by Rachel Ford
If someone was willing to come back for a body, why leave it there to begin with? If it had been a corpse disposal gone wrong, if the killer had tried to chuck the body into the swamp but missed, why leave in the first place?
We hadn’t passed anyone speeding off. We hadn’t passed anyone at all, so it didn’t seem likely that the killer had been interrupted.
And if they had, why risk going back?
For that matter, why hadn’t the other driver called the cops, long before I did? Why was my call the first Wagner and his crew had heard of a body?
Flashing lights disrupted the pockets of darkness that enveloped the campground. I unzipped a window flap on my tent and watched a ranger’s truck roll by. It passed a bend in the road, and then I heard the crunch of gravel underneath tires. The lights went on illuminating the area, bouncing off the bushes nearby.
He’d pulled into the lot with the noisy neighbors. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one to think of the noise levels.
I laid back down on my cot and tried to go back to the problem of the body. I heard voices: a low, steady voice, calm and authoritative. I heard others – some placating, some angry.
There was a man’s voice, loud and protesting. The site owner, I thought. I hadn’t really studied our neighbors, but I recalled driving past a man somewhere in his mid-thirties, looking lean and tanned, and a woman around the same age, thin and pale with circles under her eyes, and three kids under ten.
There were a lot more than those five at the site now, obviously.
I heard at least a dozen sets of feet on the gravel, then the dull ring of footsteps on paved roads: visitors returning to their own sites, presumably. The music ended abruptly and with a thud, like someone slammed a button – compliance, but sullen, angry compliance.
Then the calm voice – the ranger’s voice – said, “Thank you for understanding. You folks have a great night.” I heard more footsteps on gravel, and then the sound of a vehicle door opening and closing. The flashing lights stopped. Tires crunched on gravel and rolled quietly away on asphalt.
The angry voice, the lean guy with the tan, swore in the silence, a whole litany of curses and colorful phrases. He had lots to say about the ranger – and the ranger’s mother’s virtue, and father’s masculinity and heterosexuality.
A very unhappy man.
The female voice tried to placate him: To hell with that guy – but the kids should be getting to sleep now anyway. And they could see their friends tomorrow. “Maybe you and Dan can go fishing.”
Which suggestion turned the man’s wrath on her. He reminded her that Dan and Marci were leaving in the morning. “Why do you always have to be such a stupid bitch? Why do you got to defend that asshole?”
She tried to apologize. She wasn’t taking the ranger’s side, she was just trying to find a silver lining.
He swore again, this time at her, and stomped off. A door slammed after him. Not a vehicle door. It didn’t have the right sound for that. No, this was the door to the popup camper.
A child started to cry, and the woman turned her attention to the youngster.
I listened for a long time. The woman didn’t follow the man. She stayed outside, talking low to her children. Soothing them, singing them lullabies, as if they couldn’t pick up on the tension in her tone.
Then, distracted from murder and mayhem, I drifted off to sleep.
* * *
Deputy Austin Wagner, 10:43 PM
I finished late, because unidentified bodies were always a paperwork nightmare. Unidentified missing bodies? A bureaucratic joy that, until today, I had never experienced. I hoped I never would again.
I still wasn’t entirely convinced that Owen Day hadn’t made the whole thing up. But if he had, he’d gotten the kids involved. And they were pretty sure there was a body.
Plus, it didn’t really fit the guy’s profile. His name and face had been vaguely familiar, so I’d popped the former into Google; the search engine spit back plenty of the latter.
Owen Day had been some kind of analyst in the army. He’d gotten out on a medical discharge some years back. Since then, he’d made waves twice: once, in regard to NRK, the Nursery Rhyme Killer that had killed his brother; and a second time in relation to a massive prison scandal.
He’d helped cracked both cases. He’d saved a sheriff’s life during the prison scandal business. He was definitely a guy who stuck his nose where it didn’t belong. That was clear. But nothing indicated that he’d make something up. Nothing at all.
