The shaving I didn’t even consider, not wanting to bother with the time or hassle.
Emerging, I let my body air dry in the cool of the hotel room, making a quick lap around the place, grabbing up the few things I had brought with me. As I went, I downed two more bars of various forms and an apple, finishing the impromptu meal with a second bottle of water.
The day before, I had been lazy. I had allowed my focus on Uncle Jep to keep me from doing what I needed to for myself.
Just finding out what happened to him wouldn’t be enough. I had to ensure I was in a condition to actually help when I arrived if I wanted all of this to have been worthwhile.
Whatever form that help might end up being.
Shrugging the two backpacks onto my shoulder, I left the bag of Wal-Mart trash in the room. Tiptoeing down the stairs, I didn’t even glance over to the Charger.
It was already in the perfect place, the best I could hope for an alibi should the need arise in the coming hours. As distinctive as it was, taking it anywhere near my next destination would just make me a target.
By the same token, should somebody ask the front desk girl if she’d seen anybody come or go, she could rightly claim the car had been parked in plain sight all morning.
Not an infallible plan by any stretch of the imagination, but under the circumstances, the best that I was going to do.
Looping around away from the motel, I followed a footpath to the water’s edge, doing my best to make it look like I was just another visitor taking an early stroll, out trying to beat the oncoming heat. Keeping my gait slow and even, I walked through the open expanse of grass behind the place, coming out on the rock bar lining the shore and turning south.
Around me, the air held just the faintest trace of cooling dampness, the day ahead promising to be as warm as the one before. Across the top of the water, a handful of security lights from various properties and docks around the lake could be seen dancing with each ebb and flow of water, uneven stripes more than a half mile in length.
For more than fifty yards, I kept my pace even, waiting until I was under the thick cover of trees before increasing my speed. Moving into a light jog, I counted seconds in my head, the ground passing beneath my feet, both packs bouncing lightly against my shoulder blades.
After a quarter mile, I stopped and deposited my personal one, leaving it tucked into a thick tangle of brambles, their brittle leaves completely obscuring it from view.
Not needing to take it clear to my next destination, I didn’t want to risk leaving it in the motel room or even the car, knowing the laptop alone now carried enough information to pin me down should anybody be looking.
From this point forward, I had to assume that both Lipski and the people that had gotten to Uncle Jep were searching for me.
I’d be damned if I was going to make it easier for them.
Leaving the bag stowed where only I could find it, I pushed off again, staying on a footpath moving through dense forest. To my left, I could just see the water’s edge, the front curve of it reflecting the moon from above.
In my nostrils were the scents of lake water and pine needles.
The scents of my childhood.
Almost two decades had passed since I last ran this trail, but it was as familiar to me as the walk to my mailbox back in Portland. Through pure muscle memory, my feet seemed to know exactly where I was headed, going faster with each passing moment.
Sweat covered my forehead, breaking the seal, promising a day of heavy perspiring. My heart rate increased in kind, my breathing remaining even as I pounded out a couple of quick miles, the jog so easy it didn’t even rise to the level of being considered exercise.
Fueled by growing adrenaline, every nerve ending in my body anticipated what came next.
My reason for choosing the motel was simple, having nothing to do with the low cost or the scattered handful of travelers filling the rooms.
It was because of the location of it, the sole establishment on the entirety of Lake Edstrom that rented single rooms by the night.
Twenty-two minutes after bounding down the stairs from my room, I pulled to a stop. Pressing a shoulder tight against the base of a pin oak tree, feeling the tackiness of its sap against my exposed shoulder, I stood silent, waiting.
Slowing my breathing, I studied the world around me, peering out for any sign of movement.
After three full minutes, I determined there was none.
Unslinging the backpack from my shoulders, I unzipped the top and reached down inside, pulling out a Beretta from Uncle Jep’s bunker. Taking a single breath, I began to inch forward, knowing that my destination was just a short walk away.
Working from the base of one tree to the next, I stole through the forest, daylight still an hour away, giving me time to check what I needed to and be on my way again.
In the distance, I could hear a bullfrog croak, a few cicadas serenading me a melody I hadn’t heard in ages.
They barely registered with me, my focus on the placement of my feet as I crossed one over the other, picking my way forward. Ahead of me, a dark shape began to take form, my pulse pushing through my temples as I grew closer.
Even without the benefit of artificial light, the moon was enough to illuminate the hulking mass as I crept forward, like some form of fabled ship emerging through the trees. Bit by bit, details became more obvious, beginning with the back deck extended out from the rear of the cabin, including the glass doors, the windows framing them on either side.
The thick swath of crime scene tape sealing all three.
Starting low in my core, I could feel unbridled wrath pushing to the surface, the taste as bitter as bile on my tongue as I stood and stared at the place.
Any doubt I had previously had about Uncle Jep’s disappearance vanished as I stood and stared at the cabin that was my childhood home.
Chapter Thirty-Five
After his conversation with Vic Baxter, Radney Creel didn’t quite know what to expect, only that he should be up and ready early for whatever it might be.
