He’d bribed the guard at the gate of course, just like he did every Saturday morning, slipped him a ten, but after that he was free to wander among the piles of waste, looking for rusty gold. Today he’d found two old washing machines, an iron grate, and several industrial shelf units, their legs broken and buckled, among other things. It was a good haul, but he was tired and his back ached. Washing machines were heavy, and since Terry had not come home last night he was forced to lift them into the truck all by himself.
Now the last thing he wanted was to spend a couple more hours driving everything over to the junkyard, but he needed the cash, not to mention the fact that if he didn’t get it unloaded there would be no room in the back for the consignment of old tires he was picking up first thing Monday morning.
“Shit.” He cursed, shouting the word at nothing in particular. It was all Floyd’s fault. If the old man had not offered Terry work running illegal booze half way around the State then he wouldn’t need to do all this stuff by himself. Hell, it wasn’t like Floyd was even family really, at least not to him. A brother-in-law was not blood. Worse, Jeremiah had been divorced from Pamela, Floyd’s sister, for almost five years, and yet the man still hung around like a bad smell.
He picked up a bottle and downed a mouthful of the clear liquid inside. It burned as it made its way to his stomach. At least there was one benefit to Terry working for Floyd, he got all the free hooch he wanted, and he had to admit that the old man knew how to make his liquor.
That didn’t do him an ounce of good now though when there was a load to deliver.
There was nothing for it. He would have to go up to Floyd’s camp and find his son, who no doubt, was sleeping off yet another drinking session, having decided to hang out with Floyd after their midnight run and perform some quality control on the latest batch of moonshine. It was a regular occurrence these days and a turn up that Jeremiah found mildly distasteful, not because he disapproved of such things, but more because he wasn’t a part of them.
He found the keys to the truck, grabbed the bottle of moonshine and stomped outside, the bright daylight hurting his eyes and causing him to squint until he adjusted to it.
He climbed behind the wheel, gunned the engine, and set off in the direction of Floyd’s land.
It only took Jeremiah a few minutes to drive the three miles to the moonshiner’s camp. Along the way he swigged the alcohol, and then pushed the bottle down between the seats as his destination came into view.
He pulled up next to the cabin and climbed from the truck.
There was no one in sight.
“Terry?” He called out. When he didn’t receive an answer he poked his head inside the cabin, but it was empty.
“Terry. You up here?” He wandered toward the still. “Floyd?”
It was not like the old moonshiner to leave his equipment in full view. He hadn’t even pulled the tarps down over it, the fool.
He reached the still and looked around. He had been hoping there might be some more booze up here, maybe a couple of jugs laying around for the taking, but he saw only empties. That wasn’t the only thing he saw. The still was half pulled apart, tubes dangling where the main pot should have been. There was a yellow piece of paper stuck to the ruined apparatus.
Jeremiah leaned down and read it, the heading in large bold type telling him all he needed to know.
WOLF HAVEN SHERIFF’S OFFICE
NOTICE OF IMPOUNDMENT
He read the rest of the notice and sighed. No wonder Terry hadn’t come home last night. The damn fool had gone and gotten himself arrested for running Floyd’s illegal liquor.
There was no point in hanging around here. He would go down to the sheriff’s office and bail the stupid kid out the first chance he got. In the meantime, he really needed to pee.
Jeremiah ambled over to the latrine, taking a deep breath to avoid breathing in the fumes given off by the nasty combination of rotting shit and piss for as long as he could. Despite this, the smell still managed to work its way up his nose, burning.
He unzipped his pants and began to pee, watching the arc of yellow liquid splash down into the hole. When he was finished he shook it and zipped himself up again, thankful to escape the nasty tent.
He was about to pull the flap back and head toward his truck, when he realized he was no longer alone. Someone was walking around the camp, and they weren’t being particularly quiet about it either.
Jeremiah froze, unsure what to do.
Maybe Floyd and Terry didn’t get hauled off to jail. If they noticed the cops coming up the dirt road they could have ducked into the woods and hidden, waiting until the coast was clear to come out.
On the other hand, it could be the sheriff and his half-baked deputy coming back to clean out the rest of the still equipment. The last thing Jeremiah wanted to do was end up sharing a cell with Floyd and Terry. Then who would bail them out? Not Pamela, that was for sure. She was still holding a grudge after catching him in the back of his truck with Ruby Wells from the discount grocery store in Hodgenville, two towns over. Five years and she still couldn’t forgive him. It wasn’t like she was pure as driven snow either. He’d known all about her little liaisons with Matt Barker up at Hardee’s Gas on Route 4. That man sure filled her up, in more ways than one.
Jeremiah would have chuckled at that under normal circumstances, but since he was holed up in a stinking latrine hiding from what he assumed was Sheriff Decker, he didn’t.
Instead he just stood there, not daring to move, doing his best not to breathe, partly for fear of discovery, and also because he didn’t want to breathe in any more of Floyd’s shit fumes than necessary.
The footsteps were right outside the tent. He thought he heard a sniff, like a dog checking out a scent, then another. Did the sheriff have a K-9 unit now?
