“They closed this place years ago, but Dad used to bring my sisters and me here all the time and tell us all about the life of the forest ranger.”
“Forest ranger?”
“Yeah. They’d stay here on their own, watching for fires, reporting conditions—”
“On their own?”
“Yup.”
“They’d stay here all the time?”
“Well, they’d work shifts, sleep, eat…”
“Could they read? Listen to the radio?”
“I guess so.”
Charlie marvels at the idea.
“No internet, though,” I say, snapping Charlie out of his daydream.
His smile fades. “Yeah, I suppose that wouldn’t work.”
I laugh. “Whether you like it or not, you should have some sort of connection to the real world.”
“Maybe in another lifetime, son,” he utters wistfully, climbing back on the atv. “Another lifetime.”
chapter 58
Old Fire Tower Road skirts the top of the hill and travels back down toward the lake. We follow it, both of us noting that there are clear signs of recent use: fallen trees chainsawed and moved to the side, and low-hanging branches that must’ve been broken by a large vehicle passing through.
Charlie pulls to the edge of the drop that leads down to the water and turns off the four-wheeler. Ollie trots behind us, ducking in and out of the trees, and I have to call to him. He comes racing, shooting past me and splashing into the water. I follow him while Charlie stays at the top of the ridge and surveys the area.
“You that worried about suckers?” I goad.
“Nope, simply taking in the scenery.”
I figure I should do the same and take a step back to view my surroundings. If this was where Terry came to do the exchange, it offered good cover. The long shoreline curved around, keeping any transactions—or murders—hidden.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Charlie calls down to me.
Ollie hears his voice and races back up to him.
“What doesn’t?”
“Notice the logs.” He points toward a spit of land jutting out into the water and the large trunks pushed up against it. “The currents push everything into this bay. If you were trying to dump a body, you’d have to push it out past the point. It wouldn’t be the most ideal way to get rid of it.”
“So, what would you do?”
He studies the location. “Either get on the other side of that beach,” he says, glancing back over his shoulder, “or go farther down past the bend.”
“But that would require planning, arranging…”
“Exactly. If they came out here with the intention to bump him off and make it seem like he drowned, the logistics alone wouldn’t work.”
“So they knock him off and simply bury him,” I suggest.
“But why kill him at all? Unless it was unplanned or accidental—”
“Why couldn’t it be?”
“It opens up too many possibilities. He vanishes, then people start searching for him. Wouldn’t that eventually draw attention to the very place you’re doing business?”
“What if Terry brought a gun? Tried to double-cross them and take the money and the drugs?”
Charlie shakes his head. “After everything we’ve heard about him? He gave drugs to old ladies, planned on proposing to his girl, and had no clue she was cheating on him. He was an idiot, and I feel sorry for him, but he didn’t have it in him.”
“Maybe those goons that people said were sniffing around the arcade were cleaning house? Maybe Terry messed something up and they decided to get rid of him?”
“Possibly, but then that destroys your whole supply chain. Setting up an operation like this takes a lot of work. If the plan was to cut ties with Terry, there are a lot more efficient and effective ways to make the transition to a new trafficker.”
I hear Ollie barking in the trees.
“What happened then?”
Charlie points to the water. “Terry gets fired, dumped by Miranda, and probably gets drunk. But he has his other job to do, and goes across the lake.” He turns back and points up the road. “The delivery people come and…” His brow furrows, frustrated by his lack of insight as to what might’ve happened next. “They kill him? But why? And if he just drowned, where is his body?” He shakes his head.
I climb up the ridge toward him. “Look, we’ve seen the place now. Let’s go back and maybe save ourselves from Mom’s wrath.”
He doesn’t move, just stares out at the lake.
“Ollie,” I call out, but he doesn’t seem to want to come with me either. I walk up to the treeline. Ollie’s a ways in, digging and barking. “Come on, buddy. Time to go,” I call again, but he’s not listening, so I go into the bush after him, a little annoyed that he needs this much prompting.
When I see what he’s got, I yell, “Leave it alone!” I have to get right up close to finally drag him away. “Charlie!” I call.
“What?”
I stare at the torn jeans, the white, bloated, rotting flesh exposed in the dirt. “I think we just found Terry Butler.”
chapter 59
Our cell phones have no signal, so I go back to the cabin to call the cops, but Charlie elects to stay behind. He says he wants to be sure that nothing else happens to the body, but I’m sure he really wants to spend time studying the crime scene.
Mom and Dad aren’t happy about our lengthy absence, but when I let them know what we’ve found, they stop lecturing and let me use the phone. While we wait for the cops to arrive, I tell my parents and Heather the version of the story that Charlie and I agreed on: Diane lent us her four-wheeler, I showed him where the fire tower used to be, Ollie took off, and we found him digging up the body.
Since we only left out a few key details and most of it was true, I didn’t struggle too hard telling them this. None of my family believes me anyway—once you stop one serial killer, all the other dead bodies you stumble across no longer seem to be a coincidence. Still, Mom is strangely passive. I suspect there’s a storm brewing that she’ll unleash when the time is right.
