Stone Cold Case

by Catherine Dilts

  That can’t be right, Morgan thought. Why would someone put clothes on sticks?

  Her mind stumbled through several explanations until the obvious answer slammed home. The rips and holes in the tattered jeans revealed bone.

  CHAPTER TWO

  * * *

  Morgan pressed her hands to her mouth, stifling a scream, as gravel crunched under feet just outside the dugout door. She clutched her phone, her fingers trembling as she searched for the camera icon, and the temporary light its flash would give.

  A face burst through the tattered strips of blue plastic, the wet, matted whiskers and knotted hair making it seem more animal than human. Morgan tapped her phone. A brief, blinding flash lit up the dugout. The intruder threw an arm across his eyes. Then darkness returned. Morgan blinked, unable to see for an agonizing instant. Spots danced in front of her eyes, obscuring the strips of tarp that swayed from Big Foot’s rapid exit.

  The interior of the dugout was black as a cave after the camera’s flash. When her eyes adjusted to the dark again, Morgan aimed her cell phone at the jeans-clad bones, closed her eyes, and snapped a photo. This time, people would not doubt her when she told them she’d found a dead person. If she made it out alive to tell the tale.

  Footsteps crunched in the decomposing granite. The camera flash might not startle him a second time. Morgan found a stick on the hard-packed floor. It was light. Rotten. One blow and it would disintegrate. She would have to make that blow count. Whatever had happened to the skeleton in the dugout, Morgan was not going to join it. Not without a fight.

  Big Foot thrust his head through the shredded tarp. The dog followed. Or maybe it was a wolf, its fur as shaggy and matted as the man’s. Morgan shook the stick at them.

  “Go away!”

  His hand went to his knife scabbard. If he attempted pushing words out past dry, cracked lips, his effort failed. All Morgan heard were guttural animal noises.

  He pulled the curtain aside and waved his free hand. He seemed to want the same thing Morgan did—for her to get out. Morgan grabbed her daypack and pushed past him, aware of a smell like wet dog emanating from him, with overtones of sour gym clothes. He made no attempt to stop her.

  Morgan bolted down the creek bed, not caring about rain or soaked boots. The skinny wolf-dog ran beside her, prancing playfully until a shrill whistle pierced the forest. He spun around and returned to his master.

  Blinded by rain, Morgan nearly ran into a pillar supporting the bridge. She scrambled up the bank and crossed the bridge, then sprinted up the muddy road to the parking lot, the rotten stick still clutched in her hand.

  The taillights of a vehicle illuminated the trailhead parking lot. Morgan tossed the stick aside and collapsed against Professor Esteban’s lime green van.

  “Mrs. Iverson!” Trevin hopped out of the van and raced to her. “I started to look for you, but it’s like you just vanished. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Professor Esteban held a cell phone in his hand. “I just called Search and Rescue.”

  “You can cancel the rescue.” Morgan struggled to catch her breath. “It’s too late for that. Call the police.”

  Morgan shivered as she described her encounter with Sasquatch, the words stuttering past her chattering teeth. She doubted she was making any sense.

  “Climb inside and warm up,” Professor Esteban said.

  Trevin joined two other classmates in the back seat of the van. Morgan scrambled into the front passenger seat. Her clothes were soaked, and her muddy boots shed clods of dirt. The heater was on full blast. The windows fogged up, making the interior a warm cocoon. While Trevin asked for details about Morgan’s discovery, Professor Esteban spoke into his cell phone, then set it to speaker and placed it on the dashboard.

  Police Chief Bill Sharp’s gruff voice came from the phone. “If I had to bet on who was going to report finding a body, I’d have placed my money on you, Mrs. Iverson.”

  “I’m not happy about it, Chief Sharp. I don’t find this humorous.”

  “No, it’s never funny when death is involved.” Sharp paused. “It’s raining here in town. How about there?”

  “Raining cats and dogs,” Professor Esteban said. “But we have taken refuge in my van.”

  “How many people you got there with you, Professor?”

  “I’m here, sir. Trevin Pike.”

