by Robin Lamont
“Go on,” Jude prompted.
“I had tools at the cabin, but how could I leave her? She wouldn’t understand. And I knew she didn’t have long. So I lay down and held her. She passed not long after.” Rubbing a hand across his face, Ben continued, “I was going to bury her down by the pond here – close to my other dogs. So I went back to the cabin for tools and some kind of litter to carry her to the car. Maybe the hardest thing I’ve ever done, walking away and leaving her there … and when I got back, she was gone. And the sonofabitch had reset the trap.” Ben’s voice cracked with fury.
“How did you know it was Eberhardt’s?” asked Jude.
“It had a government stamp on it. And he was the only one working the woods around the lake.”
“What did you do?”
“I waited to see if he’d come forward like a man and tell me what he’d done. The tag on her collar had my address and phone number. And we’d met, he knew who I was. But he never did.”
Jude nodded encouragement.
“I went looking for him in town. When I found him, he said, ‘How’s it going, buddy?’ like nothing ever happened. If I’d had a gun then, I woulda shot him right there, right through the smirk on his face. I said, ‘You killed my dog.’ He tells me I’m crazy, then says even if it was his trap, dogs get caught in traps all the time, he has immunity with the government. He pushes right by me and says he’s got more important things to do than talk about an old dog stupid enough to walk into a trap. I heard him tell someone he was going deer hunting. So I went back to get my rifle. I used to hunt up by Freedom Lake and I’d seen where his tree stand was … a big one you could practically sleep in that he’d slapped together between a couple of trees. Anyway, I found him alright and threatened to go to the authorities, get him fired. ‘No one’s gonna believe an old man like you,’ he says. ‘And if even they do, I got the U.S. government behind me.’ All the while I see him fingerin’ his trigger like maybe he’s nervous or something. Suddenly, he raises his gun … and I shot him.”
“So it was self defense,” Jude suggested hopefully.
“Don’t know exactly. I can’t rightly remember what was in my mind just then.”
“But he wasn’t dead.”
“He went down, alright, but I only got him in the shoulder. Maybe I could have let it go at that, but he … he wouldn’t shut up. He was saying stuff, was going to get me put in jail, all over an ugly bitch of a dog. Sayin’ awful things about her, like how she pee’d all over herself in the trap, whining and crying like a baby. And I blew. I just lost it. I found a leg hold trap in his ATV. And while he’s still cursing and screaming at me, I set it and jammed his foot in there. He howled just like an animal when those jaws bit into his leg.”
A silence descended in the wake of the violent images. Finally, Ben said, “I meant to go back. I was going to leave him ‘til the next morning – way less time than my pup’d suffered in his trap. But I got real sick that night and the next day. I didn’t even know where I was. And by the time the fever let up, it was too late. I dragged myself back to the lake, but when I got close I saw the police cars. I knew he didn’t make it.”
Jude let her head drop. “You’re going to have to turn yourself in, you know.”
“I know, and I plan to. But not until Colin gets clear of Stanton. They’re going to ask me a lot of questions … about what I’ve done and all what I know about him. I’m going to tell them the truth. Don’t know how his DNA got on that trap, I swear to God. But he’s probably been screwing with those things for weeks. Eberhardt’s trap must have been one of them.” Ben looked directly at Jude. “There’s a good chance, too, they’re not going to believe me. You should know as well as I do that the FBI wants him. I could confess six ways to Sunday and they’d only think I’m covering up for my boy.”
“But the truth will come out eventually,” protested Jude.
“Eventually is too long. The last time, my wife and I didn’t even know where he was for months. They treated him like a goddamn terrorist. He could disappear again. You’ve got to help him get away from here.”
Jude was stunned with the illegality of what he was asking. A career-ending move if ever there was one. “I can’t … do that,” she sputtered.
Ben grasped her hand. “Please, I’m begging you. Colin is innocent. He’s at the cabin, closing it up. He told me he’s going to stay with me. But I don’t want him to.” His eyes searched hers for some semblance of pity. “I’m dying, Jude. It scares the bejeezus out of me, but I can handle that. I can bear anything if I know my son is not going back to jail.”
