Red Man

by catt dahman

  “I have to trust someone, Carla. I am beginning to wonder…it’s impossible.”

  “That one of us could turn on you? No way. Impossible. And yet, I said it, didn’t I? ‘You shouldn’t have trusted me.’ But you can. And I guess Taryn as well although she’s hurt now.” Carla grabbed some branches and said, “We have to look like we did something. Take something.”

  Then, they heard a loud noise.

  “Not a cloud in sight,” Charlie noted.

  “It didn’t sound like thunder to me. I doubt it did to Dana either; we’ll see if she says anything. It sounded like a landslide to me. A huge one. Just be aware and listen and watch. I will, too, and we can compare notes later,” said Carla as she poked Charlie, “and smile.”

  Taryn waved a little as they returned to camp.

  “Rain?”

  “No clouds.”

  “It sounded like rocks to me.” Dana said. “We’ll have to see. I’m thinking we can have Taryn soak her ankle in the cold water today and see if she can put weight on it? Or maybe we should try to back track out. Or maybe two of us can, and we could make a lot of time that way.”

  “We’re off the trail and on a closed trail, so no one is going to come along. If we split up, well, isn’t that what happens in all the horror movies?” asked Anthea, as she shuddered.

  “It’s a camping trip, not a horror movie. It’s just an injury,” Taryn argued.

  Dana held up a hand, and added, “Except someone tried to kill Charlie a few days ago.”

  “That has nothing to do with an accident or our taking a closed trail,” Taryn said.

  “Are we sure?” Carla asked.

  “Of course, we are,” Dana snapped, “what do you mean by that?”

  “Just saying it’s odd.”

  “It’s a coincidence.” Leila said, “I’m going to get help, and we can get Rescue up here to take Taryn out. The end. I want one of you to go with me, just back to the split, and we can get someone else to relay the message that we need help down to the Rangers. Then, we’ll come right back so that we aren’t separated except for a few hours and will feel safe.”

  “I’ll come,” Bev said.

  “Me, too,” Holly offered, “that’ll leave the five of you.”

  As soon as the three finished eating, they were ready to go; they had packed only essential and emergency supplies for the hike, saying they would be back in a few hours.

  Carla came up with a travois to carry Taryn, along with their lunches and towels, so they headed out, not to the small lake, but to the river that emptied into the lake. It took them an extra half hour, and all were tired and hot by the time they found a spot they liked.

  “You are heavy,” Charlie told Taryn.

  “Nah. You just don’t like me pretending to be Cleopatra eating grapes.”

  “Is that all you ate?” Dana grumbled. “Sure you didn’t eat all the lunches, too?”

  “Very funny.” Taryn eased her ankle into the cold water with a sigh, “Oh this makes up for the long, hot walk.”

  “You’re rotten,” Dana told her.

  Charlie and Carla braved the freezing water and sat back to dry in the sun. Dana eased into the water and sat there, looking at various rocks she picked up while Anthea swam out to a deeper, calm part of the water.

  Dana told them, “Something is weird. Why didn’t the men take all the suits? And they could have burned them or something. It’s as if they wanted one of us to go over that way.”

  Charlie glanced at Carla but didn’t say anything. She turned over to let the sun dry her back.

  Dana continued, “And look at Taryn’s ankle. See there? The cut? What would make a perfect line like that? I am telling you that looks like a wire cut. When we get back, I intend to go look at that spot again. Something is out of sorts with this.”

  “When I fell, I caught something, but a wire? Nah, maybe it was old fishing line,” Taryn said.

  “I intend to find out. It bugs me….” said Dana as she snapped her head back and forth, “what was that?”

  “Huh?”

  “Carla, you and Charlie just looked at each other.”

  “And? Is that a crime?” Carla asked.

  “No. But you haven’t said one word in Mexican since this happened.”

  “And?”

  “You don’t curse in Mexican when you are worried. You go the opposite of normal people.”

  “I’m worried about Taryn. And gee thanks for the comparison to normal people.”

