“I can see that,” Sonja admitted.
Belinda sighed, slumping her shoulders. “If you knew there was a witch hot on your trail, you’d be worried too.”
Sonja put up both hands for Belinda to slow down. “Now hold on. I think I deserve at least a little explanation. Where the heck have you been this whole time? Why haven’t you contacted me before now?”
“We don’t have much time, but okay. I’ve traced the witch’s whereabouts to this park. I’ve been slowly gathering clues and trying to figure out how to bring her out of the woodwork.”
Sonja folded her arms. “That still doesn’t explain why you didn’t include me in this. We’ve worked together on this investigation from the beginning. Why would you go off on your own without even word one to me?”
“I’m sorry,” Belinda looked down, embarrassment flushing her cheeks.
“After all, I’m the one she seems interested in. I’m the one she is after, right?”
“Yes and no,” Belinda answered.
“Yes and no? What’s that supposed to mean?”
Reaching out, she grabbed onto Sonja’s forearm. “Look, I know this may be scary, but you have to listen to me. I didn’t contact you until today for a good reason.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
Belinda looked back and forth, double checking that they were completely alone. Her eyes met Sonja’s, looking deep. “You said yourself that she’s after you, right?”
“Right. All the more reason for you to keep me in the loop.”
“No, all the more reason to keep you out of the loop,” she argued.
“Don’t start that with me.” Even if this was a scary situation, she didn’t like Belinda’s new attitude.
“If I brought you into her territory, it would be harder for me to track her down. She isn’t looking for me, she’s looking for you. If you were with me this whole time, she would have seen us coming, stopped us, and done goodness knows what to you.”
“I thought she liked having me around. My abilities to see ghosts, you said so yourself that it draws in people with evil intentions—like murders. Doesn’t the witch feed off that?”
Belinda shrugged. “She does, but what is she building all of the dark magic up for?”
This question stumped Sonja. “What do you mean?”
“I think the witch has some sort of plan in the works. I’m not sure what exactly, but I’m positive it won’t be pretty.”
Sonja thought hard over these new facts. “Let’s see if I have this correct. You’re saying that she is coming to the end of her charade and, for some reason, she probably needs me to complete her little ritual—whatever it may be.”
Belinda leaned against a nearby tree. “That’s about the long and short of it, I’d say.”
Sonja searched her friend’s face, trying to find the excited and lighthearted woman she knew hidden inside the fear. “You’re sure about this?”
“Almost positive.”
Sonja looked around at the woods, starting to feel uncomfortable as if they were being watched. “Can you at least tell me how you know the witch is in these woods?”
Belinda began walking and motioned for Sonja to follow. “Let me show you.”
Trudging through the tall grass, Sonja felt like she was wading through a sea of prickly scratchy water. She’d need at least ten band-aids after this little nature hike. Somehow, if Belinda was right, she knew that she might need more than a few bandages along the way.
A few minutes later, Sonja spotted one of the cabins in the distance—the exact same design as the one they’d found the dead body in. As they got closer, she noticed a large number on the side. Cabin thirteen, the place where Shelton Briarworth was staying.
This couldn’t be a coincidence.
Coming around the back of the building, Belinda finally stopped in place and pointed. “There. You see that?”
Sonja examined the old warped wood of the structure and instantly spotted the strange swirly symbol carved there. “What the heck is that?”
“A rune.”
“A rune?”
“It’s her mark. I’ve seen them all over the park.”
“Does it mean something?”
Belinda turned and looked Sonja directly in the eye. “It means rising death.”
Sighing, Sonja rubbed her scratched up arm. “I should have guessed. This murder is connected to the witch too, isn’t it?”
Belinda’s stone cold stare answered that question.
CHAPTER 8
* * *
“Who’s out there?” came a deep booming voice from inside the cabin.
Belinda and Sonja looked at each other with shocked expressions. They had been overheard talking.
The front door of the building banged open and a man emerged, walking around to face the snoopers. He was short with gray hair and a full belly. He wore the suit pants of a ranger uniform but only a white undershirt on top. The chaotic nature of his hair indicated that he may have been trying to take a nap when he was interrupted by the women.
“Who are you? What are you doing out here?” he demanded.
“We, uh, were just taking a walk through the woods.”
“Don’t you know the rules? Stay on the trails only. You damage the natural foliage otherwise. I could write you up for that, you know?”
“I’m very sorry. We won’t do it again.”
“We? Who’s we? All I see is you, lady.” He pointed at her with a chubby finger.
Sonja looked over her shoulder. Belinda was nowhere to be seen. She had just vanished without even a goodbye, leaving Sonja to face the strange, angry man alone.
“I’ll have you know, you woke me up from an afternoon nap, young lady,” he snapped.
Sonja stuttered on her own thoughts for a second, feeling like a car that died before it even got started. Finally, she managed to push out some words. “W-Well, I was looking for Shelton Briarworth. Are you him?”
“Yeah? What of it?”
“Actually, I was sent ahead to see if you were here,” she lied.
