It took us about ten minutes to arrive at our present location. We paused to grab some oxygen and to reaffirm our strategy.
“I don’t think I’m ornery when I’m sleeping,” she said.
“How would anyone know?”
“Sometimes I’m pleasant.”
“Maybe in a surly sort of way, I suppose,” I said.
“So, what makes you so jovial?”
“Coffee, Sam, and a good book to read.”
“You need a life, friend,” she said.
“At least I’m mostly pleasant after a couple of cups in the morning,” I said as we moved apart heading towards our Plan B positions of the back and front doors of Homer’s little cabin.
I watched Dog follow her as she moved around the corner. I waited a few seconds before I moved. I eased around the corner on my side of the house toward the front door. My side of the cabin also sported a window low enough to the ground to allow me a partial view inside. The window on the backside, Starnes’ side of the approach, was too high off the ground for a look-see. Our plan was for me to whistle if I saw anything alarming inside the cabin.
I eased myself into position for a look. Nothing was moving inside. I watched for a minute or two to see if there would be any change. There was no motion inside that I could see.
The cabin appeared to be empty. I had a clear visual to the larger outer room. I couldn’t see into the bedroom portion but I could see that the sheet that separated the two spaces was still hanging.
I blew three short whistles, our prearranged signal after I arrived at the front door. At that point, we each were to count to five using the one thousand one, one thousand two approach. Then we would both storm the castle from opposite sides.
The basis for this wondrous strategy was that he could not shoot both of us simultaneously. We were counting on our combined knowledge that crossbows were not fully automatic yet.
I opened the door and dove inside, hitting the floor and then rolling to make a more difficult target in case I was a few seconds ahead of Starnes. I came up into a firing position, gun drawn and aimed at the bedroom entrance. If Homer was home and injured, it was the likely spot for him to be. Starnes made the same maneuver from the other side of the cabin. She was closer to the bedroom even though we were not that far apart, once we landed and rolled.
Silence greeted us after our raucous entrances came to a halt. We waited a few moments before moving. I look around the sparsely furnished residence. No television, no pictures, no wall hangings, no drapes, and no sign that read Home Sweet Home above the entrance. What I did notice was that on one side Dog was standing outside the back entrance staring in at us. On the other side, Sam, half in and half out of the front door threshold, was also staring at our strange behaviors. No doubt they both were wondering about our theatrics upon entering.
Nothing was happening except for our heavy breathing. The dogs remained calm and stationary. They were more cautious than the two masters.
“Okay,” I said, and we both moved quickly to either side of the sheeted doorway to the bedroom.
I moved the sheet back with my 9 mm in case Homer was lying on the bed with his crossbow aimed at the sheet. It would have been such a shame to have come so far safely only to be arrowed-down once we arrived. That’s like being gunned-down with a slight twist to it.
Homer was lying on his bed. There was blood near his pillow. He was still. He was either sleeping or dead.
Chapter 32
Laurel Shelton stopped running nearly a mile from where she had left the two deputies. She realized that they were not trailing her immediately, but she decided to continue a hurried pace to gain some distance from them just in case they were able to make up some ground.
Once she was away from them, her thoughts turned toward Homer and his serious condition. She had no idea how much of a head start he had since she had no way of knowing when he had abandoned his position at the tree.
There was no ready-made trail in these woods, so it would be sheer guesswork for her to find the way back to Homer’s place. She decided that he was likely heading in the direction of home. All things being equal, that would be what she would do. Home is usually a safe place. Usually, she said to herself.
She looked for traces of blood as she moved her tired body through the trees and grasses, all the while steadily climbing upward. Perhaps there would be a trail once she reached the ridge. Trying to recall the twists and turns of the Grapevine road as it moved down to the highway, she tried to reconstruct a geographical layout of the terrain. She was frantically searching for some logical way of finding a possible trail to his place. He had to have blazed a trail somewhere around his cabin besides the one she had been on the past two days.
Laurel knew it was not going to be easy. She had hiked enough in the mountains to know that people got lost easily whenever they left the established trail. The same would be true for those foolish enough to set out in a forest that had no trail at all in search of an established one. She felt foolish, but she had no choice. She was hunting while being hunted. Not a pleasant way to travel in the mountain forests.
It was not raining – a fact that made her grateful.
At some point in her blind ascent, she came across a small pool of blood. It was not what she truly wanted to discover. At least she was moving in the same direction as Homer. She figured it was only a matter of time. She quickly dispelled the notion that her search for her friend was to end badly.
Now and then, she took a breather. She wanted to sit down and rest for a good while. She dared not allow such a thing. Once she caught her breath and allowed her weakening leg muscles to feel normal again, she moved on.
Weariness was overcome by her great need to find Homer and help him however she might. The more she studied that proposition, the more she was fearful that her body strength would not be sufficient to help such a big man. If he had fallen, she had already decided that there would be no way for her to help him back to his feet. Even on her best days, she might be capable of lifting close to one hundred pounds. Two hundred fifty pounds, give or take, was quite out of the question.
