For the Trees

by Brett Baker

  Johnny and Justine hugged me, and the three of us cried together. Whit stood back and looked at the ground. When the three of us broke our hugging huddle, I looked at him and saw his eyes filled with tears, which he wiped before offering a slight smile.

  “I loved your folks,” he said. “I really did. My kids have moved away, and I never remarried, and your mom and dad became my family. They were such great people. I hope what I’ve told you isn’t too disturbing.”

  “Thanks for telling us, Whit. I’m sure it’s difficult to relive such a thing.”

  “Well, like I said, we don’t know what happened. Just the aftermath. That’s all horrible enough. But I guess somebody out there knows, and maybe we’ll hear about it if they catch them.”

  “They’ll be caught,” I said. “One way or another they’ll be caught.”

  10

  Chapter 10

  When Whit discovered we planned to stay at a hotel while in town, he wouldn’t allow it. He kept his house immaculate, had four bedrooms and no one to fill them, so he demanded that we stay with him. I preferred to stay in the hotel. I always felt uncomfortable being an overnight guest in someone’s house, but after all Whit had done for my parents over the years, and the previous day, I had no choice but to agree to be his guest. His face lit up when Johnny and I agreed to stay with him, and he assured us that while we were his guests he wanted us to feel at home. The four of us spent the entire evening on Whit’s front porch, into which he’d built a brick fire pit years before fire pits had become fashionable.

  The police remained at mom and dad’s until well after dark. At one point another van with “Police” on the side arrived, along with a state police car.

  Johnny had expected the police to call to setup an interview with us, but we never heard from them. We had a brief discussion as to whether the small town police in Eutaw and Greene County could handle a murder investigation, but Whit believed that there was no small town police department in the country more competent than those assigned to this case. Whit’s confidence reassured me.

  All four of us decided to turn in early. We felt emotionally drained and physically exhausted, yet we knew that we had difficult days ahead. I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and didn’t move for hours.

  The red lights on the clock next to the bed read 3:17 when a growl from my stomach woke me. I hadn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours and my hunger had decided to make itself my top priority. Whit told us he had plenty to eat, so I made myself a peanut butter sandwich and poured a glass of lemonade. My short, intense sleep rejuvenated me, and I decided to sit on the porch and enjoy my early morning snack. The fire had burned itself out, but the ashes at the bottom of the pit still let off a slight trail of smoke.

  I sat on one of the five wooden chairs that Whit had crafted by hand, and rested my feet on the edge of the fire pit. I could see my parents’ house from where I sat, and a lone police car sat on the shoulder of the road at the end of the driveway. As I ate my sandwich I watched the house, and tried to think back to what it was like to live there. I’d been on my own so long that I’d almost forgotten all the years of my life in which that house and my family were the center of my universe. How many times had I walked over the very spot where Whit found my father on the floor? How many batches of cookies had my mother made in her life before she got to the batch that would never be finished? A vague memory of standing on a chair at the counter and stirring a bowl of flour and other ingredients came rushing at me. Back then baking was just mom’s hobby. We didn’t know that it would end up being the last thing she did in her life.

  My moments of reflection came to a sudden end. As I thought about my mom and how much time she used to spend baking, I stared at the house and tried to conjure the smell of her cookies. As I looked toward the house a sudden movement caught my attention on the periphery of the front lawn. I transferred my gaze to a large bush on the corner of the lot. It took a moment to refocus my eyes, but just as I did I saw a dark figure emerge from behind the bush and race toward the front of the house, seeking refuge behind a bush there. I looked at the police car, assuming an officer sat inside and expecting him to emerge at any second and pursue the person hiding behind a bush at a murder scene.

  Seconds passed and no officer exited the car. No spotlight shined on the bush. I appeared to be the only person aware of the trespasser. A moonless, mid-night darkness shrouded Whit’s porch, and I slunk down on my knees and hid behind the wooden chair to further hide myself. I’d become expert at moving without making noise, and although I couldn’t see the person hiding behind the bush, I was quite certain he didn’t know I was watching. Three minutes passed before the person emerged from behind the bush. When he did, he sprinted across the front of the house, and up the driveway, toward the porch. The angle of the house blocked my view of the porch, so I lost sight of the intruder. I had to act.

  I duck walked across Whit’s porch to the top of the steps leading to the yard. Pausing for a moment, I looked down the street in both directions and didn’t see anyone else. I expected to see a waiting car, or another person on lookout, but saw nothing obvious. Someone might have watched me from afar, but I decided that the risk of someone seeing me approach the house in pursuit of the intruder was less important than the risk of permitting the intruder to get away. The person sneaking around might just have had some sort of macabre fascination with my parents’ murder without being involved in the act, but I didn’t want to make that assumption. I slid down the steps and ran across Whit’s yard, seeking cover behind two bushes and a large bench along the way. I didn’t hear or see anyone else around.

