by John Dibble
Difficult Run
A NOVEL
John Dibble
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DIFFICULT RUN. Copyright © 2013 by John Dibble. All rights reserved.
For information address Marker Oak Books, 1101 30th Street, N.W., Suite 500, Washington, DC 20007.
www.markeroakbooks.com
ISBN: 978-0-615-79563-9
BISAC: Fiction / Mystery & Detective / General
CHAPTER ONE
THE CURLED FINGERS OF THE GIANT HAND suddenly thrust out of the low-lying fog as she rounded the turn in the road. A breeze briefly parted the mist and she could see the face of the creature, teeth bared in preface to a primal scream, the other hand just breaking through the soil, seeking a purchase that would allow the enormous body to pull itself from the earth.
She had to run faster, fast enough to pass by the thing before it could rise up and grab her with an outstretched arm, dragging her back into the ground with it. Her breathing quickened, providing needed oxygen for the muscles that would propel her away from danger. Toes pushing harder on the pavement, she increased the length of her stride and felt her body accelerate toward the next turn.
As she passed the three-mile marker on the side of the road, she glanced at her watch which showed an elapsed time of 18:40. Not bad, she thought, doing a fast conversion to a time of around 38:30 for a 10 kilometer run. Considering that the heavy rains in Washington over the past four days had made it impossible to run at all, she was especially pleased with herself. Hains Point, where she was now running, had been completely flooded by the Potomac River, including the open area where the metal sculpture called The Awakening was located. She loved the sculpture of a giant emerging from the ground and used it as an artifice in her daily runs, pretending that it was a real creature emerging from the earth and pursuing her. On average, she estimated that the additional push to escape his clutches improved her time by three to five seconds overall.
She had about a mile left to go. Her breathing was measured and deep. The length of her stride remained at the Awakening level, although she wasn’t sure she could maintain it all the way to Park Police Headquarters. She didn’t want to risk injuring herself. Her muscles had been deprived of strenuous exercise for four days and she knew that cramps or worse, ligament tears, were a real possibility.
M.J. Powers was twenty-eight years old, five feet ten inches tall and weighed about one hundred thirty-five pounds, a lot of which was muscle mass. As her mother used to say, she was “all legs.” Her mother also used to say that she didn’t have much in the “chest department,” which, because of her running, was probably just as well since she didn’t want the aggravation of dealing with flailing breasts. She wore her light brown hair shoulder length, except when she was running and put it in a ponytail.
It was the beginning of spring 2005. Earlier in the year, she had decided that instead of training for the Marine Corps Marathon in the fall, she would concentrate on improving her time in 5 kilometer and 10 kilometer runs. She had a decent finish in last year’s Marathon, but the number of people participating had risen to thirty thousand and the crowding had reduced her enjoyment of the event. She had been forced to think carefully about just why she had become a runner in the first place and had decided that ultimately it was the solitary challenge that kept her at it. Although she could find that challenge running alone, there was also a need to compete at some level, to prove to herself that she could outperform other runners. She just wanted more control over the setting, and masses of marathon runners in a highly-publicized event like the Marine Corps Marathon didn’t fill this need. Of course there were other runners in 5K and 10K events, but nothing approaching the size of the Marine Corps event. There were also more of the smaller events in which to compete, and she liked that aspect, too.
She had been so focused on her running that she was unaware of the car rolling along next to her on the left. The passenger-side window rolled down and a voice said, “Hey, Detective Powers, our presence has been requested at Great Falls.” It was her partner, Jake Hill.
“Shit, Jake,” she said, with obvious irritation in her voice, narrowing her light blue eyes for effect. She continued to run but slowed her pace. “You know I can’t just stop. I need to cool down. Give me a couple hundred yards and I’ll get in.”
“It’s OK with me. Just don’t let Swain know that I didn’t force you into the car,” he replied.
Lieutenant Mike Swain was the Commander of the Criminal Investigations Branch, or CIB, their boss and a royal pain in the ass. He made a big deal out of everything, and in the U.S. Park Police that required some real imagination.
“So what are we dealing with?” she asked, still breathing heavily.
“A double homicide. That’s about all I know,” Jake replied. “They sent some uniformed guys out from our station on the Parkway and Zerk is already on his way there, so maybe he’ll have something by the time we get there.”
Peter “Zerk” Bensen was the identification technician for their unit. He had acquired the nickname Zerk as a child because his father was an auto mechanic and called him that after the grease fittings used on cars. “That kid’s going to be a real slick customer,” his father used to say. “Slick as axle grease.”
Zerk’s father was wrong on a number of counts, not the least being that Zerk was about as far from “slick” as possible. In fact he was the quintessential nerd but, like many nerds, very smart and very good at his job. M.J. also figured that his job had gotten him laid on more than one occasion. She could just imagine the pick-up line in a singles bar: The vacuous twenty-something woman asking “What do you do?” and Zerk casually replying, “Well, I’m a crime scene investigator.” The woman exclaiming, “CSI? For real? Like the T.V. show?” He would carefully omit the fact that he worked for the U.S. Park Police to avoid the inevitable references to raccoons and Smokey the Bear. He would probably just say, “Maybe you could come over to my place later and I could tell you about some of the cases I’ve worked on.”
