by Gwen Moffat
Miss Pink looked up. ‘The higher trail can’t be far above,’ she said. ‘I remember looking down the gash but I couldn’t see this path. It must have been hidden by that crag.’
In the middle of the slide was the cause of the trouble: a trickle of water (which would be a torrent in rain) that drained past a ragged outcrop with angular chunks poised on either side. A few more inches of soil would wash away in the next storm and more rock tumble into Porcupine Gulch. From raw indentations in the slope it was obvious the whole mess was extremely unstable.
‘There was a fall here quite recently,’ Leo said. ‘We tried to dig the path out again.’
‘Not to say “dig”,’ Sadie protested. ‘We didn’t have shovels. We cleared the trail with our hands.’
The landslide was about sixty feet wide and the trail started as a thin line marked by deer. The women walked along this without a pause but treading carefully; it was a long way down to the bottom of the slide and the angle was not consistent. There were more outcrops below, and drops.
‘I’ll stop in the stream,’ Leo warned – and not superfluously. To tread on the heels of the person ahead in this place could be sufficient to upset delicate balance. At least one of them might fall.
They edged round the foot of the outcrop and stopped in wet rubble and water. Miss Pink glanced up at the poised blocks and swallowed. Rocks shifted under her feet. Leo intercepted the glance. ‘We pushed down the worst rocks,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Those we left are wedged; you gotta believe it. No way would we have been digging out a path right under them otherwise.’
‘It was the first thing we did,’ Sadie assured her. ‘Knocked off all the loose boulders, and then we dug out the trail.’
Miss Pink yawned with tension and looked at what they called a trail. Sadie watched her anxiously. ‘You should have seen it before we dug it out again,’ she said. ‘The last rockfall must have happened in the storm we had – remember: last week, soon after you came?’
‘I was here,’ Miss Pink said absently, watching Leo who was staring down the line of the slide. ‘I got caught in the rain.’
‘Good job you weren’t here when the rock fell,’ Sadie said.
Miss Pink frowned. Leo said, ‘It’s only ravens. Let’s move; my boots are leaking.’
They continued to the sweet haven of the trees and a good earth trail, but instead of walking on, Miss Pink paused and looked back.
‘I heard that rockfall,’ she said. ‘I must have been coming down the spur. There was a tree dropped earlier in the day, and then there was the woodpecker, and a red-tail. Curious’ – she stepped back to the very edge of the slide and looked down – ‘the red-tail was around here. And now,’ she mused, ‘there are ravens.’
‘I said so.’ Leo was impatient. ‘Come on; it’s owls we’re looking for.’
Miss Pink was focusing her binoculars. Sadie and Leo exchanged glances and then, resigned, making the best of it, they concentrated on what might be in the canopy.
‘Those ravens are feeding,’ Miss Pink observed.
Leo blinked. Sadie said, ‘There’ll be rodents and things got caught in the landslide.’
‘The rockfall,’ Miss Pink corrected. ‘The landslide was years ago. But anything caught in the rockfall would still be fresh.’ She stepped back. ‘You look,’ she told Leo.
The other squinted down the slide. ‘Yeah, they’re pecking.’ She focused her binoculars and was still for quite a while. She lowered them. ‘They got something big. Like a deer’s leg.’
‘No deer ever got caught in a rockfall,’ Sadie said.
‘Well, cow then.’
There was no response; they all knew that there were no cows in this forest. The other two looked at Miss Pink, who said, ‘We don’t all have to go. You look for the owls; I’ll go down the side, through the trees.’
‘You can’t,’ Leo said. ‘It’s a jungle: all down-timber and enormous logs. You’d never get through. It has to be some old carcass.’
‘I’ll go down to Porcupine then, turn up the trail and cross the creek. The landslide must go almost to the water, so it can’t be a quarter of a mile from the trail.’
‘Quarter of a mile – in this!’ Leo gestured at the timber, meaning the under-storey rather than the trees.
