He hands me back the card. “He didn’t look like a researcher. More like Grizzly Adams, if you ask me.”
Another snicker from the peanut gallery. I should have come alone. “Yes, well, looks can be deceiving. So, about that night...”
Greg’s eyes lose focus. “I don’t remember much. It was dark, and Fred left the tent to, you know, find a tree to...” He flushes under his pallor. “And then he started screaming. It seemed like there was a bunch of people out there, or creatures, or whatever it was. All this crashing and yelling and howling. Like an animal, almost. I-I-I don’t know what it was, but I’ve never heard anything like it before.” He shivers. “I ran out there to help my brother, and then something hit me on the head, and I blacked out. I woke up, and he was hurt really bad, and I couldn’t find our way out of there, so I put him in the tent and dragged him through the forest until we found the house. I couldn’t call for help, because there was no reception, and we were just stuck there. He wanted me to leave, but I couldn’t.”
Greg clenches the blanket, his hands shaking. “You know, the funny thing is, we weren’t even supposed to be around there. We were supposed to camp by Tulsa, but Fred said he thought this area might have less people.”
He takes a ragged breath. “If we’d just gone to Vegas, or Tulsa, or anywhere else, he’d still be alive.”
“You don’t know that,” I say.
“Yes, I do,” he says, his voice ringing with finality. “If I hadn’t let him talk me into coming to his hillbilly little town, none of this would have happened.”
Chapter 20
After we leave the hospital, we head back to Atopka. I want to talk to Ceri and her dad, if possible, to see if we can find out any new information. Jess stays at the hotel to transcribe the interview and give Bear a break, and Russ elects to come with me, stating that it’d be too boring to stay in the hotel room.
At the gas station, Russ fills up the van, and a familiar beat-up pickup truck pulls in to get some gas.
“You guys still hanging around?” Buck asks, hopping out of the back of the truck, his lip bulging with chew. How he talks around it without spitting chunks everywhere amazes me.
I plant my hands on my hips. “Until the case is finished, yes. We’re in it for the long haul.”
He spits out the glob of chew way too close to my foot, but I refuse to flinch or step away. Maybe taking Ceri over to the shop had been a mistake, but I wasn’t about to let him think he intimidated me. Not a chance. I’ve dealt with worse, by a long shot.
“I don’t know what you’re investigating. There ain’t nothing here.” His words echo his dad’s.
I tilt my head, and despite the fact that I know my grin will piss him off, I do it anyway. “Haven’t you heard? We found two the missing hikers: Greg and Fred Burrows. He and his brother disappeared a couple weeks ago, and we found them when we were out investigating.”
Buck’s eyes widen, almost bugging out of his head. “You what?”
His dad gets out of the driver’s side and swaggers over to us. “What in the hell are you doing, boy?” he asks, slapping his son on the back of the head.
“Nothing, Dad.” Buck shrinks under his dad’s censure. “I was just making conversation,” he says. “I wasn’t telling her nothing.”
Interesting. That means he has something that he doesn’t want me to know. Huh. I file that tidbit away for later.
His dad waves his hand at me. “Why don’t you get out of town? You don’t belong here. There ain’t nothing for you to find out there but trouble, and trust me, you don’t want none of that.”
I tilt my head to the side and narrow my eyes. “Are you threatening me?”
He slams his hand into the side of his truck. “Hell no, girl. I’m just telling you that you might want to get the hell out of Atopka. Those people who disappeared stuck their noses in where it didn’t belong, and it got ‘em killed. You don’t wanna be next.”
A shiver snakes up my spine.
“We’re all set.” Russ walks around to the other side of the car and raises his eyebrows when he sees us all. “Is everything all right?”
Buck’s dad grunts and squints at us. “Yup. We’re all good here.”
Trapper returns from the gas station with a bag of chips and a liter of Mountain Dew in one hand. “Ready to go, Dad?” He eyes Russ and me nervously, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. He wants to get out of here, too.