He recoiled, expecting the tarps to part at any second, expecting to be discovered and hauled off to jail, either for trespassing, or for being one of Floyd’s accomplices. That didn’t happen though. Instead the footsteps receded until there was nothing but silence outside the latrine. Whoever was poking around was gone.
Jeremiah lingered, hidden by the tarpaulins, for a few more minutes, until he felt it was safe to move, then he parted the flaps and slipped from the toilet, relieved to be back out in the open air.
The camp was empty.
There was no sign anyone had been there or that anything had been touched. The partly dismantled distilling apparatus was just as it had been a few moments before, complete with the impound notice, and his truck still waited for him next to the cabin.
It suddenly occurred to him that if the cops actually were to return then his pickup, sitting out in the open like that, would be a dead giveaway. All Sheriff Decker needed to do was call in the plate number and his goose was well and truly cooked.
Whoever he heard walking around, it was obviously not the cops. Regardless, he should probably make himself scarce. He didn’t want to push his luck. Decker would return at some point to get the rest of the impounded equipment, and Jeremiah didn’t want to be there when he did.
He hurried toward his truck, retrieving his keys from his pocket as he went. He was five feet from the vehicle when he stopped short, his eyes alighting on something odd in the soft dirt. There, plain as the nose on his face, was a set of tracks moving across the camp. Tracks that Jeremiah did not recognize as any animal he was familiar with, which was odd considering how much time he spent hunting out in the woods. He bent to inspect the strange impressions. They looked somewhat like a barefooted human had strolled through the camp, except they were too big, much too big. Worse, he could see small tufts of dirt that were pushed up and back, and next to them, deep holes where claws had penetrated the ground.
He looked around, nervous, but there was no sign of the owner of the footprints. Never the less, something was off. The birds no longer sang in the trees. The woods had fallen silent. It was eerie, disturbing.
He all but ran to the picku
p and slammed the door. He pushed the key into the ignition, started the engine, and pushed the gearstick into first, hoping that whatever was prowling around didn’t hear the metallic grind from the worn gearbox. Then he was moving, putting as much distance between himself and the camp as he could.
19
DECKER WATCHED AS the M.E. poked and prodded the corpse of Jake Barlow. Not for the first time in the last few hours he repressed the urge to vomit. In all his years in law enforcement he had never seen a body quite so torn up and mangled. He wished he were somewhere else, anywhere else. This was not the kind of messed up shit he had signed up for. Fist fights at the County Line Saloon, domestic disputes, and the occasional drunk and disorderly, that was more his speed these days. In the five years since taking the sheriff job and returning to his hometown he’d never even pulled his gun, not once. This was a quiet place, a simple place. That was the way he liked it, and now this.
He watched the forensic photographer, called in from New Orleans, as he darted around, snapping pictures of the ground surrounding the body, the woods, and the trail, anything he could point his lens at. The man had already spent half an hour documenting the pile of clothes and the blanket by the water, and a further forty minutes photographing the body from every conceivable angle, before the M.E. went to work. Decker wondered if they actually needed so many shots or if the man was just keeping himself busy to avoid looking at the bloody mess that was, only a few hours ago, a healthy, horny teenager.
His mind wandered to another time, many years before when he was still a kid, back to the day his mother died. He wondered if his father, himself the sheriff of Wolf Haven, had stood and looked down upon a similar scene out in the woods behind their house. What his mother was doing out beyond the tree line, deep in the forest, no one knew, but when they found her there was no mistaking the cause of death. They blamed a wild dog, said she must have crossed paths with it while out walking on a hot summer day, but his father, the first person on the scene, didn’t believe that. He spent the next eight years growing more and more obsessed with finding out the truth, or at least the truth as he imagined it to be. He followed leads, most of which went nowhere, spent hours in the pinewoods looking for any sign of the animal that killed his wife, and slowly but surely alienated his son. When Decker was eighteen he left for college, and was happy to be away from his old man. Six months later his father died, swallowing enough pills to strike down a horse.
“Still at it?” Chad’s voice brought Decker back to the present. He looked up to see the deputy trudging toward him from the direction of the swimming hole, which was now strung with yellow crime scene tape all the way from the head of the trail.
“Seems to be.” Decker said. He turned away from the body and rubbed his neck, swatting away a mosquito that was trying to score a free lunch. “This has turned into one crappy day.”
“Sure has.” Chad said. He held up a wallet in a plastic evidence bag. “We have a positive ID on the kid. There was a driver’s license in his jeans. It’s Jake Barlow alright.”
“Figured as much.”
“Who’s going to tell the parents?”
“I’ll swing by on the way back to town, break the news. Damned if I know what to tell them though,” Decker said.
“Right.” Chad sounded relieved.
“Sheriff Decker?” The M.E. pushed her way through the brush, her eyes cold and haunted despite the forced smile on her lips. She pulled off the blue latex gloves she was wearing as she approached, then proffered her hand to Decker. For a moment he paused, reluctant to shake a hand that had spent the last 60 minutes probing a corpse, but then he took it and shook.
“So what do we have?” Decker asked.
