by Gregg Olsen
Nothing else.
No one else.
She stripped off her clothes, put them inside the plastic bag. She spread out the tarp and stood naked over her tools. She halted her breathing and listened with all the concentration she could gather.
No one was there.
Just birds.
Only squirrels.
And the dead man.
Pulling off the cover of branches and ferns over the body, she gave it a careful look. She hadn’t made time for that when she’d made the discovery and considered the implications of what might happen if someone found it. It was badly burned, but she could tell it was a man. His shoulders were broad, and hips narrow. Not a woman. Her eyes traveled downward for further confirmation. She found it. A nob of charcoaled flesh indicated what was left of his penis. He wasn’t very tall, as men go. Maybe five foot eight. His clothes had melted onto his skin or had been completely incinerated. In a few places he wasn’t burned as badly. He was white. It appeared that he wore glasses because lines seared around his eyes bore the distinct traces of frames. Regina made a note to look for them when she was finished.
She put the respirator on and bent over the body, hacksaw in hand.
I’m doing this for me and Amy. I didn’t kill him. I’m only doing what I know I must do to protect us. This is ugly, but it isn’t wrong when so much is at stake.
Regina started with the head because all of her years butchering animals on the farm had taught her that was the most difficult area to work—physically and emotionally. It took some doing, but she managed to sever the head just where the neck met the shoulders. She knew that blood cooked in the fire oozed rather than splattered.
Thank you, God.
She put the head on the tarp, face down. No need to look at the face. Even though she didn’t know him, it felt invasive. Too personal.
Regina took air in through her mouth. The hands were easily snipped off at the wrists with the bolt cutters. She deposited them on the tarp with the head. She took in a another gulp of air and listened. Nothing.
I can do this!
She tried the cutters on the arm bones, but the dead man was too large for the blades. She reverted to the hacksaw. Up and down. Up and down. The blade wasn’t as sharp as it needed to be for efficient cutting, yet it worked. In time, Regina butchered the increasingly fetid body into manageable pieces. By the end of it, her hands and arms were covered in blood and body fluids. Some spatter even freckled her face. That was fine, she thought. She could wash away everything in the outdoor shower. Her clothing would never betray what she did and how.
Amy didn’t need to know how far Regina would go for love.
Neither did the Jefferson County Sheriff.
It took her two trips to bring the body parts to the firepit, a location that had been the center of activity when she and Amy still had visitors. S’mores. Puffs of marijuana. Long, drunken stories about people they loved and hated.
Regina used some fat rendered from a goat she’d slaughtered to help ignite the pieces of what remained of the nameless dead man. She piled on the wood and set the fire. She knew it would take a long time, probably all night. When they first moved there one of their friends hit a doe and someone came up with the bright idea of cremating the animal’s remains. The worst idea ever. It sent up a stream of acrid smoke and the fire hissed as the animal’s fat was consumed. A person’s pre-burned body couldn’t be that bad. Or could it? When the night was over the deer was gone. Even some of the bones had burned. Gone. That’s just what she needed. She knew that no one would pay any attention to the pyre. Once she’d burned a mattress sending a tornado of black smoke into the sky. No one said a word. No one complained of the smell either. In Snow Creek, she mused, burning a body was a private, do-not-disturb affair. Like a lot of things out there. She watched the blaze take off and then hurried inside to tell Amy that she was finally getting to some of that trash that had piled up in the barn.
“How’d it go? Did you bury the body?”
“Yes. I did.”
“In the woods?”
“Yes, baby, in the woods.”
Regina felt Amy’s lips against hers. So warm and lovely. So perfect.
“You get some rest. I’m going to watch the fire.”
“I love you.”
“I love you forever and a day.”
Their love, they both knew, was everlasting.
Eight
Not a single cloud marred the blue of the sky the morning Dante York and his off-and-on girlfriend, Maddie Cohen, took off from Port Hadlock to scope out the wilds above Snow Creek. Dante had become obsessed with cryptozoology. He was sure that he could be the first person to get an irrefutable photograph of a Sasquatch. Maddie was pretty interested in the idea too, although felt that the new fascination was taking up too much time out of their romantic life.
Everything they did lately centered around Sasquatch.
A logger had reported seeing tracks there in the late eighties. Sam Otis had even been photographed and featured in the Port Townsend Leader.
PT Man Says He Found Bigfoot Tracks
Last Friday was like any other day for Sam Otis, 36, of Port Townsend, with one big exception.
Make that one Bigfoot exception.
Otis had just got off his shift as a sawyer for Puget Logging Co. at the timber giant’s Snow Creek property. While returning to his truck, he says he stumbled upon a trail of large humanoid tracks.
“I knew what I was seeing right away,” he told the Leader. “I’ve always had a feeling that Bigfoot was out there, you know, watching the crew. Now there’s proof.”
Otis’s proof is in the form of two photographs of the tracks. In one, he put a dollar bill in the frame to show scale…
“We’re going to find something,” Dante insisted as he downed a bottle of Mexican Coke.
Maddie smiled encouragingly from her cell phone.
“Yeah,” she said as she clicked a deluge of Likes on her friend’s Instagram posts. “Something.”