But Miss Pink was adamant and, out of courtesy as much as common sense, they wouldn’t let her go alone. In fact, she wasn’t sorry to have company. It was quiet and dim under the great trees: the fronds of the sword ferns were motionless, the hanging lichen unstirred by any breeze. There was no movement, no sound of bird or squirrel, only the thud of their boots in the dust, the creak of a rucksack strap, the whisper of denim against a twig. This was an alien place and Miss Pink found herself thinking of Gideon d’Eath and the mythology that he had stolen from the old world, when all the time a native magic lurked here in the primeval forest that fronted on the Pacific.
They came to the creek, crossed it by a log bridge and climbed the far bank to turn up Porcupine Gulch. They agreed to go for about three-quarters of a mile and then to start looking.
In the event the landslide wasn’t all that difficult to locate when three people were searching for it although, predictably, it was the far-sighted Leo who caught the glimpse of pale stone high under the spur a mile away.
‘You don’t want to come, Locke,’ she said firmly, ‘not with your knees.’ And Sadie sat down to wait while the other two started to work their way to the creek.
The terrain was appalling: they could scarcely take one step without being forced to climb a log or boulder, which might not be anything on the uphill side, but below, the drop was sometimes impossible and they’d be forced to retreat. And always, under the obstruction, there was the danger that something, disturbed by their progress, would shift and roll, trapping a limb. In the end they took the easiest line, regardless of the fact that they might come out a long way from the foot of the landslide.
They slid into the bed of the creek and clawed their way out on the other side. They paused for breath, streaming sweat, and Leo turned to Miss Pink: ‘I had an awful thought. If there is – anything – then we killed it, rolling down rocks when we dug out the trail.’
‘I doubt it.’ Miss Pink tried to sound equable but she was panting heavily. ‘Were there ravens that day?’
‘I didn’t notice. Who bothers with ravens?’
But it was the birds that brought them to the landslide. As they blundered through the undergrowth above the creek they were unable to see their goal but they could hear the ravens croaking. Rock appeared through the tree trunks and the ferns: raw, angular, sunlit. The birds flapped away and the women came out on a titanic rubbish dump: rocks, splintered branches, uprooted bushes and, at the lowest extremity, trees leaning drunkenly into the forest.
They clambered over the debris to the centre, the fall-line. Sticking out of a mass of gravel was a leg.
‘A leg,’ Laddow said coldly. She had finally reached him on the telephone that evening. He was in Portland. ‘An animal’s leg?’ he asked, sounding as if he would like it to be that but knowing it was hopeless: a ridiculous question. She hadn’t run him to earth in order to tell him she’d found a dead deer.
‘Not with a Hi-Tec boot beside it,’ she said.
‘Oh, so it could be – The boot need have nothing to do with— ’
‘There was a foot inside it, sort of.’
‘Sort of? What d’you mean: “sort of”?’
‘The ravens. They’re scavengers – but they couldn’t get at the rest of the body.’
‘And you didn’t?’
‘It’s more or less cemented in by the gravel. We thought we should leave it anyway.’
‘A Hi-Tec boot,’ he repeated thoughtfully. ‘Can we get a car in there? A helicopter?’
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to walk.’
‘Why did you call me?’ He was suddenly wary.
‘The police had to be told, and we know you, and then you were engaged in
Sundown.’
‘Are you keeping something back – like this discovery points to someone we know?’
‘Andy Keller’s missing.’
‘I see. You think he came back.’ She said nothing. ‘We’ll be down tomorrow,’ he said.
‘I forgot to ask— ’ She stopped. He’d rung off.
She asked the question next morning as the detectives, exhausted, splashed water on their faces and drank from Porcupine Creek regardless of bacteria.
‘What kind of gun was used to shoot Gayleen?’
Laddow was too worn down to orientate himself. Hammett who, being lean, was suffering less, said, ‘A .22. Why?’
‘Was Mrs Keller’s revolver a .22?’
‘It was.’ Laddow glared. ‘It doesn’t mean she was shot with that revolver, but she could have been. You know’ – a thought had struck him – ‘I don’t want this body to be Andy Keller.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I can see that.’
