“You okay?” Murphy asked.
“Yeah.”
“You say you didn’t go in there?”
“Just far enough to see that he was there. From all the blood, I knew he was dead and backed out…. That’s when I met you.”
Murphy lightly grabbed Cote’s shoulder, restraining him, and moved ahead, spreading the alders and pushed his way inside. The carnage that greeted him was horrific and his stomach lurched, trying to evacuate its contents. Whoever had killed Kelly—if this was Ryan Kelly—had ripped the body apart. For some strange reason Murphy visualized a medieval pagan feast where everyone around the table grabbed meat with their hands and ripped it apart with their teeth. Murphy forced his revulsion aside and squatted beside the body to inspect it. He expected to see damage from where predator animals had been at the corpse—this was over and above any damage he’d ever seen done by scavenger animals. Starting at the head, he slowly trolled the light’s beam over the body and stopped when he reached the chest cavity. The body had lain in the cold long enough to have frozen and everything looked crystalline in the light of his Maglite. “Christ … ,” Murphy whispered—then he realized that the boy’s legs and buttocks were gone.
“What you say?” Cote asked.
“Nothing.” Murphy spread the snowsuit open. As he spread the fabric, the frozen blood that covered it cracked and snapped. He peered inside and saw the chest cavity had been ripped open rather than cut and appeared to have been ravaged by teeth. He rocked back on his heels, took a deep breath, and rose. As he stepped out of the brush, he said, “Did you contact anyone else?”
“Like I said, I got here just ahead of you. Was gonna see if I had any bars on my phone when you came along. It don’t take no doctor to see there ain’t no rush to get no ambulance out here—he’s beyond their help,” Cote said. “Even if they was of a mind to come, the closest they’ll be able to get an ambulance will be Cross Lake Road.”
“I could call for a helicopter to get him out of here. Nearest hospital is Fort Kent and that’s, what … thirty, forty miles away?”
“By helicopter, yeah, maybe as close as twenty if they cut across Canadian airspace.”
“Well, I better call. Where’s the nearest place a chopper can get in?”
Cote thought for a minute and then said, “About a mile south there’s a clearing that might be big enough, but it’d take an idiot to try and land there at night.”
Murphy glanced upward at the black sky, “I left my truck back at the Little Black checkpoint. Looks like I’m in for a long night.”
“I could swing by Little Black and have them send someone up here.”
Murphy checked his watch. “The checkpoint will be closed before you get there. I’ll see what I can do with my cell phone.”
“We could pull him out of here, put him in my trapper sled, and head back there. Somebody will have to collect his sled tomorrow though—I got no way to haul it.” Cote scrutinized the warden. “Murph, I can’t help but notice that you seem a bit shaken. What did you find in there?”
“Whoever killed that boy tore him apart. There are parts of him missing. You head on, I don’t want to disturb things any more than I have to.”
“You gonna spend the night out here?”
“Might have to.” Murphy shined the beam around the ominous trees. In the monochromatic world of the winter night, snow falling from the pine and evergreen boughs resembled white cirrus clouds. “If you don’t mind, in the event I can’t reach anyone, when you get back to Lyndon, would you call 9-1-1 and report this?”
“Sure.”
When Cote was out of sight and the whine of his motor faded, Murphy began a quick search of the area. Returning to the thicket, he scanned the area with the flashlight’s beam. If there was one single positive thing about a winter crime scene it was the difficulty a perpetrator had in obscuring his or her tracks. After a short time he found one. He took care not to disturb the area any more than he had to and estimated the distance from the track to the thicket to be approximately six feet. He perused the area around the footprint and discovered another, also about six feet away. If he ain’t running, he’s one tall son of a bitch, Murphy thought. He reached inside his winter snowmobile suit and took out a folding knife. He cut several long, full boughs from a pine and carefully laid them over the two tracks to protect them from drifting snow.
