All That Remains (Lancaster Falls Book 3)

by RJ Scott

  “They gone now?” he asked Heather, but Heather ignored him, and I moved again between Sandoval and her immediately, keeping my back to him.

  “Civilians messing up things. Nothing gets done right anymore,” Sandoval muttered, and only when I saw Heather relax did I know he was leaving. “No one listens to me.”

  “Twice he’s tried to get inside the cordon and comment,” she murmured.

  "Are you okay?" I asked Heather, and she nodded. “Can I do anything to help?”

  She blinked at me, then shook her head. “We don't have the manpower,” she blurted, then from her expression, she regretted her outburst and schooled her features into calm.

  “Shouldn't we have the coroner here?” I asked as gently as I could.

  Tate answered, “We only found it twenty minutes ago. He's on his way.” He pulled a bottle of water from a bag and handed it to Heather, patting her arm.

  “Whose hand is it?” Marco asked, and Heather went pale. I herded Marco and Harry together and away from the scene quickly.

  “You’ve seen enough.”

  “But, Dad—”

  “Uncle Josh—”

  “Beat it!” I warned, and with a shove and a stumble, the two of them ran off toward the hotel, where I knew they’d hole up and talk conspiracy theories for the rest of the day. My son had his mom’s imagination and was spending way too much time chatting to Chris, who'd recently moved in with Sawyer. Chris was a horror author, and I genuinely believed that one day Harry, with his vivid imagination, could write a book. Of course, he’d have to pass English first, and when it came to the academic subjects of math and English, he was—challenged—he was a doer, not a thinker. He was a gifted artist like his mom and had my athletic build. He and the school system weren’t a good fit, not like me. I’d faked my way through school, not even tried, got in so much trouble, and was still destined for college with my love of math. Then I’d gone and fucked it up and gotten Sadie pregnant when we were still kids.

  Only not really fucked up.

  Becoming a dad as a teenager had become the best thing to ever happen to me.

  I hovered a bit longer by the tent, kept a pale Heather company, chatting about everything and nothing. Both of us watched as paramedics arrived but didn’t stop, driving past us toward Iron Lake. I stayed until the coroner and his assistant arrived at the scene, and then I sauntered back to the hotel. Harry and Marco were in their usual place; sitting on stools and reading comics behind the desk in reception. Harry glanced up as I came in.

  “I’ve done my homework,” he protested before I even said a single word.

  “I wasn’t going to say a thing.”

  “Yes, you were. You had that face thing happening.” Harry rolled his eyes dramatically.

  “What face thing?”

  “When you get all frowny and think I’m messing around when I’m not.”

  I nodded a little. “Oh, that face.”

  God, I loved Harry. He was my everything, the best part of me, the reason I wanted to make this hotel work long enough to give him a safe place. I felt like a failure that we might lose it all, but I had ways of stuffing that emotion down so far that I forgot it. He looked more and more like me every day, but he had Sadie’s laugh and her sense of humor; he was the best part of both of us.

  “Me too,” Marco added and pulled me out of my musing.

  “You too, what?” I asked.

  “I’ve done my homework.”

  They seemed so serious as they lied to my face about their homework, which was probably lying discarded under an issue of Spiderman. It was too hot to argue. It was Saturday, their day off, and bless Harry, but he was still handling reception so I could work, even if we didn’t have any guests right now, nor were we expecting anyone soon. Worry poked at the edges of my thoughts, and I ruthlessly pushed them away. Maybe the hand would encourage another influx of journalists? Not that I wanted those bottom feeders in my place, but at least they paid the bills. Or at least some of them did.

  Anyway, I liked that Harry was smiling with Marco and the on/off grumpiness he’d been exhibiting the past few weeks had vanished for a few moments. Today I refused to worry because tomorrow was a new day, and everything would work out, particularly if I was successful with the new hacking job. Then we’d be set for the winter events in town, have money left over for advertising, and everything would be okay. With renewed enthusiasm for life, I grinned at them both.

  “Ice cream, anyone?”