“Well, what we are looking at is severe trauma. Huge amounts of damage to the neck, chest and stomach, which was flayed open with organs chewed and removed, as well as defensive wounds to the arms and legs. Most of the damage seems to have been inflicted perimortem.”
“Huh?” Chad looked confused.
“Perimortem. Right before death.” The M.E. explained. “He was still breathing when the wounds were inflicted, at least to begin with. Poor kid.”
“Oh. Right.” Chad looked pale.
“Please continue,” Decker said. “Do you know what the cause of death was?”
The M.E. nodded. “Acute blood loss and shock, he wouldn’t have lasted long. There were several major arteries torn. But I imagine you are talking about what attacked him rather than what the physical cause of death was, am I right?”
“Right.”
“It’s almost certainly a large animal. There are bite marks around the neck and chest areas, not to mention deep lacerations to the arms and legs from the animal’s claws. I will be able to give you a more definitive answer when I get the body into the lab and I can compare the marks to known predators, measure the jaw size and bite radius, although, I have to say, I’m stumped about what could have caused this.”
“Could a bear be responsible?” Decker asked.
“It’s possible. It seems unlikely though given the scarcity of bears in these parts, and despite what people think, fatal bear attacks are rare, less than three or four a year nation wide. You’re more likely to be struck by lightning.”
“And yet here we are.” Decker’s eyes drifted to the corpse. For a moment it wasn’t Jake Barlow lying dead on the ground, but Decker’s mother. He looked away again quickly.
“Like I said, I’ll have more information after I conduct the autopsy. In the meantime, I would suggest that you keep people out of the woods. Bear or not, something ripped chunks out of that poor boy.”
20
CAROL LAWSON RUBBED HER temples to ease the headache that refused to go away despite several aspirin. At first, after Decker and Chad rushed up to the swimming hole, she harbored a faint hope that Taylor might be mistaken about Jake - that they might find him alive - but the sheriff put that notion to rest when he radioed to report their gruesome discovery.
She popped yet another aspirin and watched Nancy help Taylor into a waiting car in the parking lot. It had taken two hours to calm the hysterical girl enough for her mother to take her home, and even now Taylor was barely functioning.
Nancy climbed into the car and reversed out from the parking space. Carol closed her eyes, praying the headache would subside. No sooner had she done so than the front door opened. When she opened her eyes she found Jeremiah Boudreaux standing at the counter.
“I’ve come to get my boy.” Jeremiah said.
“I’m sorry?” Carol replied.
“Terry. I’m here to bail him out.” Jeremiah glanced around the office. “You have him in your jail?”
“We don’t have anyone out back right now.” Carol wondered why Jeremiah thought his son was there.
“Well, he ain’t been home since last night, so if he ain’t here then where the hell is he?”
Carol shook her head. “I really don’t know.”
“Well you should. Your impound notices are all over Floyd’s still.”
“Terry was with Floyd Benson?”
“Sure was,” Jeremiah said. “Not doing anything illegal mind you, just helping the old man move some old tires down to the dump.”
Sure he was, thought Carol. So it was Terry who was with Floyd in the truck last night. “We found Floyd’s truck abandoned up on Route 16. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?”
“Hell no. What do you mean you found Floyd’s truck abandoned?”
“Exactly what I said. It was just sitting there, right in the middle of the road with the keys still in it and hooch bottles smashed all over. I think the sheriff might want to talk to you when he gets back.”
“Why?” Jeremiah looked startled. “I haven’t done nothing wrong. I don’t know nothing about any liquor bottles.”
“I’m not saying you’ve done anything wrong Mr. Boudreaux, but if Terry was with Floyd, and you haven’t seen him since, then we have two people missing.”
“Missing? Why would they be missing? More than likely they went off and got roaring drunk out in the woods.”
Carol wondered if she should tell Jeremiah about the animal attack, but thought better of it. Given the discovery of the claw in the back of the truck, she had a growing suspicion that whatever had attacked Jake might have been up on Route 16 the previous evening. If that was the case they had a real problem, and maybe two more victims. “Did you want to report Terry missing?”
“Hell no. Stupid kid is probably sleeping off a hangover somewhere,” Jeremiah said. “He’ll come back when he’s good and ready.”
“Your call,” Carol said. She rubbed her forehead again. Her headache was getting worse.
21
BY THE TIME DECKER returned to Wolf Haven the sun was slipping low on the horizon.
After leaving the swimming hole he drove to the Barlow residence to tell them of their son’s death, watching as their faces turned from disbelief to anguish. It was never easy being the bearer of bad news, but somehow it seemed much worse given Jake’s age. Afterward, he felt drained and empty. He checked in with Chad, who was still at Sullivan’s Pond while the M.E. removed the body, and then drove the short distance back to town.
As soon as he entered the Sheriff’s Office he went to his desk and pulled out the claw he’d found in the bed of Floyd’s truck. He turned it over in his hand, examining it. When Carol filled him in on her conversation with Jeremiah Boudreaux his unease grew. Had the moonshiners stumbled across the same animal that attacked Jake Barlow? That would certainly explain the strange claw. It would also mean that there might be two more victims out in the woods somewhere. It was too dark to do anything about that right now. It would have to wait until morning.
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