He straightened and inhaled deeply. There was an odor hanging in the air. Murphy couldn’t describe it except to say it smelled like rot and decay. It was as if he was standing beside a corpse that had been lying in the summer sun for a week. Suddenly Murphy was overcome with the feeling that he was not alone. He slid his nine-millimeter pistol from its holster and held it in his right hand while he swept the area with the flashlight in his left.
The wind increased, causing the trees to rustle and creak. Snow drifted through the light beam and settled on Murphy. Time to build some sort of shelter for the night, he thought, and he stepped wide of the crime scene and trudged back to his sled.
It took him the better part of an hour to scoop out an impromptu shelter in the snow, pausing several times when the wind escalated and the trees groaned as they swayed, stressing their frozen trunks. It is going to be one long night, he mused as he settled into the crude shelter.
4
Viverette Settlement
It walked across the clearing toward the abandoned village. No one had lived in the settlement for almost fifty years. Still, it kept a wary eye out for any sign that someone had been in the area. But the snow along what in summer was a dirt street showed no sign of anyone having walked on it.
The lane ran between a number of depressions that were the foundation remnants of buildings that had succumbed to the ravages of time and the weight of the snow of many winters. There was a time when the settlement was a small but thriving village, but then the lumber companies determined they’d harvested all of the trees of any value and moved on to more lucrative wood lots, effectively killing any chance Viverette had of ever again being anything but a ghost town. The only proof of its existence was a small dot and notation on topographic maps. The deep snow, which would be hip-deep on a person of normal height, barely came midway up its shins. It proceeded effortlessly across the open dell and approached one of the two remaining structures, a collapsing shanty. It pulled the door open, stooped down to avoid banging its head on the top of the entrance’s threshold, letting the portal swing closed. In spite of the cold, its breath was not visible when he exhaled. Now that the hunger had lessened, the monster was at peace.
It walked back outside, carried the rest of his provisions inside, and placed them on the counter next to the sink. When placed beside the legs and the pieces of rump, the liver looked tiny. Too small to sate hunger, still it would make a passable snack. The gigantic being stared through the small, grime-coated window that was centered over the sink, opened the window, placing the meat in a wooden box fastened to the sill, and closed it, secure in the belief that the food would be there when wanted.
It walked over to the elongated cot that lay along the wall of the one-room hovel and flopped down on it. Like any sated animal, now that it’d fed, it would sleep—until the hunger came again.
_____________
Unnamed Logging Road, T19, R11, North Maine Woods
Murphy heard the sleds several minutes before he saw them. Awake since dawn, he had left the snow shelter he’d made, and had been crouching on the leeward side of his snowmobile, using it as a windbreak. He would be the last to admit it, but when he saw the two sleds he felt an immense wave of relief flow over him and he stood up for the first time since leaving the body.
The two machines stopped beside Murphy’s. Not sure who the riders were, Murphy removed his helmet and remained silent. The rider on the sled closest to him stepped off and removed his helmet. Murphy immediately recognized the man. “Hey, John,” he greeted John Bear, the DIF&W Crimes Investigation Division investigator.
“Murph, long time no see.” John Bear looked around the area. “Could you have found a worse day to discover a body?”
Murphy grinned. “Believe me, it ain’t something I planned.”
The second man rounded the sleds, carrying his helmet in his left hand. “Looks like you found a way to screw up my week, Murph,” Bob Pelky said.
Murphy nodded to Bob Pelky, the Maine State Police officer assigned to Lyndon Station. “Wish I hadn’t, that’s for sure. It’s the goddamnedest thing I ever come across,” Murphy answered. He pointed to the mound. “You guys should probably take a look for yourselves.”
John Bear took the lead. When he reached the corpse he stood beside it for several seconds, looking around the area. “Things pretty much the way you found them?”
“I tried to keep the scene undisturbed as much as I could. But, with the snow and everything there ain’t gonna be a hell of a lot of forensics takin’ place,” Murphy answered.
