by Blake Pierce
“All right, so if they’re older, they probably live somewhere nearby, yes?”
Adele sniffed. “Makes sense. Near the Black Forest area. Ha Eun’s body was discovered in a field, miles away. Intentionally dumped where we could find it. A mistake, though.”
“How so?” John’s face was illuminated by the traffic lights above. Adele peered through the chilled glass as they moved along the streets away from the hospital. “Because they wanted us to find her body. They showed the body too far from the Black Forest. It confirms that they’re near the forest. They wanted to redirect our search efforts—which means we were getting close. Someone got close.”
“The search parties, you think? So we’re looking for an older group of two or more killers in the Black Forest area within our search radius.” John trailed off. “Who do we know?”
Adele tapped a finger against her teeth, her mouth half unhinged, thoughts swirling through her mind.
And then it dawned on her. She swiveled toward John, and her hand darted to her pocket, pressing against the rigid outline of her phone through the fabric of her pants. “My dad stumbled upon a cabin when he was searching the woods,” she said, quickly. “Said there was a couple there. A man and woman. He talked about a farm, self-sustainable.” As she spoke, Adele’s words came faster, spilling from her lips as her subconscious caught up with her active thoughts. “Broken branches means broken bones…” Adele breathed, a shiver along her arms. “Every child needs play time; I don’t really know what that means, but I think the killers have been letting their victims out for some yard time. Even maximum-security prisons give their prisoners yard time.”
“Yard time? I’m not following.”
“This cabin in the woods, it had plants, trees. My dad mentioned it. If they’re an older couple, married, it might lull the young backpackers into a false sense of security. Though,” Adele trailed off now, frowning to herself. “My dad said he got a good impression. They offered him food, and they were warm, hospitable.”
“Not exactly indicting characteristics.”
“No. But old, off grid, in the Black Forest area. In the grid pattern of the search parties and, also, within a radius of where most of our victims have gone missing. And they have a garden. A well-maintained garden. If you break the plants they break your bones.”
“What?”
“Whoever this killer is, they’re very protective of these plants. Maybe their own garden. We need to find out where that cabin is.”
“Well, call your dad.”
Adele gritted her teeth and fished her phone from her pocket. She quickly cycled through her contacts, found the Sergeant, and pressed the number.
The car was quiet for the next few moments, but Adele was confronted only by a ring tone. She growled in frustration and tried again.
“Not answering?”
She shook her head. She tried again. No answer. She muttered darkly to herself and tried a final time. No answer.
Her father hadn’t even set up a voicemail.
“Dammit,” she shouted, slamming her hand against the glove compartment.
“Well,” John said, steadily, taking the unusual role as the calm one in their duo, “you know your father. It’s your job to find people. Where will he be? How can we get to him?”
Adele hesitated.
“Might he be back at home?”
But Adele was shaking her head already. “No. No, that’s not who he is. He’ll be on the search again.”
John glanced at the sky. “It’ll be evening soon, night is coming.”
“That doesn’t matter to him. He’ll search at night if he has to.”
“He’s a bloodhound, like you.”
Adele snorted. “We’re nothing like each other. You need to get us back to that highway. He’ll be in one of those search parties. John, hurry up. Go!”
The tires screeched. John didn’t need a second invitation as he started swerving through traffic, rapidly leaving the hospital behind them, heading up the road and moving back toward the highway, the first crime scene, and the search parties combing the forest.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
For the second time in the last half hour, John pulled the vehicle to a screeching halt, half on the curb. Adele threw off her buckle, swung open the door, and stepped out, muttering, “We’re going to have to work on your parking skills.”
John was already slamming the other door. The two of them hurried to the coordinator of the search parties. Night had fallen, and already Adele could see a trickle of volunteers in their orange vests moving back toward the parked cars on the side of the highway.
“Hello,” Adele said, “excuse me. Is Joseph Sharp back yet? Sergeant Joseph Sharp?”
The woman standing beneath the tent, behind a white folding table, glanced over. Adele spotted a scattering of extra orange vests and a few whistles. There was a flare as well.
The officer in charge cleared her throat and said, “Excuse me?”
Adele flashed her credentials and then said, “Interpol. Look, I’m his daughter. Is my father back? Joseph Sharp. He’s volunteering.”
The coordinator half glanced toward one of the squad cars, where two other officers were standing, looking on with curiosity.
But then she sighed and pushed back a stray tuft of hair behind her ear; she glanced down at the table and flipped a sheet of paper. The staple in the top left moved, nearly falling out, suggesting this pile of papers had seen good use in the last couple of days.
She flipped through what looked like a list of names, and then settled on one. Adele noticed checkmarks next to some of the names.
The coordinator glanced, tapped a finger, and said, “Sergeant Sharp isn’t back yet. He arrived late. He should still be out searching the western grid. Near the base of Feldberg.”
Adele quickly nodded her thanks. She gestured at John, and together they hurried toward the trees, stepping through the fringe and sidling past a group of ten searchers moving with exhausted motions back toward the waiting tent, already removing their vests with tired arms.
