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Jo stepped forward. “Are you the Williamses?”
“We are,” Trey Williams said.
Jo introduced herself as Arnett’s car screeched into a parking spot nearby. “And here’s my partner, Detective Bob Arnett.”
Jo gaped at him as he exited the car. She’d never seen him in jeans before, and the glimpse of brown flannel at the neck of his fleece jacket was a decidedly rural departure from his typical urban twill chinos and sports coat. He ran a self-conscious hand through his slightly-too-long salt-and-pepper hair, then greeted her and Matt.
“I’m so sorry to have to interrupt your Sunday,” Jo said, still taking him in.
He held up an evidence bag with what looked like a shirt inside. “Not a problem. I’m not a big fan of apple picking.”
That explained the outfit, at least. Arnett and his wife Laura had come close to divorcing close to a decade before, and had agreed to dedicated date-night and date-weekend extracurriculars. Laura had cycled through a wide variety of activities to broaden their horizons while bringing them together.
“Shetried to get me out to do that once.” Mr. Williams jerked a thumb at his wife. “So I drove to the grocery store andpickedup a bag of Granny Smiths.”
Stacia shot him a nasty glare. “A girl’s in trouble, Trey. This is no time for jokes.”
Jo gestured them down the trail. “The State Police Special Operations Section has a search team on their way. But since Madison could be alive and injured, time is crucial, and we need you to take us immediately to the spot where you found the dog. What time did you find her?”
“About four-thirty?” Stacia glanced at Trey, who nodded confirmation. “We were on our way back because we had a dinner we couldn’t be late to. We called the humane society, but they were closed for the weekend. The dog seemed really sweet and we didn’t know how long animal control would take, so we put her in our garage for the night with some water and some canned chicken. We didn’t get home ’til after midnight, so we called animal control first thing this morning.”
“Susan said the dog was tied to a tree. Do you mean literally tied, or was her leash just caught on it?” Jo asked as they approached the trail split.
Stacia took the right-most path. “Literally knotted around the trunk of the tree. No way it happened by accident.”
Exactly what Jo was hoping not to hear. The only reason to purposefully tie Ginger to the tree was to make sure she didn’t follow and interfere. Still, Susan said Madison was an animal lover who wanted to be a vet, so possibly she’d stumbled on an injured animal and restrained Ginger so she wouldn’t attack or be attacked. And maybe, as she tried to help the animal, she’d slipped and injured herself. It was possible—but not likely.
“Did you search the area for the dog’s owner?”
“We called out in case someone was nearby, and Trey took a quick look around. But looking for the dog had already made us late, and we didn’t have a lot of time.” Her eyes pleaded with Jo for understanding.
Jo nodded reassuringly. “You did more than most people would have done.” She turned to Trey. “How far away did you search?”
He shook his head apologetically. “Not far. Maybe a few hundred feet?”
“What made you decide you needed to take the dog, that the owner wasn’t coming back?” Arnett asked. “Did you see some evidence of a problem?”
“No.” Trey’s posture tightened. “But it isn’t right to leave a dog tied up alone in the woods like that. I’ve heard of bears out here.”
“You did the right thing.” Noticing the growing defensiveness, Jo switched to small talk about the recent influx of leaf peepers. She kept one eye on the terrain surrounding the path, searching for any unusual flashes of color or damage to the greenery. As the topic shifted to trail safety, Stacia slowed slightly.
“Are we close?” Jo asked.
“We turned off somewhere around here, I remember that twisted maple in the distance. I was careful to keep track of landmarks so we wouldn’t get lost, and I remember a big rock that looked like a whale—there.” She pointed into the distance.
Jo spotted the boulder, and reached out to stop Stacia. “We’ll need to take care where we walk, and stay single file as much as possible. Follow me.”
Stacia nodded and Jo reset the pace, with Matt and Arnett trailing behind the Williamses. Light struggled to filter through the now-dense trees, breaking the forest into alternating patches of shifting shadow and blinding sun. Jo turned on her flashlight and scanned carefully in a one-eighty arc as she trudged forward, searching for evidence of footprints or disrupted foliage hiding in the pools of darkness.
When they reached the rock, she turned back to Stacia. “Where to now?”
Stacia frowned, then pointed a forty-five-degree angle. “We walked from the head side of the whale, that way.”
Keeping Stacia close, Jo continued her visual sweep in front of them. After a few hundred yards, she asked, “Is anything else familiar?”
Stacia squinted into the distance. “That tree that looks like conjoined twins. It was just a little past that.”
Once they passed it, Trey pointed to another. “The one with the Lion’s Mane mushrooms. That’s where she was tied.”