“Yeah,” his dad grunts. “Let’s get out of here.” He cuffs his son on the side of the head, and Buck skips out of the way, rubbing the place where his dad hit him. “Get in the damn car,” he growls. “We gotta talk.”
Buck seems to wilt away from his dad and slinks into the truck. Interesting. All that bluff and bravado, and he’s still afraid of his dad. Trapper hops into the bed.
I file that away for later, too. I never know when I might be able to use something for my benefit. Maybe I can weasel information out of him later, if I’m desperate. I’ll have to be real desperate, but it’s nice to have options.
“What was that for?” I ask Russ as he folds himself into the driver’s seat and I join him on the passenger side.
A muscle in his jaw twitches. “Just stupid macho shit. Did you see the look in his eyes? He doesn’t respect women at all, and I wasn’t going to stand by and let him mess with you. We’re family, and family protects each other.” Russ clears his throat before I can respond. “Besides, how many times have you saved my ass from all the dumb shit I did back home?”
I grin. It’s wobbly, but it’s there. I didn’t realize that the altercation with Buck Senior would have affected me that much, shaken me even, but it has. “About a million times,” I say, and Russ cackles as he pulls out of the gas station. Russ is wrong—it isn’t true. I really only saved his ass one time, but it’s the one time that counts, and it’s the one time he’s been trying to pay me back for the last two years. I told him it doesn’t matter, but it does, at least to him.
“Do you think Buck’s dad meant what he said?” I ask, partially to fill in the silence stretching between us and partially because I keep ruminating over the conversation.
Russ shrugs. “Maybe. Probably not, though. I think he was just trying to scare you away and make you want to leave. Haven’t you noticed that small-town people are like that? They try to drive you away as fast as they can, even when they claim to want to know the truth. They really don’t.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” I pull out my phone and stare at the screen. I should call Ceri, but I feel like I need to recover from the scene at the gas station first. I call my sister instead.
“How’s it going?” I ask.
“Slow,” she says, her voice short. “We didn’t really get good audio, but it’s not terrible. I mean, the new gear we got helps, so it’s a lot better than it could have been. Have you talked to Ceri yet?”
“Negative. I got a little sidetracked.” I relay what happened at the gas station.
“What a jerk,” she says. “I can see where his sons get it from.”
“I’m going to call Ceri now, and maybe stop by George Smith’s cabin to find out if he’s seen anything else since then, and then we’ll head back to the hotel. Let me know if you find anything, okay?”
“Aye aye, captain,” Jess says, hanging up before I can reply.
Before dialing Ceri’s number, I glance over at Russ. He still looks broody and pissed, so I decide not to engage him. Luckily for me, Ceri answers on the first ring.
“Hey, I was wondering if you’d heard anything from your dad about what happened,” I ask.
She pauses. “Nope. He won’t say a word. You can ask him, though. He’s home. Maybe you can get him to talk.” Her irritation mirrors my own.
Muffling the phone speaker with my hand, I tell Russ to head over to Ceri’s house. “We’re on our way,” I say. The conversation with Mullet Senior niggles at the back of my mind. “I also had a weird run-in with Buck and his dad that I want to
talk to you about, since you know them better than me.”
“Don’t remind me,” she groans.
“Do you want to sit this one out?” I ask Russ as he pulls the van up to the side of the road and parks it.
He gives me a dark look. “Just because I got pissed at that loser at the gas station doesn’t mean I can’t handle myself. I’ve got this.”
“I didn’t mean you couldn’t handle it. I just didn’t know if you wanted to. That’s all.”
“I’m fine,” he says through gritted teeth.
Great. Lovely. I hop out of the van, leaving it at that. I’ve pushed Russ enough, and I don’t want to shove him away any further. He’s already shutting down, and that’s not a good thing.
Luckily, Ceri meets us at the door, a weary smile flitting across her face.
