Dare jammed his hands between his knees and rocked back and forth the whole way there. I placed a hand on his shoulder just to let him know he wasn’t alone.
We were traveling on Hawthorne Road, not far from where the search party was held. The cruiser pulled off the road onto a path that was just rutted tracks from previous traffic. We were surrounded on all sides by towering pines, which in the moment felt quite claustrophobic. The “path” ended somewhat abruptly in a dead end at the lake’s edge, where there were about a half dozen police cruisers, some unmarked, and a diving team with equipment. Dare’s parents stood on the banks, behind the crime scene tape, tense and vigilant.
“I drove right past here,” Dare muttered and then, as though realizing I was still standing beside him, he turned to me. “Friday night when I was waiting for Mason to meet me, I drove by here.”
“What time was that?” I asked, pulling up my timeline.
“I don’t know, quarter to eight?”
“Did you see anything?”
“No.” Dare shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Did Mason tell you he was headed out here?”
“No. He just called and told me he’d be late. Actually he texted me, and I called him back. I gave him shit for it, because I knew people would be at our house already.” Dare drew his hands down his face. “God, I was such an asshole.”
I was sure it was just Dare’s annoyance at his brother for flaking. “Do you know why Mason would be out here?”
“No. He doesn’t go for long drives like I do, says it’s a waste of gas. His truck’s a gas-guzzler. It’s so strange….”
He trailed off and glanced back toward the road.
“What’s strange?”
“I never come out here either. I just… had a feeling. You know?” He looked to me for validation, but I couldn’t give it to him. I’d never followed someone based on a gut feeling. I also didn’t like to think about what that meant: if GPD found something in the lake, Dare’s admission put him at the scene of the crime.
Dare looked bewildered by it all as he walked over to his parents and greeted them. The head of the dive unit conferred with Lieutenant Hartsfield, who communicated that to his team via radio. Hartsfield then went over to Dare’s parents to give them an update. I edged in a little closer.
“We found Mason’s truck,” Hartsfield said. “The license plate matches. We’re getting a tow truck out here to pull out the vehicle and see what’s what.”
Hartsfield’s face looked grim. Dare’s mother turned away and folded neatly into Mr. Chalmers’s chest like a bird nesting down for the night. His arms went around her to comfort her. Dare crouched down in a bed of pine needles and buried his head in his hands. I squatted next to him.
“He’s dead,” Dare whispered. “My brother is dead.”
“You don’t know that.” I tried to comfort him, but my words sounded hollow, even to me.
“I know it, Charlie. I’ve known since Friday. Somebody killed my brother, and when I find out who….”
Dare’s face reminded me of Boots’s snarl when he sensed danger. The tendons in his wrists were taut and straining. His hands were two fists, balled up with tension. His voice was a growl when he said, “I’m going to fucking tear them apart.”
DREDGING MASON’S truck out of the lake was a production. The first tow truck didn’t have a cable long enough. Then, once a longer cable was secured, the muck acted like a suction cup, and the one truck didn’t have enough power to get the job done. Its tires got stuck in the mud, causing the engine to keen in a terrible way. They had to use a second truck to tow the first one. Finally, with two trucks working in tandem, they were able to free Mason’s vehicle from the swampy bottom. GPD didn’t want to pull too hard and disturb potential evidence, so the actual towing of the truck went inch by devastating inch.
Dare alternated between rocking back and forth on his heels and pacing the outer perimeter of the crime scene. His concentration was focused on the activity in the lake, the tow trucks’ slow progress, and Mason’s F-150 as it slowly breached the surface like a whale coming up for air.
As soon as the truck was on dry land, the crime scene unit descended in full gear, and no one was allowed to cross the yellow tape, including my mother. She stood near their makeshift headquarters with a radio, giving orders and requesting information. A young woman in business casual clothing and waders stood next to her, taking notes. Normally I’d be doing that job, which I’ll admit stung a little. Meanwhile the crime scene specialists worked with industry, dusting the door handles, the tailgate, the sides and hood of the truck. They filled vials and swabbed samples. I stood as close as I could get away with and made notes of my own. The truck appeared to lean to one side, though it was hard to tell whether it was the vehicle itself or the swampy ground.
When the techs finally got around to opening the driver’s side door, a gush of water surged from the truck, and a spherical object rolled out along with it. At first I thought it was only a soccer ball.
It was not.
My stomach turned, and I had to fight down the urge to vomit. My first thought was to make sure Dare hadn’t seen it. He and his parents, thankfully, were angled toward the passenger side. At the same time, the techs realized what they’d stumbled upon and took a step back. One lifted the radio and sent a message to my mother, who quickly activated her team to form a human blockade. The officers moved slowly but coordinated, trying their best to make it appear casual and accidental. Mom glanced my way, and without any instruction I strode over to where Dare and his parents were waiting.
“GPD is asking that we move back a little farther,” I told them, making up something that sounded official. I spread my arms wide and herded them backward. They shuffled away, out of the line of sight, and then Dare’s mother recognized me.