Laurel decided to worry about that when the time came.
Unknown to Laurel, Smathers and Ramsey were making plans to come in search for her and for Homer. They were delayed because of the Sheriff’s orders to use dogs. The dogs did not immediately arrive, and this gave Laurel a much-needed time and space advantage.
Forty minutes after Laurel had run away from the deputies, the dogs arrived and the search began. With the help of the three canines, it was rather easy to trail Laurel. It was not easy, however, for the deputies and the volunteer searchers to climb the trail-less mountain forest and keep up with the dogs. Even though the dogs were restrained by leashes, the handlers had to walk faster than they were used to walking. This meant that all the searchers, including the two deputies, had to stop often and rest.
The dogs and the volunteers seemed to be focused on the goal at hand – finding the two suspects in a triple murder investigation. That was the way Sheriff Murdock had explained it to those who were helping. Smathers and Ramsey were focused upon other matters. Ramsey had food on his mind since it had been before six that morning that he had last eaten anything. Smathers was thinking that there had to be an easier way to make a living.
Laurel’s pace and consistently brief rest stops along the way allowed her to gain, rather than lose, time. Unknown to her was the hour advantage she had achieved on those following. The posse was losing time because they would stop every twenty minutes and rest for at least five or more minutes. Ramsey was the senior deputy, so it was his call to stop often and grab a breather. Smathers realized that they were losing time in this chase, but since her heart wasn’t really into this, it didn’t matter. Part of her was hoping that the girl would get away. Still, she knew it was her job to find this girl and to find that friend of hers, as well.
Even though Sheriff Murdock, who was not part of the posse, had
told them to stay together, Smathers and two volunteers, along with one dog, kept moving when the party stopped at the point where they found the same blood that Laurel had discovered nearly an hour earlier. Laurel had tried to cover it with natural foliage and some small rocks, but the dogs easily sniffed out the blood scent.
Smathers and the two volunteers made greater time than Ramsey and his crew. Ramsey steadily cursed his partner under his breath for leaving him behind. He had never been as dedicated at law enforcement as she had. It was a point of contention between the two of them. He made sure it came up often.
Laurel maintained her time and distance lead until late afternoon. She tripped over a rock hidden by some dried leaves. It was a hard fall and she landed on her hip. Too weary to persevere with the pain, she pulled herself close to a large birch tree. Leaning against it, she rested and ate one of the biscuits the Christian lady had provided. It tasted good.
There was a distant sound of a dog barking that awakened her. She held her breath as she listened closely for other sounds. The dog barked steadily for a few seconds. Angry at herself for falling asleep, she tried to stand. The hip was hurting. She forced herself upright but leaned against the tree for some needed support. She moved her upper torso from side to side hoping that the stretching would help eliminate some of the discomfort in her right hip.
The pain persisted.
Laurel took a few steps to see if she could walk. The dog barked again, this time a little closer. The walking hurt.
She lifted her backpack and headed on through the trees in the twilight. Despite the pain, despite the weariness, the approaching sounds of those following drove her on into the descending darkness.
Suddenly, she climbed a small hill and there was a trail running crossways to her ascent. She studied it for a few moments hoping that something would strike her as familiar, something that would help her to realize that she had successfully arrived at one of Homer’s self-made trails.
There were deep footprints near a rock outcropping on the trail. The foot prints indicated that there had been some recent hikers. The tracks indicated that the hikers had been traveling in the opposite direction from her. One track seemed to be crossways in the mud. She took a moment to think about that print on the trail.
It could be Homer’s, she thought. It has to be Homer’s.
She concluded that Homer likely made that crossways track but that he did not follow the trail immediately. Perhaps he moved up higher and walked along the upper side. Or, she wondered, perhaps he moved back lower and moved along that way trying to stay close to the actual trail but avoiding making tracks. He was injured, that she knew. But he was still thinking about getting away from anyone who might be tailing him.
Instead of following on the actual trail to the left, the logical direction she assumed she needed to go, she went back down the short hill and then turned to the right and followed on the lower side of the actual trail now above her. She was hoping that this strategy might fool the dogs long enough for her to gain some needed advantage. She also hoped that the day-old mud trail from the unknown hikers might carry a scent that might confuse the dogs if not the pursuers.
Laurel hiked alongside the trail above her for at least two hundred yards. Finally, the terrain forced her to climb a little and use the established trail. Her hip pain prevented her from moving as fast she desired. It was now nearly dark, and the advantage would still be with her. She was counting on the searchers and their dogs to stop for the evening, maybe even give up until the next day. She had no way of knowing what they were thinking. She could only plan, guess, and hope for the best.
