted back to blood and seeped into his skin. For a few minutes, his hands felt slightly bloated and hot, and then the extra mass redistributed itself, surging through his bloodstream to where it could be put to best use. Ukiah tucked the vials away before the next round of poking and prodding by the hospital staff could start.

  Ukiah asked for something to eat but was refused on the ground of possible internal injuries. Finally they let Max in to see him.

  “Please,” Ukiah begged, “tell me you’ve brought me something to eat.”

  “Would I let you down?” Max produced lukewarm French fries from his jacket pocket.

  “Oh, bless you.” Ukiah winced in pain as he levered himself upright. As Ukiah wolfed down the fries, Max pulled two double bacon cheeseburgers, a handful of candy bars, and a bag of trail mix from his various pockets. “Thank you. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Max, in a flourish, added a bottle of root beer to the stock of food.

  “Here.” Ukiah pressed the empty blood vials on him. “Get rid of these someplace safe.”

  Max frowned at the labels. “You let them take blood? How did you get it back?”

  “I couldn’t stop them. Jared’s little sister stole them for me. She’s a candy striper. She believes I’m family.”

  Max laughed and tucked away the vials. “I’ll take care of them.”

  “Where’s Kraynak?” Ukiah asked.

  “He went back to the campsite to pack up Alicia’s belongings. He’s driving her straight home—when—we find her.”

  As an unspoken rule between them, it was always “when” and never “if,” even in the bleakest cases. Ukiah took a deep breath as he realized that his shooting changed Alicia’s disappearance into something more insidious than simply being lost and possibly hurt. Max’s hesitation indicated that Max knew that Alicia’s rescue had crossed the line from likely to doubtful.

  Max looked away, refusing to put the change into words. “The doctors want you to spend a night for observation.”

  “I’m fine,” Ukiah said quickly, and got a scowl from Max. “Well, I’m getting there.”

  “Yeah, I know. After you eat this, though, you’re going to fall asleep until tomorrow. I rather you’d stay here than try to get you moved back to the motel before you zonk out.”

  Ukiah admitted that he had a point.

  “It’s weird,” Max said, “but it’s a hell of lot easier seeing you in here, knowing now that you’re virtually indestructible. It used to be that every time you got hurt, I’d go through this massive guilt session and think about calling it quits.”

  “Quits? Dump me as a partner?”

  “Don’t give me those puppy-dog eyes. The worst part was having to call your moms and tell them what happened,” Max said, and shuddered.

  Ukiah discovered how much it hurt to laugh. “You’re going to call them now?”

  Max considered. “I don’t think so. You’re not their little boy anymore. Besides, we know you’re going to be all right—don’t we?”

  Ukiah nodded. “I’m fine. I’ll be back on my feet tomorrow and back to normal in a day or two. My moms are having their first vacation in six years. Might as well not alarm them.”

  “On the other hand, I have already called Indigo.”

  Ukiah burst out laughing, rolling into a ball against the pain. “Oh, please, don’t, that hurts!”

  “She was not happy. If this was anyplace on the East Coast, she’d be on her way.”

  “I wish she was here.” Ukiah polished off the second double bacon cheeseburger.

  “So she can watch you eat and sleep?”

  “I’d feel safer,” Ukiah admitted, yawning. “Do you think there’s a chance that the shooter will come after me here?”

  Worry flashed across Max’s face and was controlled. “I don’t think so. You can’t ID him. Even in a town this small, it will take him a few hours to learn you don’t have bullet holes in you, but still most people wouldn’t be fit to walk for another week or so. I think you were shot just to keep you from tracking Alicia. Flat on your back in a hospital, you’re no threat.”

  “We go out tomorrow?”

  Max winced. “Ukiah, I know that you’re almost indestructible, but I hate the thought of putting you in deliberate danger. I don’t like seeing you in pain, and I really, really don’t want to find out the limits of your abilities.”

  “We can’t leave her out there.” Ukiah clung to the hope that they would find her alive, against growing odds.

  Max studied the ceiling for a few minutes. “We’ll see how you are tomorrow. I’m not taking you out if you’re not at a hundred percent. If for no other reason than it took six men to carry you out this time. It would have been a nightmare if the shooter decided to pick us all off. If there’s a next time, he might.”

  “Jeez, Max, you know how to scare me into doing what you want.”


  One corner of Max’s mouth curled up in a wry smile. “Good. As for being safe here, I heard Kicking Deer has arranged for one of the security guards to hang out outside your door. It’s not much, but—at least you’re nearly indestructible.”