His cold, vein-topped hand gripped hers with as much strength as he could muster, and it wasn’t a lot. Oh, shit. She squeezed back. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. Tell me how to get to the cabin. In return, there’s something I need to know about Craig Eberhardt.”
Chapter 25
From the looks of it, no one had been there for months. Sheets of plywood were nailed over the cabin windows, the door padlocked, and the dirt driveway raked of all footprints. Colin had been thorough. For a worrisome minute, Jude thought she had missed him and that he was en route to his father’s. But Finn sniffed him out and the two of them emerged from the trees behind the cabin.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he said, relief brightening his face. There was something else, too, that seemed to smooth the crease in his brow. Jude thought it was happiness, and she had to look away, knowing she would be the one to extinguish it. Colin wrapped her in a bear hug, asking, “Did Oliver tell you where I was? He’s actually a closet romantic, if you can believe that.”
Jude drew back and dealt him the first blow. “Colin, it’s bad. They have a DNA match to you on the Eberhardt trap.”
“Me? No way.”
“The FBI says they do.”
“That’s bullshit. It’s a setup.”
“Maybe not. How many traps have you sprung? You always use gloves?” Jude asked.
His eyes flickered anxiously as he ran through the possibilities. “Yeah, I do, but I’ve torn holes in them plenty of times. I could have gotten blood or some skin on any one of them. Probably one of them was Eberhardt’s. Jesus!” He took Jude by the shoulders. “You have to believe me. It wasn’t me. I swear to God.”
“I know that.” Jude shook her head sadly. “Colin, I know … who killed him. I just saw Ben. He told me the whole story. Eberhardt killed his dog Oona.”
Colin’s face darkened with anger. “What the fuck are you saying?”
“Your father shot Eberhardt and put him in the trap.”
“My dad? I don’t believe you.”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
He wheeled away. “Why are you doing this to me?”
Jude trailed after him. “He found Oona in one of Eberhardt’s traps up here by the lake. She was still alive, but she died before he could get her out. He went to get something to open the trap, but when he got back, Eberhardt had taken her body … probably to get rid of the evidence. That’s why Oona’s collar wasn’t with the others.”
Colin had his hands on the porch railing, his back curled as if he might throw up. Jude continued, “Your father knew whose trap it was and confronted him. Eberhardt raised his gun first, so there may be a case for self defense. But Ben shot him.”
“And then put him in a trap? I can’t … I can’t believe that. He’s saying these things to protect me.” With his head bent, Colin’s rejection was muffled, unsure.
“No, I saw his face when he told me what happened. Your father loved that dog and seeing her die that way. I think he just went mad for a moment.”
“I’ve got to go to him,” said Colin, straightening slowly as if it hurt him to stand.
“No. You cannot show up there now.”
“He needs me.”
“Colin, he doesn’t want you to stay. He sent me to convince
you to leave. Look, I’d be the first one to tell you that it’s the right thing to stay with him now. But he doesn’t want you to risk it. He begged me. He knows as well as anyone that even if he confesses, they’re going to arrest you. Christ, they have your DNA on the trap! They’re going to think exactly what you want to believe … that your father’s trying to take the rap for you. But by the time it gets sorted out … if it gets sorted out, you’ll be long gone into maximum security again, and your father may be dead.”
Jude had to say what she knew in her heart was true. “Ben loves you. He says he’s going to give himself up, but not until you’re far away from here. Look, he knows they’re going to question him hard about you. Don’t make him have to lie or be complicit in your arrest. He wants to make up for the past, Colin. Give him his chance. He needs that more than he needs your company now.”
Colin threw his head back and drew a deep lungful of air into his chest. “Okay,” he said on the exhale. Then he looked at Jude. “I left my wheels down the road. We’ll meet up in Saint Claire.”
