Those Who Came Before

by J. H. Moncrieff

  Drip, drip, drip.

  No, not rain.

  Dan’s blood.

  Falling from the ceiling.

  “Your mother says you told the lawyer someone talked to you that night, tried to scare you off.”

  You’re not welcome here.

  I shuddered, snagging the blanket Mom kept on the couch. “If you can call it talking.”

  “Well, there you go. He has to be the killer.”

  Actually, I thought whoever it was had been trying to warn me, but I couldn’t tell Dad that. I wasn’t sure how I knew. It was just a hunch.

  Chapter Twelve

  Something brushed against her and she cried out, whipping around so fast she nearly toppled her chair.

  Ben threw his hands up in surrender. “Don’t shoot, Officer.”

  “Very funny. You scared the shit out of me.” Her heart pounded so hard it made her feel dizzy.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” Her husband looked so contrite that she tried not to be angry with him, but it was tough. She hated getting spooked. “I was wondering if you’re planning on coming to bed soon.”

  He waggled his eyebrows at her, and a week ago she probably would have laughed. However, that was then, and this was now.

  “It won’t be for a few hours yet.”

  Kinew had been tight-lipped about the modern catastrophes that had befallen the campsite, and she was curious to see what she could find out. It had taken her so long to drive home from her meeting with Kinew that she’d started late.

  “A few hours? Honey, it’s already midnight.”

  “Three college students were torn to bits at the campground, Ben. Can you think of a better reason for overtime?”

  His response could go one of two ways. Either he’d start in about how there would always be something pulling her away from him and Heidi, or he’d understand. Whichever direction he decided to go would impact how much work she’d get done. After a fight with Ben, she was pretty much useless. Maria dreaded confrontations, which she figured others would find strange, given her line of work.

  Without saying anything, her husband gently turned her chair around so she faced the window. He rubbed her shoulders until she moaned, stretching her neck from side to side until the joints popped.

  “You’re working so hard,” he said.

  “I really want to solve this one.”

  “I know.”

  There weren’t many homicides in her county, thank God, and there had never been one like this. Not that she was aware of – the tribal and state police usually investigated crimes on treaty lands. She wasn’t sure why this one had been left to her. Because the victims were Caucasian?

  “I miss you.”

  Her husband’s attempts to relax her failed with those words. Feeling the tension return to her shoulders, her reply sounded harsher than she’d meant. “Don’t start.”

  “What? I’m being honest. I do miss you, and Heidi does too.”

  His hands sought the tight muscles at the base of her neck, but she pushed them away. “Nice. Thanks for the guilt trip. That’s the last thing I needed today.”

  “I wasn’t trying to make you feel guilty. I only wanted to let you know we care about you. If you feel guilty, maybe it’s your own conscience nagging you.”

  She whirled to face him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing, other than the fact you were having dinner with another man when you could have been home with us.”

  “I wasn’t ‘having dinner’ with him. I was interviewing him, remember?” Maria often regaled Ben with funny stories about her day, but perhaps the humor of Kinew’s tight pants was more subjective than most. And she never should have told her husband about the ‘nice bed’ remark. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous of him.”

  “Why not? He’s spent more time with my wife this week than I have.” Ben’s face reddened while she gaped at him. Her husband was the most mild-mannered man on the planet. Occasionally he got upset if the job took her away from home too much, but even then, he was always upset for her, never at her.

  “That’s not true. And I only spent as much time as I did because he insisted on stonewalling me. I didn’t know we were going to eat until we arrived at the diner.”

  Seen through her husband’s perspective, she wondered if Kinew’s reluctance to talk had had a nefarious purpose behind it. “What’s really going on, Ben?”

  He lowered his eyes, unable to face her. “Those nightmares you’ve been having. Barb thinks there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Barb. The dreaded sister-in-law. She was older than Ben by five years and absurdly overprotective. Most days Maria cut her a lot of slack because her coddling came from a good place. But sometimes she had no patience for Barb’s unerring ability to stir up shit in their marriage, and this was one of those times.

  If Barb wasn’t feeding Ben crazy ideas, she was asking him for money. She was one of those people who couldn’t hold down a job if her life depended on it. Her latest gig had been at a so-called ‘wellness’ institute whose services included Reiki, phrenology, cupping, Tarot-card readings, and dream analysis.

  Ben was smart, but he was also creative, and it didn’t take much to get him imagining various worst-case scenarios.

  “Barb thinks every police officer in the world is hiding something. Ben, I saw a young woman turned into a puddle. Tell me who wouldn’t have nightmares after something like that.”

  Ben grimaced. He was happy to hear about her job, but he couldn’t handle the gore. She figured that if he were going to accuse her of infidelity, he deserved everything he got.

  “I wish you’d cut her off when she starts going down that road. She always ends up causing problems between us.”

  She had long suspected Barb was jealous of their relationship. The woman had been divorced three times and was currently single. Maria wished Barb would stick to one of her many dating stories when she phoned. They were infinitely more entertaining.

