No Woods So Dark as These

by Randall Silvis

  He said, “How is Mrs. Fletcher doing these days?”

  “She’s doing all right. She manages the diner now. Has a boyfriend who’s a really good guy.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “Also, I used to play in the old St. Margaret’s Hospital. I know all about what happened there last summer.” She turned to Jayme. “I’m so sorry.”

  Jayme answered with a smile.

  Flores looked to DeMarco again. “You’ve been an inspiration to me, sir. I applied to the academy because of you. It’s an honor to work with you. With both of you. You’re both just so…so…”

  “Okay, enough of that stuff,” DeMarco said. “Trooper Boyd is getting nauseated. Here’s what I thought we could do today. If it’s okay with you, Mace.”

  Trooper Boyd said, “It’s your show, Sergeant. I mean I know what Captain Bowen said, but technically…”

  “Technically,” DeMarco told him, “everything I say is merely a suggestion. If you disagree, you say so.”

  Boyd nodded once.

  DeMarco took one copy of each of the Otter Creek Township maps out of his bag and spread them open on the table. Already on the table was a short stack of papers facedown. “The X on the property map marks the approximate crime scene. Ditto the aerial view map in case you need to orient yourself. As you can see, I’ve divided the township into east and west of the X on the property map, one portion for each team. As per Captain Bowen’s direction, we need one uniform on each team. So, if it’s okay with you guys, how about we put Trooper Boyd and Jayme together, and I’ll work with Trooper Flores. Agreed?”

  Flores began, “It would be my honor—” then stopped when DeMarco raised his eyebrows. “Agreed, sir.”

  “There are just shy of two hundred occupied homes in the township. The ones marked with a yellow highlighter are, obviously, closest to the crime scene, and also those closest to a public road. In other words, home to people most likely to have seen the vehicle or the victims at one time or another. We’ll focus on those today. There are more homes on the east side than on the west, but there’s less territory to cover.”

  Jayme and Trooper Boyd shared a look and a nod. Jayme said, “We’re good with that side.”

  “Excellent. That leaves Trooper Flores and me with the easy part.”

  Everybody smiled. DeMarco put his fingertip to the stack of other papers and said, “Mace, are these the photos?”

  “Two of each for each team. One of each for each person, in other words.”

  DeMarco turned them faceup. Four photos of the dead man nailed to the tree. Four photos of the burned-out Santa Fe. He said, “Just be very careful about flashing this one,” he said, his finger to a photo of the dead man. “Make sure no kids see it.”

  “The car too,” Jayme said. “We don’t want any children having nightmares about the family car burning up.”

  “Let’s just be careful all around,” DeMarco told them. “Ask before we show.”

  Boyd said, “We know that the vehicle was dark green. Called Black Forest Green. We’re looking at 2010, 2011, 2012. If it’s been around the area at all, somebody would have seen it. And, with luck, the victims.”

  “Any hits,” DeMarco said, “Jayme, you and I will stay in touch. No call means no hits.”

  “Copy that,” she said.

  “So much for the instructions, folks. You all know what you’re doing.”

  “If I could just add,” Jayme said, and made a point of not singling out Trooper Flores by looking only at her, “nonverbal information might be our most valuable source here. Nervousness, evasiveness, hostility, even an overly zealous desire to cooperate—it all says something. Keep good, thorough notes for every house and every person canvassed.”

  DeMarco waited ten seconds before asking, “Any questions?”

  There were none. He dug into his satchel, pulled out six Power Bars and tossed them onto the table. “Help yourselves,” he said. “And stay hydrated.”

  Flores and Boyd each took one Power Bar. DeMarco pushed two toward Jayme, plus two bottles of water, and dropped the remaining bars back into his bag.

  Outside, on the way to their vehicles, Jayme and DeMarco hung back a couple of steps. He said, “Gonna miss you, partner.”