  I’d never seen two boys move so fast.

  Three

  Lucas

  “Former military could mean traps,” Logan warned as he checked around the gate. “Mines, tripwires, this is Conspiracy Central, so we need to take things carefully.” We went in a few steps, and I held my breath as the stench of decay hit me. The smell was overwhelming, large oil barrels filled with god knows what, old food, decaying and rotting in the heat, tires discarded, old bits of machinery. It was an assault course to get any deeper into the tangle of forest, and we split up so we could walk single file, taking positions on the only ingress that looked as if it could be a trail. Logan was ahead, taking things slow, Sawyer behind him and to the left. Both had their weapons out, as did I, and Drew was behind me. A severed hand wasn’t an exact indication of someone down here armed with a blade and waiting for us to arrive, but who knew?

  We stayed quiet, taking each step with consideration, and I cataloged more waste as we moved through sacks of garbage, years of trash thrown into the woods. Some of it had split open. I could see empty cans of peaches, beans, and soup, labels faded from exposure to the sun, along with rags and glass bottles. Some of them had shattered. Others were intact and green with growth inside, and some held tiny skeletons of animals that had crawled in and had not made it out. This was a hermit’s lair, the place where a person could hide away and never see another living person. Logan stopped abruptly, holding up a fist and indicating we all stop as well. Then he went to a crouch and gestured for us to check what he’d found.

  At worst, I imagined a body, at best another bag of garbage, but what I saw in the mess of undergrowth was the remains of a dog. Maggots crawled over the carcass, flies buzzing around their dinner, and it was bloated with heat, a Dalmatian maybe?

  “I can't tell if this is one of the dogs from the day I was down here,” Logan said.

  My stomach rebelled when I leaned closer, and the scent of decaying flesh hit me, so I stepped back and away.

  At least it’s not human, I told myself, but I loved dogs, and to see one like this was terrible.

  “Keep moving,” Sawyer instructed in a low voice.

  We carefully picked our way over the remains and headed even deeper into the tangled undergrowth. Trash, tires, the remains of an old jeep that was more a shell than anything else, and on the seats inside a ton of hunting magazines in clear bags all labeled with years. I checked the worn date on the top label—2006 maybe—although it was difficult to make out the cover of the magazine at the top of the pile, even if it was shaded from the worst of the heat.

  I didn’t need to have received profiling training to be able to form an opinion. Outlier. Hoarder. Paranoia. The path was slowly becoming harder to negotiate when my instincts told me it should have been easier. Something about this didn't seem right. Sawyer must have had the same thought. He stopped and tilted his head, listening for something. He called softly to Logan and indicated I follow, and we left the path, heading right and deep into the woods. We stumbled through twisted limbs of fallen trees, and as the undergrowth thinned out, we ended up in a clearing free of garbage and decaying vehicles.

  My grip wet with sweat, I switched holds, wiping my hand on my jacket, then repositioned the gun. I wasn’t the best at the firing range by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d passed all my certifications and I was confident in this at least. We spread out again, and the farther in we got, the tenser I became. What were we going to find? More dogs? Booby traps? I was already checki
ng every step I took, on edge for the click of a mine or seeing the glint of wire in the dim light.

  “The cabin,” Logan murmured as the path ended, and the twist of trees opened up again.

  “Maybe we should have used a drone to look here first,” Sawyer mused, and I thought he was feeling the strain the same as me. On the other hand, Logan and Drew were in their element, light on their feet, alert, turning in a slow circle and pointing at the wires that crisscrossed above us.

  “Communications,” Drew observed and pointed up at a huge satellite dish on top of the cabin with a network of cables running inside; whatever kind of survivalist this Adam Gray was, he’d had a grasp of electronics and technology. He could’ve been completely fine in his cabin, using his iPad and watching the television, and we were worrying over nothing.

  Maybe it wasn’t his hand.

