by Jeff Dosser
Matt nodded and dropped into a chair Dr. Hill indicated. While he filled out the paperwork she excused herself and he heard the click of one of the cabinet doors. There was the solid metallic sound of wheels on a rail and a loud thunk as the panel reached the end of the track and locked in place.
He signed his name across the last line and pushed up from the chair. The odor of bleach permeated the room mixed with the sickly-sweet stench of decay. Sergeant Burns stepped up beside him. Dr. Hill stood next to an open metal door mounted on the wall. A blue sheeted form lay prostrate before her.
“Matt, may I call you Matt?” she asked.
He nodded slowly, not taking his eyes from the sheet. At the spot where the head lay, the cover was dark blue with moisture.
“Matt, all I need you to do is positively identify your mother.” She slowly moved a hand over the body to catch his eye and lift his gaze to hers.
The doctor’s eyes were blue and kind. “Matt, there’s been damage caused by your mother’s immersion in the lake. Fortunately, it’s a lot less than what I’d typically expect.” She cleared her throat and glanced briefly at Burns. “You’re going to see some discoloration, Matt, some disfigurement around the eyes. I want you to be prepared.”
Matt nodded. Despite his earlier insistence that he was an adult, a man, he didn’t feel it.
Dr. Hill pulled away the sheet and folded it just below his mother’s shoulders. The stench of stagnant water and rot seemed to reach up and grab him. But the sight of his mother’s face locked him in place.
Her long blonde hair was tumbled behind her, matted with moss and weed. Her normally rosy cheeks were mottled blue-green beneath the harsh fluorescents. Four deep scratches ran from her chin to shoulder, the flesh between the gashes a mushy red, like too rare roast beef.
Matt stared at his mother’s face wondering what was covering her eyes. His brain finally worked out the variegated masses he thought covered her eyes actually were her eyes. Or rather the spaces where eyes had been. Now, they were ragged, wet pits staring blankly at the ceiling.
“Wha…what happened to her eyes?” Matt stuttered.
Dr. Hill flung the wet cover over his mother and rolled her back into the metal tomb. Sergeant Burns draped a heavy arm across his shoulders and guided him to a chair. He sank into it listlessly.
“Your mother was immersed in the water for several days,” Hill said. “The damage was likely caused by the fauna inhabiting the region.”
Matt glared up at her, tears streaking his face. “You mean the fish ate her?”
Hill cleared her throat and glanced uncomfortably at Burns. “Um…yes. That’s correct.”
“And what about the claw mark on her face?” Matt blurted. “Doesn’t that mean someone did this to her?”
“No, son,” Burns’ husky voice answered. “There were several witnesses to the accident. The scratches were caused by branches on the tree your mom was pinned beneath. That’s why her life vest didn’t help. It’s also why it took us so long to find her.”
Darkness crept in from the edges of his vision. Far away a woman’s voice, it could have been Dr. Hills, said, “Put his head between his knees, I think he’s going to faint.”
Chapter Five
“Matt, you okay? Hey, Matt, wake up, buddy.”
The world swam into focus, brilliant and cool. Matt held up a hand to block the bright morning sun, recognizing Andy’s face haloed in brilliant gold. Andy had an arm beneath his shoulder and helped him sit up.
“What happened?” Matt croaked. The memories flooded back, smashing into his psyche like a fist. The eyes. Angrily he shoved away Andy’s arm and struggled to his feet. His back and butt were damp with morning dew, his face hot with embarrassment.
“I was comin’ back and saw you, man,” Andy said. “You went down like a sack of potatoes. Boom. I don’t blame you,” he said sheepishly. “This whole scene is pretty horrific.”
“Yeah, it is.” Matt rubbed his arms against the leg of his pants wiping away the dew. He stared down at the body. “I can’t believe I fainted.”
The woman was lying in a bed of tall, winter grass. Her head, cocked back and facing the sky, was surrounded by thick brown blades waving sedately in the breeze. Her mouth was cracked open as if her final moments were wrapped in torment. All around lay the tiny bodies of bees.