“Glad you guys could come so quickly,” she says. “Where’d you end up finding a hotel?”
“Tulsa, but we were in town anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal.”
“Good. Maybe you can talk some sense into my dad, too. He’s such an idiot.”
“I heard that,” Ceri’s dad calls out from inside the house behind her.
Ceri rolls her eyes and beckons for us to follow her into the house.
Sheriff Sinclair sips coffee from a mug in the living room, stretched out on the sofa and watching a football game. Russ and I share a glance. This version of the sheriff is far different than the last one we met.
“You’re wasting your time,” he says. “I’m not telling you anything.”
I perch in the chair across from him while Russ trails behind Ceri into the kitchen for some bottled water. “How about a little tit for tat?”
The sheriff raises his eyebrows. “What could you possibly have to offer me that would get me to compromise my case by giving classified details to you?”
“Russ and I just got back from talking to Greg Burrows at the hospital.”
He pauses the coffee cup in midair before it reaches his lips. “So? I’ve talked to him, too.”
Darn it, I was hoping that he hadn’t spoken to Greg yet. “He told us about the night they were attacked and what happened afterward. What he remembered, anyway.”
His eyes flicker to mine. “Not that he remembered much. I doubt he gave you anything he didn’t tell me.”
I decide to pull out the ace up my sleeve, as weak as it is. I want to show him that we can investigate, too. “Oh yeah? Did he tell you he heard multiple attackers?” I don’t mention the howling because I don’t think it would help my case.
Sheriff Sinclair sits up a little straighter. “What else did he tell you?”
My mind blanks for a second. Crap. I didn’t think he’d bite. I have to think of something. “He said he didn’t know how many attackers there were and that he got hit over the head as soon as he got out of the tent.”
“Huh.” The sheriff folds his hands in front of him. He must have already known that part. “Not much I can do with that, I’m afraid. I’ll tell you this: I’ve had my men combing this side of the state land, and they can’t find their campsite anywhere. So either Burrows dragged his dying brother several miles, or someone cleaned up the scene.”
I reflect back on our own hike through the forest. “I don’t know, are you sure you didn’t just miss it? Those woods are pretty dense.”
He scowls at me. “Positive.”
Ohhhkay. “Have you talked to the Mullet Boys?”
Ceri chooses that time to walk into the room. She chokes on a laugh, her face beet-red.
“Who?”
Oh God, yeah, I said that out loud. “Buck and his brothers, they own the bait-and-tackle shop. Do you know them?”
The sheriff stands up, downs the rest of his coffee, then rinses his cup out in the sink. “Oh yes, the Henrys. I’m well aware of them, although I’ve never heard of them referred to like that before.”
“Yeah, well. I... Uh, I tend to pick out names for people before I know their real names, and sometimes those nicknames stick.”
He fights back a throaty chuckle and loses. “I might have to remember that one. What have they done now?”
I take a step back. “What makes you think they did anything?” I was not expecting that question.
The sheriff shrugs. “Those boys are always up to something. What is it?”
After glancing at Ceri and Russ, I tell the sheriff the whole story, from our first night here to the conversation at the gas station. “Do you think they know more than they’re saying?” I ask at the end.
The sheriff looks out the window, taking a long time to answer. “I think they’re idiots. Sure, they’ve gotten in trouble a time or two, but mostly for petty crap that’s more trouble than they’re worth. But murder? No. Those boys don’t have it in them.”
“What about their dad?” I remember his slimy voice, the way his eyes narrowed, and the shiver it sent down my spine.
“Gunner? Shoot. I went to school with him. He was a deadbeat and a loser then, and he’s a deadbeat and a loser now. He’s smart, though. He’s always gotten himself and those boys of his outta any trouble they’ve gotten themselves into. Shoulda been locked up years ago, but I could never make it stick. Nah. They’re probably trapping illegally back there or making moonshine, but that’s about it. They just wanted to scare you away to make sure you didn’t run into their still. Don’t you worry about it.”