  “Bullshit. I know you are concerned, but I also know you would wisecrack through about any situation, so something is bothering you a lot. And I did see the looks you two traded. Spill it.”

  Carla sighed but quietly explained the conversation she had earlier with Charlie.

  “I don’t have pink paper,” Taryn said, “and I sure didn’t injure myself like this, but look in my pack. I have nothing to hide.”

  “Was I a suspect?” Dana asked.

  “I told Charlie we should all be,” Carla told them, “maybe it’s nothing, but in case it is, maybe it’s Anthea.”

  “I love ‘Thea, but she isn’t really brainy enough to plan this kind of thing, and you think she went into the woods in the dark to set a trap? Ummm…no.”

  “She might have pink paper though, Dana.”

  Charlie sat up and said, “We are not detectives. I left the detective back in town, remember? I am an idiot for that, but look, I don’t think one of my best friends is involved. There’s no motive. I refuse to think it’s possible.”

  “Calm down. Okay. Let’s keep it to ourselves, and when we get back, Charlie, you search our packs. Make sure,” Dana said.

  “I feel weird about that. I don’t think it’s anyone of you, but….”

  Dane nodded and responded, “That’s why I’m saying check and know for sure.”

  Anthea joined them, and they ate lunch.

  Dana told them she thought Taryn’s ankle looked better. “It isn’t as swollen anyway.” She said Taryn should stay off the ankle and wait for Rescue. They had enough food and supplies to wait there for someone to come for their friend. She also suggested that one of the girls should fly out with Taryn if she could, but that the rest should go on and finish the hike.

  “Is that safe for Charlie?” Anthea asked.

  “As long as she calls her detective friend, it should be. And we will be safe as well,” Dana said.

  “Of course, we will be. Why wouldn’t we be? Are you worried about those men still being angry?”

  “Maybe,” Dana told Anthea, “I’m sure they’re long gone.”

  After cleaning up their trash, they went back into the water while Taryn soaked her ankle. When they started back, they walked back in swim suit tops and shorts; a short sprinkle came up and soaked them, making the return trip cooler and less dusty so they were less miserable.

  The trip seemed to go faster.

  “Maybe that’s the last of the rain,” Taryn said.

  Dana and Carla fed the fire a few logs and put water on to boil. Dana said the others would be back soon, and she wanted to make biscuits and have the stew with vegetables ready. “Just in case, we should cut more wood and have it ready. Where did you put the hatchet?”

  “Right there. Like we always do.” Carl looked at the log where she had left it. “It didn’t walk away.”

  They looked, but it was gone.

  Carla asked Charlie to search the packs, starting with Anthea’s, while they kept her occupied. “Hand me my cell when you get to my pack.”

  “No service out here.”

  “Nope, but when you power on a phone, it pings the nearest tower anyway, I think.”

  Charlie slid over to Carla and pulled her to the side and said, “No pink paper in anyone’s stuff. But our cell phones are gone.”

  Carla turned, walked back to the tents, and then came back, her face dejected, and she said, “I hoped you were wrong.”

  Telling the others, Carla and Charlie looke
d at the rest for answers. They had a hatchet missing, as well as all of their cell phones. Anthea, half serious, was angry and demanded to know if this were a practical joke they were playing; they assured her it wasn’t.

  “It’s a missing hatchet. That’s a pain but not earth shattering. The phones’ missing isn’t too horrible because we can’t use them anyway, but I hate for those men to have our personal information,” Anthea said. She stirred the stew in the pot of boiling water so the meat and vegetables and spices could rehydrate. “I hate the idea that someone came in our camp while we were gone and took things.”

  “It’s adding up to something I don’t like,” Carla said.

  “Help me, please.”

  The women spun. Dana grabbed her knife at the same time Carla grabbed hers. “That’s far enough. You get any closer, and I’ll gut you,” Dana threatened the man.