  Before approaching the house I thought it best to check the police car. The ideal course of action would be to let the police investigate and apprehend the intruder, but only if an officer was waiting in the car. I couldn’t take the time to call the police and assume they’d arrive before the intruder got away. Staying low to the ground, I scampered across the street, and pressed my face against the window of the patrol car. Empty. It seemed obviously incompetent to me for the police to have a crime scene still surrounded by yellow tape, but no one on hand to ensure the integrity of the scene. A police car parked on the property would have deterred most people from trespassing, but at least one person wasn’t fooled, and with no officer on duty, that person had unfettered access to the house.

  I peered down the driveway toward the house. The night was dark without shadows, and I would have killed for a set of night-vision goggles. I didn’t see the intruder, which meant that he either went inside the house, or ran away, the latter being the less-likely scenario. If he was inside the house I didn’t want him to see me if he happened to look out a window, so I fell to my stomach and began crawling along the grass adjacent to the driveway. The cold, dewy ground made a subtle squeaking noise as I pulled myself along, but the sound didn’t travel more than a few feet, so I didn’t worry about being too loud. I kept an eye on the windows of the house in case the intruder was dumb enough to turn on a light. It’s often difficult to tell just how smart an adversary is, but it’s frequently easy to discover how dumb they are. A flipped switch and a glowing light would have indicated a carelessness upon which I could easily capitalize, and if the light went off immediately it would have indicated a predilection for panic, upon which I could also capitalize. Unfortunately, this intruder had enough intelligence or discipline to meander in the dark.

  When I reached the deck outside of the porch, I paused at the base of the steps to listen. I half-expected to hear the sound of someone rifling through my parents’ belongings, but I heard nothing, not even the gentle wind that had just picked up.

  Having reached the porch, I faced a decision. As far back as I can remember I associated this house with one sound. It had remained unchanged from the time I was a little girl, and it had become such a part of my experience with the house that I never noticed its presence, only its absence on the rare occasion that my mom fixed the noise: the s
queaky porch screen door. The same door hung on those hinges for decades, and the tinny, high-pitched squeak that occurred every time the door opened frequently announced visitors before we saw them. Dad loved the squeak; he said a squeaky porch door was a tenet of country life, and refused to fix the squeak. And although mom was always very easy going, if she was having a bad day she might decide that she could only take so much squeaking and she’d lubricate the hinges and comings and goings in the house would be silent for a period of time. But as far as I know it had been years since mom lubricated the door, so its squeak likely lived on. I hadn’t heard it when the intruder entered, but I was a couple hundred feet away, around a corner, so used to the door’s sound, and so locked-in on the trespassing that it’s possible I wouldn’t have heard the squeak. However, someone who broke into a house that remained a roped-off crime scene in the middle of the night would be much more sensitive to any noise, and would hear even the smallest squeak.

  I couldn’t enter through the door.

  The squeaky door wasn’t the only thing in the house that my dad refused to fix. A small basement window had a latch that hadn’t ever secured properly. Mom implored dad to fix the latch for safety sake, but dad correctly pointed out that crime in Eutaw barely existed, and the window latch remained broken. From the position of my dad’s body on the floor of the porch, it seemed likely that the killers gained entry through the door, a fact for which I suddenly found myself bizarrely thankful. The irony of that broken window latch contributing to the death of my parents would have been too great to process.

  So I crawled around to the back of the deck and pulled on the basement window latch. It opened without resistance, and without sound. I cursed myself for not considering before I opened the window, the idea that it might squeak. Those were the sort of mistakes for which agents have died.

  I’d always been the only member of our family who could fit through the window with its narrow opening, and my petite frame. We returned from Easter dinner at my grandmother’s house one year to discover that one of us had locked the door, an unusual occurrence in the already-established-as-safe town of Eutaw. I crawled through the window and saved the day, and dad gloated about his foresight in failing to fix the window.

  I took one last look toward the deck, and the yard and the street beyond, and seeing nothing, I ducked my head into the window, pulled myself through, and lowered my feet to the basement floor. The darkness immediately worried me. Residual light from other houses, and even the faint flickering stars prevented absolute darkness outside, but little of that light made it through the basement windows, which left me in a darkness so pitch that I was unable to see my hand when extended at arm’s length in front of my face. I hadn’t been in the basement in years and had no idea what mom and dad kept down there. Turning on the light might tip me off to the intruder, but the chances of making my way across the basement to the stairs in the middle of the room were small as well. After thinking about it for a minute I figured the possibility of making noise was better than the certainty of making light, so I proceeded cautiously.

  Five minutes later I had successfully shuffled across the floor, bent at the waist, my feet and hands barely moving to avoid any obstacles. I reached the bottom of the stairs without making a sound though, and began ascending them, my feet on the far sides of each tread, a betraying squeak being less likely to occur there than in the middle of the step. At the top of the stairs, a closed door separated me from the living room in the center of the house. When I opened the door anyone in the kitchen, living room, or bathroom would have a clear line of sight to me. I put my ear up to the door and listened for any sound. The intruder knew that the house was empty, so he had no incentive to remain quiet. A seasoned professional would have remained quiet anyway, just out of habit, but I expected to hear someone.

