by Bill Bernico
Matt pulled in and immediately realized this wasn’t the right wayside and pulled back out onto the road without stopping. “I guess these waysides all look alike,” he said. “Besides, I think it was a few more miles to the west.” He drove on for another eight miles before he came to the next wayside. He pulled in and knew that this was the right spot. “This is it.”
“But where’s the crime scene tape?” Nick said. “You’d think was would still be classified as a crime scene. Heck, I even thought there still might be some cops hanging around, beating the bushes.”
Matt pulled up to the same spot his car had occupied on their first visit here. Everyone got out and began stretching their legs and arms. Matt and Nick immediately walked over to the guard rail and looked over the side. This was definitely the spot. The bushes below had been cut and cleared away enough to allow the old sedan clearance when the crane lifted it up from below. More brush surrounding the crash site had also been cleared, as if the authorities had been down there looking for anything else to tie in with the incident.
“Well,” Nick said. “You wanna go down there and have a look around?”
Matt gestured with his chin over the side. “To what end? It looks like they scoured that entire area looking for whatever might still have been down there. What do you think we’re going to find?”
“Dad,” Nick began. “Try thinking outside the box for a minute. Those three guys in the car certainly didn’t kill themselves. They had help. And, like the sergeant said, four men went missing all those years ago. Where’s number four? My guess is he’s probably the one who killed the other three and then took off. How does this fit? What if before he killed the other three, one of them wounded him? So he kills his pals and takes off after he dumps the car over the side. He’s wounded and on foot. Depending on how seriously he was wounded, how far could he get on foot?”
“That’s a whole lot of supposing,” Matt said. “And as long as you’re supposing, if this mysterious unknown number four guy killed the other three, why didn’t he just dump their bodies over the side and take off with the car?”
Nick snapped his fingers and pointed at his father. “Good thought, Dad, but maybe the car was stolen and this number four guy knew it would eventually turn up on some cop’s hot sheet. Maybe he had another car stashed someplace close by. I don’t know. I’m just guessing. Maybe he didn’t even think things through before he got this far and wound up tramping through these woods on foot. And as long as we’re supposing, suppose that’s what he did and didn’t get too far before he dropped dead himself. If that’s the case, his body could be out there somewhere just waiting to be found.”
Matt had to agree that Nick’s theory sounded plausible. “So now what?”
“So now we beat the bushes down there for, let’s say, a mile and see if anything turns up.”
“Not so fast,” Matt said. “Assuming what you say is true and number four did drop dead out there some thirty seven years ago, there’d be nothing left of him by now.”
“What do you mean, Dad?” Nick asked. “The other three left skeletons behind. Why wouldn’t he?”
“Think about it,” Matt offered. “The other three were locked inside that car. The scavengers and the predators in the woods wouldn’t have been able to get at them and drag their bones off to some den. If number four dropped dead out there, his remains would have been ripped apart and eaten by whatever is out there and looking for a meal. You might find a shoe or two but that would be about it.”
“Still worth a look, isn’t it, Dad?”
Veronica and Chris walked over to where the two men were talking. “What have you two decided?” Chris said.
Matt filled her in on his and Nick’s theories. “We thought we might take a look around down there just to satisfy our own curiosities,” he said.
“I want to come, too,” Veronica said.
“Someone has to stay with your mother,” Matt told her.
“Her mother is coming along with you,” Chris said. “I’m not helpless. Besides, four of us could cover a lot more ground than the two of you. We all have our cell phones and can stay in contact with each other.” She stood there waiting for a reply.
“You’re not exactly dressed for it,” Matt reminded her.
“I have jeans and a sweat shirt in my suitcase,” Chris said. “Just give me a minute and I can be changed and ready to go.”
Matt shrugged and spread his hands. “Looks like we’re all going down there.”