They turned to the bank, the men going straight up to an eroded overhang, Miss Pink working diagonally out of the creek. Unable to cope with the overhang the others slid back to the water and followed her.
The ravens were there again, showing them the way to the landslide, taking off in alarm at the noise of their approach, perching high to watch and wait.
‘Oh, yes,’ Laddow breathed, looking at the leg which was no more than splintered ends of bone. ‘Where’s the boot?’
‘Here.’ She indicated a small stone structure like a dolmen. Carefully Hammett removed the capstone to expose the boot: grey and white, grubby, the laces still in their eyelets but not tied, the thing smelling foul.
Hammett was carrying a small pack. He produced a pair of gloves and, picking up the boot, peered inside. He grimaced and replaced it in its nest of stones.
Laddow said, ‘Take some pictures and then we’ll move these rocks.’
They stood aside while Hammett busied himself with a Nikon.
‘Do you understand this?’ Laddow asked. ‘You’re the hiker. See anything like it before? You have to think.’ as Miss Pink hesitated.
She responded calmly. ‘I’ve seen a lot of bodies in mountains and so on, the result of falls … But the nearest I’ve come to anything like this was in avalanche debris. It looks similar, except that this is gravel and rock rather than snow.’
‘You figure it’s natural – no foul play?’
‘My dear man!’ She was shocked.
‘Look’ – he was testy – ‘I’m not the expert here, not at least until we uncover him – or her – although that’s a big boot, a man’s, wouldn’t you say? I’ll be more at home’ – he grinned like a bear – ‘when we’ve got him out, but right now, ma’am, I need to know about avalanches. Do you follow me?’
‘Yes. So far as I can see, everything looks natural. He could have fallen by – accident … ’ She trailed off.
‘You thought of something?’
‘Only that there’s so much rock on top of him, but then that happens too: a boulder comes down after the victim’s fallen and brings a lot of subsidiary stuff with it.’ She had remembered Sadie and Leo clearing the trail above, but she would let them tell it, not her.
‘Right,’ Hammett said with relief, ‘I’m finished.’
‘We haven’t started yet,’ Laddow said, and Miss Pink withdrew to sit on a rock and watch them work.
They hadn’t brought a shovel and they wouldn’t have used one anyway; they cleared the ground like nurserymen gently exposing the roots of a cherished plant that must be removed without a scratch – or without further injury; scratches bore no relation to what had happened here. The body was so battered and crushed that not only was it unidentifiable, its sex was in doubt until they could work it out to their satisfaction. It had been a man.
They retreated to join Miss Pink, bringing with them the stench of putrefaction, or rather, intensifying it, for with the disinterment the whole place stank.
‘No way,’ said Laddow morosely, ‘no way can anyone identify that. Levis and a T-shirt: nothing distinctive.’
‘Clean up the jaw and see if it can be wired together,’ Hammett suggested. ‘Try it out on his dentist.’
‘You have the boot,’ Miss Pink said. ‘It’s odd that there’s no pack and nothing in the pockets.’
‘Pack?’
‘Rucksack. You went through all the pockets?’
Hammett said, ‘He’s face upwards, we haven’t moved him yet. What about the hip pockets?’
Laddow sighed and stood up. She watched them walk slowly back to the body. The ravens were watching too and she shivered in the sunshine.
Hammett eased the body off the rocks, trying to be gentle, but he had an extremely difficult task before Laddow could work his hand underneath. To Miss Pink, observing their movements with her senses dulled, time had stopped and there was just space and silence, the sun shining on the stones, black shadows in the forest, and two men trying to find something that would tell them about the third.
Hammett was lowering the body, Laddow was getting to his feet holding a small object in gloved fingers. They came back and he showed it to her: a key on a ring with a dark wedge of plastic on which was printed in neat white letters: Fountain motel. Portland, Oregon, and a telephone number.
Chapter 11
‘He came back.’
‘When?’
‘The same night. He walked back – through the forest?’ Laddow looked at Miss Pink. ‘Is that possible? How far is it?’