The ride was rough going up the old logging road. Puget Logging had intended harvesting more timber there, but an endangered species, the spotted owl, put an abrupt stop to those plans. The irony was the little bird was discovered by a group of crypto-hunters in search of Sasquatch.
Sam Otis’s story cost him and everyone on his crew their jobs.
Maddie looked down at her phone.
“No service,” she announced.
Dante looked over at her. “You don’t always need to be on your phone. Let’s enjoy the moment.”
It was a familiar refrain. She was on her phone a lot. More so with Dante’s new obsession taking center stage.
Maybe they weren’t right for each other after all?
She glanced away from her nonfunctioning Samsung and thought it over. Dante was handsome. Kind. Had a good job. What more could she want?
The terrain grew rougher, steeper and the roadway narrowed.
“I feel like I’m in a NutriBullet,” she finally said.
“Yeah. Shocks are shitty on this car.”
That’s true, she thought. His car is shitty. That’s a solid strike against him.
“Let’s pull over,” she said.
“Nah. Can’t here, but up ahead I see a wider spot.”
A minute later, they stopped next to a slash pile of stumps and other refuse from the forest. It had been there such a long time that a Douglas fir seedling managed to get a foothold and rose like a Christmas tree topper from the wood rubble.
“I got to take a leak,” Dante said, on his way to the other side of the road.
I need to figure out where this relationship is going, Maddie thought as she perched on a sun-bleached log.
Dante stood in the familiar stance, legs planted apart, rinsing the road dust from a natural hedge of Himalayan blackberry bushes. The razor-wire-like brambles were laden with ripening fruit. The aroma of sun-warmed blackberries is many Pacific Northwesterner’s idea of summertime h
eaven.
“Hey, we should pick some berries.”
“Not over there,” Maddie shot back, making a disgusted face. “You’re gross, Dante.”
Dante rolled his eyes. “I didn’t mean right here.” When he dropped his knees a little to zip up and looked down past the blackberries, a glint of silver struck his eyes. He craned his neck to see better.
“Maddie,” he said, turning to face her, “there’s a pickup truck down there. Let’s go check it out.”
It wasn’t Bigfoot, but it was something more interesting than just standing around waiting for something to happen, so Maddie agreed.
“Maybe someone junked it here when the logging stopped?” she offered.
“Sounds reasonable,” he said, as they slid down the ravine.
As they got closer, Dante could make out the tailgate.
“It’s a GMC,” he said. “This truck’s only a few years old.”
He started pulling off branches.
“Someone ditched it here,” she said.
“Wonder why? Better than my POS of a car.”
“No argument there, Dante.”
They walked around the vehicle. It was blackened by fire and the windows were broken out. Driver’s door hung open. In the truck bed, a mishmash of carpet and paint cans.
“Remodeler’s truck?” Maddie suggested, flicking away a yellow jacket.
Dante assessed the contents and gave her a quick nod.
“Stolen,” she said.
“Yeah, someone took it for some fun up here and ran it off the road.”
Maddie poked at the contents in the truck bed with a stick.
“Nothing to salvage here,” she said.
All of a sudden, her eyes locked on something in the truck bed. She stood frozen for a beat. Her eyes locked. She started to scream. It was a horror movie scream, the kind that slides up and down in volume and doesn’t seem to stop.
Dante, who was looking for a registration to see who the truck belonged to, hurried to where she was standing.
“You okay? Did you get stung?” He wrapped his arms around Maddie and tried to calm her.
Maddie stepped away from the truck; though her mouth was moving, she remained mute. All she could do was point the stick at something in the back of the truck.
He drew closer.
“What is it?”
“There,” she said, taking the stick and tapping against what she wanted him to see.
A desiccated human hand protruded from the carpet scraps. It was small, a child’s or a woman’s. The fingers were curved and crab-like.
“Holy shit,” Dante said looking at his girlfriend as she leaned into a sword fern and vomited.
Nine
A young state patrolman catches my eye and motions in my direction as I climb out of my car. He’s not alone. There are three more cars, two of which belong to Jefferson County Sheriff’s deputies. A third, I can tell, belongs to the young couple who made the call. It’s a ten-year-old Buick Skylark, brick red in color. It must have been a hand-me-down car from a grandparent or something. The couple standing next to it are young.
The female is petite with light brown hair and white skin. The male has black hair and dark skin. She looks toward the ravine. He keeps his eyes on me as I approach.
“I’m Detective Carpenter,” I say. “I know today has been traumatic for both of you,” my eyes take them in, “but I need you both to tell me how you found the victim.”
The two of them tell me their story. It’s a Wimbledon tennis match, with Maddie and Dante taking turns filling me in.
“Sasquatch.”
“Proof.”
“Road sucked.”
“Wanted to go home.”
“Had to pee.”
“He called over to me.”
“Truck.”
“Like it was hidden.”
Maddie stops for a second before starting up again. She looks down at the powdery dirt road. I know she’s remembering. Dante wraps his arm around her shoulder.
“Hand like a claw.”
“Heard scream.”
And that was that.