John Bear said nothing as he surveyed the corpse and their surroundings. After several seconds, he turned to Pelky who squatted beside him and said, “seen enough?”
Pelky nodded. “For the time being.”
The two men stood. Pelky turned to Murphy and asked, “You find any sign of who did this?”
“A couple tracks.”
“Show us,” John said.
Murphy led them to the first track and raised the pine bough he had used to cover it. Pelky saw the bough and looked at him. Murphy said, “Hey, the way it’s blowin’ I wanted to preserve it as much as I could. I was careful to disturb the snow as little as possible.”
Pelky shrugged and looked at the track. He asked John, “What you think—a snowshoe maybe?”
“It sure as hell ain’t a human boot,” John answered. He turned to Murphy. “This all you found … a single track?” He reached inside his cold-weather suit and took out a small digital camera and took several photos of the depressions.
“There’s another about six feet over there.” Murphy pointed to a dark spot in the snow. He shrugged with embarrassment. “Yeah, I know … another pine bough.”
Pelky looked skeptical. “That’s it? Two tracks about, what, five or six feet apart?”
“Believe me, Bob, I looked everywhere to see if there were any others that may have drifted in—didn’t find a single one. Like I said, it’s the goddamnedest thing I ever saw. It’s like the killer escaped like Tarzan, swinging from one tree to another.”
John squatted beside the huge humanoid footprint and studied it. The killer, if these were his tracks, was gigantic. He bent cautiously over the packed depression, eyeing it with trepidation, as if he were afraid it would attack him. The print was sharp and clearly defined; wind blew snow across the area and some was caught by the depression, but had not yet filled it with drifting snow. John studied the footprint. Other than its size there was something peculiar about it. He bent over the track, intently studying its shape, and then he caught a whiff of a repugnant odor, similar to that of a rotten carcass.
John’s eyes returned to the track. He knew when fully expanded each of his hands measured nine inches from the tip of his little finger to his thumb’s end, a technique he had used for years to measure fish he caught. He touched his thumbs together and spread his fingers as wide as he could. He placed his hands into the track. He touched his left pinky to the heel and made a mark where his right pinkie ended. There was still an inch of space between his pinkie and the toe of the track! Allowing for distortion in the snow, John guessed the track to be near twenty-four inches long and its width about ten inches! Cold sweat soaked through John’s heavy wool shirt. He slowly stood up and moved deeper into the woods, his eyes searching, expecting who-knew-what to jump out of every clump of brush he saw. He cast a last look around and began backtracking. A gust of wind blew through the trees and made a sound not unlike a howl. He spun around, trying to identify the source of the eerie sound, but all he saw were gray trees and snow drifting through the air. Another gust of wind sent the trees creaking and swaying. The hair on the back of his neck stood up; he thought he could detect a foul smell in the wind, similar to the odor of decaying flesh. Just as he was about to give in to fight or flight, he heard Murphy shout, “Where are you, John?”
Without removing his eyes from the woods in front of him, John answered, “Over here!”
John returned to the body and said, “The body was like this when you found him?”
“Yeah, you notice anything unusual about the vic?”
John spread the remnants of the dead man’s snowmobile suit and saw the ravaged chest cavity. “It looks like scavengers got to him before you found him.” He took several photos of the body.
“If they did, I sure as hell didn’t see them—besides, the only tracks I saw were the two I showed you. When I found him there was no heat in the cavity. The wounds are not sharp and precise.” Murphy said. “His legs and ass are gone. If I didn’t know better I’d think he was slaughtered and butchered like a cow.”
“So, what now?” Pelky asked.
“Let’s take him down to the Little Black checkpoint. The rangers there can babysit him until the medical examiner can get someone out here to check him over.” John looked at the sky and noted the lowering clouds. “Gonna be snowing soon. There’s no way we’ll find anything in this weather….”
“I suppose you’re right,” Pelky said. “Any evidence is buried deep in the snow and ain’t goin’ nowhere. I’ll bring a crime scene tech out here first thing in the morning and look things over.” He turned to Murphy. “That okay with you?”
