Blood Knot: a small town murder mystery (Frank Bennett Adirondack Mysteries Book 3)

by S. W. Hubbard

  “No, I’m—”

  “Really? Who else had access?”

  “I meant, no, I am not trying to hush anything up.”

  “So, the students were the only ones with access to the bag.” The entire time he spoke, Dawn kept scribbling in her notebook.

  “No!” Frank felt his temper flare—he was used to being the questioner, not the questioned. “Who said anything about there being bacon grease on the sleeping bag?" So far as he knew, he and Earl, Rusty, the state police, and Payne were the only ones aware of the bacon grease. Surely the troopers and Payne wouldn’t have told this woman anything. Was leaking the information to the press Rusty’s way of forcing an investigation?

  “I can’t reveal my sources,” Dawn replied. “So, you’re confirming that someone did place bacon grease on the bag, is that right?”

  "No, I’m not confirming anything!”

  “Is it true that a murderer is loose and people from this community are terrified?”

  “That’s ridiculous. People are a little jumpy about the bear, but—”

  “I understand that some people around here are willing to overlook anything to keep that school in business. Would you say that MacArthur Payne has undue influence over the political leaders of Trout Run?”

  The sudden change of tack left Frank floundering again. “Undue influence? What are you talking about? And what are you writing in that notebook? I haven’t told you a thing.”

  “Actually, Chief Bennett, you’ve been quite helpful. Thanks for your time.”

  An uneasy silence settled over the office after Dawn Klotz left, persisting until a torrent of acorns and leaves hit the window an hour later. The lights flickered.

  Earl looked out. “Man, that was the wind. A front’s moving in from the west. The temperature’s supposed to drop into the teens tonight, and they’re predicting snow.”

  “I knew the nice weather couldn’t last.” Frank walked over to the window to scrutinize the sky. “If this wind keeps up, we’ll have broken branches bringing the power lines down.”

  As he returned to his desk, the phone rang. He listened carefully, taking notes. After he hung up he said to Earl, “Get the gear. A hiker from the North Country Academy is lost on Lorton.”

  Earl peered up through the windshield as they drove toward the tallest peak in the Verona range. Thick, steel-gray clouds had erased the morning’s bright blue sky. “She picked a bad day to get lost. It sure looks like snow.”

  Frank glanced at the dashboard clock. “Yeah, and we have less than three hours to find her before it gets dark.” According to the call from the DEC dispatcher, the missing hiker was Heather LeBron, fifteen years old, five foot seven, one hundred forty pounds. She'd become separated from her group of ten hikers and one teacher as they descended the Lorton trail. For some reason, no one noticed she was missing until they reached the trailhead parking lot and prepared to get in the van to go back to the academy.

  Frank knew Heather was the girl who’d jumped on the boy’s back when they were carrying Jake Reiger off the mountain after the bear attack. She must be terrified now. She sure wasn’t a natural outdoorswoman.

  They arrived at the trailhead amid a cacophony of barking dogs, complaining teenagers, and shouting adults. Rusty was trying to outline the search strategy to five ECOs and ten civilian volunteers. Among them were Ray Stulke and Oliver Greffe. MacArthur Payne stood beside Rusty, and from the look on Rusty’s face, things weren’t going well.

  “… and John’s group will take the south trail. Please stick together and follow the orders of your party leader. We don’t need searchers lost, as well. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that with the temperature dropping and sunset at 5:10, time is of the essence.” Rusty scowled at MacArthur Payne. “I only wish we had been notified sooner.”

  “I still think you’re overreacting,” Payne said. “I know Heather and she's either hiding in those woods to call attention to herself, or she’s trying to run away. We’ll probably find her hitchhiking on Route 73.”

  “You have expressed your opinions and they are duly noted,” Rusty said. “Now let’s begin the search.”

  A split second of silence descended, as everyone waited to see Payne’s reaction to his dismissal. After a slight hesitation, the headmaster fell in behind the conservation officer assigned to lead his group, and the search teams fanned out.

  “Where do you want Earl and me, Rusty?” Frank asked.