Matt forced himself to consider the face, the eyes. Like his mother’s, this woman’s eyes were vacuous, bloody pits. Like his mother, there were four long scratches across her face and neck.
“What do you suppose happened?” Andy asked.
“I’m not sure but it looks like she was attacked by a swarm of bees.” Overhead the tenebrous clouds skated across the sky, low and menacing. Matt dragged his eyes from the body and panned the field. They fell upon the overturned easel twenty feet away. Stepping cautiously across the clumps of prairie grass he bent down and lifted a canvas from a patch of thorns.
“I don’t know if we should be touching anything,” Andy said.
Matt’s eyes darted to Andy and back to the painting. “You’re probably right.” Instead of replacing the canvas Matt studied it. The painting was really quite good. A sketch of the bay. It reminded Matt of the lake yesterday morning when he’d come to survey the traps.
On the canvas, the lake and woods had been roughed out in pencil. The flock of sandhill cranes inhabiting the cove were depicted as pencil outlines haunting the water’s edge. The artist had provided details in only two birds. At the shoreline, she had painted a pair of cranes dancing in combat. Another figure had been painted in—a solitary deer stood at the wood’s border contemplating the scene. Matt blinked and moved his eyes closer. The deer’s eyes were red. A little weird, but well done.
He placed the canvas back where he found it and glanced to the sky. Thunder grumbled across the treetops with the promise of rain.
“You get the tarp?” Matt asked.
“Yeah, right here.” Andy bent to retrieve it and shook it out. “Should we cover her now or wait?”
Matt glanced at his watch and pulled the radio from his belt. He clicked the talk button. “William twelve to base. Do you have an ETA for the OHP detectives?”
“William twelve stand by,” Rachael’s voice flowed across the radio.
Out on the bay, tiny expanding circles signaled the arrival of rain. In moments the drops were falling fat and cold across his neck and back. “They’re not going to get here in time. We’d better cover her up,” he told Andy.
Andy floated the tarp across the body. He stood for a moment shaking his head and then glanced up at Matt. “What do you suppose happened to her eyes?”
“I don’t know.” Matt scrubbed a palm across his cheek. “I don’t know.”
They jogged along the path towards the parking lot, Andy’s white truck parked behind a green, older model Subaru Outback.
“Did you run the tag?” Matt asked. The pregnant drops of rain had transitioned to a light mist as Matt marched across the lot and examined the wagon. It was unremarkable as far as he could tell. A standard forest green with tan brown molding along the bottom. On the rear bumper were stickers you typically expect on a Subaru. ‘COEXIST’ in various religious symbols and peace signs on the bumper. On the rear window, a sticker which read, ‘Humankind Be Both.’
“Yeah, I wrote it down,” Andy told him. He pulled out a notepad and flipped it open. “The car’s registered to a Sadie Louise Rusk. White female, thirty-four years old. No criminal history, no warrants.” He folded up his notes and stuck them in his pocket.
Matt finished his circuit of the Subaru when the rain hit with a vengeance. It cascaded down in undulating sheets and sent them dashing for the shelter of Andy’s pickup. Matt swung open the door, pausing before jumping inside. On the ground were not two sets of tire tracks but three. Matt’s eyes traced the first to the edge of Andy’s truck. A second ended at the rear wheel of the wagon. But the third set of tracks looped to the right of the Subaru and left
the lot. Before the rain obliterated the evidence, he noted the tread prints on this third set of impressions were irregular. There was an eighth of an inch-thick slash across the tread print as if the tire had run across a sharp metal bar. Then the tracks were gone, obliterated by rain.
“Would you get in!” Andy yelled. “My seats are gettin’ soaked.”
Matt leapt inside and slammed the door. The temperature had dropped as the storm rolled in drenching Matt in a flood of frigid drops. He began to shiver as Andy flicked on the defrost, the fan of the old F150 grinding noisily beneath the dash as it struggled to warm the cab.
“Hang on, I think I got a towel.” Andy turned and dug through the back seat. The front windshield fogged thick and gray and began to slowly clear along the bottom. Andy dropped back in his seat and flipped a ragged green towel into Matt’s lap. “What the hell were you doin’ out there?”