Chris found the change of clothes she needed and had Veronica hold up a blanket for her to stand behind while she changed her clothes and shoes. Veronica tossed the blanket into the trunk and the two of them joined Matt and Nick back at the guard rail.
“I wish I’d brought some rope,” Matt said. “We’ll have to lower ourselves down by hanging onto branches and vines, so take it slow and easy and be careful.”
Chris saluted like a good little soldier and then smiled at her husband. “Yes sir,” she said and snapped her saluting hand back down at her side.
“I’ll go down first,” Matt said. “Then I can help you and Veronica down.”
“Dad,” Veronica protested. “I can do this on my own.”
“Excuse me,” Matt said. “Then I’ll just help your mother down, if it’s all the same to you.” Matt eased himself over the guard rail, finding some of the same footholds he had used the day before. When he got to the ledge where the car had rested, he looked up and told Chris to start her descent. She eased herself down, clinging to the branches as she went. Three feet from the bottom, Matt took hold of her and told her to let go of the branch and she settled in his arms. Matt eased her to the ground and told Veronica to come next. She made it down under her own power and stood with her parents, waiting for her brother to join them. Once Nick was standing with the rest of the family, Matt pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open. “Everyone check their phones. Make sure they’re on and have plenty of battery life left.” They all complied, closing their individual phones and dropping them into their pockets.
“Who’s going where?” Nick said.
Matt gestured up to the guard rail. “It’s obvious none of us has to check to the south. That leaves three directions divided four ways.” He looked at Nick. “Suppose you head out that way.” He pointed to the east. He switched his point to the north and told Veronica to head out in that direction. “Your mother and I will head in a westerly direction. He checked his watch. “It’s nearly eleven-thirty. Let’s all head in our own directions until noon and then both of you can call us and we’ll arrange to meet somewhere in the middle, okay?”
Veronica and Nick both checked their watches. “Got it,” Nick said. “Noon,” Veronica added. Both kids began their hikes. Matt and Chris began walking to the west.
Just ten minutes into their trek, Chris turned to Matt and said, “What if this number four fellow began walking from up above? Then he could still go south.”
“This whole thing is guesswork,” Matt said. “Besides, if that were the case, someone would have found him by now. Down here is dense with underbrush. Up there he’d stand out like lederhosen on a Wall Street executive.”
Chris had to stop walking now. She stared at her husband. “Where do you come up with these crazy sayings?”
“I don’t know, really,” Matt said. “They just come to me. Creates quite a visual, you have to admit.”
Veronica had been walking for nearly fifteen minutes before she stopped to catch her breath. The brush was thick and it took her just as long to push the branches aside as it did to traverse those five feet. She kept moving but stopped when she thought she heard some rustling in the bushes ahead. She listened and heard the same rustling sounds. Her heard began beating faster as she pulled her cell phone out and dialed Nick’s number. “Nick,” Veronica whispered when her brother answered.
“What is it?” Nick said, somewhat out of breath himself.
“I thought I heard something in th
e bushes ahead of me,” she whispered.
“It’s probably a rabbit,” Nick said. “Either that or a ten-foot hungry Grizzly bear.” He laughed.
Veronica listened again and looked in the direction of the sound. A moment later Nick’s guess showed itself, rearing up on its hind legs and staring at Veronica. As soon as Veronica gasped, the rabbit went back down on all fours and scampered away into the bushes. Veronica let out her breath and said into her phone, “It was nothing.” And closed the phone again.
Nick kept moving east, veering a little north as he went. He lifted branches as he walked, looking underneath and finding nothing. He was beginning to wonder if this idea of his wasn’t a bit harebrained after all. He surely didn’t want to admit that to his father and just kept moving.
Matt and Chris had been on the move for nearly half an hour when Chris stopped, bent over with her hands on her knees and said breathlessly, “Wait a minute, will you. I need to catch my breath.”
Matt stopped and walked back to where Chris had stopped to rest. He laid his hand on her shoulder. “You want to call this whole thing off?”