So, unless I found out differently, we’d treat this like the real deal.
I grabbed my travel mug and rolled the seat under the desk. I started to turn.
And my desk phone rang.
I stood there through the first ring. It was two minutes to quarter to eleven. Well past the end of my shift. It could wait, right, whatever it was? Jade, my longtime girlfriend, would certainly say so.
But, I was already going to be in the doghouse where she was concerned. I was hours late. So I shrugged and lifted the receiver. “Sheriff’s Department, Austin Wagner speaking.”
There was a pause and a crackle on the line. Then, I heard a voice, “Deputy Wagner? This is Special Agent Curt Travers with the Federal Bureau of Investigations. I understand you found a body up in Wisconsin, by Milwaukee?”
Chapter Four
The kids woke before me. I could hear them milling around the site, going through the coolers and the snack bin for something to eat.
I yawned and shook my head and got up. They were worse than racoons. “You guys hungry?” I asked, like I didn’t already know the answer.
Daniel shrugged, the agreeable shrug.
Maisie said, “Starving.”
So I fired up the camp stove and got a pot of coffee brewing on one burner, and one of my signature breakfasts going on the other.
I could make three breakfasts really well: scrambled eggs, pancakes from a box, and cereal from a box. More recently, I’d upped the breakfast game from pancakes from a box to pancakes from scratch. I’d even thrown waffles in, when I had a waffle iron on-hand, because the prep was the same. The cooking was the only part that differed.
Today, though, I was going with the classic: from a box. It was the pancake mix that only needed water added, but I knew better than that. I had milk in one of the coolers, and eggs, and breakfast sausage. I added an egg and milk instead of water to the mix, and threw sausages in the pan to cook beside the cakes.
Maisie and Daniel prowled the sight like starving animals, devouring the pancakes as soon as they left the pan. I focused on drinking enough coffee to feel human again while I fed them, and then made my own pancakes.
By that point, they were all sugared up and rearing to go. “Hold your horses. I’m eating before we go anywhere. Trust me, you don’t want to spend a day at the beach with me if I haven’t had breakfast.”
“You get hangry?” Daniel asked. “Mom says I do.”
“I do too,” Maisie confided.
A fact I knew very well about both of them, but pretended to be learning for the first time.
I was just sitting down with a plate of cakes when a figure appeared at the end of our site. They were medium-sized sites, with a narrower clearing for the drive that ballooned outward in the back for the tents or RV’s. The park had cultivated a careful mix of tall trees and low bushes, to create the perfect blend of privacy and shade: we had enough shade to be comfortable, and a nice, makeshift privacy hedge to hide the neighbors, and hide us from the neighbors.
She was standing at the narrow end, while we sat in the balloon space. It was the woman from next door. She looked paler than usual, with bigger ruts under her eyes, like maybe she hadn’t slept much. Like maybe she hadn’t slept at all.
“Morning,” I called.
She flashed a quick, almost apologetic smile, and took a hesitating half-step forward.
“Can I help you?”
She took another step and made a gesture with her ha
nd – not quite hushing me, but close. “I…I was wondering…” She took another few steps into our site.
I watched her and tried to look nonthreatening as I did it – not always easy for a big, dark-haired guy with a physique like mine. I was almost 6’4,” and no kind of Hulk; but I’d kept fit and active after leaving the service. And that, in combination with the dark hair and an innate aversion to eye contact, tended to scare people.
I knew that. People, especially women, especially in isolated situations, or situations like this one, that felt isolated, looked at me and imagined bad things. I didn’t take it personally. I wasn’t that kind of guy, but we lived in a world where women had to worry about those kinds of guys. And they rarely were so obliging as to identify themselves as such.
So right now, I knew what was going through this particular woman’s head. She was measuring the narrow drive, and sizing up the boundary growth, and wondering just how visible she’d be from the road. She was measuring the danger to herself of stepping into this site, if the big, dark-haired guy at the other end turned out to be a problem.
