The prospect of spending the next couple of weeks here was not something that filled me with any joy. Visions of sleeping on the same cot that Henderson had used made me nauseous. But I had set my future back in those woods the day before.
There was no going back now.
A few days later I listened to the thumping sound of helicopter rotors to the east. The shack was well camouflaged by nature so I wasn’t worried about being spotted from the air. I could occasionally see the choppers flying grid searches although they never ventured very near my hideaway. This went on for several days during which time the only precaution that seemed necessary was to avoid building a fire.
Eventually the skies went quiet again.
With the benefit of time my mind began the slow process of healing and my thoughts became more logical. I had begun to seriously wonder if my ploy had worked. Had the Feds bought the scene I had constructed? I had tried to make it appear that Henderson had gone to great lengths to cover the murders of Con and myself so that his presence on the mountain would remain unknown. The fact was I was up against some very smart people. The more thought I gave it the less confident I became that they would fall for my ruse. My greatest anxiety came from worrying that Henderson’s body would be discovered. I had, after all, buried him very quickly while in a seriously deranged frame of mind. If they found him everything would fall into place pretty fast for the investigators.
The need to run rippled through me.
I had already lost ten or so pounds and it had been weeks since I had shaved. If I spent a little time shaping my beard I could look enough like the picture on Eldon Walker’s drivers license to get by.
It was time to put as much distance between myself and this nightmare of a mountain as I could.
Part Seven
Doubt
50
With clear evidence that the burned bodies found at the campsite were those of Jack Parmenter and Conrad Edgerton the search for Henderson was resumed. When an intensive aerial search proved unproductive three teams of search dogs and their handlers were brought to the mountains to comb the woods. It took the dogs less than twelve hours to find the buried remains of Reuben Henderson.
Blackmore and Colletti were once again flown to the mountains. Crime scene investigators were all over the scene.
“Well, well,” Blackmore muttered viewing the disinterred and butchered body. “Reuben Henderson finally meets his just reward.”
“Looks like we got more of a mystery on our hands than we thought,” Colletti mused.
Blackmore turned away from the gruesome sight. “We’ll see what the forensic techs have to say, but this has got to be the strangest son-of-a-bitch of a case we’ve ever worked on.”
Colletti stood silently, letting his mind process this latest development. “It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense,” he conceded.
“Come on, bud, you must have some ideas. You always figure these things out somehow.”
Colletti smiled meekly at the compliment. “There’s two things I’d like some answers to before we get too deep into what happened here.”
Blackmore’s compliment hadn’t been hot air. He had a great deal of respect for his partner’s powers of deduction. “Shoot,” he said.
“First of all, why would Parmenter’s dog be buried separately?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. If somebody goes to all the trouble of burning Edgerton and Parmenter to render them unidentifiable, why leave the dog’s remains for us to find?”
Blackmore arched his eyebrows but said nothing.
“And second,” Colletti continued, “the killer put a lot of effort into the cremation process. Very thorough. And yet he overlooks a boot in the woods. And doesn’t notice that Parmenter is missing a boot when he burns up the bodies.” He shook his head in a manner suggesting it was all just a little too implausible.
Blackmore studied his partner closely. “So what are you saying, Vince?”
Colletti swatted a bug from in front of his eyes. “I’m saying this, partner: we have two positively identified corpses – Edgerton and Henderson – but no absolute evidence that the third body is Parmenter. We also have a dog, owned by Parmenter, buried separately from the burned bodies. To me this suggests the possibility, at the very least, of some kind of sentimentality. Now, it might have made some kind of sense when we believed that Henderson had killed them all. But now we know differently.”
“It’s possible everything went down the way we figured but somebody took out Henderson after the fact.”
Colletti looked doubtful. “Whoever did Henderson had one hell of a lot of rage going on, Harv. This looks to me like it had to have been done by somebody with a very personal grudge. Somebody like the father of a murdered little girl. A little girl, maybe, who had been decapitated.”
“Jesus,” Blackmore whispered. “You think Jack Parmenter did all this?
“That’s the way I’m seeing it, yeah.”
“This just doesn’t compute with the guy we’ve been told Parmenter is.”
“Look what he’s been through. His little girl is murdered and decapitated. His wife spends months near death in a coma. And then, to top it all off – if I’m right – Henderson kills the poor bugger’s dog and his neighbour who it appears is a good friend. I don’t think we can assume that a guy who’s been through all that is going to be thinking clearly or rationally.”
“There’s one way to find out,” Blackmore said. “We put the dogs on Parmenter’s scent from here. If they pick it up, your theory will look pretty damn good.”
Colletti mulled that over. “I guess it will. It won’t be proof positive, though, because it’s possible his scent was here prior to all this happening.”
Blackmore looked at him sceptically. “I guess anything’s possible. Not too likely, though, huh?”
“No, Harv. Not too likely. But it also leaves a big question: if Parmenter is alive, who the hell got burned up with Edgerton?”