When the police arrive, I ride out with them to the location. They stop at the top of the hill beside the base of the old tower and walk down. Right away, they’re taking notes and asking questions about how we approached the area, where we walked, and if we had moved any of the freshly sawed trees—everything that Charlie and I had seen as signs of recent activity. Whatever headaches and predicaments he’s brought into my life, I have to give Charlie credit for my new powers of observation.
Charlie is exactly where I’d left him, sitting on a log by the edge of the slope down by the water, but I’m certain he’s been all over the area. They split us up and we go through our story question by question and I tell it exactly like I told Mom, Dad, and Heather. I skip over why we came out here to begin with and the whole discussion we had on the ridge, and I’m positive my story will concur with Charlie’s version perfectly.
It isn’t until they ask me if I saw anything else—plastic bags, duffle bags, or any other kind of container—that I’m certain they already suspect Terry’s connection to drug-trafficking. I play dumb. The less we go down that path, the better it’ll be for Charlie and me. We’re just two clueless teenagers who accidentally stumbled across a dead body.
Suddenly, a cry down by the beach catches everyone’s attention and a few cops race toward another cop who’s down by the logs jammed against the spit of beach. Sure enough, after photographing and cataloguing it, one of the officers lifts a plastic bag above his head. I’m positive it’s the money Charlie and I found. I’ll confirm it with him later, but I’m betting he found my hiding spot and planted the bag while I made the call.
After they’re done questioning us, they take us up the hill to a car waiting to drive us home. Charlie and
I don’t say much on the way back to the cabin. I’m too nervous around the cops and Charlie knows from experience to stay quiet.
The hill isn’t steep but it’s long, and as I listen to the flit and chirp of birds in the trees around us, it occurs to me that we’ve solved the mystery. I can go back to my vacation and my normal life. I wonder if Charlie will stay or move on, but I’m guessing I already know the answer.
chapter 60
Cousin Rachel is impressed by Little Joe’s kitchen—for a dealer and scrap yard owner, he kept the place immaculate.
She searches under the sink and finds some dish soap and a knitted washcloth in a drawer. She wets it, suds it up, and washes off the blood and small bits of flesh caught on her serrated knife. She’s careful not to knick the cheap dollar store gloves she wears so that she won’t leave any dna behind.
She rinses the knife off, squeezes out the cloth and hangs it on the rack. She knows there may be traces still on it, but it’ll be dry before anyone finds it.
Outside, she gets into her car. As she starts the engine, the police scanner squawks and she hears the chatter. Terry’s body has been found—and there is talk of drug money.
That’s it, they’re done here.
She calls her two guys and sends them home, anticipating the long drive ahead. She’ll get home late, but at least she’ll get to sleep in her own bed beside her husband and watch her son’s swim meet tomorrow.
She shifts the car into gear and pulls out of Little Joe’s yard, driving out onto the highway. She goes over the bridge, moving past the turnoff to the old road where they used to do the exchange. Her priority was to clean up and remove any traces that could lead back to her bosses and she feels no loss or sense of nostalgia over the fact that she’ll never return to the town of Estoria. Adapt or die, wasn’t that the old adage?
Yet her thoughts drift to Terry. Although his death had caused her extra work over the last week—nothing she couldn’t handle—he hadn’t deserved to die. Whenever she cleaned up a mess like this, the real reason behind it usually became obvious. Most often it was due to greed or a bad relationship but Terry’s old boss and ex-girlfriend, cold-hearted
and duplicitous though they were, weren’t killers—and it was clear, to Rachel at least, that Terry’s death had nothing to do with a power play for the local drug scene. She doesn’t really care—it isn’t in her job description—but she makes a mental note to keep an eye on the local papers to see if the real reason finds its way to the surface. She doesn’t care about Terry, but she’d like to know who cost the company a solid source of income—as well as an inconvenience to her busy schedule.
Cousin Rachel’s car speeds down the highway.
There’s one thing she does know, though: whatever happened to Terry, it had nothing to do with her.
chapter 61
The woman lies in the silence of the forest, watching.
The men in uniforms move up and down the hill. They’d found the body of the man she killed almost two weeks ago when he came to her shore. But he’s no longer where she left him; he had floated with the currents to where the other woman and the four men with the white van had found him. She finds it strange that they buried him—they hadn’t ended his life and certainly didn’t seem to be his family.
She rolls over and the soft moss cushions her back. Her hair twists in a long, loose braid across her neck. The tops of trees brush against the blue sky; birds rotate in a cyclone above. She stretches out her arms and her fingers feel spongy mushrooms and smooth blueberries and the rough bark of trees. She digs beneath the cool earth, where the ants and worms crawl.
Her attention is drawn to a tickle on her cheek. At first she thinks it’s a stray hair falling across her face, but then it moves. An insect—a small, smooth beetle—makes its way toward her nose before veering down to the top of her lip, where it pauses. With a quick flick of her tongue, she catches it and pulls it into her mouth, crushing it between her teeth before swallowing.