“Guys,” Murphy said, “I been out here since yesterday afternoon, I’m more than ready for some heat and a few hours’ sleep.”
5
Viverette Settlement
It sat in the darkness, listening to the blowing wind, and staring at the snow flying past the filthy window of the cabin. Its mind drifted back to a time when it had been someone different. His name had been Paul Condor….
_____________
Oslo, Maine, 1996
It was the January thaw, a brief period of unseasonable warmth which usually preceded the really cold weather of February and March. Paul Condor stood silently staring out the filthy window of the ramshackle hut where he lived with his father. His eyes followed his father, a solitary, drunken figure who held his collar closed around his neck as he staggered through the pouring rain. Paul watched with dismay as his father pulled a pint of gin from his pocket, took a deep swallow from it, and succeeded in returning it to its resting place in his pocket on the second try. His father’s feet slid in the mud that covered the road’s shoulder and the drunken man took several quick steps to try to right himself, but Wally Condor was unable to maintain his balance and he tumbled face-first into the mud. Paul watched his father lying in the mud and knew that the cold rain was soaking through his coat and shirt, plastering it to his back. He heard Wally curse and saw him spitting mud out of his mouth as he scooped a handful of snow from the snowbank that bordered the road and washed the mud from his face. He must have thought about the pint of whiskey he had put in his coat pocket and began patting his pockets, searching for it. He extracted the unbroken bottle of Seagram’s, unscrewed the cap, and took a drink. He wiped his mouth with the back of his muddy hand, spit out the debris that wiping his face had left in his mouth, staggered to his feet, and plodded toward the shack.
Paul knew his father’s brain was swimming in an Olympic-size pool of alcohol and he muttered in fear and frustration. He knew his father bemoaned his lot in life—cursing because everything was shit, as usual. It would only be a matter of seconds before the old man began to vent his anger on Paul. He would start by blaming Paul for the death of his mother and from there Paul would become the object of all that was wrong in Wally’s life. By the time Wally stepped through the door, the alcohol would have fueled his anger into a raging conflagration—one that would consume him until he doused it by beating his son unconscious.
Paul dropped the burlap bag they used as a curtain for the filthy window and crawled into his bed. He pulled the blanket over his head, hoping that by feigning sleep maybe the old man would leave him be. He listened, in stoic silence, to the sounds of his father staggering into the cabin’s main room. The old man was swearing at no one in particular and Paul heard the wet plop of a coat hitting the floor. That, Paul knew, was not a good sign. Wally’s level of sobriety could be measured by the length of the clothing trail he left on his way to the greasy mattress where he slept. Whenever he dropped his coat immediately upon opening the door, that meant he was really loaded. The door to the small room where Paul and Wally slept swung open so violently that it slammed into the wall and a loud bang echoed through the shanty. A jar fell to the floor in the section of the main room that served as kitchen and dining room and shattered. “Get out here you mother-killer,” Wally shouted.
Paul tightly shut his eyes and feigned sleep while bracing for the inevitable beating that always followed when Wally was drunk.
Wally Condor appeared in the door, teetering back and forth as he stared at the figure of the boy. The volume of Wally’s voice increased as he began to rant, “You ain’t foolin’ me you overgrown bastard! You ain’t asleep. Now git on your feet and take it like a man, not an oversized pussy!”
Paul lay still.
“Have it your way then….” Wally took two stumbling steps forward and with all the strength his anger could muster, he punched Paul in the face.
The boy’s head bounced from the recoil of the blow his father had delivered and white spots danced before his eyes, rendering him temporarily blind. He curled into a fetal ball, a futile attempt at self-preservation, but his maneuvering only served to further enrage his attacker. Wally continued to pummel and curse at the boy until Paul was a bloody, crying mess.
Wally landed one final punch and then, exhausted from his efforts, flopped onto the bed across the room. In moments, he began to snore in a deep, drunken sleep.
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