Chris just held up one hand and shook her head. “No, I’ll be fine if I can just rest for a minute or two.”
“All right,” Matt agreed. He looked around and found a fallen tree lying off to one side. The bark had rotted away decades ago, leaving a smooth surface to sit on. “Why don’t we go sit down for a minute?” he said, gesturing toward nature’s loveseat. He helped his wife over to the fallen tree and held her hands as she lowered herself onto the trunk and let out a deep breath.
“Yes,” she said, rubbing her feet. “That feels better.”
Matt sat next to her, his arm around her shoulder, and pulled her close to him. “This is kind of nuts, isn’t it? I mean to be out here expecting to find clues to an almost forty-year old crime. I have to admit, when we were talking about the possibilities, it sounded like a good plan. Now I’m not so sure.”
“Why don’t you just call the kids now and tell them to head back to the wayside?” Chris said.
Matt hesitated briefly and then nodded. “Good idea,” he said, releasing his grasp on Chris’s shoulder and standing up. Chris hadn’t expected that and lost her balance, tumbling backwards off the log. She fell onto her back, her feet straight up in the air. Matt quickly turned and saw what had happened. “Are you all right?” he said, reaching his hand out to her.
A moment later Chris let out a scream when she turned her head and found herself staring at a bleached out skull. Matt grabbed her hand and pulled her back upright. “You’re fine now,” he told her. No need to scream.”
Chris wrapped herself in Matt’s arms, pointing with one hand toward the log. “Behind the log,” she said.
“Wait here,” Matt said, prying Chris from his arms. He stepped up to the log and looked over the top of it. There was a skull looking back at him. Even Matt had to recoil at the gruesome sight. Then his gaze shifted to a spot just a foot beyond the skull and his eyes widened. He reached over the skull and grabbed the object, pulling it up and over the log.
“What is it?” Chris said, gingerly stepping a little closer.
Matt brushed off a layer of mold and dirt, enough to be able to read the printing on the side of the canvas bag. It read, Victorville Security Bank across the front. The bag was made of canvas and was two feet long by a foot wide. Matt guessed it to weigh somewhere around twenty pounds, give or take. “This is a bank bag,” he told Chris. “It looks like the kind they use to transport money between the bank and an armored car. See, up on top here there’s a zipper and a handle for the guards to carry it with.”
Chris pointed to the log. “Do you think that’s number four down there behind that tree?”
“Could be,” Matt said. “Let me check something.” He stepped a little to the left of where he and Chris had been sitting and cleared away some underbrush before he found what he was looking for. On this side of the log Matt found more bones with rotted cloth on them, ending in a pair of leather boots.
Chris gasped and turned away.
“I think I’m beginning to get the full picture,” Matt said. “I’ll just bet the four of them were bank robbers on the lam from a heist in Victorville. For whatever reason they ended up at the wayside and got into an argument, probably about how and when to divide the stolen money. Number four, here, probably killed the other three and took off on foot with the money.”
“Then why is he lying there?” Chris said.
“From what I can tell,” Matt said, “it looks like he stopped here to rest, kind of like we did. He must have leaned against the wrong tree, probably a dead one that was ready to fall, and it fell on him, trapping him right where we found him. We may never know if the tree falling on him killed him or if he was just trapped under there alive and died from exposure, and I don’t suppose it really matters one way or the other.” Matt looked closer near the waistline of the skeleton and found a leather belt. Still tucked into the belt Matt could make out the butt of a handgun sticking out. He left it where it was, unwilling to pollute a crime scene.
“The kids,” Chris suddenly remembered.
“Huh?”
“I’ve got to call the kids,” Chris said. “Before the wander too much farther away. How do I describe where we are?”
“Just tell them to meet us back at the bottom of that ravine,” Matt said. “We can all go back up together. Don’t tell them what we found just yet. I want to surprise them.”