  She swung her hand toward his, but the moment her fingertips touched the back of his hand, a cold shock shot up her arm, an icy, unnameable fear. She seized his hand and squeezed it. “You too, babe. Stay in touch, okay?”

  “Always,” he said. After a quick squeeze of his fingers, his hand fell away from hers.

  Sixteen

  Alone in the vehicle with Flores, DeMarco felt awkward and ill at ease. She kept turning her head slightly in an attempt to view him surreptitiously, and sometimes held her gaze on the side of his face so long that he felt his cheeks reddening. More than once he felt an urge to rebuke her, tell her to knock off the staring. But maybe that was why she seemed so tense and apprehensive. The guys at the barracks had probably painted him as an ogre who would bite her in half at the first wrong word. Plus there was the whole thing about her following his career, about joining up because she used to serve him his breakfast. He had never thought of himself as a role model for anybody. Didn’t even want to model himself after himself, let alone have an impressionable young woman do so.

  He let out a long breath, tried to blow some of the stiffness out of his neck. It was too early in the day for a stiff neck.

  He turned his head away from her. Glanced out the side window. They were coming up now on a long hay field he liked, especially in the early evening when the sun was below the horizon. The field rose up from the highway in a long, gentle incline, so that the slope crested a couple of hundred yards beyond and above the car. Right now the sun was above Flores’s side of the car, not yet at solar noon, so the huge cylindrical bales of hay, all wrapped in sleeves of white plastic, resembled monstrous white maggots. In the early evening, with the sun at their back, they would look like great shaggy-headed bison asleep across the horizon.

  To Flores he said, “What do you think bison dream about?”

  The question startled her at first, but then she smiled. “Other bison?”

  “There were thirty million of them in North America before the white man came along.”

  She was silent for a few moments, seemed unsure of how to answer. But after he looked at her and smiled, she said, “Stupid white man.”

  He grinned, nodded, and kept driving.

  He liked her. She was just a kid to him but she was alert and eager and she would do fine. Today should be simple. Knock on a door, ask a few questions, move on and repeat. Nothing to worry about.

  “Listen,” he told her. “Chances are, today will be a cakewalk. But there’s always that one chance in a million it won’t. That’s the one you always have to be expecting.”

  She nodded. “The murderer might be in one of the houses. Might open the door. And might do something stupid when he sees my uniform. Don’t worry; I’ll be ready.”

  “Good,” he said. He slowed to make a left off Folk Road, a two-laner, and onto Donation Road, a narrower asphalt road with no lane markings. Soon they would be in Otter Creek Township.

  “What made you think of bison?” she asked.

  “I’ll show you later. On the way back.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “We have bison here too. But they’re always sleeping.”

  She cocked her head, gave him a quizzical look.

  “Better cap your water bottle,” he told her. “The road gets fairly bumpy from here.”

  Seventeen

  Lots of maybes. Lots of yeah, I think I did but I have no idea when. DeMarco handed out a card at every stop, said, “If you remember anything or hear anything, please give me a call.” Flores carried her own cards, which included only the state police contact information, u
nlike DeMarco’s or Jayme’s, which included their names, Private Investigations, and the number for their landline.

  Flores noted that DeMarco’s introduction was always the same: “I’m Detective DeMarco and this is Trooper Flores; we’re with the state police.” With the state police. Technically correct, but prone to misinterpretation. Only she was of the state police. She knew that he was too smart not to have chosen his words deliberately.

  Most people wanted to be helpful. After the initial stops, the residents seemed to be expecting the knock and showed no surprise to find a detective and state trooper on the other side of the door. The cell phone towers are getting a good workout, Flores thought.

  At fourteen homes, nobody answered the door. She wrote Please call ASAP on a card and stuck it between the door and the jamb. Only a few people were hostile, answered brusquely, and slammed the door. Two men said, “I wouldn’t tell you anything even if I did know.”