  "Huh?” Rusty seemed a little rattled, as if he’d surprised himself by winning that battle. “You two can work with me. I’ve only got Roger, and that thin fellow there, a teacher at the academy who came over to help search—Oliver Something.”

  Rusty gathered them together. “We’re going to drive around to the west side of Lorton and take a secondary trail up the mountain. It’s steeper and rougher than the trail the kids went up on. If she wandered off the main trail, there’s a chance she’s worked herself around to this one. We’ll go up on the trail, then bushwhack our way down, covering the area between the two trails. Sam here will be searching for signs of her scent.”

  Rusty held out a dirty sock to a medium-sized brown and white dog. The dog sniffed and cocked his head, his intelligent brown eyes looking eagerly at his handler. Frank had worked with Sam before. If anyone could find Heather, this little mutt could. They set off up the trail.

  A sharp blast of wind cut through Frank’s jacket. He wished he’d worn his heavier coat, but it had been twenty degrees warmer when he’d left the house this morning. “Geez, the temperature’s dropping like a stone. We’d better find her quick.”

  “It’s worse than you think,” Rusty told him. “Because it was so nice this morning, the hikers all took off their jackets and left them at the lean-to halfway up the main trail because they were overheating. They picked them up again on the way down—we found Heather’s still there.”

  “You mean the kid’s out here without a coat?” Frank asked. “She could die of exposure.”

  “The situation is very serious,” Rusty agreed. “I tried to make that clear to Mr. Payne, but he didn’t seem to understand. He kept saying, ‘This experience will test her resourcefulness.’ Well, let me tell you, all the resourcefulness in the world isn’t going to save you when you’re wearing jeans and a cotton sweatshirt in an Adirondack snowstorm.”

  “How come when they all picked up their coats at the lean-to, no one noticed one was still there?” Earl asked.

  “That’s what I’d like to know.” Rusty paused and looked up the trail. “Heather obviously got separated from the group somewhere above the lean-to, yet no one noticed she was gone until they got all the way out to the trailhead. How can that be?”

  “I think I might be able to answer that,” Oliver said from behind them on the trail.

  They all stopped and turned to look at him.

  “Heather hasn't adjusted very well to the routine at the academy. She has a bad habit of not only getting herself in trouble, but also pulling other students into it with her. I think many of the kids avoid her because they don’t want to risk losing points.”

  “That seems kind of mean,” Earl said. As the youngest in the group, he had the clearest memory of the pain of high school.

  “You mean you think the other kids noticed she was missing but didn’t say anything?” Rusty asked.

  “Oh, I’m sure it wasn’t intentional,” Oliver said, but Frank thought the expression on his face wasn’t as certain as his words.

  “Heather might have been trailing along behind because she didn’t like being on the hike and no one wanted to walk with her,” Oliver continued. “So they probably thought she was right behind them and would pick up her coat when she got to the lean-to.”

  Frank didn’t comment. No point in speculating how it had happened; the bottom line was, the kid was lost. But he didn’t like the feeling he was getting that some of the other searchers from the academy might not be that motivated to find her. A few fine flakes of
snow drifted down, the advance troops for the invading army.

  The trail was now steep enough to make conversation a waste of energy. They scrambled up a bare outcropping of rock, and the trail leveled out for a bit. The dog had been trotting along beside them, staying on the trail and showing no signs that he had scented anything. Occasionally Sam took a detour out into the brush, but he always returned promptly. Now, as they paused to take a drink, Sam lay down and stared at his handler hopefully, as if to say, "You promised me a better outing than this.”

  "She hasn’t been through here,” Rusty confirmed. “We’re about a half an hour from the summit. Once we’re there, we can cross over to the main trail. I want to go partway down that way to a spot where the trail’s a little ambiguous.” They slogged on, their hard breathing leaving puffs of vapor in the air.

  A small cascade of rocks skittered down the path as Earl stumbled and went down hard on one knee. When Frank offered him a hand up, he realized Earl had no gloves and had been walking with his hands in his pockets. His skin was red and chapped, the nailbeds white with cold. “Here, Earl, wear my gloves for a while until your hands warm up,” Frank offered.