In the end, she must have decided the risk was low enough. Maybe it was the two kids, watching her with frank, innocent curiosity. Maybe it was because I was seated: a non-threatening stance.
But whatever, she kept coming. “I’m sorry to interrupt your breakfast,” she said.
“No problem,” I said. “You hungry? We’ve got plenty of mix.”
“Oh, no. It’s – I just…uh…” She hesitated. “My name’s Ashley.”
“Nice to meet you, Ashley. I’m Owen.”
“I’m Maisie,” Maisie said. Daniel said nothing, so she added, “And this is Daniel.”
Ashley smiled at the kids. “Nice to meet you.” Then she turned back to me. “Listen, I…uh…I wanted to apologize. For last night. I hope we weren’t too loud or anything.”
“It’s fine,” I said.
She nodded. “Thanks.” Then, she fidgeted in place, like she had something else to say, but didn’t quite know how to say it.
“Are you okay?” I asked. Maybe it wasn’t the most tactful way to address the problem. But between the tirade last night, and her presence here this morning, I was pretty sure she wasn’t okay.
She flushed, and her gaunt cheeks turned a bright red. “Of course. I know – well, Aaron gets a little wound up sometimes. That’s all.”
I shrugged. I’d help if she needed help, but if she said she didn’t, well, there wasn’t anything I could do about that. “Okay. Well, it was nice meeting you.”
“You too,” she said. She didn’t move, though. She stood there, looking awkward and uncomfortable.
I didn’t say anything. Either she was going to say something further, or she wasn’t. I didn’t want to force it.
“Look,” she said in a minute, “I know I don’t really have the right to ask you this. Especially since we were kind of loud last night…” She half-laughed and shrugged.
“But?”
“But – well, Aaron’s asleep. He didn’t sleep much last night, and I was wondering if maybe – maybe you could keep it down.”
“Keep it down?” I repeated.
“Just for a little while. Just so he can get some sleep, you know?”
“Sure,” I said. “We’re leaving soon anyway.”
Something like relief spread over her face. “Oh, thank you. I mean, you know how it is when someone doesn’t sleep. He’ll be in a mood.” She repeated the same laugh.
I nodded. “Yeah. Listen, if you need to talk to someone, I can give you the sheriff’s department number.”
She flushed and insisted that it was nothing like that. She just wanted to make sure he had a good day.
“Okay,” I said again.
I didn’t think of Ashley anymore that morning. But I did end up talking to the deputies again. It happened after we reached Harrington Beach State Park.
The water was colder here than it had been at Random Lake. A lot colder.
Not much of a surprise, since Lake Michigan holds an estimated quadrillion gallons of water. I didn’t know how much Random Lake held, but it was a hell of a lot less than a quadrillion gallons. It might as well have been a bathtub by comparison. So it would take a lot less summer heat to warm up than Lake Michigan would.
The kids didn’t seem to mind. The day was a little breezy, so the water was a little choppy in turn. Nothing dangerous, but little waves rolled in and broke on the sandbars, or washed all the way to shore.
That only fueled their excitement. They raced the waves and tried to catch them or glide over the top of them. They tried to withstand them as they washed past and shrieked with laughter when the water bowled them over.
I stayed in with them for a space, but there was only so much freezing I wanted to do. So I sat on the shore, and tried not to be bored to distraction.
They were in no danger of that. They probably would have stayed in the water all day if I hadn’t insisted they come onto shore and warm up a few hours in.
This was met by vehement protests. They didn’t care that they’d started to turn a blue hue. They were having fun, and I was interfering.
They fell on the snacks, which distracted them for a space – distracted them, and restored something of their usual color. Then, though, they went back to pouting.
“Half an hour in the sun,” I told them. “Then you can go back.”
I might as well have given them a life sentence, for all the whining that ensued. That was ridiculous. What were they supposed to do for half an hour? They were already warm. I was worse than their mom. And so it went.
“Build sandcastles,” I suggested.