  Through it all, Flores stood a long stride behind DeMarco at the door, off to his right, her hand open against her hip, thumb touching the holster. Please God, she prayed each time DeMarco knocked. Please Blessed Mother of Jesus Christ, please.

  Only twice during the day was she frightened enough to slide her hand over the holster. An older man stinking so strongly of beer and old sweat that she could smell him from six feet away. Average height, maybe sixty years old, dirty white whiskers, tufts of white hair in his ears. Face like dried-out leather. Small squinting eyes as gray as river ice. He kept his right shoulder and arm behind the doorjamb, spoke loudly through the screen, swore at DeMarco for waking him up, lobbed one f-bomb after another. DeMarco spoke calmly, evenly, told him how important it was that he and his neighbors assist them in finding the people responsible for this crime. How grateful he was for the man’s cooperation. And in the end the man took the card DeMarco held out to him, pulled it away clamped between his tobacco-stained fingers, said, “Yeah all right, I hear what you’re saying,” before he closed and locked the door.

  The other man was all cooperation, all smiles and soft voice. But he was huge. At least six four, over two hundred pounds, mid to late forties, cleanly shaved skull and face. Dressed in pressed blue jeans and a clean white T-shirt and Nike suede-and-mesh slip-on sneakers. He had the look of a former weight lifter going paunchy. But he oozed something negative, had that imperious air she had experienced from a couple of lawyers, a Lexus salesman, several married businessmen, and most of the boyfriends she had been too young and stupid to avoid. They thought they were smarter than you and better than you and could talk you into anything. There was a quiet intensity to everything they said, as their eyes never strayed from yours and they leaned close as if sharing a secret. They gave her the creeps. Like a white Cory Booker, she told herself. Or Mitt Romney without hair. At the end of the day, these were the two she remembered most vividly, the ones who made her skin feel dirty.

  DeMarco parked the car at a pullout beside an oil holding tank. Finished up his notes, then waited for her to finish. When she looked up from her notes, he asked, “So what do you think?”

  She didn’t need to consult her notes but pretended to anyway. “The older man in the trailer with the ratty old sofa and other stuff in his yard. And the bald weight lifter guy in that beautiful old farmhouse. I got bad vibes from both of them.”

  “Read me your notes,” he said.

  “All of them?”

  “Just those two.”

  “Edson Wetzel, 148 Kitch Road. Sixtyish, smelly, cranky old man. Retired logger. Says two unemployed sons live with him, come and go. Neither currently present. Angry and evasive. Never showed his right arm or hand. Probably not strong enough to overpower or move male victim on his own, but with sons’ help?”

  “Okay; good. Who else?”

  “Luther Reddick, 379 Linn Tyro Road. Online dealer, antiques and collectibles. Late forties, clean-cut, soft-spoken, well-dressed. Single, lives alone. Is certain he’s seen the Santa Fe several times but doesn’t remember where, probably somewhere in town, doesn’t remember noticing the plate. Doesn’t remember ever seeing the vic. Uber cooperative. Asked for a card. Shook Sergeant’s hand. Winked at me when saying goodbye. Feels skeevy. Ugh. Made me want to spit.”

  She looked up at DeMarco then and said, “Sorry about that last part.”

  “Don’t apologize. Half of this job is trusting your instincts. The other half is in knowing when to follow up on them.”

  “Some men just rub me the wrong way. But it doesn’t mean they’re murderers.”

  He nodded. “Did you notice anything else of interest in Wetzel’s yard?”

  “Mmm…just a lot of junk, as far as I recall.”

  “I saw two red plastic fuel containers. One gallon and five gallons.”

  “How did I miss that?”

  “They were halfway buried under other stuff. Still…you have to notice everything.”

  “But wasn’t there evidence of a melted container inside the Santa Fe?”

  “And…?”

  “Okay. Maybe that one was burned up, but the presence of the other two…it means he uses them. Maybe the two with the junk have holes in them.”

  “How far is his trailer from the crime scene?”

  She looked at the property map. “Maybe two and a half miles?”