“You’re that boy who got Mason in trouble last year,” she said with an angry look on her face.
“Yes, ma’am. Charlie Schiffer.”
She took the opportunity to tell me what she thought of me, which wasn’t very much. I nodded along with her assessment, but I wasn’t giving her my full attention because Dare had caught on that there was activity happening on the driver’s side of his brother’s truck. He broke away from his parents and strode in that direction. An officer tried to intercept him, but Dare pushed past. His tennis shoe got caught in the muck, and he nearly stumbled but regained his balance and continued on with purpose. I jogged after him, but I couldn’t prevent Dare from seeing what was sure to give him nightmares for the rest of his life.
The forensics team was carefully bagging Mason’s severed head.
Chapter 6
DARE WENT into shock. It happened so slowly that nobody noticed at first. His mother was hysterical, but Dare just… shut down. By the time I realized what was going on, the color in his face had drained away and his lips paled around the edges. Then his eyes glazed over and rolled back into his head. His body went limp. I caught him as he was falling and laid him out on a grassy patch of ground.
“Medic,” I shouted to the EMTs on duty. Dare’s hands were like ice as I tried to massage feeling back into them. “Dare.” I shook his shoulders and felt for his pulse—sluggish but regular. A medic took over, checking his vitals and issuing commands. Dare’s eyes slowly opened, then closed again as though he didn’t want to face the realization that his brother was dead—not just dead, but murdered—and this was his attempt to stave it off for just a little while longer.
The medics wrapped Dare in a reflective blanket and massaged his arms and legs to get his blood circulating properly. They wanted to take him to the hospital, but Dare refused, so they set him up on the tailgate of the ambulance and gave him a juice box. He didn’t drink it, though, just sat there with a vacant expression, the little plastic straw still attached to the box. I wanted to stick it in for him and hold the straw to his mouth, but I didn’t want to treat him like a child.
My constitution was a little gray a
s well. Even though I’d looked at countless crime scene photos, I’d never actually seen a dead body in real life, or a severed head that had been in the water for three days. Mason’s face had bloated so much that his jowls looked like grouper cheeks. His lips were purple and swollen as well, and his eyes had a bluish film over them like an early onset of glaucoma. He was almost unrecognizable, and it was hard to reconcile the waxy horror with the mischievous, smiling face I’d grown up with. It felt unreal, as though his head were only a prop in some theater production. Perhaps that was just my mind’s way of coping.
Everything I thought to say to Dare seemed wrong, so I simply sat beside him and monitored his vitals. Neither of his parents came to check on him. His mother had to be medicated and taken home by a friend of the family. Dare’s father paced back and forth in the muck, ruining his dress shoes and slacks. The sight of his pants all wet and dirty like that bothered me more than it should have, all things considered. My mother was doing damage control, keeping everyone extraneous away from the crime scene so it wouldn’t be contaminated, while also consulting with the forensics team on how best to proceed.
Even though I felt sick to my stomach and wanted nothing more than to go home, I had to be Dare’s eyes and ears. I figured that was why he’d brought me here in the first place. Having a job to do made me feel a little more in control and a little less unsettled. If I couldn’t comfort Dare, I could at least take notes, so I listened in on the deputies’ conversations and the radio traffic to deduce the following.
Mason had been murdered. They weren’t sure if it was by decapitation or if he was dead already when it happened.
The keys were still in the ignition and the driver’s side window was down, which meant the killer could have driven Mason’s truck into the lake, presumably to hide it, and swum out the open window.
Mason’s head had been lodged in the steering wheel.
His body had not yet been found.
In the hour since he’d discovered his brother was dead, Dare hadn’t uttered a word and still looked ghostly pale. I wished there were a counselor present, someone who could say the right things to comfort him, but GPD was too busy collecting evidence and support staff had yet to arrive. I felt trapped between saying the wrong thing and saying nothing at all. Dare had discarded his juice box, unopened, and kept his hands clutched between his knees, rocking ever so slightly as though in a trance.
I debated for several minutes on the best course of action, but it seemed to me that Dare had had enough of the crime scene for one day. There was nothing to be gained by having him present. I hopped off the tailgate and stood in front of him, forcing his attention outward. Very slowly I stilled his knees with my hands, grabbed his fingers, and softly squeezed, similar to how I’d massaged them before when I was trying to help the paramedics circulate his blood.
“I should take you home,” I told him.
Dare’s eyes slowly focused, his chin lifted ever so slightly, and he blinked, still somewhat catatonic. “I… I can’t leave Mason.”
There was a crew setting up lights in the ashen twilight. I suspected they’d be here for several more hours, collecting evidence and photographing the scene. There were storm clouds gathering above us. I hoped the rain held off until they’d finished. A rainstorm would erase any tire tracks or footprints that could help us find Mason’s killer.
“Why don’t you come to my house?”