“M.J., time to get in the car,” Jake said.
She opened the passenger door with the car still rolling and hopped in. “Take me by Headquarters so I can get my stuff. No time to shower, I suppose, but we’ll probably be outdoors and I’ll try to stay downwind,” M.J. said.
Jake pulled up to the rear entrance of Headquarters and M.J. trotted inside. She splashed cold water on her face and the back of her neck, briefly fussed with her hair and opened the locker that she used when she ran at Hains Point. She reached into her gym bag and found a pair of nylon workout pants, pulled them over her shorts, grabbed her jacket with POLICE printed on the back, donned a dark blue baseball cap with the Park Police emblem on the front, put on her gun belt and grabbed her badge before returning to the car.
As soon as they began moving, Jake turned on the flashing lights. When they cleared the parking lot, he turned on the siren. It was 7:45 a.m., the peak of rush hour in Washington. Although they would be traveling counter to the commuter traffic, he planned to make their trip as short as possible. He crossed the 14th Street Bridge, took the ramp onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway—known to everyone as “the GW”—and headed north. There was a lingering fog that blocked the early morning sun and reduced visibility to a few hundred yards.
Dispatch came on the radio to tell them that Eagle One, the Park Police helicopter, was awaiting clearance to take off and should be on the scene in about thirty minutes.
At the end of the GW, he turned right onto Georgetown Pike, a winding two-lane road that followed the same path as the wagon trail used in Colonial times. There
was bumper-to-bumper traffic in the other lane and the twisting road made it necessary to reduce their speed. After about four miles, they entered a series of cutback turns along the side of some steep hills. Rounding the last of the turns, they saw an area below them on the left where the fog was illuminated by blue, red and yellow flashing lights.
“This must be the place. It looks like a police convention,” Jake said, turning left through the oncoming traffic into a parking area.
At the entrance a large wooden sign, stained dark red with yellow letters, said DIFFICULT RUN.
CHAPTER TWO
M.J. HAD BEEN TO GREAT FALLS PARK a few times when she was assigned to the Patrol Branch out of the GW Station. It was one of the most scenic areas in the Washington region. The falls themselves consisted of jutting rocks that caused the Potomac River to cascade over a drop of almost a hundred feet. There were several overlooks, a spacious picnic area, a Visitor Center, and several miles of nature trails. She had always entered the park through its main entrance, which she recalled was about a half mile farther on Georgetown Pike. The Difficult Run entrance was new to her. She assumed that it was named for a stream or creek, which in Virginia is called a “run.”
Jake pulled into an empty space in the parking lot. A Fairfax County police officer came over and shook his hand, then M.J.’s. “Hi, my name’s John Crocker,” he said. “This lot is technically our jurisdiction, but the crime scene is in the park, which makes it yours. Just let us know how we can help.” He pointed to a car half hidden under a copse of trees and cordoned off with yellow tape. “That appears to be the victims’ car over there.” He pointed to a second car. “The other car belongs to the woman who found the bodies. She’s over there whenever you want to interview her, but she’s pretty shaken up at this point.”
“Did you run the tags on the victims’ car?” M.J. asked.
“Sure did,” he replied. “It’s registered to a couple in McLean, probably the parents of one of the boys.”
“Boys?” M.J. asked.
“Yeah, two of ‘em. Trail bikers. See the rack on the back of the car,” Crocker said, looking toward the vehicle.
M.J. noted the rack and asked, “Have the parents been notified?”
“Not yet,” he replied. “We wanted to wait until you gave us the word.”
“Thanks,” M.J. said. “We’ll try and do that as soon as we can.”
Crocker pointed to the far end of the lot. “You’ll need to follow that trail about three hundred yards to the beginning of the trail in the park. It follows the stream and it’s muddy as hell because of the rain. You might want to take your flashlights too, because of the fog,” he said.
Jake reached into his car, retrieved two flashlights and handed one to M.J. They started walking across the parking lot and reached the trailhead at the far side. Once they were out of earshot, M.J. said, “So much for any footprints or tire marks from the parking lot. It looks like the entrance to a stadium on a rainy day.” She shined her flashlight down on the trail. “Not much better here,” she added. “Christ, I wish they’d limited access until Zerk could look around.”
The stream was still swollen from the recent rain. It had obviously gone over its banks during the heavy rain, as evidenced by the trail from the parking lot. “He wasn’t kidding when he said it was muddy,” Jake said. “So much for my shined shoes.”
“Stop complaining,” M.J. replied. “I’m wearing my new running shoes that cost a hundred bucks.”
Whole trees had washed up next to the trail, which was deeply rutted in several places. The access trail ended and there was a steep path up to the main trail. Another Fairfax County officer was standing there and motioned them to the right, saying, “The bodies are about fifteen or sixteen hundred yards down that way.” M.J. glanced to the left and could see the lights from the cars on Georgetown Pike.