  “How much does a five-gallon container of gas weigh?”

  “Over thirty pounds.”

  “So?” he said.

  “So if it was Wetzel…he either had help, such as his two sons, or he drove there. Which is unlikely because one of the vics would have had to drive the Santa Fe.”

  “Or maybe they all drove to the crime scene, and he walked home alone afterward, empty-handed.”

  “Yeah, that works,” she said sheepishly. “Except if they all drove there in one car … how did he initially get to where their car was? Unless the vics were at his place to begin with.” She paused, thought a moment longer, then said, “I guess I just don’t see him, all by himself, handling three other people. And didn’t the lab say that the chloral hydrate in the male victim was administered orally? Why would a big guy like him not resist and fight back? For my money, if Wetzel’s involved, he isn’t in it alone.”

  DeMarco smiled. “And Reddick?”

  “He’s big and strong. Even without a gun in his hand, he could be intimidating.”

  “And you think there’s something fishy about him?”

  “How many square feet in a house like that? Maybe three thousand? And he lives there alone? I don’t know. Yeah, something smells fishy to me. Maybe the house is filled with antiques and that’s why he lives alone. Maybe he just likes the extra space. Maybe he inherited the place. But I guess those are things I would want to look into.”

  “Why don’t you do that,” he told her with a smile.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  He laid his notepad aside and started the engine. “The sun’s going down. Want to go see those bison now?”

  “Absolutely, sir. Is it a big herd? And what did you mean that they’re always sleeping?”

  He answered with a smile. “Buckle up, Trooper.”

  Eighteen

  At approximately 6:30 p.m. DeMarco dropped Flores off at the station house. Boyd’s patrol car was already parked and empty. Flores climbed out of DeMarco’s car, put her hand to the door, but paused. Then she bent down to look across the seat at him. “Thanks for being patient with me today,” she said.

  “Patience is my middle name. Didn’t anybody tell you that?”

  The way she smiled, making her eyes crinkle a little, he knew she had been warned just the opposite. Had probably been holding her breath all day, waiting for him to blow up.

  She said, “And thanks for showing me your bison.”

  “Now they’re your bison too.”

  Her face did something funny then, the ti
niest quiver in her mouth, a glimmer of dampness in her eyes. He looked away quickly, stared out the windshield and said, “Let Jayme know I’m out here waiting, okay?”

  “Will do,” she said, then closed the door softly and strode toward the building.

  A little sun of warmth radiated from his chest as he watched her go, and his cheeks warmed too. That his few words of kindness had nearly brought her to tears—it was an embarrassing thing. Who was he to have such power? He was nobody. Certainly not a role model. Well, okay, he was a work in progress. Anyhow it was a nice way to end a frustrating day of work, giving an earnest young woman a little boost of confidence. And he had done it without thinking, without having to plan it out. What could be wrong with that?

  The dusky light of evening was quickly graduating to darkness, and with his window down DeMarco could feel the temperature cooling. A dull rumble emanated from Interstate 79. It was louder than he remembered it, always a muted thrum from his former desk inside the building, now a throbbing, palpable growl as the endless caravan of eighteen wheelers sped by, each truck spewing diesel fumes and as much nitrogen oxide and particulates as 150 cars. Interstate 80 five miles south was even busier and noisier. He wondered if living between those two concrete trails, being caught in their unabating slipstream of noise and stink, could account for his many years of insomnia and constant state of agitation. How could it not be unhealthy?

  Nearly all cities were now virtually wrapped inside such growling, vibrating ribbons of concrete, especially in the eastern half of the country. Could that proximity to superhighways be to blame, at least in part, for the alarming increase in incivility? And how about the rise in digestive disorders? He had read that gut problems had risen by over 200 percent in the past twenty years. Also the use of antidepressants, up at least 65 percent. He hadn’t seen any studies that compared the incidence of those problems in cities and rural areas, but he was willing to bet that—