  It was Bill, and he had Ray over him in a fireman’s carry. “Go ahead. I don’t really care anymore if you do.” He let his friend slide to the ground. For a few seconds, Ray stared at the women holding knives as he sweated and heaved for breath; he fell, slumping into the dirt and pebbles.

  For a minute, the women stared at the men lying in the dirt. Charlie slipped a few rocks from her hand to Carla’s hand, behind their backs. Carla slid the knife to her other hand and took the rocks into her right one, reared back and hit one man, and then the next, hard, with the rocks but neither reacted at all. Expecting it or not, people always reacted to a hard thump like she had given them.

  Carla shrugged. She had hit them hard enough to get a reaction.

  Handing her knife to Charlie, Dana walked over to the men carefully. She felt Bill’s pulse and watched him and then stepped back, “Unconscious. Not faking.” She walked over to the other man and checked him out. His shirt was covered with blood.

  “Get me the rope and hurry. Help me, Carla.”

  They tied Ray’s hands behind his back and then tied his feet and dragged him over to the shade.

  When he awoke, he looked around and sighed, “I should have known. I deserve it for being fool enough to come back here.”

  “Huh?”

  “This is how you repay us, huh? Tying me and killing Ray? Jeez. And I came back, thinking I’d get help, but I am about ten shades of dumb ass, huh?”

  “We didn’t kill him. I figured you might have though,” Charlie said as she gave him a sip of water with her knife-wielding friends watching him, “small sips.”

  “I didn’t kill him. You crazy bitch, whatever, just finish me off.”

  “Why would I give you water if I wanted you dead?”

  Dana showed them what she had found on the other man: a driver’s license, a ID card, showing he was a teacher, and a handful of other innocent-looking cards. She grabbed Bill’s wallet and asked, “You and he are teachers?”

  “This is our back to nature thing once a year,” he said as he glared at Dana, “it was. Until you decided to murder him.”

  Dana demanded that he tell her about their hatchet and cell phones. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Me? Not me.”

  “Explain yourselves then,” Dana said.

  “This morning, we headed out early. We hung around, waiting for you girls. We didn’t decide to apologize until we were on the trail and didn’t want to come back.” He said they waited all morning and then found out that the other camp had decided to stay there another night or something, and they really did think they should apologize so they began walking back.

  The two men found the women’s camp empty and figured they had gone to the river. “We knew you could return by that trail or by the other one, so he took the main trail, and I went by the water. We figured we’d all meet in the middle. I didn’t find you there, so I went back to meet Ray and was going to say I was tired of going in circles and make up for any bad karma.”

  “And?”

  “And I found where you left him, stabbed and bleeding.”

  “You think we found him, stabbed him, came back here, and began making dinner? Really? Tell me why you came here and then asked for help if you thought we did it?”

  Bill looked at Carla and shook his head and answered, “I didn’t think you had until you tied me up. Who else could it be? Exactly.”

  “I’m a nurse. I don’t stab people. We tied you up because of your stealing our cell phones and hatchet and making the trap that injured Taryn.”

  “What trap?” Bill asked at the same time Anthea asked.

  Carla explained.

  “We didn’t steal anything, and we didn’t set a trap,” Bill said.

  Carla asked him about the pink paper, and he said he hadn’t seen it. She shrugged. She couldn’t see why the men would have stolen those things and then why Bill would have killed Ray. It wasn’t logical.

  But if that didn’t make sense, neither did Holly, Leila, and Bev’s appearing from the opposite direction where Bill had come from. Lela crouched beside Ray.

  “I must be hallucinating,” Charlie said.

  “My God, he’s dead.” Leila yelped as she jumped up from where she was looking at Ray. “What the hell is going on? Who killed him? Why?”

  “Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy,” Holly said as she sat down and leaned her head between her knees to keep from passing out.

  “First, we want to know why you came from that way,” Carla demanded, her voice shaking a little. She was holding the knife again.

  “Carla? What is this?”

  “Just tell us.”

  Leila nodded. The three had gotten down the trail and were making good time when they stopped in their tracks, astounded. The entire trail had been covered and destroyed by a huge landslide. Although they searched, there was no way around the rocks and boulders without climbing gear unless they wanted to risk broken bones or worse.