Yeah, like his words will stop us from investigating. “But what about the missing persons cases?” I ask, willing him to give me something, anything, that could give us a break in this case.
“Don’t you worry about it,” he says. “There’s no big mystery or conspiracy here. We’ve got everything under control.”
Chapter 21
“I found something interesting,” Jess says after Russ and I return to the hotel room. Lying on her stomach on the bed, she stares at the laptop’s screen. Bear lifts his head from the pillow long enough to see who’s coming in the room before he drops it again.
Her enthusiasm keeps some of my frustration at bay. “I hope it’s good. We didn’t get anything from Ceri’s dad. Again.”
Russ murmurs his agreement and plops down next to Jess.
“It is,” she says, and shifts the laptop so Russ can see the screen. “Well, it’s a hunch, and I figured we might want to explore it and see if it’s true.”
“What is it?”
She smirks. “I was looking up ways to get to where Greg said he and his brother were camping, and I found drone footage posted by some geocachers a couple years ago, and it looks like there’s a trail that George didn’t know about.” She traces the screen, and when I squint my eyes, sure enough, I can see a pale little rut snaking through the trees. “I say it’s worth a shot, and we should go check it out,” she adds.
Possibilities war with the doubts running through my mind, but I push away all of the negativity. “You’re right. Let’s go.”
“I knew you’d say that,” she says, gesturing to the packed bag by the door. “I know you too well.”
On the way back to Atopka, I call George Smith to see if he knows about the trail.
“Huh,” he says, and I imagine him scratching his long, scraggly beard. “I don’t recall anything like that. To be honest, with the way my knees are, I haven’t been out there too much in the last few years. Mostly stayed at the trailhead, collecting evidence of the creature.”
Oh yes, the creature. Somehow, I’ve gotten so wrapped up in the missing persons cases that I’ve kind of pushed aside the paranormal connection that brought us here. These disappearances, the attack on Greg and his brother, and the bloody camping equipment we found seem all too human. It’s hard to believe a predator worth its weight in salt would leave injured and dead prey to rot, but that’s exactly what happened with Greg and his brother. I blink, and in a flash, I see the rotting corpse, cloaked in flies, on the floor of the upstairs bedroom. Its decaying scent fills my nostrils, and I shake my head to clear it before I gag.
George pauses. “There’s probably a lot that goes on in those woods that people don’t know about. It’s a big place. I spent my life out there, but even though I haven’t seen anybody else, they’ve got to be there. The Truent boys and the Grangers have camps about ten to fifteen miles away, and you know the Henrys have some property out there too.”
Ah yes, the Mullet Boys. Probably should cross them off of my Christmas card list, especially after the way Daddy Mullet treated me at the gas station. Not that his sons are stellar examples of the human race, either. “Do you think the trail’s still there?”
“I reckon there’s only one way to find out,” he says, his voice taking on an excited tone. “I’ll fire up the ATVs.”
“That’s not necessar—”
He hangs up the phone before I can tell him it’d probably be faster if we took the road.
By the time we get to George Smith’s house, the old man’s waiting outside his cabin, astride one of the two black, gleaming ATVS, a canvas rucksack backwards across his chest. He grins gleefully and waves his arms at us.
“I call dibs on the second one again,” Russ calls, leaning between our seats.
“Yeah, me too.” My sister gives him a high five, and I swear under my breath. That means I’m stuck with George again. Perfect.
“Glad you called me,” George says. “You never woulda found that trail on your own.”
I beg to differ. We do have a map, after all, but I let his comment go. We’re looking for a road, for God’s sake, not a needle in a haystack. We’re not totally helpless.
“So... How is this going to get us there faster than driving?” Jess asks. “I’m pretty sure we could take the highway and find it.”
A Brady Paranormal Investigations Box Set Page 26