“Sent by whom?” the man asked.
“Lieutenant Doggs. He is going to want to speak with you before the evening is out.”
“Me? What the devil for?”
Sonja paused, wondering how much she should reveal to this stranger. Realizing he could easily be the killer, she decided not to say anything about the murder quite yet. Instead, she asked some careful questions. After all, if this murder really was connected to the presence of a witch, maybe she could get some clues about how to find her.
“I was just wondering, weren’t you and Barry Niles working together this morning?”
“If you could call it that,” he scoffed, clearly so preoccupied with his distaste for Mr. Niles that he overlooked Sonja’s previous comment about the lieutenant, even if temporarily.
“Why do you say that?”
“We were assigned to go check out a potentially illegal fire. Unfortunately, we hardly made it up the trail when the kid went berserk on me. Attacked me.”
“Attacked you?”
“Yeah, as a pretty lady like yourself, I’m sure you know how some of these young men are.” He folded his arms, resting them on his large belly.
“I’m not sure I catch your drift.”
“They’re short tempered, entitled.”
“And this is how Mr. Niles was?”
“That kid couldn’t even take a little constructive criticism. I was trying to give him a little advice about how to best go about doing the job of a ranger—something I have far more experience in than he does—and he flew at me.”
“You didn’t report this incident to your supervisor?”
“What? No way.”
“Wouldn’t it be proper procedure to report him?”
“Hey, if it had been a fair fight, I could have bested him easily. As it was, I didn’t need it going around that I lost to the guy.”
“But it wasn’t fair a fair fight,�
� she stated.
“No way. When he attacked me out of the blue like that, how am I supposed to respond? He socked me right in the jaw so hard that I dropped my rifle. It fell over the cliff.”
Sonja paused at this new bit of information. “You dropped your gun?”
“It went right over the cliff, like I said—a brand new twenty-two rifle. One of the shots even went off. I could have been killed.”
It was apparent to Sonja that either this man didn’t know his fellow ranger was dead or he was doing an excellent job putting on a show like he didn’t know. She also found it a little odd, and very unwise, that the gun was loaded with the safety off.
How else could it have fired when it was dropped?
“I had to go all the way down the side trail into the gulley to get it.”
“And did you?”
“I went down there and couldn’t find the darn thing. I’m telling you, Niles better pay for it if it isn’t found.”
That’s never going to happen, Sonja thought.
The man narrowed his eyes at her. “Hey, what is this all about? Didn’t you say the lieutenant of Park Police was coming to see me?”
He’d finally mentally caught up with what she was doing.
“I just came to tell you he wants to see you, that’s all,” she lied again.
“What for?”
“I can’t say.”
“Is there something going on with Niles that I don’t know about? Did he report me for something?” He clenched his jaw, tightening all the muscles in his face. “That would be just like him to lie to the cops.”
“He didn’t lie to the cops,” she spat out.
“Oh, yeah? What is this? Are you his girlfriend or something?”
“No.”
“You warn that guy, I’ll kill him if he tries to pull any stunts.”
“That won’t be necessary,” a gruff voice came from behind Shelton.
Sonja let out a quiet sigh of relief upon seeing Lieutenant Doggs and one of his men. In one hand, he carried the twenty-two rifle from the cabin. It was wrapped up in plastic to protect fingerprints.
“What I want to know is why you’re all the way out here at cabin thirteen, Miss Reed.”
CHAPTER 9
* * *
“I can explain,” Sonja argued.
“We’ll have a discussion later, Miss Reed. At the moment, I have other items to attend to,” Lieutenant Doggs said, holding the gun up higher.
“You found my rifle,” Shelton exclaimed. His excitement soon faded as he began to put two and two together. “Hey, what is this?”
“You openly admit that this is your firearm, Mr. Briarworth?”
“It is. I lost it early this morning over a cliff. Why?”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to accompany me. I have a few questions.”
“What about?” he demanded, standing up straight with an angry scowl on his face.
Doggs looked unamused. “About the murder of Barry Niles.”
Shelton white as a sheet. “Wait, what? You’re saying my rifle was used to murder a man? How is that even possible? Those bullets are hardly large enough to hunt small game with.”
“What I’m saying is that it appears that a bullet from this kind of rifle may have been the culprit.”
“That’s ludicrous. I didn’t kill him. My gun would only be missing one round because it went off when it fell over the cliff.”
“That accounts for the second bullet.”
“Second bullet?”
“This gun is missing two rounds, Mr. Briarworth. Now, will you come willingly or do I have to order my officer to cuff you?”
Licking his lips, Shelton looked from the cops, to Sonja, and back to the cops again. “I’ll come along, no problem. But I’m telling you, I didn’t kill anyone.”
“I’m sure the evidence will tell us the answer to that,” Doggs said, motioning for the man to come along.
“And you, Miss Reed, stick around close to the Welcome Hall. I want to ask you some questions as well.”