  I listened for a couple of minutes but heard nothing. An old house makes its own noises, and it’s difficult to separate house noises from those created by humans sometimes, but all seemed uneventful. I grabbed the doorknob and twisted it ever so slowly. When the latch disengaged from the doorjamb, an audible click seemed impossibly loud in the stillness of the room. After a brief pause, I opened the door slowly, peeked my head into the living room, and took one step onto the carpet.

  Before I could step my second foot into the room, the door slammed against my body, knocking my head and left knee against the jamb. The sound, a disgusting thump of flesh backed by bone against wood, surprised me more than the impact at first, but then the intruder pulled the door open again, and bashed it against my head and back. Instinct took over and I withdrew into the stairwell and the door slammed shut. I heard a loud crash as the intruder raced out of the living room instead of choosing to stay and keep me from opening the door and entering the room. So I opened the door just in time to see him disappear through the doorway to the kitchen.

  I pursued him and watched as he plowed through the screen door, knocking it off its hinges. No need to worry about a tiny squeak when there’s a thunderous boom of the door hitting the wooden deck. He hopped over the side rail of the deck and took off down the driveway, toward the front yard. I followed closely behind him. He was burly, and I could hear him breathing as I chased him. He was built for strength and power, not stamina. He tore through the caution tape and ran across the yard, back in the direction from which he’d originally come. Before he could reach the street I caught him, put my foot in front of his shins and pushed him from behind to bring him down. He fell face first with a thud, and I pounced on his back, repeatedly punching him in the neck.

  It’s often difficult to gain an advantage over a larger adversary, and since almost every bad guy I encounter is bigger than my five-foot-four, one-hundred-ten pound frame, it’s a challenge I frequently face. And once the advantage is gained it’s vital to hold it. The man on the ground weighed at least twice as much as me, and if I let up at all I risked the possibility that he’d turn things around and have me on the defensive. So I continued to pummel the man as I rolled him onto his back. I had no desire to kill him without first finding out why he’d entered my mom and dad’s house. When I got him on his back, he took a swing at me, but I avoided it and then landed a solid right to the side of his head, which instantly knocked him unconscious. He’d brought his hand back to punch me again, and when I connected, his arm fell limply and harmlessly to his chest.

  With the man at least temporarily subdued, I stood up to run across the street to Whit’s house and call the police. Although I’d interrogated people during my work for The Summit, I figured it best to leave this case to the police. I took four steps toward Whit’s house, when another large man emerged from behind a tree in front of me, and before I could react he landed a solid punch to my cheek. The hit stunned me, and I staggered back a few steps. He didn’t relent and followed with another right to my cheek, and then kicked me in the stomach and I fell to the ground. As I curled up on the grass he kicked me repeatedly in the ribs, and I lifted my knees to protect myself. After landing a few solid kicks to my shins, he changed his focus and kicked me in the back of the head at least half a dozen times. Kicks to the head often made me feel as if my head might cave in, and I fruitlessly covered it with my hands and arms to protect myself.

  “Leave us the fuck alone,” the man said. “Get your ass back on that porch if you know what’s good for you. None of this is your concern.” He kicked me again, this time in the small of the back. “Don’t you dare go to the police about this, or you’re going to end up butchered just like that old couple.” I could hear his deep breathing getting closer to me as I realized he’d fallen to one knee and was leaning over me. His breath reeked of cinnamon candy, which always reminded me of crazy teenage days drinking Goldschlager, and has made me want to vomit ever since. “Only it’ll look like they got off easy after they see what we’ll do to you. Watch out.”

  Goldschlager stood up and as he walked away I rolled over onto my back and watched him pickup the other guy,
throw him over his shoulders as if a fireman, and stagger away. Considering the extraordinary size of the man being carried, Goldschlager had incomprehensible strength. As they reached the street, I heard a car speed toward us. It stopped in the middle of the road, Goldschlager dropped his friend into the backseat and then lumbered to the passenger door. He opened the door, but instead of getting in, he leaned over and said something to the driver and then walked back toward me.

  I got to my feet, and stood in the yard waiting for him. As he approached I took a defensive stance, confident I could deflect his attack and go on the offensive. He swung at me, and I dodged it. I kneed him in the stomach, but instead of making him double over, at which point I’d try to knock him out with a blow to the back of the neck, he came back with a roundhouse punch that I never saw coming. His fist hit the side of my head and I crashed to the ground, face first, already unconscious and unable to put my hands down to break my fall.

  11

  Chapter 11

  The morning sun was low in the sky, but very bright, and hurt my eyes as I tried to open them. I lifted my hand to my face to try to cover my eyes, and noticed the profound pain radiating from my ribs.

  “Stay right there,” Johnny said. “Don’t move. Justine just went inside to call an ambulance.”

  Birds chirped somewhere in the background and I’d never heard a more annoying sound in my life. The cold wetness of my clothes from lying on dewy grass for four hours also made me angry, to say nothing of the throbbing in the side of my head.