  “The Wickers.” Everett Wicker leaned forward from his seat in the rear and shouted at the cell phone. “Mr. Everett and Mrs. Rose. From Granite Junction. We rode with Professor Esteban, so as you can surely understand, we are not pleased to have been trapped here all afternoon and half the evening.”

  “I am very sorry, Mr. Wicker,” Esteban said. “This situation could not be helped.”

  Yes it could, Morgan thought. If I hadn’t been so stupid as to fall into a gulley while trying to photograph a black squirrel.

  “Please hold your discussion for a minute, folks.” The chief’s voice crackled over the cell phone. “Morgan, you said you saw a skeleton?”

  “Yes, in an abandoned dugout.”

  Chief Sharp asked a question here and there, but he mostly listened. Four months ago, the police chief hadn’t believed her when she found a body on a hiking trail, then lost it. She had to prove herself to him then. He seemed to take her seriously this time.

  “You’re sure it wasn’t a deer carcass?”

  Or maybe not.

  “Absolutely not,” Morgan said. “I have photographic evidence this time. I got a photo of the mountain man, too. I can see how people imagine they’ve found Sasquatch if they ran into anyone that looked like him.”

  “I’d better round up a couple Search and Rescue guys and head out that way.”

  “Any tracks have already been washed away by this rain,” Esteban said.

  “But the bones won’t be,” Chief Sharp said, “unless that mountain man moves them. I’m not taking any chances. Now you folks go on home.”

  “Don’t you want me to show you where I found the dugout?” Morgan asked.

  “I’m sure I can find it, from your description of the area,” Sharp said. “Frankly, Mrs. Iverson, I’d prefer you keep out of my way this time.”

  The rain had turned to a frozen slush by the time Professor Esteban dropped Morgan off in Golden Springs. The class had carpooled to save space in the small trailhead parking lot.

  “I apologize for inconveniencing everyone,” Morgan said, not for the first time.

  “The circumstances could not be helped,” Professor Esteban said. “There is no need to apologize.”

  “Seriously,” Trevin said, “we’re just glad you’re okay.”

  The Wickers did not join in reassuring Morgan. Everett scowled, and Rose refused to look at Morgan.

  It was close to nine by the time Morgan pulled her old Buick into the garage at the Rock of Ages rock shop, a place she now called home. Del sat in his recliner by the woodstove in the shop’s attached living quarters, while she shed the heavy daypack, her windbreaker, hat, and gloves, and dropped her muddy boots on the worn linoleum. Morgan’s shoulder-length dark curls were plastered flat with rain and sweat. She suspected she smelled nearly as bad as the mountain man.

  “I took care of Houdini and Adelaide,” Del said.

  “Thanks.” The rock shop’s mascots, two mature donkeys, got cranky when their dinner of oats and hay was late. “How’s Adelaide tonight?”

  “The vet stopped by,” Del said. “Doc McCormick says she and that foal she’s carrying are doing fine. I didn’t have much to do. Business was slow. Your day wasn’t as uneventful, I take it?”

  “That’s one way of putting it. I told you most of the story on the phone.” Morgan knew from past experience that Del would worry about her if she didn’t check in when she was running late, especially if she was hiking in the rugged mountains. “I’ve already been given my full ration, so you don’t need to lecture me again. My classmates the Wickers, Mr. Everett and Mrs. Rose, were fu
rious.”

  “Just imagine,” Del said, “if you hadn’t found the parking lot, and you were stuck out all night in this weather, you could have died. I’m sure glad you had the survival pack.”

  The pack would have proved helpful if Morgan had accessed the gear inside instead of panicking. Everything had happened too fast. Morgan steered the discussion away from her lack of survival skills. Del might insist on hand-to-hand combat training if she told him all the details.

  “A person has been missing long enough that they’ve been reduced to bones.” Morgan washed her hands at the sink, then opened the lid of the slow cooker. “I only hope my discovery brings someone closure.”

  “I’ve been stirring and adding water,” Del said. “Like you told me.”

  “Did you have dinner yet?” Morgan asked.

