by Jan Burke
Our progress was slow. Following the lead of a man who was handcuffed and heavily guarded — and perhaps savoring his last days outside of prison — was only part of the reason for our sluggish pace.
Ben and David had extra equipment to be carried, beyond the usual camping gear, and were heavily loaded down.
The group was large, and within it our level of experience varied from novice to expert. I suppose I fell somewhere in the middle; plenty of time spent hiking and backpacking, but nothing recent. J.C., the ranger, was undoubtedly the most seasoned backpacker, with Andy a close second; Flash, Houghton, David, and Ben only a little less so, but all were certainly at home in the outdoors. Bob Thompson and Phil Newly were the apparent novices. Duke was the oldest of the guards — he had shown me a photo of his new grandson, and a story about his high school days made me guess that he was in his early fifties. He was in better shape than Merrick or Manton, who were in their early thirties. Earl, somewhere in between in age, was also somewhere in between in fitness.
Flash Burden could have run circles around all of them. He was enthusiastically taking shots of wildflowers, double-checking with Andy before scribbling their names in his photographer’s notebook. Andy only corrected him once or twice. They soon fell into easy talk about places they had gone hiking or rock climbing.
It was difficult to judge Parrish’s experience on the trail. My suspicions were that in this forest, at least, he was absolutely at home. Perhaps in other forests as well. His boots, for example, were his own, and they were well made and broken in. He did not panic, as Phil Newly did, when a gopher snake hurried across the trail.
Bingle was not disturbed by wildlife, either. He didn’t chase squirrels or other small animals, even when it was clear that he had noticed them. For the most part, he stayed near David, his behavior alternately regal and clownish.
At times, he walked near Ben. I learned from David that there was good reason for Bingle’s attachment to Ben — for the last few months, Ben had been living at David’s house. Although David was reluctant to supply details, apparently Ben had split up with a girlfriend, moved out, and was staying with David until the end of the semester. “He plans to find a place of his own then, even though I’ve told him he can stay on if he’d like. The dogs and I have enjoyed his company.”
“Forgive me if I have a hard time understanding why,” I said.
He smiled and said, “No, I guess Ben hasn’t made a great impression on anybody on this trip. He’s not at his best right now.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Oh, all sorts of reasons,” he said vaguely, and moved on.
We eventually stopped for lunch in a small clearing that didn’t allow us to spread out as much as we had before. Nick Parrish used this opportunity to resume staring at me. Bingle, perhaps remembering who had shared a tent with him, took exception to this, standing rigid and growling at him.
“Tranquilo, mi centinela,” David said softly, and the dog subsided.
“What did you say to him?” Parrish asked.
David didn’t answer.
“You appear to have a protector, Ms. Kelly,” Parrish said. “For now, anyway.”
“Leave her alone, Parrish,” Earl said.
“But I think Ms. Kelly ought to be interviewing me, don’t you?”
I was spared having to answer as the last member of the group hobbled into the clearing. Phil Newly moved gingerly toward a large flat rock, then sat down on it with a sigh. It was obvious that he was about to cripple himself with those new boots. For the last half mile or so, he had been walking as if every step were over hot glass.
I was searching through my pack for some of the moleskin I had brought, when Ben Sheridan walked up to him and said, “Take your boots off.”
Newly blushed and said, “I beg your pardon?”
“Take your boots off! You’ve probably got blisters. You should have spoken up on the trail.”
“I’ll leave them on, thank you,” Newly said, with as much dignity as he could muster.
“Don’t make a bigger nuisance of yourself by being stubborn,” Ben said. “You’re endangering this whole trip by damaging your feet. Or perhaps that’s what you have in mind?”
“Now see here—”
“Ignore his manners, Phil,” I said. “He’s right about the blisters. Dangerous if they become infected.”
But he wasn’t ready to give in, and instead took out a Global Positioning System device and began the process of taking a reading. Not hiding his exasperation, Ben walked off.