  “Nah, I’m okay.”

  Frank pulled his gloves off. “Do it. That’s an order.”

  Earl accepted the gloves, and within ten minutes Frank began the feel the effects of his generosity. Even when you weren’t using your hands to climb the rocky outcroppings of the trail, it was difficult to keep your balance with them in your pockets. More than once he teetered and caught himself by grabbing at an overhanging branch with his numb fingers.

  “The summit is just past these rocks,” Rusty said. “We can’t bushwhack here—it’ll be easier to cut across the top and come down a way on the other trail. Be careful. This is slippery."

  Frank looked at the huge gray rock, worn smooth by centuries of wind and rain, looming above him. If this was the easy route, he didn’t want to think about the hard one.

  Rusty scaled the rock first, effortlessly finding hand-holds and toe-holds in the slightest indentations. Oliver went next. Thin but agile, he climbed the rock quickly, slipping only once. Sam took a long detour through some scrubby evergreens and found an easier way up for a creature with four paws.

  Earl handed him the gloves. “You go next, Frank. Then you can toss them back down to me.”

  Frank suspected the worried look on Earl’s face had nothing to do with the missing girl. Probably figures he’ll have to shove me up this thing from behind, he thought as he began to climb. The fine, icy snowflakes glazed the rock with a slippery film. Earl had been right to give him the gloves—getting a grip would be impossible without them. He could see Oliver’s and Rusty’s boots a foot or so above his head when his left leg slid out from under him. He scrabbled desperately to keep from falling. Earl gasped, but Rusty remained calm. “There’s a foothold for your left foot about six inches up from where your right foot is,” he directed.

  Frank found it and pushed himself up. Oliver and Rusty grabbed his arms, and he landed on the summit with all the dignity of a wide-mouthed bass flopping on the dock of a fishing cabin. Christ, he was getting old! Looking down at what he had just climbed made him a little queasy, and he stepped back as Earl made the ascent.

  The force of the wind whipping from the west brought tears to his eyes, and he turned his back to the view of Lake Placid that would lay in that direction. There was nothing to see from the summit now. The gray sky had descended over Lorton and they stood within the clouds.

  They crossed the summit, found the main trail, and headed down. “Look there,” Rusty said after they'd been going downhill for ten minutes. “When you’re coming down the path and you look ahead, you see the trail marker on that birch down there.”

  Frank could barely pick out the round blue disk with adk printed on it that indicated this trail was maintained by the Adirondack Mountain Club.

  “But,” Rusty continued, “if you’re tired and looking down at your feet, you see how the rocks come together to form a natural pathway that steers you over to the right. It’s possible Heather could have gone off the path here, and by the time she realized it, she couldn’t find her way back to the marked trail.” Rusty called to Sam and offered him another sniff of the worn sock belonging to Heather that had been provided to the searchers. Sam refreshed his memory and took off down the unmarked path. But within a minute he had circled back, his head cocked expectantly.

  Rusty shrugged. “I guess I was wrong—he’s not catching her scent down there."

  Frank hesitated. Rusty’s theory had a lot of merit. The false trail seemed more natural to follow at that point than the marked trail, and the marker, so far down the path, would be easy to overlook. But Sam didn’t scent her, and Frank knew from experience that the dog couldn’t be fooled.

  “Let’s start bushwhacking between this trail and the trail we came up on,” Rusty directed. They walked another fifteen minutes, as the sky grew darker and the air grew colder.

  They crashed through the underbrush, regularly calling Heather’s name, until they reached the secondary trail, then they slowly worked their way down and across to the other trail.

  On their third switchback between the two trails, Earl shouted, “Hey, there’s the lean-to.” They all sat down on the edge of the platform and drank from their water bottles. Sam made a disinterested circuit of the lean-to, then drank eagerly from the collapsible dish Rusty had brought for him. He flopped down and rested his head on his paws.

  Rusty stared at the dog.

  “What’s the matter?” Frank asked. “He’s not giving out on us, is he?”

