Case of the Glacier Park Swallow Read Online Free PDF Page A

South America,” Sophie said.
    â€œIt’s strange how birds keep going back to the same place, over and over, but they do. Think of it. That tiny swallow. Six hundred miles a day, day after day after day, until it’s there, at last.”
    It made Juliet sad to think of the tiny swallow flying hundreds, maybe thousands, of miles without its family, but the swallow was more than a year old and it had made that journey before. It knew the route. Juliet wasn’t sure how it knew the way, but it did, and it was on his way now.
    â€œDo you think it will find his family in South America?” Juliet asked Sophie.
    â€œYes,” Sophie said, and Juliet felt much better. She closed her eyes and pictured the swallow and the swan soaring south, the swan leading the way, the little swallow trying to keep up, the swan glancing back over his shoulder every so often to check on the swallow.
    â€œI remembered where I buried the other swan,” Sophie said. “It was quite easy, really. You can usually remember things when you have a good reason.”
    Sophie found a shovel and led Juliet and Max along the bank of the river to a Douglas fir tree. She pointed to a spot under the tree and said, “It’s there,” and then she started to dig. It didn’t take her long to uncover the bird.
    Juliet knelt down and pulled out her knife, cut open the bird and examined it carefully. She was searching for something, anything that might give a clue as to what was happening to these birds, but everything appeared normal. She knew she was being silly. If someone had injected this swan with a tranquilizer all of its organs would look normal. So what was she looking for?
    If someone had injected this bird with a tranquilizer, it wouldn’t have made it this far. It wouldn’t even have made it a mile. So how did they do it?
    Juliet ran her fingers over the swan’s body. She felt its heart, its bones, its stomach, its wings.
    Something was wrong with breast bone. The first time that she touched it, she thought that it might be broken, but when she fingered it again, she realized that it wasn’t the bone at all. It was lower than the bone, and it felt as if something had been implanted into the flesh. She ran her fingers back and forth, over the skin. Then she made an incision and peeled back the feathers and outer layer of skin.
    She pulled out the implant and studied it. It was about the size of a stamp, but it had three or four tiny pellets attached to it.
    â€œWhat is it?” Sophie asked.
    â€œIt’s an implant,” Juliet said. “And I’d guess that these pellets are some kind of tranquilizer, timed to go off every few miles.”
    She held out her hand to Sophie and showed her the implant. “See,” she said. “The pellets are different sizes. Some of them have more coating on them. The ones with the least coating will go off first, and the ones with the most coating will go off much later. It’s like timed-release cold capsules.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Juliet said.
    She wrapped a hankerchief around the implant and put it into her pocket, and then she picked up the shovel and buried the bird.
    â€œI’ll take the implant to the lab,” she said. “And maybe by then, I’ll have figured it out.”

6. THE STORM
    J uliet drove faster than she should have. She was anxious to get home to Montana and the lab, because now she was curious, really curious.
    Beside her, Max seemed calm, until he saw the swallow out in front of the jeep.
    Juliet could tell by the way the swallow banked and circled that it wasn’t the same bird. And this bird was alone. Her swallow was part of a couple now, wasn’t it? Her swallow was with the swan.
    Max put his front paws up on the dashboard and watched the swallow until it disappeared above the jeep, and when it was out of sight, he moved into the back and examined the sky until