  “We started talking and thinking about Charlie. So we came back here fast, but no one was here. When we looked over there, we found wire was strung. That’s why Taryn fell. It could have been anyone of us since our bathing suits were over there and someone had to get them. It was a trap.”

  “We figured that out, too,” Carla said.

  “Some faster than others, I guess.” Anthea was a little hurt she hadn’t been told.

  Leila said they saw their cell phones were gone and became worried. Taking the river trail, they went to look for the rest of the group.

  “Did you ever separate? I mean for a second or two?” Dana asked.

  “No way. Not for one second. Never. We were like glued together. We were getting spooked by then.” Leila didn’t indicate she thought she was a suspect. She said they almost raced down the river trail, worrying and didn’t know what to think, so they went up to the main trail and wanted to look in that way, all the way back to camp.

  Holly broke in and said, “We found two packs. They were just lying there, and on the side of the trail was a huge puddle of blood. We were scared to death then. We looked and looked and grabbed the packs and came back this way.”

  “We did look in the packs and figured they belonged to the two men, Bill and Ray, but with all the blood, we thought they had gotten one of you and the rest had run after them in pursuit. But then where was the one who was injured?” Leila took up the story again. “We didn’t know what to think. Nothing made sense. And it still doesn’t.”

  “What happened?” Bev demanded.

  Carla sighed and added, “It’s a long story too, so we should eat while we talk.”

  Anthea got the plates and asked Bev to help her with dinner.

  Dana said that they had figured out it was a trap, too, but had still been trying to figure out what was going on, so they hadn’t had time to tell Anthea when they found the hatchet and cell phones missing. “All of us were running around in circles on the trails.”

  “The cells aren’t in their packs,” Bev said, “and no hatchet either, and that was really expensive. They could toss the phones but the hatchet? They’d keep it.”

 
“We didn’t take anything. If one of you didn’t stab Ray, then it was one of them.” Bill motioned with his head to Bev, Leila, and Holly.

  “Maybe so. Maybe one of them did. But are all three going along with it? Why would they? Motive much?” Charlie snapped. “So if we don’t think all of them were into stabbing and killing, then one had to do it when she was alone. So one of them surprised Ray and stabbed him? At the road or river…which one of you was alone?”

  “None of us. We were too freaked out. Not for even one second,” Holly said, “and you heard the landslide. We were here. Unless, all three of us made that up: I mean our seeing it because we didn’t fake the noise for sure.”

  “We were never alone. I’m positive,” Leila said, repeating what they had said to begin with.

  Dana said that meant it was back to Bill’s having killed his friend.

  “Instead of just hiding his body or leaving him, I came here for help and carried him? Well, that makes a helluva lot of sense, too,” said Bill as he rolled his eyes, “and just kill me, too. I don’t wanna play your reindeer games. You are some sick people.”

  “He was out cold,” Dana said, ignoring Bill. She went over to Ray again. The wound was from the front and was a series of deep slashes into his belly. When she looked him over, she found a nasty crack on his skull. It had bled heavily down his back. “How did you find him, Bill?”

  “Oh, God. Umm, he was on his back, hands spread out to both sides.”

  “Did he speak?”

  “No. He never said anything. I grabbed him and started back ‘cause I thought I should find help.”

  “Did you check his vitals?”

  “No, I grabbed him and came this way.”

  Thinking, Dana came back and sat down, and asked, “Was the hatchet here at camp when you came in? Did you notice?”

  “It was gone. I know because I was going to take it as a weapon,” Leila said.

  Dana drew in the dirt and then pointed with a stick and named the places: landslide, camp, river, and death site. She then showed where each group was, and using three rocks, she showed how they moved.

  When she was finished, it was clear that the hatchet, and, therefore, the phones, were removed before Leila and the rest got back. It was possible the men had taken it, Bill, in particular, or that someone else had gotten the items. “But this is where it gets odd.”