“You ever use one of these handheld GPS receivers?” Newly asked me.
“No,” I said. “I manage okay with a compass, an altimeter, and a map.” And a little help from J.C., I added silently. His familiarity with the area had helped me identify features of the terrain more than once.
“These are pretty amazing little gizmos.”
He handed it to me and spent a few minutes showing me the basics of how it worked. As the display came up with a longitude and latitude reading, he said, “Of course, it won’t work in narrow valleys or in dense forests, or other places where it might have a hard time picking up signals from the satellites. I noticed Detective Thompson is using one, too.”
I handed it back to him. He tucked it away, started to stand up, and swore. “Excuse me,” he said, sitting down again.
“Why don’t you let me take a look at those blisters? If they aren’t too bad, this moleskin will help.”
But when he took the boots off, it was clear that he had already done some real damage. Over the years I’ve taken first aid classes, but I was relieved when J.C., much better trained and experienced, stepped in to do what he could for Newly.
We moved out again, Newly moving slowly but not giving up. When we stopped about an hour later to get our bearings, he didn’t hesitate to take the boots and socks off again. I could see new blisters forming. I was starting to cut another set of moleskin pads for him when we heard Parrish call out, “I want to talk with my lawyer. Privately.”
“What kind of idiots do you take us for?” Duke said. “You can’t just go off somewhere in the woods with your lawyer.”
Phil Newly sighed, and with a wince, stood on his bare feet. “I’ll talk to him over here, in plain sight of all of you. Surround us, if you like, but give us a little room to confer.” When Duke looked skeptical, he added, “I’m in no shape to ‘go off somewhere in the woods’ with anyone.”
Duke looked over to Bob Thompson, who nodded. “But I want them surrounded,” Thompson said. “And nobody else near them. Ms. Kelly, get the hell away from Mr. Newly.”
No one had to coax me to move out of range of Parrish, who was smiling at me. “Ah,” he said, feigning disappointment. “And I was hoping she’d play with my feet, too.”
That earned him a sharp push from Earl.
Wary, none of the guards stood too far away from him. “Newly,” Bob Thompson said, “you two will just have to whisper.”
Parrish looked down at Newly’s bare feet. “You’re moving too slow, Counselor,” he said, not trying to lower his voice.
“There’s nothing I can do about that now,” Newly said. “What do you want?”
“To move faster,” Parrish said, and brought one of his sturdy boots down hard on Newly’s bare left foot.
Newly gave a shout of pain, and Bingle began barking, but the guards had already moved in, shoving Parrish hard to the rocky ground and pinning him there. Houghton, gun out, covered them from a short distance away. Earl was on top, holding Parrish’s face against the earth, distorting Parrish’s smile of satisfaction.
J.C. hurried over to Newly, who looked as if he might faint. The ranger spent a moment examining the foot and said, “I think he broke some bones. It’s swelling up fast.”
He opened his first aid kit again and applied an instant cold pack to the foot. Soon it became clear that Newly would not only be unable to walk, he wouldn’t be able to put his left boot back on.
This led to a heated discussion over whether to end the entire trip then and there.
Thompson was the main proponent of calling it quits. The others pointed out the time and expense already incurred. “If we have him up here without his lawyer—” Thompson began, but Parrish interrupted.
“I fire him, then.”
“And I’ll take you right back to Las Piernas anyway,” Thompson said. “You think the D.A. won’t go for the death penalty if he finds out how you screwed up this expensive search? Which may just be a wild goose chase, after all.”
“I can promise you,” Parrish said with a cold smile, “that this is no ‘wild goose chase.’ ”
There was a long moment of silence before another round of arguments began. Newly agreed to allow Parrish to lead them to the grave out of his presence. “Leading you to her saves his life,” he gritted out, his face pale and drawn.
Thompson finally relented, and decided to let J.C. and Houghton take Newly back to the plane. “Houghton, you fly back with him, take him to a hospital, then get in touch with the D.A. as soon as possible. Let him know exactly what happened here, and that Newly agreed to these arrangements.”