Maisie scoffed, and Daniel repeated, “Sandcastles?” like it was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard.
“Or forts. Or sun yourselves. I don’t care. Just stay out of the water until your time is up.”
Daniel turned his back on me and hunched his shoulders. Maisie threw dirty looks my way.
When that didn’t work, she resorted to throwing mud her brother’s way. He returned fire, and before long they were chasing each other up and down the beach.
Which was alright. They weren’t any louder than the other kids, and I figured they’d definitely warm up doing that. It seemed like mission accomplished.
Then, my phone rang. I expected it to be Megan, returning my call during a moment of downtime. I expected wrongly.
The caller ID displayed the name of the local sheriff’s department. I frowned and answered it. Deputy Wagner’s voice came on the line. “Mr. Day?”
“Yes?”
“Ah, I’m glad I caught you. I hope I’m not interrupting?”
I glanced at the kids. They were currently wrestling in the sand. “Not at all. What can I do for you?”
“Excellent. I had a question, about the unidentified male you found yesterday.”
I noted vaguely that the skepticism of yesterday seemed absent in his tone today. “Okay.”
“Did you notice any marks or scarring on the victim’s lower jaw?”
“Scarring?” I repeated. I thought about the face, about the angle and the shadow from the tarp. “I didn’t. But I was looking down at his head, from the top. And I could only see so much because of the tarp.”
“So it’s possible there might have been some kind of mark that you didn’t see?”
“It’s possible, yes. But, I also didn’t see anything.”
“Understood. Okay, thank you, Mr. Day.”
He sounded like he was about to hang up. “Do you have an ID then?” I asked, before he could. “On the victim?”
Silence for a beat. Then, “Possible. We may have more questions, but for now that’s all. Thank you, Mr. Day. You have yourself a good morning.”
We packed up at quarter to six. I’d spent the day fruitlessly considering the vanished body. The kids had exhausted every snack option I’d packed, and even they had finally tired of the waves.
Pizza was on the agenda again. S
o they changed into dry clothes, and we headed out. They wanted to take Jay Road back to town. “In case there’s another body,” Daniel said, optimistically.
I wasn’t sure if I should worry about the kid, or be glad he’d moved away from the zombie thing. But the truth was, I had a morbid curiosity to see the road again myself. I didn’t think I’d see something that a whole department of cops missed.
But it wouldn’t hurt to have a second look, either.
In the end, we were all disappointed. The kids spotted no more bodies, and I came to no brilliant, clarifying conclusions. The road was the same swampy stretch it had been. The shadows were longer this time, but otherwise it looked exactly like it had: empty, desolate, and grim.
We passed yet another cheese shop at the intersection to WI-57: the most Wisconsin of all landmarks. We ended up in town just after six.
It was a Wednesday, so there wasn’t much in the way of congestion. I figured things would get worse as we approached the weekend, when the tourists and lake house owners migrated back. Right now, the closest it got to a traffic jam occurred when someone hauling a boat cut the line at a four-way intersection, and nearly clipped another driver in the process.
Both came to a screeching halt, completely obscuring the intersection. Honking and big, aggravated gestures ensued in every direction. Then the guy whose turn it was shook his head at the guy with the boat, and circled around the nose of his truck and moved on.
The guy with the boat looked a little chagrined but sped off. The normal flow of traffic resumed. We got to the pizza place none the worse for any of it.
The kids were already asleep by time we reached our site. They’d practically passed out as soon as we finished dinner. We repeated the same teeth brushing ritual as the night before, complete with the complaining and threats of showers.
I figured sooner or later I would need to make them take showers. They hadn’t shampooed their hair since we left on Sunday. But it wouldn’t be after a long day, when they were all tuckered out and crabby.
Maybe in the morning, before we headed out.
We got back to our site before eight-thirty. Maisie seemed to have revived somewhat. She wanted to stay up and talk. Daniel headed straight for his tent, though, and was asleep within minutes.