  “So you’re not hiding anything?”

  “Well, I am, but it’s not what you think. And this has nothing to do with your sister’s accusations, so don’t you dare give her credit.”

  A ghost of a smile creased her husband’s face. “Fair enough. I promise.”

  And then Maria told him about Kinew’s stories of the lost tribe and the slaughtered settlers. Ben’s eyes widened.

  “Do you think there’s some truth to it?”

  “What happened to the settlers is definitely true. I verified it with a quick Google search. As for the lost tribe, that will be harder to prove.”

  “That’s certainly disturbing. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but what does that have to do with the murders?”

  “Kinew says his people believe the campground is cursed, something to do with what happened to this so-called lost tribe. He says the deaths of the settlers prove it.”

  “But the settlers could have been killed by bears, or wolves, or some other kind of predator. It’s creepy, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s supernatural.”

  “I didn’t say it was. I’m telling you what Kinew’s people believe,” Maria snapped.

  Ben recoiled. “No need for hostility.”

  “You’re right, I’m sorry.” She hugged him, relieved when he wrapped his arms around her as tight as ever. “This is difficult for me, but I don’t mean to take it out on you.”

  “Apology accepted. I’m sorry for psychoanalyzing you with my crazy sister.”

  “That’s okay. I probably need to be psychoanalyzed.”

  “Did this guy Kinew have a theory?” His anger forgotten, Ben’s words tumbled over each other in his excitement. Now that they were discussing a case, he would do his best to help her figure it out. Everyone liked to play detective.

  “From what I can tell, he
stands with his people, believes the land is cursed.”

  Ordinarily she’d never share that with anyone who wasn’t a dream analyst at a New Age clinic. But since Ben was non-judgmental, she trusted him to keep an open mind.

  He didn’t let her down.

  “Is that what you think?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted, resting her head against his chest. “It’s a strange place. I don’t like being there. But is that the place itself or the horrific things that have happened there?”

  “I’ve never heard you entertain any supernatural explanation before.”

  He stroked her hair, and she felt her lids growing heavier. It would be nice to follow him to bed. The case file would be there in the morning.

  “Something’s got you riled up,” he said.

  “That would be Kinew,” she admitted. “He claims there have been several deaths at the campsite in the past twenty years, but I haven’t been able to find mention of one before this.”

  “Can I help you look? With two sets of eyes, it’ll go a lot faster.”

  She hugged him tighter. If you needed to find something online, Ben was your man. He’d been that way since the days of AOL and Webcrawler. If he hadn’t set his sights on becoming a music teacher, he could have founded Google. “That would be great, but you should get some sleep. You have school tomorrow.”

  “If I start to nod off, I’m sure the Zimbowski twins will wake me.”

  She laughed. The Zimbowski twins had an extraordinary talent with the violin. As Ben had once put it, “I don’t understand how they make that instrument sound like cats in heat and air-raid sirens simultaneously. It’s a gift.”

  Before she could protest, Ben took a seat in front of his laptop. “What are we looking for?”

  Leaning back in her own chair, Maria smiled. He was right – things were always better with two. “Any news you can find on Strong Lake. If there have been other murders out there, someone must have written about it.”

  Especially if things were as bad as Kinew had made it seem.

  She ordinarily preferred silence while she worked, but in this case, the sound of Ben typing was reassuring. There was something about researching that godforsaken place when she was alone that gave her the shivers. Her husband’s companionship was most appreciated.

  Understanding her need for quiet, Ben didn’t speak. An hour went by, and then two. Maria could barely concentrate on the screen anymore, and her mind wandered.

  “This is interesting….”

  She jumped. Ben hadn’t said anything for so long that she’d almost forgotten he was there. He patted her hand.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. Again.”

  “It’s okay. Whatcha got?”

  “Strong Lake Band challenges Minnesota State in land dispute,” Ben read aloud.

  “That’s not a surprise. It seems like there’s always a land dispute going on somewhere.” Disappointed, she rested her head on the desk, closing her eyes. “This is hopeless. Let’s go to bed.”

  Her husband nudged her. “You don’t understand. This dispute wasn’t because they wanted the land. It was because they didn’t.”

  Her ears perked up. She rolled her chair over to Ben’s, scanning the article on his screen. He was right. Kinew’s people had tried to hand Strong Lake over to the state, but the state didn’t want it.

  “It’s the oddest thing I’ve ever seen. If they didn’t like the idea of managing a campground, either side could have split the property into waterfront lots and made a fortune.” Ben put his arm around her so she could rest her head against his shoulder. Though it was the closest thing they’d had to a lead that night, it hadn’t cured her exhaustion. “What do you think it means?”

  “Kinew told me conservation officers patrol it. He said his people won’t go anywhere near it.”

  “Because of a curse?” Maria could hear the disbelief in her husband’s voice, open minded or not. “I can’t believe everyone in the community would go along with something like that. It’s not the Dark Ages anymore.”