She rolls back and watches the men again. They’ve been here for many days and nights, but they don’t wander too far, staying close to the path and the road. They’re here because of what she did to that man—that stupid, stupid man who got too close. She hopes her patience will pay off and that they’ll leave soon.
Because if they don’t, she’ll do whatever it takes to protect her family.
chapter 62
When we pull up in the police car, I’m sure Mom and Dad are going to freak, but Charlie takes the blame immediately. He tells them that it was his fault, that he knew they wouldn’t let us go, but that he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go for a ride on an atv. They aren’t convinced and drag us into teatime. By the end of it, they’re even more distrustful of our defense that we really weren’t looking for Terry, that we just happened to stumble across him. We are put on lockdown in the cabin, restricted to only places where one of them, including Heather, can keep an eye on us.
So, over the next few days, we stay close to home, hanging out at the dock and reading. I persuade Charlie into giving the water a try and he finally agrees, mostly because his tough-guy persona doesn’t work well with a fear of leeches. But it doesn’t stop him from bringing down a container of table salt to the dock before going in and thoroughly checking every inch of himself every few minutes.
In the late afternoon we pick through the collection of board games and play a few, and in the evening, we return to the firepit to roast marshmallows. Charlie displays a calm temperament that I’ve never seen before, possibly due to the relatively healthy experience of being away from the city. Although I’m not used to this version of Charlie, I think it’s a good thing. It’s like we’re really on vacation.
On the second day, the cabin phone rings and I answer it.
“Hello, Anthony.”
I recognize her voice immediately. “Hello, Detective Gekas.” When I say her name, Charlie stares at me, dumbfounded.
“Is Charles with you?”
I point at him and he shakes his head, waving his hands in the air in a way that tells me I should say no. I ignore him. “Yes, Detective.”
He throws up his arms and slumps his shaggy head.
“Put me on speaker.”
“Uh, I can’t. It’s a rotary dial phone.”
There’s a pause and I can tell Gekas is wondering why we’re still using this ancient technology.
Charlie can’t keep quiet and yells, “It’s like living in the stone age around here!”
“Hello, Charles,” Gekas says flatly.
I point at the receiver and wave him over. After a few awkward seconds, he finally comes over and the two of us lean in close to the handset.
“Hello, Detective,” Charlie says.
“I hear you two have been busy,” Gekas insinuates.
That’s an understatement. We could play dumb, but we know she’ll see through it.
“The missing guy they found?” I ask innocently, though not very convincingly.
She adds, “Don’t insult my intelligence, Anthony. I know he happens to be a drug trafficker. Your names are on the report, and the fact that it was you and Charlie who found him doesn’t come as much of a surprise, I have to say.”
Man, she really does keep tabs on us.
“Promise me, you two,” her voice is stern now, “that this is absolutely it. No more hunting for mysteries or playing detective. You gave me your word, Anthony.”
“Yes, that’s it,” I say, though Charlie is noticeably quiet.
But Gekas isn’t done. “Chasing after these kinds of people… leave it to the professionals.”
“We will, Detective Gekas.”
“Take care, you two,” she finishes, then hangs up.
I look at Charlie, hoping he’ll stay in vacation mode so that I can keep my promise.
chapter 63
By the th
ird day of sticking close to the cabin, I convince Mom and Dad to allow us to go with Heather to the resort and hang out on a nicer beach. Since we can walk over to the restaurant and relax among other people, it makes me feel a little less like a prisoner.
Of course, Heather isn’t too pleased with my suggestion and I have to bargain: I have to agree to do all of her chores for the next two weeks before she finally gives in. She’s been giving Charlie the silent treatment for the last few days, but it doesn’t seem to bother him. In fact, he often tells her that he agrees with her opinion of him, which, of course, only frustrates her more.
For the first two hours on the beach, Heather appears to ignore us, although I know she’s watching our every move like a hawk. I eventually convince her to join us in the water, and she agrees, mostly because the cool water offers a nice break from the heat, although she does play some paddle-ball. Her ability to almost entirely shut Charlie out is amazing; she’s spoken only one or two terse words to him, and those only when absolutely necessary. It isn’t until the three of us take a break for ice cream that Heather’s tough shell starts to crack.
“I’m buying,” Charlie says, smiling. “Chocolate swirl?”
“Fine,” I say, trying to cut him off before he twists his selection into a bad punchline.
He looks at Heather. “And I’m guessing you like to keep it interesting… so, flavour of the day?”
She glares at him but finally says, “Cookies and cream.”
He snaps his fingers. “Right. Going with the safe choice.” He bounds up the stairs to the concession window.
I peer at the menu board of choices. “Flavour of the day is tiramisu and you passed it up?”
“You trying to suggest something, brother?”
I grin. “Nothing. You might want to hate on the guy a little less.”
She frowns at me. “I like cookies and cream.”
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