Smathers and her small party reached the established trail. The dog was wild with the new scents that were still prevalent from the prior hikers. The dog recognized that the scent she had been following from the beginning now traveled in two different directions. There were also the new scents from some creatures that had traveled off to the right. She circled around several times, first sniffing to the left, then to the right. Barking furiously, she tried to tell the group that she had no idea which way to go for sure.
The owners read her correctly.
“Lot of traffic through here, D.C.,” the one called Itchy said.
Smathers was breathing heavily from the uphill climb. The fact that they had reached an actual trail gave her some encouragement. She finally achieved the rhythm of her normal breathing.
“Which way is the most traffic heading?” she said.
“This way, to the right,” Itchy said as he pointed in the dim light.
“Anything going this way?” she pointed to the left, the direction that Laurel had followed.
“Nothing on the trail, at least not by the dog’s behavior,” he said.
“What your best guess?” she said.
“I’d go …,” he started to say right, but just then the dog broke free from his grip and darted off on the lower way that Laurel had used to fool the searchers.
The group watched the dog stay below the established trail and continue on. She was now barking furiously and running at top speed.
The search-dog was following the scent of Laurel Shelton.
Chapter 33
Sam and I stayed with Homer while Dog and Starnes headed back toward the bottom of the mountain where we had left our vehicles. It was the last place we had cell phone service. Homer needed medical attention. I figured that Homer Gosnell was not long for this world if he didn’t get to a hospital or clinic, where they could give him a transfusion, maybe two, and get those wounds cleaned and dressed. As strong as he was, he wasn’t immortal.
The plan was for Starnes to remain at the vehicles until the ambulance arrived after she had contacted the emergency services. Then it would be an adventure. Convincing the emergency personnel to climb the mountain was something Starnes could do with her charming personality. I would’ve forced them to do it at gunpoint. Starnes had a better manner about her.
I kept turning that idea of Homer’s isolation over. How did he get the lumber up here to build his cabin? It was small but it required a few hundred feet of lumber. I left him while I walked around studying the structure. His home was made of logs. From my limited experience in this field of construction, it did not appear that his log home was a type of kit. The logs seemed to be rough cut. It gave the structure a rugged appearance. Mortar was spackled between each log and all the gaps that were created when the adjoining walls met. Four walls, two doors, and three windows seemed to be entire elements of his cabin. There was electricity for his small refrigerator, but no inside lights, no inside plumbing, and only one inside wall which separated his bedroom from the outer room. That singular wall was composed of scraps of wood that had been neatly aligned and pieced together. My considered opinion was that this was an atypical construction for the 21st century.
Sam was resting comfortably by what appeared to be an ancient pot-bellied stove on the adjacent wall to the front entrance. There was a cane back chair sitting next to it. It was the only chair by the stove. The only other chair in the cabin was under a roughly made table near the bedroom entrance. Sparsely furnished would be considered an overstatement.
I returned to the bedroom to check on Homer. His eyes were opened.
“Miss Evans, right?” he said in a low, hoarse voice.
“That’s me.”
“Sorry I ran away from you and your friends.”
“We do what we have to do,” I said. “I assume you found Laurel.”
“For a while, yes, I had to leave you and search for Laurel. She would have been taken.”
“Curly McClure,” I said.
“I didn’t know his name. He was a bad man. I stopped him.”
“You did in fact. But he seems to have inflicted some damage to you. You’re weak, blood loss, no doubt. And, in need of further medical attention.”
“I’m safe.”
“That’s not really the point. We have to get you to a hospital.”
“It’s
a long walk from here,” he said.
“Without a doubt. I plan on moving you with a medical vehicle.”
“Are they coming here?”
“Something like that. Tell me, how did you get these logs to this spot on the mountain?” I pointed to the walls around him.
“I cut down the trees myself.”
“Figures, but then how did you get them to this spot?”
“Some I drug here; others I carried.”
“You cut the timber and planed it?”
“Yes, ma’am. A neighbor loaned me a saw and an axe.”
“You built this with a hand saw and an axe?”
I knew the answer, and I was mystified.
“Took some time, but, yes, ma’am. It’s my cabin.”
“And the stuff between the logs, the mortar, you made that as well?”
“Randy helped me with that.”
“Who’s Randy?”
“He used to be my brother,” Homer said.
“Used to be?”
“I don’t want to talk about Randy.”
“Okay. So, tell me … is there a road that comes up here through the woods from down below?”
“Why?”
“Why do I want to know?” I said.
“I don’t want strangers coming up here,” he said. He sounded as if he meant every word of it. There was also the implication that there was in fact a road to his cabin.
“Your life is at stake. It’s long hike from the actual road down below up to your cabin. I don’t see how we could carry you out safely.”
“If I don’t go, will I die?”
“Probably. Your wounds are infected and are going to get worse. You need a blood transfusion, like I said, maybe two. You need some rest. And you need some medical people watching over you.”
“I don’t have many friends,” he said.
“It’s not about that.”
“I don’t have money to pay.”
“I’ll take care of that.”
The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon Page 16