We’re finishing up as the coroner’s plain white van pulls in, and I take down Maddie and Dante’s contact information and tell them to go home.
“This is a murder case, right?” Dante asks before turning to leave.
“We don’t know that yet,” I say.
Really, I do know. I can’t think of a scenario in which the whole thing was the result of a freak accident. Like maybe someone got caught in a carpet roll at Home Depot and a worker found the body and was fearful they’d be blamed. And maybe fired. That’s stupid. Honestly, why else would anyone wrap up a body in carpet and set the thing on fire, and push it off the road? Murder, most likely.
Jerry Larsen approaches. He’s in his sixties. He’s been our coroner for more than half his life. Since the position is very part time, he and his wife run a drugstore downtown. He makes me think of Santa Claus every time I see him. His hair is white, and he has a silky, six-inch white beard. Jerry’s not the least bit fat, but with his twinkly eyes, white hair and pink cheeks, in my mind, I think of him as Merry Larsen. I never say that aloud.
“Detective,” he says, “what have we got here?”
I lead him to where the state patrol has been working the scene. This is our case, our jurisdiction. Even so, the truth is we’re in a kind of no-man’s land here. Our small budget means we rely on the state patrol and the crime lab in Olympia and assists from larger Kitsap and Clallam counties. Jerry Larsen is a coroner, not a pathologist. He’ll transfer custody of the body to one of the counties or the state and retrieve it when cause of death is determined.
The climb down to the scene is steep and I worry that Jerry might slip, yet I don’t dare offer him a hand. He’s sweet, but old-school. Old-school sometimes offends. Sweet is fine. Jerry, I think, is sugarplum sweet.
I recognize the patrol officers and they back off to let me do my work.
“We’ve searched fifty yards around the truck,” one says.
“Let’s do a hundred,” I say.
“VIN removed,” another says. “Plates too.”
I pull latex gloves from my pocket and find my way to the back of the truck. Good, I think. Only the hand is revealed from the carpet. Just as Maddie found it. No one here tried to do my job. I climb into the back of the truck, careful not to move anything anymore than necessary.
Jerry assists me with photos.
“Is there something in her hand?” he asks.
I lean in closer. The putrid scent of the body is overwhelming. I don’t let on. It’s the worst odor in the world and it stays in your nose for a week, particles of the dead clinging to your cilia like parasites that exists to remind you.
Of her.
Or him.
Or them.
The dead who want you to capture their killers.
“Doesn’t appear to be,” I tell Jerry.
I lean in and peel back the carpet very carefully. Some of the victim’s flesh adheres to the backing and it takes a little effort.
Unrolled from her carpet pupa, the woman is nude and partially burned. Her eyes are fused closed and her mouth gives out a silent scream. Jerry turns away for a split second before he resumes recording what’s in front of us with his camera.
She’s thin with pendulant breasts. Her abdomen is a pattern of stretchmarks. She’s someone’s mother. Her hands are claws, but they are calloused at the fingertips from hard work. She wears no jewelry. Her hair is long and blond. I stand still and for a second the woods around me goes silent.
I look over at Jerry. His pink cheeks are suddenly ashen.
In my gut I already know who this woman is.
What did he do to you? And where is he now?
I look over at the men standing around me.
“Everything here is evidence. I know you know that.”
I say that because sometimes they don’t know.
“We
need everything preserved for the lab. That means every bit of carpet. Scrap of paper. Gum if there’s any in the cab. Coffee cups. The condition is unimportant right now. If you think anything is trash, then you should get another job. We need to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks here. That means the truck too.”
I’m pretty sure someone mutters the word bitch. That’s fine. That means I made an impression. I’m not here for a date anyway. I’m here for justice for the dead woman.
“Did anyone find anything on the perimeter?”
The trooper who met me when I first arrived pipes up.
“I did,” he says. “I found a plastic shoe.”
He holds up a clear plastic bag.
“Trooper, that’s a Croc.”
“Sorry,” he says. “I thought it could be helpful.”
Everyone laughs. His face goes scarlet.
“It might be,” I say with a reassuring nod. “That’s the brand of the shoe.”
Ten
The forest is full of eyes. Tiny eyes. Bigger ones. When an intruder or a pack of them find their way into the dark world of green with its sweet, musky smells, watchers track every movement. Every interloper is a threat. To the single eye that tracked the police, nothing was more dangerous than what was transpiring over by the truck she’d carefully hidden. She watched, unblinking, as the coroner and another deputy carried something away on a stretcher.
Another body?
Regina couldn’t believe what she saw. How did she miss that? How was it that there were two? Her attempt at concealment was a devastating failure, one that could ruin her life with Amy.
Damn!
Fuck!
What can I do? What will I say if they come calling?
That night, she carried Amy to the barn. She was asleep, and the weight of her body was heavy in Regina’s arms. She made some soft wheezing sounds and to Regina the noise was as lovely as an aria.
Amy opened her eyes.
“I love you, baby.”
“I love you more.”
Regina could feel Amy’s gentle, almost timid, embrace. She longed for the day when she’d be better, and they could live with carefree abandon. They could live as they did before that terrible day two years before.