51
Two of the tracking teams and their owners were sent home after Henderson’s remains were found. Blackmore and Colletti met with the third team owner, a guy named Albert Two Feathers, to suggest some additional work. Two Feathers was a Navajo from the Tohono O’odham Nation in Arizona. He had learned his tracking skills as a young man from the tribal elders and had for many years made a good living contracting out his services to law enforcement agencies around the country. When he had witnessed the incredible results achieved by a team of bloodhounds owned by a California tracker, however, Two Feathers had been very impressed. He had subsequently set about acquiring a couple of the best tracking dogs money could buy. He was now revered as the go to guy if you needed results and you needed them fast. What his dogs couldn’t run down by scent, Two Feathers would locate by reading signs.
Several articles of clothing and shoes belonging to Jack were brought from Florida to provide the dogs with scent.
The dogs were given the scent at the scene of Henderson’s demise. They were clearly excited but the scent they followed just led back to the camp where the other bodies had been burned and buried.
Blackmore and Colletti were perplexed.
“I don’t get it,” Blackmore said. “It looks like Parmenter was definitely at the scene of Henderson’s slaughter but, somehow, he ends up back here and is murdered by somebody else?”
Colletti stood quietly, trying to come up with an alternative theory.
Two Feathers stood off to the side, listening. “One other possibility,” he offered.
Both agents looked at him. “Let’s hear it,” Blackmore said.
“Could be whoever did the killing didn’t walk away,” Two Feathers announced.
Blackmore looked incredulous. “What are you saying? Somebody picked him up in a helicopter?”
“Maybe not helicopter,” Two Feathers answered. “Something else maybe.”
“Such as?” Colletti wondered.
Two Feathers sh
rugged non-committally. “Would have to be something small to get up here. Motor cycle maybe.”
“A motor cycle?” Blackmore scoffed.
“Wouldn’t the dogs have picked up his scent even if he had been on a motor cycle?” Colletti asked, his scepticism only slightly less apparent than Blackmore’s.
“Heavy rain for three days,” Two Feathers pointed out. “Maybe possible.”
“So what’s next?” Blackmore wanted to know.
Two Feathers looked up at the overcast sky. “Now I go to work.”
It took until late in the afternoon for Two Feathers to prove his worth. When he reported back to the agents there was no emotion other than a little smugness on his proud face. “Don’t know if it’s your killer or not,” he announced, pointing into the woods, “but someone took off that way on a dirt bike.”
Blackmore and Colletti looked at each other. “You’ve got to be kidding,” Blackmore said, his mouth hanging open.
“Nope. Not kidding,” Two Feathers responded stoically.
52
“Okay,” Blackmore recapped when he and Colletti sat down to figure things out, “Henderson is dead. We got somebody who has to be the killer taking off on a dirt bike. We’ve got an unidentified body burned with Edgerton that is either Parmenter or somebody made to appear as if it were. If Parmenter is the killer, then who do the ashes belong to? If the ashes are Parmenter’s then who the fuck is the killer? Jesus H Christ, what a mess.”
Colletti, ever the calm and cool thinker, offered another view. “It’s possible Parmenter killed Henderson but somebody else took him and Edgerton out. Or maybe – and this is my favorite theory – Parmenter killed them all and disguised his own death in order to throw us off his trail. As to who the unidentified body is, that’s anybody’s guess for now. I’m inclined to think it was probably some innocent dupe who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe the right time for Parmenter.”
“I still don’t get it, Vince? If it’s Parmenter what’s his motive for killing Edgerton?”
“Who knows,” Colletti responded. “But remember, Edgerton is a prime suspect in the murder of his wife. Even though Parmenter evidently didn’t believe this – or care one way or the other – it’s possible Edgerton developed some kind of agenda of his own. Parmenter may have killed him in self-defence. Then he finds Henderson and goes crazy. He kills him and then, in a frenzy, he chops him up. He figures there’s no way now that he can go to the law after what he’s done. Then he comes across some dude on a dirt bike. He figures, ‘what’s one more dead body?’ He kills the guy, burns him up along with Edgerton to hide his identity, plants the boots to make it look like it’s him, and heads for places unknown on the bike.”
Blackmore took a while to ponder his partner’s hypothesis. “How the fuck do you come up with this shit, Vince?”
“What, you think my theory’s no good?”
“No,” Blackmore responded with great solemnity. “I think your theory kicks ass.”
* * *
Once on the trail of the dirt bike the dogs were able to pick up what Two Feathers insisted was Parmenter’s scent.
Sixteen hours later Two Feathers, his dogs, and two very tired federal agents arrived at the shack.
There was no sign of Jack Parmenter, or anyone else.
Blackmore and Colletti were in no shape to continue on with a chase of indefinite term. Reinforcements were called in and a team of new trackers took over from Two Feathers.
The agents returned to Tampa and met with Tom Kilborn.