The main trail was in much better shape and wider. Almost immediately, they could hear the fast moving water below to their right. As the trail became steeper, the sound of the stream became less audible and they sensed that it was becoming farther and farther below them. Because of the low-lying fog, it was impossible to tell how high they were above Difficult Run, but M.J. thought it could easily be fifty feet or more.
They moved slowly because of the fog, swinging their flashlights from side to side to make sure they didn’t step off the edge of the trail and fall down the slope to the stream. After several minutes, the trail became level and they rounded a long sweeping curve. They began to hear voices up ahead. A few minutes later, they could see what appeared to be flashlights moving around in the fog.
They ducked under the yellow crime scene tape that had been placed across the trail and continued toward a group of five people about fifty feet farther down the trail. There were three uniformed Park Police officers, Zerk Bensen and a park ranger.
“What’ve you got, Zerk?” M.J. asked.
“Well, no footprints on the ground I’ve covered so far. This trail is compacted gravel and I really don’t expect to find any. I’ve taken a few photos but I want to wait ‘til this fog lifts so I can get better quality. You guys need to come look at the bodies,” he said, handing M.J. and Jake sets of latex gloves. “Stay behind me. I haven’t swept the whole area.”
They followed Zerk down the trail and around a slight bend. Ahead, M.J. could see two beams of light shining into the fog, one straight up and one at an angle.
Another crime scene tape was stretched across the trail. Zerk lifted it for them and said, “Stay close. You’re not going to fucking believe this.”
As they approached the two bodies, M.J. could see that the lights were attached to the bikers’ helmets. The bodies were about ten feet apart and the trail bikes were in front of each body.
M.J. shined her flashlight down on the first body. The boy was staring up into space, eyes wide open. She swung her light to the second body. Same thing. Eyes wide open, staring slightly to the side. She started to move the light back to the first body again, when she realized that something about the two bodies wasn’t right.
It took a moment for the horrible incongruity to register in her mind. The heads of both boys were staring up, but their torsos were chest down on the trail, palms flat as if they were getting ready to do push-ups.
“My God!” M.J. exclaimed. “Their heads have been turned around on their bodies.”
CHAPTER THREE
THE THREE OF THEM knelt down by the first body. The boy’s neck was badly bruised and there were abrasion marks on his chin and cheeks, most likely from the strap on the helmet. They moved to the second body and found the same bruises and abrasions. The two trail bikes didn’t show any signs of damage.
“It looks like whoever did this jumped the first rider, broke his neck and then took out the other one the same way,” Zerk said. “The bikes just continued moving without the riders.”
“Whoever it was would have to be really fast to kill them both,” Jake said. “It looks like the boys might have been trying to get away and got pulled off their bikes from behind.”
“Either the killer was really fast or there was more than one,” M.J. said. “Get us some good pictures, Zerk.”
“Will do,” Zerk said. “From the look of things, that may be about all we have in terms of evidence. I’ll take the helmets and bikes back to the lab but I’ll be surprised if there are any usable prints.”
Zerk led them back up the trail from the crime scene and they rejoined the others. M.J. approached the park ranger, who held out his hand. “I’m the site manager for the park,” he said. “My name is Randall McMillan, but call me Dodd. Most people do.”
“What do you think happened here, Dodd?” she asked.
“Well, it looks like these kids came into the park after dark. We close the main gate then, but you can still get in through Difficult Run. Bikers aren’t allowed on a lot of the trails in the park, so they come in at night this way and go up into the main part of the park. I’d guess the
y were coming back down off the Ridge Trail and whoever killed them was down here at the bottom on Difficult Run,” he said.
“Is there any way out of here other than the trail from the parking lot?” M.J. asked.
“Well, they could have gone up the Ridge Trail and cut through the forest to the main entrance road or doubled back to the parking lot for Difficult Run,” Dodd said.
“Can you check with your folks to see if anyone has come through the entrance gate or been in the main part of the park this morning?” she asked.
“I’ll check, but the main park has been closed for two days due to the high water and there wouldn’t be any way for someone to get in or out of there on foot,” he said, adding, “We can’t even get to our offices in the Visitor Center.”
“If the park is under water, how were these boys able to ride their bikes on the trails?” she asked.
“Well, they could ride the Ridge Trail and the trails on this end toward Difficult Run because it doesn’t usually flood during high water. You see, the basin below the falls is like the mouth on a funnel and Mather Gorge downstream is like the stem. The water backs up at the entrance to the gorge and comes over the cliffs around the basin and into the main part of the park,” he said, putting his hands together like a funnel.
“How about the river?” M.J. asked.
“The river is so dangerous right now that even kayakers would get sucked under if they hit a rock and a swimmer would have no chance at all,” he said.
“Then whoever did this may still be in the park,” she said.
“Sure could be. There’s lots of places to hide,” he replied.
“Please ask your folks to keep an eye out and let us know right away if they see anybody,” M.J. said and started walking up the trail toward the parking lot. She stopped to talk to the three uniformed Park Police officers, all of whom she knew from her days with the Patrol Branch.