She had been dreading this moment. It seemed so unfair to throw this final punch, but Jude couldn’t pretend she didn’t know what he meant. “Colin, I’m not coming with you.”
With this one he was left breathless. She reached out and touched his arm. “I can’t. And right now there’s something I have to do. I don’t have time to explain everything right now, the light is fading by the minute.”
He withdrew from her touch and folded his arms, taking a stand. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, but if you’re running off again, at least I deserve an explanation.”
Jude listened intently for the sound of tires on gravel. She was sure that no one had followed her, but she was still worried. If the FBI suspected that Ben did in fact know where Colin was, they could have checked his property records and learned that he owned land at Lake Freedom. They might be on their way even now. “I hope you left the cycle where no one could see it,” she conceded, motioning to the Subaru. “Come on, get in. I’ll give you a lift.”
He led her to a neighbor’s cabin, closed up now that deer and elk season was over. On the way, Jude did her best to tell him what she surmised about Eberhardt.
“Remember I told you about his field diary and how he recorded every animal he trapped and killed? I think he stashed it at his tree stand.”
“A tree stand? They’re nothing more than little platforms with a seat.”
“Not Eberhardt’s apparently. Your father’s seen it and says it’s something much larger, built between two trees. At Fielding’s the other day, I saw one the size of a tree house. It was advertised as ‘Your Home Away from Home.’ I think that if Eberhardt was keeping obsessive records of the animals he killed, including non-target animals, he fits the profile of a serial killer – someone who might also be keeping physical trophies. Just maybe he took trophies from the non-target animals as well, and those he would have to hide somewhere.”
“And you think they’re in his tree stand.”
“It would make sense. The cops have looked everywhere for the field diary and they’ve never found it. Last night I was talking with Foster Dunne about where a hypothetical serial killer would keep trophies that he doesn’t want anyone to find, and Dunne said he’d keep them somewhere he felt completely safe and ‘in his element.’ After what your father told me about the tree stand, it just clicked. What could be more remote and more in his element than Eberhardt’s ‘Home Away from Home?’”
After a moment, Colin asked, “You think he kept a trophy from Oona? Like her collar?”
“Could be. He removed her body before your father could get back to open the trap.”
Jude pulled in to a narrow driveway that dipped down a hill until it arrived at a small house with boarded-up windows. No one could see them from the road and Jude decided to leave the car there.
“So I have to find that field diary,” she announced. “Before someone else makes the connection.”
Shaking his head in disbelief, Colin said, “You can’t be serious. You’re going to try and find Eberhardt’s tree stand now?”
“Your father made a kind of map for me.”
Colin barked out a harsh laugh. “You’re out of your mind. You think you’re Daniel Boone? You’ll never find it on your own. There’s a hundred square miles of nothing around Lake Freedom.” He unbuckled his seatbelt. “I’m coming with you.”
“No, you can’t risk it,” Jude exclaimed. “They’re all over Stanton looking for you.”
Colin began marching resolutely up the driveway.
“What are you doing?” called Jude angrily.
“I’m going to get Oona’s collar. It’s the least I can do for my dad.”
Jude let Finn out, and he raced after Colin. There wasn’t anything else to do but zip up her coat, shoulder her backpack, and trot after the two of them. When she caught up, she asked Colin, “Don’t you want to see the map?”
He kept walking. “I don’t have to,” he said. “I’ve been working this area for almost a month. I know exactly where it is.”
A few snowflakes had begun to drift out of the leaden sky. The storm was moving in.
Chapter 26
About thirty minutes later, they found it – a platform of rough-hewn planks hammered into the trunks of two close-growing Douglas firs. Eberhardt had cobbled together waist-high walls made of split logs on three sides. Thick, overlapping branches formed a natural roof and helped to camouflage the structure which had weathered over time and turned the same color as the bark.
Colin found a ladder nearby and shook off the snow. It was coming down harder now, gathering on their hoods and shoulders.