She considered the question. They were sitting beside Bobcat Creek, drying their hands after washing themselves for the second time. Washing skin made little difference; the smell clung to their clothes.
‘I didn’t bring the map,’ she said, ‘but I would guess that if he’d taken to the forest trails he’d have to cover at least fifty, sixty miles to get back to here. He couldn’t do it in less than two days on foot.’
‘He could have got a lift,’ Hammett said.
‘Not that night,’ Laddow put in. ‘The road would be closed at six.’ He pondered. ‘He had to call somewhere before he reached this point – ’ he gestured upstream. ‘Where’s his parka and haversack, where’s his billfold?’
‘It wasn’t in the car of course.’ They stared at her. ‘In the Chevrolet,’ she elaborated, ‘stolen from Moon Shell Beach.’
Now they looked at each other. ‘Like I said,’ Laddow repeated, ‘he stopped off somewhere.’
‘And his hat,’ mused Miss Pink. ‘But he’d never wear that when he was hiking.’ There was silence from the listeners. ‘What happened to the Stetson?’ she asked brightly. ‘Did the drug addict find it in the car and sell it? That hat cost money.’
‘It’s a detail,’ Laddow said, not answering the question. ‘Why is it important?’
‘Because he was wearing it when he left Sundown.’
‘He was,’ Hammett said, and looked meaningly at Laddow.
Miss Pink, poking at dry gravel beside a log, said, ‘I don’t see how he could have covered the ground, even hitching back to Sundown, because the rain stopped overnight.’ They turned to her like hound dogs. ‘The storm,’ she explained. ‘It started to rain on the Tuesday afternoon but it stopped some time during the night. There’s been no rain since. Surely the gravel round the body washed down after he fell.’
‘It could have been brought down by the stream,’ Hammett pointed out.
Now she felt compelled to tell them that Sadie and Leo had been trundling boulders down the slope in an effort to make the trail safe.
‘Why didn’t you mention this before?’ Laddow asked grimly.
‘I didn’t relate it to the body. Would the rocks fall that far?’
‘That’s it!’ Hammett exclaimed. ‘He fell from a trail. How far above is it?’
Relieved not to have to speculate on the actions of Sadie and Leo, she concentrated on distances, but Laddow was off on another tack. ‘When were they up there?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t
ask. I had the impression— ’
There was a scream from the far side of Bobcat. Hammett gasped, Laddow gaped at Miss Pink. ‘Red-tailed hawk,’ she murmured. ‘It’s always around – ’ She frowned, remembering. ‘There was a tree came down that day around lunchtime and afterwards the red-tail kept calling, and then there was a rockfall.’
‘Where? When?’ Laddow was excited.
‘I was above … way up near the top of Pandora Ridge. The rock fell away from below me; it could have been in the old landslide. The time? I don’t know; I didn’t look at my watch.’
‘Try to remember,’ Laddow urged. Hammett looked puzzled.
‘It was after lunch and before the rain started.’ She shook her head. ‘Early afternoon, two, two thirty, at a wild guess; I can’t do better than that.’
Hammett had waited impatiently for her to finish. ‘But Keller was seen much later,’ he reminded Laddow. ‘Four, around there; he was travelling fast to catch the roadworks, remember? That’s what Linquist and Fleur Sanborn figured. If she heard a rock come down, couldn’t be anything to do with Keller. He was alive long afterwards.’
‘Just coincidence,’ she murmured. ‘It was an odd day all round.’
‘How: odd?’ Laddow asked.
‘Well,’ she gestured vaguely, ‘the atmosphere; it’s intimidating when you’re alone. And then: a big tree falling without human agency, the hawk screaming, the rockfall.’ The voices, she might have added, but didn’t, self-conscious about her age, anticipating the way they would look at each other, or try not to; old ladies hearing things: trees, rocks, voices.
‘You can’t get away from it,’ Laddow said, watching her. ‘If that was Keller in the Chevy around four, he wasn’t killed when you heard a rock fall around two or two thirty, was he?’