He stared at me for a while—minutes, it seemed—then his shoulders heaved and he sighed in resignation. Before he could change his mind, I called to a deputy for a ride, since both our cars were still at the high school. I told Mr. Chalmers I was taking Dare to my house. He nodded absently and looked past me to the rows of pines leaning over us like hunched old men in reproach. If only trees could talk.
“My boy,” he said, broken-hearted. “Somebody did that to my boy.”
DARE WASN’T hungry or thirsty. In fact, he was so out of it that he was barely moving on his own. I led him to my room and helped him take off his muddy shoes, thinking I could perhaps clean them for him before the stains set in. I built him a nest of blankets and pillows on my bed and turned on the classical radio station for ambiance—it was what I listened to at night before falling asleep. Boots seemed to know that Dare needed comfort and made himself available for cuddling.
“Can you stay with me a minute, Charlie?” Dare asked. His voice was muffled and his face mostly buried in a pillow.
“Sure thing, Dare.”
I sat on my desk chair and tried to read a book I’d been neglecting with only my desk lamp for light so Dare could sleep. Really I just stared at the words swimming on the page and tried to make sense of it all. I was still in a state of disbelief. Mason Chalmers had been murdered, less than a mile from here, on his birthday of all days, and it was gruesome. It seemed like only a serial killer could do something so ghastly—someone seriously fucked-up in the head—but if so, why target Mason? Was he simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, or had his killer been stalking him, waiting for an opportunity when he was alone and vulnerable? Would the killer go after Dare next? That was the thought that chilled me to the bone and the reason I suggested Dare come with me to my house. At least here I knew I could protect him.
My mom got home around two in the morning. I was sleeping on the couch when I heard the sound of her keys dropping into the ceramic bowl in the kitchen. She groaned in exhaustion as her shadow on the living room wall stretched toward the ceiling.
“Charlie?” she asked, rounding the corner.
“In here.” I turned on the nearby lamp so she wouldn’t startle. Boots briefly made an appearance, then trotted back to my bedroom to be with Dare, leaving the door open behind him.
“Why aren’t you in your room?” she asked.
“Dare’s in there.”
“Dare Chalmers?” she asked in a whisper that sounded more like a shout.
“He needed a place to crash. He didn’t want to go home.”
Mom sat down on the coffee table, her knees bumping up against the couch. Even though her voice was dampened, her gestures were at full volume.
“Charlie, what did I tell you? We’re looking at a murder investigation here, and Dare is a person of interest.”
“He didn’t do it, Mom,” I said tiredly and rubbed the sleep from my eyes.
“You don’t know that,” she insisted. “People lie, Charlie. People cheat and hide things—big things.” She stopped there. I wondered if we were still talking about Dare or if she was referring to my dad.
I didn’t want to argue with her. Until my mother found a better suspect, she was going to assume Dare was guilty. I couldn’t blame her maternal instinct to want to keep me safe, and even though I was breaking one of my own rules, I knew in my gut Dare didn’t do it.
“Did you find the body?” I asked.
She sighed. “No.”
“Any ideas on where it is?”
“Hartsfield thinks the gators got it.”
That was a disturbing thought, and one I didn’t want to imagine. There were gators everywhere in Gainesville. One had just been spotted recently on our high school campus crossing an outdoor alleyway, traveling between a ditch and a water retention pond, one of the hazards of building a town in the middle of a swamp.
I’d overheard Mason’s head was caught in the steering wheel. “Does Hartsfield think the gators tore the body from the head?”
“No, the head was severed cleanly.” She made a chopping motion with her hand like an axe. “One fast, hard chop.”
“With what?”
“We don’t know yet, but it would take some strength to sever the spinal cord and vertebrae with just one blow.”
“Is that how he died?” If that was the case, Mason must have been restrained. It was terrible to think Mason might have been alive for that final death blow.
“We’ll have to wait for the medical examiner’s report, though it’s going to be harder without a body to examine.�
� Mom glanced past me to my bedroom door. “In the meantime I don’t want you involved in this case, on any level. Or with that young man.”
“Dare’s a friend, Mom. Boots likes him.”
“Dare could be a murderer, Charlie, and Boots isn’t the best judge of character.”
We stared at each other. It was a standoff. Mom liked to joke that the only person she’d ever known more stubborn than herself was me. Except at times like these, neither of us was laughing.
“Remember, I’m still the parent,” she said as her final reprimand. She kissed the top of my head and stood. “I’m beat. I want Dare Chalmers out of my house first thing in the morning.”
I said good night and fell back into the couch, unable to fall asleep right away. I was still ruminating on the unusual circumstances of Mason Chalmers’s murder and the peculiar relationship I’d had with the Chalmers twins over the years. Watching Mischief and Mayhem from a distance, being entertained by their antics, observing with a kind of vague envy at their brotherhood and the fun they created in a universe all their own. And now Dare Chalmers was sleeping in my bedroom, having lost his other half in a most gruesome and terrifying way. I wasn’t a superstitious person, but Mason reaching out to me last Friday afternoon after months of no contact almost felt like an omen.
In the Pines Page 6