“Let me see how secure it is,” he said. He set the ladder up against the tree and started up, testing it one foot at a time. At the top, he stepped onto the platform and disappeared into the gloom for a moment before motioning for Jude to follow.
The space was cramped and dark. Colin fished out a flashlight from his backpack and aimed it at a large beer cooler tucked into the corner. Covered with a mildewed cushion, it likely served as seating when Eberhardt waited for an unsuspecting buck. Colin threw off the cushion and lifted the top of the chest. They both gagged at the smell coming from inside. The Wildlife Services agent had taken pains to dry out his trophies and seal them in plastic zip-lock bags, but they were still decaying animal parts. Jude reached in and brought out a bag of feathers. Unusually large, they had the white and black shafts of eagle feathers. She pulled out another plastic bag filled with bits of fur and more; Jude made out a pointed ear of some mammal. One particularly large bag contained paws – paws from coyotes, wolves, maybe dogs … others from smaller mammals like martens or beavers. Jude could feel the stiff, matted fur and nails through the plastic and dropped the bag in revulsion. It was like something from a horror film.
Colin sat on his haunches opening a canvas sack. He withdrew a handful of dog collars. Most had ID tags still attached. He held up a jeweled pink collar that might fit a dog of twenty pounds and read the tag aloud. “Lola – The Remsens, Saint Claire, Idaho.” He lifted a frayed leather collar, shiny and dark with wear. “Earl – Bobby Hill, 320 Route 9D, Stanton, Idaho. Then another, and another. He read each tag as if memorializing fallen soldiers. Finally, he found the one he was looking for – a blue nylon collar, grimy with age. Colin’s voice cracked with emotion as he read, “Oona, Ben McIntyre, 54 Tolan Way … ” He shoved the collar deep into his pocket and said, “Let’s go.”
“No, not yet. I haven’t found the diary,” said Jude. She picked up the flashlight and began to shine it around the floor and walls of the tree stand, but there wasn’t anything more to see except a pile of dirty rags and some leaves that had blown in. She was rattled. It had to be here. Unwilling to admit defeat, she trained the light above their heads and spotted an oval hole in one of the tree trunks.
A home for a squirrel perhaps. She rose up on tiptoe and thrust her hand in, feeling around. Her fingers finally touched something smooth, with defined edges. She pulled out Eberhardt’s diary wrapped in black plastic cut from a garbage bag. Clever.
“Is that what you’re looking for?” asked Colin.
“Yes, I think so.” With growing excitement, she stripped off her gloves and began thumbing through the pages. In small, neat handwriting, Eberhardt had noted the dates and times he checked his traps, and when and where he killed an animal, adding comments about species, size, and gender. “Oh, look,” she said victoriously. “Here he puts that he caught a golden eagle and writes, ‘Called Boise for instructions. Per BG, bury and do not record.’ I’ll bet BG is Bud Grimes, the regional director of Wildlife Services. And here,” she had turned to one of the last entries. “‘White, female Labrador, 65 pounds, trap #0172, Lake Freedom, sect. 86.’ That’s got to be Oona. That’s going to prove that Eberhardt was killing domestic pets and covering it up. This is really important. They want to debate the AETA? These politicians want to strengthen the laws prosecuting animal activists? When I bring this evidence that the government itself is so corrupt, so depraved … wow, the press is going to have a field day.”
Colin eyed her sadly. “You wish.”
“It’s not just one employee,” insisted Jude. “This implicates the regional director of the entire program. You don’t see how big this is?”
“Yeah, big for about five minutes,” replied Colin bitterly. “And then it’s gone, replaced with important news like what some asshole celebrity is wearing to the Academy Awards.”
“It’s going to have an impact,” Jude insisted.
He winced as if the idea hurt him. “It all comes back to the same story. You and Gordon think you’re going to save all the animals. You go hunting for evidence, get your undercover videos, draft the petitions, hand out your leaflets, and post it all on your ridiculous Facebook wall, as if the bureaucracy will suddenly acknowledge their own corruption, the public will wake up and take notice, and then all the animals will live happily ever after.”