“You think he’ll be out there much longer?” John said, from next to her, as he hurried to keep up.
Adele was jogging, and John eventually had to break into a jog as well. Pine needles crunched, and pine cones scattered. Her footfalls fell softly against the vegetation.
The smell of the forest was dampened by the cold, and the morning sunlight was long gone. Darkness stretched across the sky, threatening the deeper heart of night. Already, the stray tinges of moonlight glimpsed through low cloud cover and thick trees. The rigid bark from the trees cast shadows in scattered patterns like the furrows of a child’s fingers dragged through mud.
“He’ll be out all night if he has to,” Adele muttered.
“You’re sure? It might be smart just to wait for him back there.”
Adele shook her head. She knew her father; she knew he’d still be out searching again long after everyone returned. Her own thoughts moved, cycling in tandem with the motion of her legs and the slow puff of breath as she hurried through the woods. John was breathing heavily already next to her.
Adele spoke her thoughts, if only to air them aloud. “He didn’t think there was anything off about them. That’s what he told me. He barely even mentioned it, except I kept asking.”
“Who?”
“The old couple. He thought they were harmless.”
“Well… maybe they are?”
Adele just shook her head and picked up the pace, scattering pine needles and fallen leaves with each footfall.
John muttered a curse, but then caught up; the two of them fell quiet, jogging, listening to the steady sound of their breathing, hurrying along the forest path. Adele had to pace herself. She knew if she ran too fast, John wouldn’t be able to keep up. But also, if she ran too slowly, night would fall completely, bringing greater darkness. The two of them would be lost in the woods.
“You have your flashlight?” she said.
John
grunted between gasps for air. In an irritated voice at the distraction, he said, “Grabbed it from the car.”
“Good.” She exhaled deeply, but steadily. “Western quadrant, yeah?”
John, though, didn’t seem to have the air now to talk. And instead veered off to the right just a bit, and then moved around a trail of scattered leaves where it was clear search parties had already wandered. They moved west, the two of them heading through the forest at a steady pace.
Adele hadn’t had her morning jog in a while, and now, as the blood began pumping, she allowed her thoughts to wander. One of the reasons she liked running so much was the opportunity it afforded her to think without distraction. There was something about a physical task which forced the mind to focus. It almost seemed to put it on a single rail, when normally her mind would threaten to veer off in any direction it could.
As she jogged along next to John, she desperately thought of the clues. She thought of what they had discovered. She thought of Amanda Johnson. The way the young woman had stared wide-eyed, straining in the nurse’s hands.
She’d said every month they would get a chance to go outside. Broken plants meant broken bones. Number seven… So much of it didn’t make sense.
They.
She’d said they.
There was more than one killer. A certainty.
Twenty-six bodies in the last ten years. Found in different states of decay. Most of them half clad, most of them without shoes. Most of them with terrible injuries. Some of the ones in better condition had also displayed rope burns across their wrists and ligature marks.
Adele thought about it. Not just twenty-six names. Two hundred missing. In the last decade, the number of people who had disappeared in the area had gone unnoticed. Forgotten. Turned into a sort of urban legend, a spooky story.
But for the very real families who had lost loved ones, not just a story. A ghoulish reality.
Adele picked up the pace subconsciously, now hurrying through the trees and starting to leave John behind. Not to be outdone, she heard her partner put on an extra burst as well, gasping raggedly behind her, but with equal determination, making up for his lack of endurance with sheer willpower.
They jogged through the night, beneath the falling sky.
A while later, John finally broke silence. “Adele!” he said, sharply. It seemed to take everything in him to utter those words. But he flicked a hand, his flashlight now out, as night had fully inserted itself across the skies.
Through the trees, Adele spotted movement. A light. Another flashlight.
Adele’s eyebrow shot up and her feet pattered to a halt on the man-made trail. She stared, eyes peering in the dark, then her voice probed out. “Dad?” Adele called. “Sergeant Sharp!”
The flickering light through the tree trunks paused. Then turned off.
“It’s me, Adele,” she called.
The light turned back on.
She redirected, leading the charge, with John gasping behind her. The two of them reached a gap in the trees and came across a small creek meandering through the forest. There, to Adele’s relief, the Sergeant was standing next to the same straight-backed, clean-cut man Adele had talked to that morning.
The two of them had vests on and whistles dangling from their necks. They both wore matching glares as they stared at Adele, and then their eyes flicked to John. The two older men watched as the tall French agent doubled over, hands now on his knees, gasping at the ground.
In between gasps, he cursed, but then found he had to gasp even more for talking, and remained silent, one hand braced against the nearest trunk.
Adele had to hand it to him. John was strong, quick. But he was a sprinter. Meant for rapid action in short bursts. On longer runs, though, if not for sheer willpower, he wouldn’t have kept up.
The Sergeant was frowning at his daughter. A flicker of surprise was quickly fading to worry lines. Her father had never been the sort to let anyone know they’d caught him by surprise—not even by his own daughter beneath moonlight in the woods. “What is it?” the Sergeant said simply. No Hello. No What are you doing here? Just, What is it?
“Are you all right?” she said, returning his stare.