  Logan indicated we wait, and Sawyer stopped walking, even though he outranked Logan, and glanced behind to check on me. I nodded I was okay with whatever he thought was right, and Drew stepped back a few paces until he was behind me. The two former soldiers were taking up tactical positions, and it heightened my anxiety.

  “He’s good at his job,” Sawyer murmured as I watched Logan cautiously circle the building, disappearing behind it and then emerging unscathed from the other side.

  “You need to see this,” Logan called after a few moments, and he wasn’t keeping his voice down, so he wasn’t worried who heard us, which meant that in his opinion, there was no one around to startle.

  The corpse of a barely recognizable human lay in the undergrowth. An old man with a matted gray beard attached to what remained of his face, a scarlet bandana cutting into his throat, his torso missing limbs. I could see one leg some way from him, another chopped cleanly into three pieces, two of those chewed through to the bone. Where the arms had gone, where his clothes were, I couldn't see, and suddenly lost for making sense of what I was seeing, I bent at the waist and rested my hand on one knee to steady myself.

  Sawyer holstered his weapon and crouched as close to the body as was safe, and for a moment, we stood in silence.

  “Adam Gray.”

  Logan nodded. “Fuck”"

  “We need to get the coroner down here,” Sawyer tapped his radio, sent the message to dispatch, asked if the coroner was there yet, and when it was confirmed they’d arrived, he suggested Logan would meet them at the gate, leaving Drew to stand guard, his feet apart, knees slightly bent, and his weapon at his side as if he expected trouble.

  Logan vanished back the way we’d come, and I joined Sawyer nearer to the body, but not too close. There was a disciplined and systematic approach to recording the various observations we were making here, and it was vital that we collect potential evidence. I took photos of what I could see, zooming in on the phone and attempting to make dispassionate assessments of the horror I was observing. Sawyer didn’t have to know I was about ten-seconds from being violently ill, not if I could breathe my way through this.

  “Murder,” I said.

  Sawyer nodded. You didn't have to be a cop to see that this was murder. There was a round hole in the center of the forehead, no brain matter visibly expelled on the ground, but we didn’t know how long he’d been dead. It could have been days, and animals had done their worse with the remains.

  “This could be the primary scene,” Sawyer murmured, “but we can't be sure from looking. There isn’t much blood now. It’s rained heavily, then it’s baked hot.” He glanced around him, his face a mask of focus. He was saying that this was potentially the place where the incident had occurred, where a man had been hacked into pieces. This meant that the majority of physical evidence, had Mother Nature not done her worse, would have been located here.

  If this was the primary scene, then one of the secondary crime scenes was that shady part of the sidewalk where the dog had dropped the hand—physical evidence transported away from the first crime scene and left to be found. If this wasn’t the primary scene, then this indecipherable act of murder had been done elsewhere. Would we ever find out which?

  Sawyer stood, balancing himself and swaying a little at the head rush before stepping carefully back and away.

  “We’re lucky to see this much because he would have been left here at least another two weeks.”

  “Two weeks? That’s kind of specific.”

  Sawyer shook his head. “We had Veteran Services coming with a joint welfare check, and they’re so backlogged that it was going to be that long to have to wait. I should have tried harder to get to him. Logan tried, but…”

  I could see where this was going. Sawyer was going to end up killing himself with regrets if he didn't stop now.

  “What’s done is done,” I said as pragmatically as I could. “When someone chooses to live in isolation and shuns the world outside, it’s because they feel safe that way, and they don’t welcome intrusion. Escalation is always possible in situations such as those.”

  “He wasn’t exactly safe,” Sawyer crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the middle distance with such an expression of self-defeat that I felt it was my duty to say something. Maybe even be encouraging. But I had nothing.

  Stick to what you know.

  “The rain means there’s no visible trace evidence that the death occurred at this location.”

  “I know.”

  “Talk to me. Tell me your thoughts on this and everything else happening in town.”

  He stared back at Drew, who’d retreated to the tree line and, leaning against the nearest tree trunk, was watching our six. Then Sawyer turned back to the scene. After a while, when I didn't push him, he began to talk, and I did what I did best. I listened.