J.C. and Houghton divided up the contents of Newly’s pack, then supported Newly between them. Newly, still white with pain, tried to give me the GPS, saying, “Mark the position of anything I need to know about, will you?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t,” I said, not wanting to be even vaguely involved with Parrish’s defense.
He managed a small smile and said, “You’ll be using your compass, then?”
“Yes, and although I don’t think any sane judge will let you get your hands on my notes, we both know Bob Thompson is using a GPS, too.”
He nodded, but seemed too distracted by the pain in his foot to keep talking.
J.C. asked Andy to keep an eye on things while he was gone. “Leave trail signs for me,” he said, “and don’t let them destroy too many acres of forest, if you can help it.”
We all watched the trio move slowly away from us.
I had a few chances to talk to Andy when he stopped every so often to mark a turning with a strip of cloth on a bush or small rocks in the shape of an arrow.
“Do you think J.C. will ever catch up to us again?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” Andy said. “He’s in great shape. He can cover distances in a day that would have most of us looking as wiped out as Phil Newly was at lunch.”
By late that afternoon, I began to wonder if we would make it to an area where we could set up camp, let alone to Julia Sayre’s grave. We had wasted a lot of time, and the air was cooling rapidly. Clouds were gathering overhead — cirrus clouds. We might be in for a storm.
Thompson apparently had the same concerns. He stopped the procession. “We don’t seem to be heading in the direction of the valley you indicated on the map,” he complained to Parrish.
“I was wrong,” Parrish said. “I know exactly where I’m going now.”
Just then the breeze shifted a little. Bingle lifted his nose and made a chuffing sound, then began to whine, looking at David, ears pitched forward.
“Is he alerting?” Ben asked softly from behind me.
David was focused on the dog. “¿Qué te pasa?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
The dog started to move ahead, and David hurried to catch up with him. I followed, ignoring Thompson’s “Get back here!”
The dog was moving rapidly now, and soon was out of sight. “Bingle! ¡Alto!” David called, but Bingle had already stopped. He was ahead of us, barking, then whining in distress.
We reached it at the same time, both giving a cry of revulsion at the same moment. Bingle was at the base of a pine tree that at first seemed draped in some strange, gray moss. But it was not moss. The objects dangling from its branches were animals. Coyotes. A dozen or so carcasses, hanging upside down, in varying states of decay, nailed to the lower branches, as if someone had started to decorate a macabre Christmas tree.
I put my hand over my mouth, fighting off the urge to be sick.
David was quieting Bingle, praising the dog, but I could hear the shakiness in his voice.
We heard the sound of the others, pushing their way through the woods behind us.
Nicholas Parrish looked up at the tree and smiled. “I told you we were headed in the right direction.”
6
TUESDAY, LATE AFTERNOON, MAY 16
Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains
Flash took pictures. Merrick, arms held back by Manton, red-faced with anger, shouted at Parrish that he was “one sick fuck,” while Manton did his best to keep his fellow guard from punching the prisoner. Parrish kept smiling.
I had watched the others arrive at the coyote tree; their faces had expressed first horror, then fury. Ben Sheridan, although briefly startled when he first saw the tree, now calmly studied it. He turned to Flash. “We’ll need photographs of this, Mr. Burden.”
Merrick, seeing Ben start to take notes, shouted, “That turn you on, Sheridan?”
“Shut up, Merrick,” Bob Thompson said without heat, moving closer to the tree, studying it as well.
“From several angles, please, Mr. Burden,” Ben said, then glancing at Merrick added, “if you videotape, please keep the sound off. David, perhaps it would be best to move Bingle away.”
“There’s a small clearing about fifty yards away — down that pathway, there,” Parrish said, pointing. No one thanked him for his help.
I stayed for a while, but no one else was talking. I saw Thompson take out his GPS. I used my compass to note the position of the tree.