The Special Agent in Charge was not a happy man. “So now you’re telling me I have to go back to Callie Parmenter and tell her we were wrong,” he summarized bitterly. “The good news is, your husband is not dead. The bad news being, we now suspect him of being a murderer. And not just one murder, but three. And not just murder, but dismemberment. Of the man who fathered you.” He stared sullenly at his two subordinates.
Blackmore and Colletti looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Sorry, boss,” Blackmore sympathized, “but that appears to be a fair representation of the facts as we now see them.”
53
Callie took the news of the discovery of her father’s mutilated remains with little emotion beyond relief. “Good riddance to the bastard,” she muttered when Kilborn relayed the information.
“There’s more, Callie,” Kilborn said.
“Tell me,” she said, sensing his reluctance to say anything further.
“There is evidence now that Jack didn’t die as we first believed. The ashes found in the grave with Edgerton are thought at this time to belong to someone else.”
Callie took a sharp intake of breath. “Jack’s alive? But where is he?”
“We think he is, yes. It’s… very possible, Callie, that he is responsible for the killing of your… of Henderson.”
The sudden reality of what this meant hit her with the force of a sandbag. “No… ” she wailed. “Jack wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t. You’re wrong, Tom, I know you are.”
“Maybe, Callie… but I don’t think so. We’re using tracking dogs to follow a trail we believe is Jack’s. We should know for sure before long.”
After the call ended Callie turned to Miles and Betty. “They say Jack is alive and that he killed Reuben and… they say he did horrible things.”
Both Miles and Betty were at once thrilled and devastated. “What do you mean, Callie?” Miles said. “What did Jack do?”
“He… he cut Reuben up with an axe.”
Betty immediately went into a state of emphatic denial. But Miles wasn’t nearly so sure that such a thing was impossible. He could more easily imagine himself in a similar situation and how he might react after finding the fiend responsible for the brutal murder of his daughter.
“What is Jack saying?” Miles asked.
“They haven’t found him yet,” she answered tearfully. “They’re chasing him with dogs.”
Miles went to Callie and held her in a firm embrace. She sobbed into his shoulder, saying over and over that she didn’t care what he had done. That she just wanted him to come home to her. That she loved him and needed him.
* * *
In the Virginia mountains the relentless search for a murderer, believed to be Jack Parmenter, continued. The pursuers, forced to proceed on foot because of the dogs, were at a distinct disadvantage. While the killer made great progress by virtue of his motorized transport, the trackers were losing ground fast.
By the time the four man tracking team, now led by a Corporal with the West Virginia State Police, came upon a couple of hikers, the focus of their search was three days ahead of them.
Corporal Kenny Severin stood six feet five inches even without the boots he wore that added another inch and a half to his intimidating stature. When he and his three troopers spotted the young couple, loaded with camping gear coming up a trail toward them they reigned in the dogs.
Severin tipped his hat politely. “Howdy, folks. How are you doing?”
The couple were in their early twenties and very fit. “Hi,” they echoed.
“My name’s Corporal Severin, West Virginia State Police. We’re looking for a fugitive. I wonder if you might have come across anyone since you’ve been up here.”
The pair looked suddenly shocked.“We did run into a guy on a dirt bike three days ago,” the young guy said, just after we got to the park.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Yeah. He was an older guy, maybe fifty or so. Uh, around six feet, thin, with a grey beard.”
“How was he dressed?”
“Uh, jeans, a peaked cap, a plaid shirt jacket kinda thing. Dark sunglasses.”
Severin took a picture from an inside pocket of his uniform jacket. “Do you think it could have been this man?”
Both the hikers studied the picture for several seconds. They both shook their heads. “I don’t think so,” the guy said.
“Are you sure?” Severin asked. “It
could be his appearance has changed a little since this was taken.”
The girl shrugged. “It’s possible I guess.”
“Maybe,” the guy added.
“Did you speak with him?”
“Yeah,” the guy said. “We asked him if he was the owner of the white Chevy pickup down in the parking area because we had noticed it had a flat when we parked. It was kinda weird because he said yeah it was his. But then he said he had gotten a little turned around and wasn’t sure where the parking area was. It seemed really funny because we were only about three hundred yards away from it at the time. We figured the guy must have been a little whacked, you know.”
“You say the pickup was a white Chevy?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you have any idea of the year?”
“Yeah, I think it was an eighty-five. My cousin had one that looked almost identical.”
“Anything unusual about it? Any damage or markings?”
“Not that I noticed.”
“What about plates? Did you happen to notice them?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I did. They were Nebraska plates. I remember thinking that the owner was a long way from home.”
“Okay, folks,” Severin said. “You’ve been a big help.” He handed them a card. “If you think of anything else that might help us please call this number.”
When Severin and his team arrived at the parking area there was no sign of a white Chevy pickup.
The trail had come to an end.
54
A Shadow Fell Page 13