Rising well before the sun, he emerged to find Elijah Pyle already sitting at the table. Gone were any of his familiar tools, not even his favored cigars sitting nearby.
Instead, it was only him, reclined in his chair, the back of his head against the wall, staring blankly through the window above the sink.
“Don’t you ever sleep?” Creel muttered, coming in and dropping his cell phone on a placemat before lowering himself into the opposite chair.
For a moment, there was no response, nothing at all from Pyle, before his eyes fluttered, his lids blinking a dozen times in quick succession.
As they did so, a heavy sigh pulled him from his sleep, the sounds of slumber rolling off him.
“Were you...” Creel began, his eyes bulging slightly, “sleeping with your eyes open?”
Raising his hands to his face, Pyle rubbed hard at his cheeks, pulling them back to reveal the skin bearing a rosy pallor.
“Is there any other way?” Pyle asked.
Dozens of retorts sprang to mind for Creel – everything from wanting to know what the man had been through to feel that was necessary to stating he had never witnessed such a thing in person, had heard of it only a couple of times before.
As was his nature though, he let them pass, opting for something else instead.
“Man, who are you?”
Keeping his head reclined against the wall, Pyle rolled it to look over toward Creel, a faint sneer crossing his face.
“I’m impressed. You managed to hold out a lot longer than anybody else would have.”
Feeling a few more questions rise to the surface, Creel again chose silence, trusting that Pyle’s nature would make it impossible for him to stay quiet for too long.
“How long you been working jobs for Vic?” Pyle asked, shifting his head back toward the wall across from them.
Glancing down to the screen of his phone, seeing nothing but the same blank image of the
rear of the cabin he’d been staring at for the better of a day, Creel replied, “Couple years now.”
“Hmm,” Pyle replied. Raising his left arm, he balanced his elbow on the side of the table, cocking a hand back and scratching at the side of his scalp. “That would mean E was already inside four years before you came along.”
With his attention aimed down, Creel felt his brows come together. Confusion played across his face as he looked up, shifting his head slightly to the side.
In two years, he had not once heard that name. Not with regards to a potential threat that needing neutralizing or an ally that should be treated as such.
“E? Inside?”
Continuing to work at the hair along the side of his scalp, Pyle cast him a glance, the look a mix of amusement and disdain. “Damn son, you’re not real quick on the uptake, are you?”
Any bit of confusion Creel felt melted away, replaced instead by ire, his exposure to the man fast reaching a point where it was time for them to part ways.
Before something bad happened to one or both.
Seeing it, sensing that he had struck a nerve, Pyle extended his left arm, using it to pat at the air before him.
“Easy now,” he said, “I’m just saying, they keep you pretty far in the dark over there, don’t they?”
Liking this response even less than the one before it, Creel drew his mouth into a tight line.
Two years ago, Vic Baxter had sought him out because he was the best at what he did. Back and forth they had gone, performing whatever jobs needed doing, exchanging a handsome fee in the process.
In all that time, never once had Creel felt like Baxter wasn’t on the level with him, like he was being set up in any way.
Even on this one, something that had been a side project of sorts for a long time, he felt like everything was above board.
A bit unnecessary, his now staring at a cell phone waiting for a boogeyman that was never going to show being the latest example, but nothing underhanded.
Or so he thought.
“Who the hell is E?” Creel asked.
Across from him, Pyle matched the stare a moment, the two squaring off, equal opponents, animals in neighboring cages just aching to test one another.
Vic Baxter had demanded the man be a part of things, so Creel had gone along with it. But that didn’t mean he liked it, or even condoned it.
Outside of his display with Lynch, Pyle had as yet done nothing spectacular.
Nothing at all outside of sit and smoke cigars, as far as he could tell.
Locked in that position, the two men sat and stared, the concentrated skill and ego amassed in the kitchen becoming too much for the small space, threatening to explode at any instant.
It never came to it, the first blink made not by either one, but by the phone on the table between them. Barely more than a flash, it appeared that at long last the man they had been waiting for had decided to make an appearance.
So focused on Pyle, on how that encounter would play out, Creel barely noticed the movement at first, had to force himself to look away once he did, to focus on the screen.
The tension of the moment gone, Pyle shifted back in his seat, the same cocksure grin appearing.
“Looks like it’s time for you to go to work,” he said, no small amount of gloating in his voice. “And as for E? Let’s just say he’s the reason I’m here now.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
The words of Sheriff Charbonneau were still ringing in Talula Davis’s ears as she pulled up to the cabin she had first encountered a couple of days before. Calling in on her drive back from Sevierville, the sun was still just starting to hint at making an appearance, the early meetup with Dr. Asay fresh in Davis’s mind.
Playing it back one time after another, she tried not to let her mind linger on the emaciated state of Jessup Lynch’s toes.
On the clearly sadistic pleasure that had been taken in dispatching the rest of him.
Instead, she thought of the bigger pieces that Asay had mentioned. Things like the fact that the crime scene was staged, that the body had been killed somewhere else and repositioned.