I wondered if Thompson would ask for additional charges to be brought against Parrish for this — maybe J.C. could bring them on behalf of the Forest Service. I forced myself to count the coyotes — there were twelve of them. They appeared to have some sort of coating on them. Much as I tried to mentally brace myself, the sight made my stomach churn. I turned to Parrish. “Why?”
He grinned and said, “Feeling a kinship with them? Perhaps you’d like me to hang you here among them. Let them sway against you in the breeze.”
I felt a sudden surge of anger, but just as quickly saw that he enjoyed my reaction — so I clenched my teeth against a retort.
Quietly, Thompson asked me to leave, and for once, I was happy to comply with his request.
When I caught up with Andy and David, they were playing tug-of-war with Bingle, using a cotton rope toy that had the worn look of a favorite plaything. I joined in the game. The dog would shake the rope fiercely and then proudly prance around the clearing whenever he took it away from one of us, high-stepping as he let the others know who had won the encounter, looking slyly at each of us to dare the next comer. It was almost enough to take our minds off what was happening by the tree, but not quite.
“David,” Andy said, “you’ve been around this type of guy before. Why do you think Parrish did that?”
“There could be any number of explanations,” David said, “but if you’re trying to make any real sense of it, well, that’s something for a forensic psychologist to tackle.”
“He’s insane,” Andy said.
“Not by the legal definition,” David said. “He was found competent to stand trial.”
“According to Newly, Parrish was a severely abused child,” I said.
“Oh?” David said. “Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. His mother is dead and his sister has mysteriously disappeared, so we only have Parrish’s word about the abuse. In fact, he’s probably the only person on earth who knows where his sister is — either one of you believe she’s still breathing?”
Silence.
“Did he kill his mother?” Andy asked.
“No,” I said. “She died of natural causes. But one of the psychologists who interviewed him thought her death may have set him off.”
David shook his head. “I guess psychologists have to try to understand him. Me, in most ways, I don’t think I’ll ever really unde
rstand a man like Nick Parrish. Other people survive abuse and go on to lead productive lives — they don’t torture women and animals. Parrish is beyond explanation. Bingle’s actions make more sense to me.”
“So why is Ben back there studying that — that tree?” Andy asked.
“So that when the next Nick Parrish comes along, you catch him on his first coyote. Ben has done a lot more of this kind of work than I have. Maybe too much.” He glanced over at me. “He’s had a lot of tough cases lately. And a couple of back-to-back MFIs — he’s on the DMORT team for the region.”
“What’s an MFI?” I asked.
“Sorry. Mass fatality incident — anything that takes the lives of a large number of people. Natural or otherwise — earthquakes, riots, bombings—”
“Airplane crashes?”
“Yes. Ben was called out to one of those in Oregon a few weeks ago.”
“The commuter jet that crashed in the Cascades?”
“Yes. Eighty-seven dead. And we had just come home from working the flood up in Sacramento when the DMORT team got called to that one.”
“What’s a DMORT team?” I asked, pulling at the rope as Bingle nudged me with it.
“Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team — it’s a federal program. Let’s suppose you’re a coroner or a mortician in a rural area, coping with — oh, at the most, a few bodies a week. A plane crashes in the local woods, and suddenly you’ve got two hundred bodies to deal with. Usually, in a mass disaster, the local coroner and mortuary facilities can’t handle it. If the coroner needs help with victim identification and mortuary services, the DMORT team can bring in a mobile morgue and the specialists to go with it. There are ten DMORTs, organized by region. Ben’s on the one for this region.”
“But this is different,” Andy said. “Even working on criminal cases, I’ll bet this is the first time he’s seen something like that coyote tree.”
David shrugged. “Maybe. You might be surprised at some of the things we’ve seen, Andy. Things that . . .” His voice trailed off. He shook his head, then called to Bingle. After a moment he said, “Ben wouldn’t take the time back there if he didn’t think he could learn something from it.”