  “I was waiting for you.” Del tugged at his bushy gray mustache.

  “Likely story,” Morgan said. “I’ll bet you just forgot to eat.”

  The old cowboy was skinny enough without missing meals. A tooled leather belt cinched blue jeans to his lean frame. A thick flannel shirt and fleece vest made him appear heavier than he was, but Morgan knew he’d lost weight recently.

  Morgan opened a cupboard door and reached for bowls. There was no dining room. The kitchen and living area were all one room, and not in an open-floor-plan kind of design. The place was just plain tiny.

  “I have a theory.” Del rose from the recliner. At six foot three, he was taller than Morgan by nearly a foot. “Golden Springs hasn’t had many cases of missing people. A few hunters or hikers, the occasional young scout wandering away from their troop during a camping trip.”

  “You told me when I first moved here.” Morgan shuddered, still chilled from her misadventure and the fear of what could have been. “Something about flatlanders’ frozen bodies being found in snow banks every spring.”

  “I may have exaggerated just a bit,” Del said. “They’ve all been found alive. Except for one girl. About sixteen years ago. Gerda’s daughter.”

  “Gerda has a daughter?” Morgan asked. “Gerda the mechanic?”

  Gerda Kruger ran the small town’s only auto repair garage. She and her two employees kept the citizens of Golden Springs mobile, working on everything from passenger cars to snow mobiles.

  “Two daughters,” Del said. “One girl moved to somewhere in Kansas. Gerda never talks about her. Rumor at the time was they had a falling out, but maybe the kid just didn’t like small town life. Shortly after she left, the other daughter disappeared.”

  Morgan wondered if that was why Gerda always seemed to have a bottle of booze nearby.

  “Tell me about the missing daughter.”

  Morgan ladled up two bowls of beef stew.

  “Back when the West was wilder,” Del said, “Golden Springs was populated with prospectors, gamblers, and women of ill repute. Occasionally a person would just disappear. Maybe they left town of their own volition, but some most likely ran afoul of outlaws or claim jumpers. Nowadays we have Pine County Search and Rescue, with all their fancy equipment. Even helicopters. But in this case, nothing helped. The girl was just gone. The one cold case in modern Golden Springs history.”

  “So did she leave town?” Morgan broke a corn muffin in two and buttered half. “Like the other daughter?”

  “Nobody seems to know,” Del said. “Maybe she got lost. Like you did today, kid.” He nodded at Morgan. To sixty-seven-year-old Del, anyone under the age of fifty qualified as a kid. “The whole town searched the mountains, but that’s a lot of territory.”

  “Do you think Gerda’s daughter was murdered?” Morgan hoped not. In January, she had stumbled onto a much more recent body.

  “Considering you found her in a dugout on Temple Mountain,” Del said, “I think it’s more likely she got lost, and wasn’t lucky enough to find her way out.”

  Morgan set her spoon down. “I took photos.” She noticed the look Del shot her way, so she explained. “That must seem ghoulish, but after losing the last body I ran across, I wanted to have evidence this one existed. Hopefully the photos turned out.”

  She pushed back her chair and retrieved her phone from her windbreaker pocket. The new phone had lots of buttons and gadgets. Apps, her friend Bernie called them. Fortunately, they had little icons that mostly matched up to her expectation of what the function of the app was. Morgan worked her way to the photos. Her attempts to photograph the black Abert’s squirrel had failed, but she had a pretty good shot of the mountain man. She handed the phone to Del.

  “I think you found a dead bear.”

  Morgan took the phone from him. “No, this is the mountain man. I would have voted for Sasquatch at the time, but when my initial terror faded, he looked more like a homeless man. He had a wild matted beard, his clothes were filthy and torn, and he carried a butcher knife in a leather scabbard at his waist.”

  Del squinted at the phone’s screen. “That’s not a butcher knife. It’s just a hunting knife.”

  “What’s he hunting? Elephants?” Morgan brushed her finger across the screen to the next photo. “These are the bones.”