  “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “Because it’s the only reason I’m as calm as I am right now. If I didn’t know how hard it is to kill you for good, you’d be heading home right now.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  St. Anthony’s Hospital, Pendleton, Oregon

  Thursday, August 26, 2004

  As a testament of how badly he had been hurt, Ukiah spent a deep and dreamless night at St. Anthony’s Hospital. He woke at his normal East Coast time, which meant it was still three hours before dawn. Rubbing sleep out of his eyes, he peered around the hospital room, confused.

  He was in Oregon, he had to remind himself, for the memory of arriving on the West Coast had skittered away on little mouse feet. Alicia was missing, someone had shot him, he had fallen off a cliff, Max had performed surgery, and he was in the hospital. At least for the last two events, he had his normal total recall. The first three were just words, like a story read from a book. “Once upon a time, a girl named Alicia disappeared, and her good friend looking for her was shot. Bang. He fell down.”

  His stomach grumbled, reminding him of the normal result of being shot and falling down. The night nurse answered his summons and complaint of hunger with crackers and ginger ale. The crackers made one mouthful. The ginger ale went down in one long swallow.

  He was considering buzzing her again, when Max slipped into the door, wreathed with the perfume of breakfast.

  With a deep inhale, Ukiah drank in the smell. “Denny’s!”

  “Basic comfort food,” Max said, cleaning up the debris of Ukiah’s snack. “Looks like I timed it perfect it too.”

  “I’m sorry you had to get up early to come feed me.” Ukiah opened the box to find maple-syrup-soaked pancakes, a western omelet, and a dozen sausage links. “This is wonderful!”

  “I’m still operating on East Coast time.” Max stole one of the sausage links, and settled into the visitor’s chair. “I’m fine. So, how do you feel?”

  Ukiah raised up his plaster-encased arm. “I wish they hadn’t done this. It’s going to be a bear to get off.”

  “We’ll pick up a hacksaw at a hardware store. How does the arm feel? Truthfully.”

  Ukiah considered it. “Fragile. The breaks are all knitted, but not strong, like they’re balsa wood.”

  Max grunted at the discouraging news. “And the leg?”

  “Not much better than the arm,” Ukiah admitted. “I probably should use a crutch today.” He sighed. “If we were in Pittsburgh, I could push myself, pay for it later. I’ve had time to think about what you said. I’m not up to tracking today, not here. If I collapse, it’s not going to be in someone’s backyard where you only need to carry me twenty feet to get me into a car.”

  “Amen to that.” Max leaned forward to steal another sausage link. “Just as well. It will be hours before anyone will be able to check you out. You know how it is—doctors will want to poke at you, maybe run tests and such before they’ll okay your release. If you don’t let them, then our insurance might back out of paying for the bill.”

  They had learned the hard way that insurance companies didn’t like patients walking out in the middle of the night. Unless medical costs in Pendleton were much lower than Pittsburgh’s, they had racked up a serious bill yesterday.

  “I’ll stay put.”

  “Thanks.” Max stole a third sausage link, and they ate in silence for several minutes.

  “How’s Kraynak taking this?” Ukiah asked.

  “A bear looking for something to maul.”

  “I’ll be up and running tomorrow—but I can’t help thinking that tomorrow will be too late.”

  “You’re doing the best you can, kid—which is a hell of a lot more than most people could—but everyone has limits and you just hit yours.”

  Ukiah looked out at the predawn lightening the sky. “You and Kraynak are going out?”

  Max nodded. “We’re meeting with the search-and-rescue team in an hour. They’ve agreed to change the focus of the search over to the bottom of the cliff. It will trample the trail for you tomorrow, but if we find her today it will be worth it.”

  In the meanwhile, he would need to sit around and wait to hear. The day stretched out long before him.

  “Oh, before I forget.” From various pockets, Max produced five plump black mice. “Take these back. They make me nervous. Much as I love my godson, I don’t want another Kittanning on our hands.”

  Kittanning had been the least dangerous of Ukiah’s stolen mice; Hex injected one into Max in an effort to turn him into Ukiah’s Get. Max had a right to be nervous about free-roaming blood mice.

  Ukiah picked up the first mouse, smiling at the shimmer of joy racing through the little creature. The mice didn’t like being away from him—it was a big, scary world. Ukiah held it cupped in his hands, letting it revert to blood, then seep into his skin.