While Chris called Nick and Veronica, Matt opened his phone and dialed 9-1-1 and got what sounded like the same operator he had yesterday. He told her to have to police come back to that same wayside as yesterday and that he’d meet them there.”
“And what is your emergency today, sir?” the operator said.
“We found one more dead body,” Matt said, as casually as if he was explaining why his library book was overdue. He told her that his car would be parked at the wayside, but that he and his family were down below in the brush and would try to get back to the parking area before the police got there.
Matt and Chris made it back to the bottom of the ravine several minutes ahead of their two children. As they approached, Nick looked at his father and said, “Why’d you call this off? You get too tired to go on?”
Matt stepped aside, revealing the canvas bank bag with the handle and the zipper. It bulged as it sat there on the forest floor.
“What’s that?” Veronica said, stepping up for a closer look.
“Is that a bank bag?” Nick said. “Where’d you find it?”
Matt hiked a thumb over his shoulder. “Back there,” he said. “Number four had it with him.”
“Number four?” Nick said, surprised. “So we were right?”
“Looks like it,” Matt said. As he stood there a coil of rope dropped down alongside him. Matt looked up to see two policemen looking down at them from the guard rail. It was Sergeant Bentley and his partner Officer Ferguson again.
“Come on,” Bentley said. “We’ll help pull you back up here.”
Matt fashioned a loop knot at the end of the rope and instructed Chris to stick her foot into the loop while the two cops pulled her up. Veronica and Nick followed next. Matt took the last ride up, hanging onto the rope with one hand and the bank bag with the other hand. When he got to the guard rail, he heaved the bag over the side and it dropped at the officers’ feet. Matt stepped up and over the guard rail and lifted the bag again.
“Where did that come from,” Sergeant Bentley asked.
“We found it down there,” Matt explained.
“The 9-1-1 operator mentioned that you found another body,” Officer Ferguson added.
“He’s down there, too,” Matt said. “I think that might be the fourth guy you were talking about yesterday. You never mentioned that those four might have been bank robbers on the run.”
“That was confidential police business,” Bentley said. “But I guess it’ll be out in the open after
today.” He looked down at the bank bag and then up at Matt. “You open it?”
Matt shook his head. “Not me,” he said. “Thought I’d save that privilege for you.”
Bentley tried working the zipper but it was rusted shut. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a folding knife, flipping the blade out. He ran it across the top of the bag and pried it apart, gazing down into the bag. Bentley whistled and said, “Looks to be all there. Thanks again, Mr. Cooper. A lesser man might have been tempted to just keep the money and not tell anyone.”
“I don’t really need it,” Matt told the sergeant. “The insurance company probably paid off the Victorville bank, so the bank doesn’t need it. But I’ll bet the insurance company will be glad to get it back.”
“No doubt,” Bentley said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a reward in it for you; maybe as much as ten percent.”
Matt gestured at the bag with his chin. “How much do you suppose is in there?”
Bentley thought for a moment and then said, “Eight hundred thirty-five thousand, seven hundred-fifty dollars in bills and three thousand eight hundred dollars in coins.”
“You’re guessing,” Nick said. “Unless you can tell by the weight, but even then no one is that good.”
Bentley smiled. “You’re right. After yesterday, I started looking into the disappearance from thirty-seven years ago and narrowed it down to the four who held up the Victorville Bank on that particular day. I got in touch with the Victorville bank and asked how much had been taken in that original holdup. Simple.”
Matt hiked a thumb over his shoulder. “When you bring that guy up, have your men check his belt. I saw a gun butt sticking out. Ballistics will probably be able to match it to the holes in the three other skulls.”
Sergeant Bentley made a quick note of Matt’s findings and thanked him.
“So now what?” Veronica said.
Bentley was just about to answer her when it suddenly dawned on him. “Hey,” he said. “I thought you people were supposed to be on vacation. Where was that you were going? To the Grand Canyon, wasn’t it?”