  She thought of Kinew, who’d appeared as rational and sensible as anyone else until he’d taken her to a diner because he didn’t want their conversation about the campground to ‘taint’ his office. “I’m not sure, but something has definitely spooked them.”

  “It looks like you’re going to have to pay the chief another visit.”

  Even as she teased him about sending her into the arms of another man, she knew her husband was right. If there had been other murders at Strong Lake, why hadn’t anything been written about them?

  This time she didn’t refuse her husband’s invitation. She gladly followed him to bed.

  Unfortunately, they were too tired to do anything more than sleep.

  Chapter Thirteen

  At the sound of the engine, her partner groaned. “Don’t tell me there’s another one.”

  Straightening from where she’d been crouching near the girls’ tent to study the blood spatter, Maria shielded her eyes from the sun. The day was unseasonably hot, which had done nothing to prevent the chills that periodically crept over her spine.

  The car wasn’t marked, and no police officer drove an Audi – not in this town. “Looks like it.”

  “Fucking vultures,” Jorge said. “Sometimes I wonder about people.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Only sometimes?”

  It had been a rough day. They’d had to chase three different SUVs full of teenagers and one very determined woman away from the crime scene. News of the murders had hit the media, and the locals were smart enough to read between the lines and figure out where the ‘unspecified campground’ was. Maria found the disruptions irritating, but they drove Jorge into a state.

  “I’ll go this time,” she offered, but he caught hold of her arm before she could move.

  “No, wait. Maybe they’ll cross the tape and we can haul their asses in for obstruction,” he said, an optimistic gleam in his eyes.

  She didn’t recognize the man who got out of the driver’s seat. He was ludicrously out of place in his three-piece suit. His hair was so blond it was nearly white, and the sharpness of his features was exaggerated like a model’s. She disliked him instantly.

  “What in the fresh hell is this?” Jorge muttered.

  The passenger door of the glossy car opened, and she was shocked to see Reese emerge.

  “Hey, isn’t that the—?” Jorge asked, but she was already walking to meet them.

  Reese couldn’t possibly have lost a noticeable amount of weight in the couple of days that had passed since she’d last seen him, but he looked diminished. He scuffed his sneakers through the gravel as he moved, keeping his head down. His hands were stuffed in the pocket of his hoodie, and the hood was up, as if he wanted to hide his face.

  As soon as she got a good look at him, any fleeting suspicions that might have lingered vanished. This kid wasn’t guilty. This kid was suffering.

  “Reese, are you okay?”

  She reached out to touch his sleeve but the man he was with stepped between them.

  “Officer Greyeyes, I presume?”

  “Detective.”

  “Detective, then.” The man stuck out his hand, and although she was loath to take it, she couldn’t see any way around it without being rude. He was one of those men who got manicures, she noted.

  She’d never trust a man with a manicure.

  “Gregory Vincent Prosper, attorney at law.” He pressed an embossed business card into her hand, and she was gratified to notice her dirty fingerprints adhere to its surface. She tucked the card into her back pocket, not bothering to acknowledge it. “Mr. Wallace here is my client.”

  Reese lawyered up?

  As if he’d read her mind, Reese lifted his head, an expression of misery on his face. “It was my mom’s idea.”
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  “I thought we agreed it would be better if I did the talking, did we not, Mr. Wallace?” the lawyer said.

  Reese lowered his eyes. Where was the feisty smartass she’d met the other day? Even after receiving the shock of his life, there was no way that kid would have put up with this shit.

  “I’m surprised to see you here, Reese. Did you come to talk to me?” If Maria had been a civilian who’d found her friends slaughtered in their sleep, you wouldn’t have been able to drag her out here again no matter what you did. Whether fair or not, she blamed the lawyer, which pushed her instinctive dislike closer to revulsion. The possibility Reese would want to come out there never occurred to her.

  “We have strong reason to believe there may be important evidence here, evidence that will exonerate my client,” Prosper broke in before Reese could speak, puffing himself up to full self-importance.

  What was this guy up to? And why on earth would Reese’s mother hire such an awful man? She could hardly bear to share airspace with him. “Your client isn’t under arrest, Mr. Prosper.”

  “Even so, we think it’s prudent to collect this evidence, if you’d be agreeable to letting us through.”

  She stared at him, aghast at his arrogance. “This is a crime scene. Of course I’m not going to let you through. As a lawyer, you should know that.”

  Jorge appeared at her side as though summoned. “Is there a problem here?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “Reese, can I talk to you for a sec?”

  Reese lifted his head enough to meet her eyes before glancing at his lawyer.

  “Anything you can say to my client you can say to me,” Prosper said.

  “In that case, I’d rather say nothing.” She felt sorry for the kid, but his mom had made a tragic mistake that was going to cost him. As long as he had a lawyer in tow, she wasn’t allowed to say anything to him. She’d already crossed a line by asking to talk to him privately.

  “It’s okay. I want to talk to her alone,” Reese said.

  Maria expected his lawyer to put up a fuss, but the man merely shrugged. “Whatever,” he said, studying his nails. “It’s your funeral.”