  Memories seeped blood warm through his mind. Jared Kicking Deer standing on his back porch, the smell of fried bacon coming from the open door.

  “Maybe I’ll give seeing Jesse Kicking Deer another try.”

  “I did a quick Internet search for you last night,” Max said. “The only hits on Kicking Deer were on our friend, the sheriff. I couldn’t find anything on his mother, Claire, or Jesse or even your little candy striper. If there are more Kicking Deers in the area, they all have unlisted phone numbers and live uninteresting lives. I didn’t have time, though, to dig deeper than general public records.”

  “So Jesse does live at the farm.”

  “Well, he might be in a nursing home without a private phone. Looks like you’re going to have fun today sharpening your private investigator skills.”

  Sam Killington standing up from the table, long, thin legs ending in a shapely bottom, Obsession perfume warmed by her body, laying a business card on the table that readSAMUEL ANNE KILLINGTON, 451 MAIN STREET, SUITE 2B, 541-555-7895.

  “Maybe I’ll get help.”

  “Indigo? You know how she is about using official FBI databases for private use.”

  “I think I’ll talk to Sam Killington. Trade local color for inside information.”

  “Sam?” Some emotion Ukiah had never seen on Max’s face before flashed by and was gone. “That might be a good idea. Be careful, though. Someone took those shots at you. It’s a small town, but we only talked to the search-and-rescue team, and Sam last night.”

  “And Jared Kicking Deer.”

  “But he was beside me when the shots were fired.” Max waved a finger at the remaining mice. “Keep going, you’ll see.”

  Yes, Kicking Deer had been down beside Max as the shots were fired. He stood with eyes shaded by his hand to look up at Ukiah. There was even one quickly spinning image of the sheriff—the man seemed horrified by what he was witnessing. No. Jared Kicking Deer hadn’t shot him.

  But who had?

  Surprisingly, he managed to talk his way out of the hospital a few hours after dawn. The young-faced doctor of the previous day turned out to be more than willing to sign release forms, saying that anyone that could shrug off impromptu amateur abdominal surgery probably shouldn’t be holding down a hospital bed. While Ukiah wanted to be released, he felt the need to argue against such a cavalier attitude. If he was human, he should have stayed in the hospital. But he wasn’t—so why was he upset?

  Mysteriously, the hospital also asked if he wanted help “with his problem” and gave him several pamphlets on drug abuse. It wasn’t until he remembered that the candy striper had swapped his blood that he realized they thought he was a drug addict. Perhaps it was why they were so eager to see him go—leaving a drug addict in a hospital might be akin to leaving a child in a candy shop. Hopefully, the information wouldn’t get onto his permanent insurance record!<
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  He had only gotten as far as the front sidewalk before wondering if he had made a huge mistake. The short walk had his knee screaming in pain, and not using his right hand proved nearly impossible. Every ounce of pressure he put on it tested the strength of the fragile knits. He kept expecting the bones to splinter back apart. The energy provided by the a.m. breakfast was depleted, leaving him hollow, hungry, and shaking.

  “You look like shit.” A familiar voice made him look up. Sam Killington was standing a few feet away, hands on her hips. “Are you supposed to be out here, or is this some lame excuse of a breakout?”

  “They signed me out.”

  “I’d get a second opinion on that.” Sam closed the distance between them. “I didn’t expect you to be out of bed this week.”

  Was that because she had put him into the bed in the first place? He stifled a flare of fear. He was nearly indestructible, he was nearly indestructible—he chanted it like a mantra. Pain started to thrum in his wrist in time with his pulse rate, a dull beating agony. Sure, all he had to fear was pain, lots and lots of pain.

  “I heal quickly.” Ukiah gazed out over the parking lot, suddenly aware that he had no clue which direction the hotel lay.

  “Where’s your partner?” She joined him at scanning the parking lot.

  “Looking for Alicia Kraynak.”

  “Down in Umatilla National?”

  “Yes.”

  She sighed. “Let me get my Jeep, and I’ll give you a lift.”

  It was a deep green Jeep Wrangler, probably ten years old, and burning oil. The front was clean of litter. The backseat, while orderly, obviously served as a general closet.

  “Hotel?” she asked as he carefully climbed into the passenger seat, hoping he wasn’t making a second, larger mistake by getting into her car.

  “Actually, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could we go through a drive-through? I really need something to eat.”

  “McDonald’s?” she asked. When he nodded, she shifted into first and pulled out. “It’s a bit out of the way, but I know they’re open this early.”