That histamine levels, a half-bitten off tongue, and burst blood vessels in the eyes displayed he had been under extreme duress when he passed.
Playing those things over on loop in her mind, the radio off, her concentration focused, she barely even registered the phone as it sat buzzing on the seat beside her. Had no idea how many times it had rung before she reached over, intending only to silence it, before seeing the name on the screen and picking it up.
The fact that he was even awake at such an hour was surprising.
That he was awake and calling her, a bad omen, to say the least.
“Davis.”
“What the hell were you thinking?!” Charbonneau bellowed, bypassing any sort of greeting.
Pulling the phone an inch away from her ear, Davis winced, the sound especially loud given the silence of the Bronco.
“What?”
“Exactly what I want to know,” Charbonneau spat. “What the hell were you thinking going to the media like that?”
Her mouth dropping open, Davis said nothing, headlights whipping past her heading north, the world nothing but a blur of shapes and colors.
“The media?” she asked. “We agreed two days ago that we were going to keep the media out of this for as long as possible.”
“You damn right we did,” Charbonneau said, “yet somehow, they’re standing outside the cabin giving a live report as we speak.”
Her lower jaw sagging a bit more, all of the air in Davis’s lungs slid from her body, forcing her back into the seat behind her.
“You’re kidding me.”
“Does it sound like I’m kidding you?!” Charbonneau yelled, his rage still at an apex, like a thrashing animal spewing venom at whatever he could.
The moment of shock, of facing something unexpected gone, Davis drew herself up, feeling some of the same vitriol that was now being sent her way rising forth.
“Well, it wasn’t me. I just found out yesterday I was the lead on this thing. Why would I run straight to the media?”
Without pause, Charbonneau fired back, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe so you could get your face on television?”
Whether he actually thought that or was just pissed at the notion that anybody besides him might get a little attention out of the case, Davis didn’t know.
Didn’t especially feel like trying to determine.
“Sheriff, if that was the case, then why would I now be on the road headed back from the coroner’s office?” she replied. Hearing no immediate response, she added, “Hell, I haven’t even been to that cabin since we rolled out two days ago.”
On the other end, she could hear feet shuffling over bare floors, some huffing and grunting that was too low to make out, a sixty-second parade of animal noises that ended with, “Yeah, well, you better get your ass over there now.”
“And tell them what?” she asked, not bothering to add that doing so might end with her inadvertently being on television, the thing he seemed so adamantly against.
“Tell them it’s a closed crime scene and they are trespassing!” Charbonneau said, some of the previous angst returning before he cut the line off, the phone retreating to silence in her hand.
Staring at it for a moment, Davis thumbed it off and tossed it onto the passenger seat. After it landed she extended a middle finger toward it, thrusting the single digit at it several times, so much bottled hatred seeping into the gesture.
It was that same hostility, the animosity she’d been feeling for months now, that pulsated through her system as she pulled into the dirt lane for the cabin, using the very same tracks that she had followed after speaking to Peg Bannister a couple of mornings before.
With the first rays of morning just starting to sift through the thick undergrowth, putting the area in a state of twilight, small details just becoming visible, she wound her way back toward the cabi
n.
Two days ago, she had had the world to herself. Walking in silence, she had been left to listen to the forest around her, to try and distill any movement, any signs of passage.
This time she was greeted by a small swirl of activity, a white paneled van sitting with the sides spread wide, a host of people moving about.
Gripping the wheel tight, Davis felt her rear molars come together, the scene before her just one more layer on the shit parfait that had been her week.
Pulling to a stop at an angle beside them, she killed the engine and climbed out, aware that every person present was looking her way. Allowing the anger she felt to buoy her, she tapped at the badge affixed to her waist and said, “You are all trespassing on a closed crime scene. I have to ask that you cease what you’re doing right now and exit the premises.”
Hoping that the directive would have the desired effect, would cause them to immediately heed her words, begin packing up things to head out, she was less than surprised when it managed little beyond pushing most of the crew back to what they were doing previously.
Moving about some equipment, rolling up lengths of cable, taking exterior shots with shoulder cameras.
For as long as she could remember, she’d been putting up with such open disrespect from her coworkers, the call a moment before just the latest example.
She’d be damned if she was going to accept the same from a bunch of young punks in backward hats and vests.
“Hey!” she yelled, her voice echoing through the trees, snapping the attention of everybody present toward her. “This is my crime scene, and you guys are trespassing. Unless you want me to haul every last one of you in, get your shit and get out of here!”
A few eyebrows rose in the wake of her explosion, a couple of muttered terms drifted over that she didn’t want to hear the full translation on, but the words did seem to find their mark. Bit by bit, people drifted toward the van, beginning to load things up.
All except a single person that emerged from the far side of it, a woman that had been hidden from view on Davis’s first approach. With blown out blonde hair and a violent shade of red lipstick, it was clear she was the on-air reporter for the team, the only one of the bunch a network would even consider putting up live.
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