  Blurry and underexposed, the photo did not show much but a dark mound. Morgan enlarged the picture. The subdued colors of faded denim, a red windbreaker, and what seemed to be a yellow knit cap showed against the packed dirt floor.

  “The picture of the man looks like a bear, and the picture of the skeleton looks like a pile of laundry. I don’t know how these are gonna help any.” Del tugged at his mustache. “I sure hope this was due to natural causes. I’d hate to see you caught up in another murder case. The last one nearly killed you.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  * * *

  In the morning, Morgan braved slick roads. The aging Buick’s tires were a few millimeters away from bald, but she had managed to survive the Colorado winter. Now that it was May, she had deluded herself into believing new tires could wait until fall. She was relieved to reach the Golden Springs Community Church without sliding into an irrigation ditch.

  The stained-glass windows added visual warmth to the exterior of the stone church. Central heat warmed the interior. Morgan was an unofficial member of the church kitchen ladies, helping brew coffee and set out cookies for the after-service social hour. She walked in and grabbed an apron, wrapping it around her going-to-church wool slacks and pink striped blouse.

  “Good morning, Morgan.” Beatrice Stonewall clasped her hands together as though she could barely contain her excitement. “So, do you have any news for us?”

  The other two ladies looked up from arranging store-bought cookies on trays.

  “I do have news.” Morgan tied the apron strings behind her back.

  If Golden Springs Community Church was the wheel upon which local gossip turned, Beatrice was definitely its hub. The sturdy older woman’s short, steel-gray hair seemed to stand at attention as she waited for Morgan’s morsel of information. Apparently, Morgan didn’t speak quickly enough to suit Beatrice.

  “I’ll bet I can guess. Morgan, you hit it off with Pete.”

  Morgan suppressed the urge to cringe.

  “I do appreciate you making the arrangements,” she said. “But Pete and I don’t have much in common.”

  Morgan wasn’t sure why she’d agreed to go to dinner with Pete Melcher, except that Beatrice was a difficult person to refuse. He wasn’t interested in any of the things that filled Morgan’s world, like hiking, rocks, and donkeys.

  “How can you say that?” Beatrice asked. “You have lots of things in common. You both live in Golden Springs. You attend the same church. I’m sure if you get to know Pete better, you’ll find you share many of the same experiences.”

  Perhaps, Morgan thought, but having done some of the same things in life didn’t equate with a shared enjoyment of those experiences. Pete did say he had been camping, but his description of a night in a tent had been tinged with horror at the discomforts. In fact, the outdoors seemed to frighten him.
r />   “You can’t tell these things after just one date,” Beatrice added.

  “That’s not the news I had,” Morgan said, hoping to deflect Beatrice’s matchmaking attempt. “I found a skeleton.”

  “On your date?” Beatrice asked. “Pete didn’t tell me anything about skeletons.”

  “No, not on my date. Yesterday. During my last geology class field trip.”

  Teruko McCormick shook her head, as though gently scolding Morgan for her penchant for discovering dead people. The woman with a halo of soft white curls had surely never done anything scandalous in her life.

  “Del thinks I might have stumbled across Gerda Kruger’s missing daughter,” Morgan said.

  “He could be right.” Anna poured a pitcher of water into the industrial-sized coffee pot. The woman’s face was lined from years spent hiking and skiing at high altitude. She was tall and lean, and in much better shape than Morgan. “That’s the only cold case in recent history.”

  Beatrice scrunched her face into a thoughtful expression. “How recent was the body?”

  “The hiking boots and jeans looked modern,” Morgan said. “There wasn’t a body, exactly. Just bones. I have a photo on my phone.”

  Teruko wrung the dishtowel with both frail hands.

  “Well, let’s see it,” Beatrice said.

  The ladies erupted with questions. The blurry, poorly exposed photos did not help answer them. Morgan had to tell the tale again of falling in a gulley, stumbling onto the dugout, seeing a skeleton clad in hiking clothes, and having the daylights scared out of her by a smelly man who resembled Sasquatch.

  “Del believes she got lost in the forest,” Morgan said.

  “She might have run away from home,” Anna said. “Like the other daughter.”