The Sergeant glanced at his friend then back to Adele. “We’re searching. Had a couple more hours.”
“Okay,” Adele said. She swallowed. “Great, look—no easy way to say this: but I need you to tell me where that cabin is.”
Her dad blinked. “Cabin?”
“The one with the elderly couple. The one you stumbled on yesterday.” She trailed off, allowing the lilt of her voice to fill the silence.
Her father’s frown deepened. “I told you, that wasn’t anything. Just a nice couple living off the grid. They said they’d left the city a few years ago.”
“Yeah, I think they were bullshitting you. I think it was a story they made up just to get your sympathy. Where are they?”
Her dad stared at her. For a moment, she wasn’t sure what was passing between them, but his eyes were like flint. His jaw set much in the way John’s did when he was about to hit someone. Of course, she knew her father would never strike her. And yet he seemed in a posture of aggression, though she wasn’t sure exactly what she’d said to spark it.
In a clipped, quiet tone, he said, “You think I’m wrong?”
“I don’t think you’re wrong. I think there might be something going on that wasn’t obvious at first.”
His jaw was still clenched. Her words did nothing to settle him. “You think I’m wrong,” he muttered. “You think I don’t know what I’m doing. You really think that little of me?”
“Joseph,” said the other man, in a calming voice, “where was this cabin?”
But the Sergeant ignored his friend. He stared at Adele. “I’m telling you,” he said, stubbornly, “there is nothing going on there. If they were up to anything, I would have seen it. I would have.” He said the second part with severity, but this time, his anger seemed to be directed somewhere else. His eyes flicked off to the trees, peering into the darkness, then back to Adele. For a moment, the only sound came from John still gathering his breath and finally finding some energy to utter a choice string of French curse words.
“Look, Dad, I’m sure you would have. But it was late; maybe the best clues are only out during the day.”
“It’s still late,” he growled. “I can’t believe,” his voice began to rise in volume, “you’d come out here, hunt me down like I’m some sort of—”
“Dad,” she cut him off before he got a head of steam. “I just need you to tell me where that cabin is, please.”
The Sergeant flicked his gaze toward the trees. Again, as if looking for a ghost, or something that no one else could see. His eyes were sunken, and Adele realized he hadn’t slept in two days. His hands were at his side, and one of them was curled, but slowly opened.
“Dad, we found a body this morning. There are going to be more bodies. I need to follow every lead. I’m desperate. You found that cabin. No one else. You did. I’m asking for your help. I’m running out of time; there are other people on the line.”
The silence reigned again, and even John stopped cursing to listen.
“I don’t know exactly where it was,” he muttered—his cheeks had reddened. And though the words he spoke seemed even, his tone seemed on the verge of explosion. “It was late and dark. But I know which quadrant I was searching. And I know which direction I was headed.” He jutted his chin out as if challenging her.
“That’s fine,” Adele said in relief. “Please, just tell me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Night allowed little room for error. And yet the two agents wandering though the labyrinth of vegetation found their going difficult.
Adele felt the cold press in, the wind whistling and buzzing past her ears. The trees all looked the same. The cold ground all seemed identical. She’d lost the desire to speak, her lips having numbed. But if she had wanted to, she would have ask
ed John, Have we been here before? It felt like they were going in circles, one clumsy step at a time. A flashlight beam carving through the darkness like a sickle through wheat.
Another step, and another. More darkness, more cold. Exhaustion pressed in.
Adele shivered and paused, leaning back, her head tilted, her eyes glimpsing moonlight through the canopy. Then she felt a nudge. She glanced over and spotted John’s flashlight had veered off. His hand was tapping her shoulder and pointing.
Through the trees.
Something.
A clearing? No… Something else…
The darkness witnessed John and Adele—after a roundabout journey moving through the forest, following her father’s instructions—arrive at a small, dirt driveway, leading up a trail with saplings lining the road, heading toward a wooden cabin with an orange light glowing out.
Adele swallowed, standing at the foot of the dirt road. Her lips felt less numb all of a sudden. The cold seemed to recede. She took another step toward John’s flashlight beam, toward the road. She nudged her partner. “This has to be it,” she said.
John nodded. Adele pointed at the saplings. “Young trees. Broken plants means broken bones.”
“I still don’t get what that means,” said John.
Adele swallowed. Her mouth felt dry all of a sudden. “I think we’ll find out soon enough.”
“Should we call for backup? We don’t know how many of them are in there.”
Adele shook her head. “Dad said he saw two. Besides, we wasted hours finding my dad and then this cabin.” She glanced up toward the sky, and then back at the trail, illuminated in the beam of John’s flashlight. The bright yellow and white light competed with the orange glow from the cabin for dominance.
Adele shook her head once and stepped onto the dirt trail. The dirt crunched under foot as she moved up, heading for the cabin.
She spotted plants and neatly arranged vegetables in a small garden. Whoever had spent time out here certainly liked order. Everything had its place; most of the vegetables had small signs and support sticks for vines, but, given the season, had nothing growing yet. Others, winter plants, were neat, trimmed, pruned.