  “When they found the bones, the first skull, I thought we were handling a case of a misplaced body from when the valley was drowned to form Iron Lake. When we found the rest, it was still our lead theory because to imagine otherwise is horrific.” I nodded, and he lowered his voice. “Then the murder-suicide in the church… ”

  “William and Beverly Kirkland, deathbed confession to the murder of Casey McGuire.” I summarized the main points succinctly but saw him wince as he glanced at Drew again. Maybe I should have sugarcoated the dry facts more.

  Sawyer continued. “Two more people die, we nearly lose Logan and Drew in the fire; we have backstory that I’m not seeing, FEMA demanding we do this thing and that thing at the lake, and now we have an old man who was scared of the world, dead in the undergrowth, and left for what…? Chopped up for the dogs to eat? What the fuck is going on in this town?”

  I wanted to tell him that I’d seen worse in my time as a fed, and I guess I had. I’d seen missing children. I’d found them using computers and surveillance, been part of awful cases, but never up close. None of what I’d seen would make any sense of what he was going through.

  “We'll figure it out,” I finally said. “Whatever I can do to help. We have resources, manpower at our fingertips. Just think about what you need.”

  The tension in his expression eased a little, but nothing changed the fact that we had a half-eaten dismembered corpse right in front of us.

  “I will.” He paused for a moment and then cleared his throat, batting away flies that buzzed around his face. The wind shifted, and the scent of decay hit me full on, making me gag again, and I covered my mouth and nose with my hand without shame.

  “Do you think he was shot, and then mutilated,” Sawyer murmured, and I felt like his head was back in the game.

  “The coroner will give us a better picture.”

  Voices broke into our weird situation, and the sound came nearer, Logan clear and concise, others a little wilder, snapping about impossible situations and damned trees, and when they burst from the trees, there were two others with Logan.

  “Told the paramedics we had this, that it’s retrieval and no chance of resuscitation,” Logan announced as he drew nearer, the two men behind in suit pants and shirts, following Logan’s exact footsteps. They
stopped when he did, the one at the front peering around Logan’s broad shoulders and down at the remains.

  “Liam Anders, Coroner. Carl Renner, my deputy,” he said. “Now, where do we step, Officer Hennessy?”

  Logan moved to one side. “You’re okay now.”

  Liam didn’t move at first and glanced dubiously at the ground. “No booby traps here?”

  “We’re fairly confident the dogs milling around here mean that this is safe,” Drew deadpanned from his position by the tree and got a glare thrown at him for his pains.

  “You appreciate that the weight of a human is significantly more than some dogs,” he snapped. “A human could set off a mine that a light dog could dance on, and we know he had little dogs as well.”

  Drew tilted his head. “My apologies. The area has been checked.”

  Liam huffed, but I wanted to smile, even felt humor bubbling inside me, which was fighting hard with my feeling nauseous and being freaked out at standing by a dismembered corpse.

  Liam and Carl stepped closer to what was there and exchanged looks, then began chatting as they went about assessing the scene.

  “How many dogs did he have?” I asked in general.

  Logan sighed. “We won’t know for sure, I mean, he always had dogs, that’s all I know. Some of them may have run off, got out, like the one in town.”

  “Others will have fed on him, so we need to keep our wits about us. Also, we'll need to widen the circle here to locate all parts of the body,” Carl suggested. That was when the skies darkened and it began to rain, just like it had on the way to town, heavy insistent, with cracks of thunder and flashes of lightening.

  “If he’s been here more than a few days, then we’re not going to find anything useful,” Liam muttered, looking up at the sky in frustration.

  Logan took shelter and called the situation in, then began retracing his steps, indicating Sawyer and me to do the same. Then in a standard pattern, along with Drew, we began to pick our way through the undergrowth. More trash, cans, old mobile phones that Carl bagged for us, and finally, after a few hours of painstaking work, the coroner was happy that between rain squalls, and without detailed evaluation, we had all parts of the body, all bagged and ready to go.