* * *
This was just great. First, Sonja found another dead body, and second, she might have accidently implicated herself in the murder. Third, one of her best friends was running about the woods like a crazy woman, and last of all, a witch was supposedly hunting Sonja down for some creepy ritual.
This camping trip was turning out to be a disaster.
“Sonja,” Frank called, waving from the side of the Welcome Center when he saw her approaching. He stood near an outdoor picnic table sitting in the growing shadow of the building.
“Hey, Frank,” she sighed. She was glad he didn’t know about her little slip up in the woods yet. He was sure to scold her about the importance of police procedure when he found out.
Part of her blamed Belinda for all of this.
“You look worn to bits,” he said, wrapping an arm around her waist.
“Of course. There’s been another murder and I got stuck walking your old flame back to her cabin.”
“My old flame?” Frank asked.
“Never mind. Forget I said anything.” She hated that she kept slipping up like that. Frank didn’t need to know about her weird worries.
Luckily, he let it slide. “Well, anyway, I wanted to let you know that Lieutenant Doggs has this case in the bag already.”
“Yeah?” Sonja asked, looking up into her boyfriend’s eyes.
“He’s ninety percent positive that after the official autopsy and a ballistics check, he’ll have everything he needs to bring in the killer.”
“You mean Shelton Briarworth?”
Frank’s eyebrows pushed downward with concern. “How do you know that?”
“Unluckily for me, I ran into him on the way back over here.”
“You did?” he asked, the sound of a lecture already on the edge of his voice.
“It was totally on accident,” she informed him. That part was completely true. “He didn’t hesitate to blurt out how much he hated the victim and wished he was dead. He also mentioned his twenty-two rifle.”
The furrow in Frank’s brow slightly disappeared and he shook his head, clicking his tongue shamefully. “If he is the killer, he sure hasn’t done much to hide it.”
“Doesn’t it seem a little strange?” Sonja asked.
“What?”
“I mean, wouldn’t a smart killer not leave so many clues behind?”
Frank sat down on the bench of the picnic table. “One of the things you learn early on in this type of job is that not all criminals are smart. In fact, many are just downright foolish.”
“I guess,” she said, sitting close to him and wrapping her arm in his.
“You know, it’s possible that Briarworth accidentally killed him, or did it in a fit of passion, and then didn’t know what to do about it. I knew the man a little, and he was often short tempered.”
She gave his arm a squeeze. “I suppose that’s true, but don’t you think it all seems a little obvious? There was so much evidence pointing to him that I could nearly call him out as the killer with little to no background on either man.”
“You know, not everything in life needs to be complicated,” he said, looking down at her.
She drank in his gaze, examining the color of his eyes in the quickly fading daylight.
His breath was warm and had a scent of mint. Leaning in, he kissed her passionately.
“Wow,” she whispered when he pulled away.
“You see? Like that. That was simple.”
“And beautiful,” she added.
“Right.”
Bethany flashed through her mind again. “Frank, do you think we are simple? Our relationship, I mean?”
He shrugged. “Sure. I think so.”
“You don’t believe that my ability to talk to ghosts, or the fact that I’m always around when a murder happens, makes our relationship more complicated?”
He thought a moment, tightening his lips. “No, I don’t.
It’s a little hard, and definitely a little scary, but it’s not complicated.”
Sonja sighed, leaning into him again. “I’m glad you think so.”
“And, just like us, maybe this is just a cut and dry murder case for once. Simple.”
She rubbed her cheek against the rough fabric of his uniform. “I hope you’re right.”
Unfortunately, something inside her gut told her otherwise.
CHAPTER 10
* * *
There was a firepit in the center of the amphitheater and it was blazing bright thanks to Frank’s outdoors skills—something Sonja had never known about her boyfriend.
Other rangers who had shown up for the next day’s award ceremony were also sitting on the stone seats looking into the warm blazing fire. A few had brought bags of marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate bars for s’mores.
Frank knew a few of the men and chatted about the old days, making Sonja feel a little left out at moments.
As the evening wore on, Sonja didn’t see the lieutenant again, much to her relief. If she was lucky, there wouldn’t be any more questions for her. More than likely, they’d find Shelton’s fingerprints on the gun and he would be officially arrested as the killer.
That was all fine and dandy, but the real question was, how was the witch connected? Had she somehow used a mind-altering spell to force Shelton to murder, had she benefited from the murder somehow, or was it just more evil energy for her to feed off of?
Sonja hated to admit it, but she was feeling nervous about going to bed that night. As she’d assumed, she was being forced to sleep in her tent she’d brought along, but was considering trying to sleep in the back of her catering van. It sounded safer than staying out in the open.
“You want one?” Frank asked, skewering a marshmallow on the end of a stick and interrupting her thoughts.
“Sure,” she agreed. Sweet foods always made hard or frightening situations better. It was part of the reason she loved cooking for a living so much. She could bring a little happiness and light into people’s lives each day, and that meant something to her.
“How do you like your marshmallow done?” he asked, taking a seat next to her and holding his stick out over the flames.
Waffling in Murder Page 4