Page 165 of 1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Forty-Two

A light moved. As she indicated the direction of the glintand color, it seemed almost as if the trees had widened and grown, blockingwhatever it was.

But she had seen it.

She knew she had seen something.

“There’s something there,” she repeated withdetermination as she slid past Jackson.

Of course, he and Clayborn followed her as she wove her waythrough thickets and trees.

And she was right.

They stopped and stared for a minute.

They had found the navy SUV.

She and Jackson walked to opposite sides, looking into thevehicle. No one sat in the front or back seats, but there was something largeand dark in the back compartment that they saw through the rear window. But allthe doors were locked and the windows were up.

“We’ve got to get it open,” she murmured and hoped againsthope that Officer Whittaker wasn’t beneath the blanket she saw.

Dead.

“Forensics will need to go over the vehicle, but this can’twait,” Jackson said. He pulled out his Glock, flipped it around, and slammed itwith all his strength against the back window. Again and again and again.

The window broke at last, and he found the button to causethe back hatch to open. Once it was up, he instantly pulled at the blanket tosee what lay beneath.

It wasn’t Officer Whittaker. It wasn’t a man at all, butrather ten or so stuffed toys, ranging from panda bears to monkeys.

“That may be good,” Angela whispered. “I want to believethat Whittaker is still alive. And I somehow sense that he might be, whetherthat’s wishful thinking or not.”

Jackson was already calling their discovery in, letting theinvolved Krewe know they’d found the vehicle that the neighbor had seen andstating it had been abandoned in the woods.

But seconds after he made the call, he received one inreturn. It was Patrick. Jackson put the phone on speaker.

“I got the information on the SUV. Someone stole it from ahome in Maryland two nights ago,” Patrick said. "We'll be there in amatter of minutes. I've got Jordan and Brybo. Markand Colleen are a few minutes ahead of me with Red. And Ragnar is heading tohis place to pick up Hugo. All of us and the dogs will be there withinminutes.”

“Wonderful,” Angela called out. “We have the police, andwe’re out here, but there is nothing like a good canine to find a person—livingor dead,” she added unhappily.

“See you soon,” Patrick said.

Jackson sighed. “I’ll report the car to the forensic units,though they’re likely going to be running thin on personnel with all ourdifferent crime scenes. But the local police are in on this, too, so maybe wecan use theirs, and it will all get done. Quickly.”

“Whittaker isn’t in the car. We have tofind the man,” Angela said.

“Agreed. We’ll go northwest. I’ll let the others know whichway we’re headed.”

They started to move through the woods. As Angela did, shenoted several huge, beautiful elm trees.

Colonel Clayborn saw her eyeing them. “Beautiful, aren’tthey?” he asked her. “And rare today. I tend to forget decades, but I believemany died in the 1970s when that Dutch elm disease swept across the world.Obviously, these survived. And at their size, I’d say they are old, at leastone hundred years old. Maybe more.”

“The trunks are huge,” Angela noted.

“Yes.”

The branches of the trees created massive canopies thatstretched over the trails. They blocked most of the remaining sunlight as nightstarted to fall.

But one didn’t look quite like the others. It appeared asif, perhaps, lightning had struck at some point, causing a split high in thetree, leaving a slice-of-pie-shaped area of branches to fall toward the groundat a strange angle.

“That tree...” she murmured.