“There was a third set of tire tracks in the lot,” Matt said. “They had to be fresh.” Matt wiped away the condensation on the passenger window and leaned over to study the ground. The tracks were already submerged beneath puddles of brackish water.
“What does another set of tire tracks mean?” Andy asked. “You think it was related to that woman’s death? Like maybe she was killed?”
Matt toweled off his arms and head. “No. I don’t think she was murdered. Didn’t you see all the bees?”
“Yeah, I did.” Andy wiped a hand across the fogged driver’s side window and stared towards the trail. “I’d say she ran into a swarm.”
“Possibly. It is the time of year for swarms.” Matt shook his head. “I don’t know, maybe she was allergic or she panicked instead of running away.”
“It could be some of those deadly African bees,” Andy said. “I heard they’re spreading like crazy.”
Matt sat lost in his thoughts, the rain blurring the distant edges of the lake into the steel gray of the sky.
“William twelve, William twelve, this is base.” The call crackled over the radio startling both men from their reverie.
Andy snatched the mic off the dash and hit the talk key. “Go ahead base.”
“William twelve. OHP informed me they’ll be another fifteen minutes before they get to you.”
“Copy that. Thanks, Rachael.” Andy racked the mic onto its holder and peered through the windshield. Already the rain had lessened, the sky lightening in the west as strips of dark clouds skittered across it.
Matt let his head drop against the headrest and stared at the ceiling. So far this morning had been a total shit storm, he hoped like hell it didn’t get any worse.
“Matt, what do you think happened to her face?”
Matt closed his eyes, his mother’s face etched in his mind, the skin mottled and thick, just beginning to swell with decay, a cloying stink of spoiled meat, her bright blue eyes nothing more than dark pits.
“The animals did it,” Matt whispered. He rocked forward and glanced into the rearview mirror. Two OHP black and whites and a white Suburban pulled up behind them. “It was the crows.”
Chapter Six
It took almost five hours before the troopers and detectives had completed their investigation. Fortunately, the rain let up and the sun came out soon after they pulled into the lot. It turned out to be a beautiful May afternoon.
Matt tried to not be insulted when the detectives blithely brushed off his guess as to when the victim had shown up to the park. When he mentioned the tire tracks he’d spotted in the lot, an older trooper smirked and told him to not worry about it.
“This isn’t a crime scene,” he said. “This woman was allergic to bees and ran into a swarm of ’em.” The detective pulled a can of Skoal from his pocket and jammed a plug of tobacco between his lips. “It was just bad luck.” He spat a stream of brown liquid to the ground. “Hell, she was stung so many times, her EpiPen didn’t even work.”
With his boots and shirt soaked, Matt gave up watching the detectives and tramped back to Andy’s truck to sulk. He wanted to scream that he’d been a cop in Alsuma for two years, a highly trained police officer with time on the street. He wasn’t some ignorant, backwoods Barney Fife.
Andy, on the other hand, followed the investigators around in a flurry of excitement. At first, the Highway Patrol guys seemed aggravated by his pointed interest but his genuine curiosity and passion at what they were doing seemed contagious. Soon they were tall-taling him with war stories and laughing good-naturedly at his questions. The last Matt saw, before tramping off to the truck, Andy was helping them set the measuring poles before photographing the body.
Matt crawled into the passenger seat of the old Ford and flicked on the heater and the radio. Stevie Nicks was crooning out ‘Gypsy’ on the oldies station as he pulled out his phone and poked through his Facebook pages.
By the time a McMichael’s Funeral Home van pulled up, Matt slipped out of the cab a drier and happier man. He helped the driver unpack the gurney and roll it down the trail to the body. As it didn’t appear the detectives were anywhere near being ready to load up the victim, Matt headed back to the truck.
When he hopped in, he noticed the light pole at the corner of the lot. All the time he’d worked here, Matt had never noticed the camera perched atop the pole. He dragged out his cell and called the office.