  “Look at him. He’s totally relaxed. He’s not showing any sign that he scents Heather. And we know she was in this spot—she left her jacket here. Her scent should be strong.”

  A few months ago, Frank would have assumed the dog was unreliable. But Sam had proved his mettle on another investigation, and that forced Frank to look at the facts from a different perspective. Fact one: Heather had been here. Fact two: Sam wouldn’t miss the scent he’d been asked to follow.

  “Give me that sock,” Frank demanded. He turned it over and found two small black letters, a laundry mark, on the sole. “MT,” he said. “This isn’t Heather's sock.”

  “MT would be Melissa Trenk, Heather’s roommate,” Oliver said. “She didn’t come on the hike.”

  Frank threw the sock down. “Jesus H. Christ! We wasted nearly two hours sending that dog tracking the wrong person.”

  Rusty immediately got on his walkie-talkie to confer with the other searchers. While he talked, Frank quizzed Oliver. “Who gave Rusty that sock?”

  The young teacher paused to think. His soulful brown eyes and earnest expression unconsciously mimicked Sam the dog. “I guess it must have been Mac, or maybe Steve Vreeland. He’s one of the Pathfinders. There was a lot of confusion when we left the academy—assembling the search party, finding the articles of clothing, running back for water bottles.”

  Rusty signed off and outlined the new plan. “The team who took the westernmost side of the mountain was also using one of Melissa’s socks. But the team on the main trail was using Heather’s coat. Unfortunately, the dog on that team was the least experienced of the three. His handler said he seemed to pick up Heather’s scent right at that spot above us that I pointed out. They followed it for a while, but lost it at a little stream.

  "They’re going to head back up the trail with the coat,” Rusty continued. “Sam and I will go down to meet them. You guys go back to the spot in the trail where she seems to have wandered off and follow it to the stream. Take the radio—we’ll stay in touch and meet there.”

  Frank tramped wearily back up the trail, letting Earl take the lead. His feet were freezing; with every step he felt a hot stab in his thighs. He’d been climbing much faster than he would on a recreational hike, trying to keep up with the younger men. To take his mind off the pain, he asked a question.

  "Oliver, Heather was
one of the kids on the camping trip when Jake Reiger was attacked, wasn’t she?”

  “Yeah, it's like she’s a bad-luck magnet. I’ve heard the other kids are somehow blaming her for that.” Oliver shook his head. "Ridiculous.”

  “I noticed when we were bringing the campers down that Heather had hardly any hair. If she’s recovering from chemotherapy, it’s going to be even harder for her to survive this cold.”

  "Chemotherapy? Oh, no—Heather didn’t lose her hair to cancer. Mac made her shave it off.”

  “Why?” Frank and Earl asked in unison.

  “It’s part of the treatment that all the kids have to give up their outrageous fashion statements—take out the nose rings, get rid of the hot pink hair.”

  “So if a girl has her hair dyed a crazy color, Mac shaves her head?” Frank was appalled. Caroline had once poured peroxide on a big chunk of her dark hair.

  She looked like a skunk, and Estelle had cried, but Frank had just laughed. It was only hair, and it had grown out. Some things weren’t worth fighting over.

  "No, he makes them dye it back to a normal color. But Heather came to the academy with dreadlocks,” Oliver explained.

  “But she’s white.”

  “Well, she has this frizzy kind of hair and she was trying to get it to form dreadlocks, but it turned into a big matted lump,” Oliver explained. “There was no way to comb it out, so they shaved her head.”

  Frank glanced at Earl to gauge his reaction. He looked distinctly unconvinced. Oliver must have noticed their expressions.

  “I know it sounds harsh, but her hair really was pretty disgusting. And Mac’s been letting her wear a hat, even in class, until it grows back in.”

  “She better have that hat on now,” Frank said, as another gust of wind blew sharp ice particles into his face. Now that they were lower down on the mountain, the temperature must be right at the freezing point, making the precipitation neither rain nor snow, but an icy sleet. The thick clouds and the dense canopy of balsam and pine had chased off the last moments of daylight.