Rachael picked up on the second ring. “So how’s it going out there?” she asked. “Are they almost done?”
“Pretty good,” he said. “The OHP guys should be wrapping up in the next hour.” Out on the cove, a mated pair of mallards cut their wings and drifted onto the water with a splash. “Andy and I filled out witness statements, but since OHP is handling the investigation is there any paperwork to fill out on our side?”
“I’ve already got the forms printed,” Rachael said. “It’s only a few pages, so it shouldn’t take long.”
“Thanks,” Matt said. “The less paperwork the better.”
“I heard there were bees. Is this going to be an accidental death?”
“Yeah, that’s what they’re saying. There were dozens of dead bees all around the victim. They also found a used EpiPen. The medical examiner also found a medical card in the victim’s purse. Apparently, this woman was allergic to everything.”
“How old was she?” Rachael asked.
“Same as me,” Matt said. “Thirty-four.”
“Oh. That’s really sad.” It was hard to believe, but her statement sounded sincere.
“Hey Rachael, I have a question. Do any of these parking lot cameras work?”
There was a long pause. “I know some of them do,” she said. “The only ones we ever use are pointed at the boat docks but you can check through all the video files when you get back to the office. In fact, I’ll try and find the one for that lot and pull it up for you.”
“Thanks, Rachael, you’re the best.”
It was actually almost two hours before the caravan of OHP cars and the funeral home wagon were rolling out of the lot. By that time Matt was back in the boat and motoring across the lake.
His boots were soaked from wading back to the Jezebel so when he stepped into the ranger station and plodded towards the changing rooms his frozen feet squish-squashed noisily across the floor. The front of the ranger station was a wall of glass looking invitingly onto the visitors’ parking lot. An expansive wood counter ran almost the length of the building effectively separating the waiting area and its row of plastic chairs from the administrative area, offices, and classrooms beyond. Early afternoon light angled through the windows sparkling on the puddles Matt left in his wake.
Rachael glared disapprovingly at the wet footprints. “You gonna mop that up?”
“Yeah, I’ll clean it.” Matt waved her off. “Don’t worry. I just need to get some dry shoes on.”
He whipped past the rows of historical photos and construction maps of the dam that formed Lake Thunderbird Falls and stepped into the employees’ locker room. Luckily, he had forgotten to take his gym bag home and
his workout clothes from the day before were still there. Although dirty, the socks and gym shoes were dry.
When he sauntered back into the main hall, Rachael was already rolling the mop bucket back into the equipment closet. She shot him a ‘Now-you-owe-me’ glance and closed the door.
“Hey, I coulda done that,” Matt said. “I just needed to get out of my wet boots or I’d be spreading water everywhere.”
“No problem.” Rachael waved a hand dismissively. “I didn’t want any guests slipping and falling.”
He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “Say, did you have a chance to pull up any of the parking lot videos?”
“No, I didn’t have time to search through all the camera feeds. I did pull up the app that controls the feeds.” She jacked a thumb behind her. “It’s ready to go in the office. Be sure to log out when you’re done. And don’t forget to fill out your paperwork.”
“Thanks, Rachael.” He watched her disappear around the corner and stepped into the side office and dropped down in front of the computer. A wiggle of the mouse brought the monitor to life. On it were three rows and three columns of images. Three of the nine camera feeds were useless, two were black and the other an out of focus jumble of browns and greens.
Studying each of the images in turn, Matt determined none of them was the Calypso Cove parking lot. He clicked through the menu eventually finding another eight feeds. Half of these were either out of focus or black. One, at the bottom of the screen, caught his eye. The angle of the camera was confusing. Then he spotted the scrapes in the gravel. It was where the tow truck had removed the Subaru. This was it.
He pulled up the feed and began to rewind. The timer at the bottom of the window reeled back the hours until it read 1:22 of today’s date. The screen went black. He fast forwarded until the records returned and tried again. Blank.
What the hell happened to the recording? He set the rewind as fast as it would go and let it run. The screen was blank for several minutes, then sprang to life again. He hit pause. The timer on the bottom read April 23, 09:45:44. A month of video gone.