by Jeff Carson
“Yeah!”
Wolf sat back down and waited.
“Yeah.” Baine leaned in the doorway.
“Did you find her?”
“Yep.”
Wolf stared at him. “So what are you waiting for?”
Baine looked lazily at his watch. “Seven thirty.”
Wolf frowned.
“That’s when she gets off work.” Baine lifted his lips in a jackal smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll get what you need.”
Wolf’s skin crawled, but he stopped short of calling Baine off. Instead he nodded, and Baine disappeared around the corner.
Wolf jerked his head as his desk phone shrilled. He stared at it for two rings and then picked it up.
“Wolf.”
“So?” Margaret’s voice was just below a yell. “I just saw him leave. How did it go?”
“It went.”
“Okaaaay. What did he say?”
“He wanted to endorse me.”
“What?” She laughed. “Are you kidding me? Oh that’s good!”
Wolf felt a ball of molten lava hit his gut as he pulled the phone away from his ear.
She blew into the phone. “Oh, my God. That’s such good news. With this video going viral, and now Chama’s endorsement, we’re sitting pretty. Do you know the pull this guy has? Do you have any clue the contact you’ve just made for the rest of your career? Listen, I saw Sarah earlier today. Maybe we should all go out and celebrate. I’ll buy dinner.”
Wolf’s gut churned some more. “No thanks. I already have something going on.”
“Oh. Okay. Yeah, you and Sarah probably don’t want me being a third wheel.”
“Listen, I gotta go.”
“All right. Great work, Sheriff. Remember to study your—”
Wolf hung up the phone and leaned back.
The clock said 6:40.
Politics, he thought. Whatever it took to be a politician, Wolf had not been endowed with it at birth. And the more time he spent with politicians, the less interested he was in developing the skill.
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, letting the tension melt through the chair under him.
What seemed like five hours later, he snorted awake.
The clock said 6:51—an hour and nine minutes until his drink date with Kimber Grey. He had a VIN number to pursue, two burnt bodies to investigate, one being the possible owner of the vehicle, an old man with a hundred stalker photos plastered to the wall of a back room in his basement, missing and nowhere to be found, and eight dead bodies pulled from the lake, six of which were still unidentified.
His cell phone vibrated in his pocket and he pulled it out.
Sarah.
He snorted out loud, hit the ignore button, got up, and left for the bar early.
Chapter 41
“I tell you what else.” Rachette stepped over a downed log, his foot crunching on dead branches. “She’s got another thing coming if she thinks Scott Reed is some sort of saint.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Wilson asked.
Rachette concentrated on his steps.
“Are you saying Scott’s been cheating on Patterson?”
Rachette tilted his head from side to side. “Well, no. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he was. Good-looking guy like that? Always shuttling women off the mountain in that snow cat? Men can only hold back for so long.”
Wilson stopped and looked at him with a sour face.
“What?”
Wilson rolled his eyes and started walking again. “I don’t know what you want from me here. You want me to start bad-mouthing Patterson?”
Rachette shook his head. “Never mind.” The big man just didn’t get it.
“Good idea.”
They walked in silence for another few seconds, and then Wilson froze with wide eyes.
“What?”
“Shh.”
Rachette tilted his head and listened. It was probably another squirrel, chipmunk, or deer. They’d been hiking zigzag patterns in the woods for over two hours now, and hadn’t found anything of interest. But Wilson was a big man and hardly excitable, so this had definitely got Rachette’s heart going.
“What?” he whispered again.
There. A branch snapped in the distance, somewhere up to the left.
A century of fire suppression in the area had made the forest so thick it was impossible to see further than fifty feet from where they stood.
“I think I saw movement.” Wilson’s eyes popped.
“I didn’t see anything. Probably another deer.”
“No. I saw … I don’t think it was an animal. I think it was a person.”
Rachette pulled his gun without thinking, his pulse racing now. “You’d better be sure. You’ve got me freaked.”
A second later came the sound of footfalls, the rhythm of a person running at a fast jog, traveling west up the slope ahead of them. They looked at each other.
“Let’s go.” Rachette started running toward it.
Sheriff Wolf had sworn he’d encountered a person a couple of nights ago, and Rachette was determined to prove his boss right. After his debacle with Jessica and the backpack, or Gail, or whatever her name was, he was desperate to redeem himself. This was his chance.
They were west of Kimber Grey and Olin Heeter’s house, way up in the virgin forest with the lake at least a mile behind them.
Saplings scratched against his jacket, his lungs pumped, blood rushed in his ears, and he pushed harder. But the light was fading fast now, and he’d not seen anything in the first place. Before he got too far he stopped and listened for the footsteps again.
Wilson came up a few seconds later. The big man put his hands on his knees and huffed.
“Shh.” Rachette cupped his ear.
Wilson closed his mouth and a squeak came from his nose as his chest heaved.
Nothing.
The sky above was turning orange, and despite there being at least thirty minutes of light left, the forest around them was turning pitch black. Though a flashlight would give away their position, Rachette saw no choice. He pulled his Maglite and clicked it on and Wilson did the same.
Wilson’s breathing normalized, and the forest went silent once again.
They stood motionless for another minute.
Rachette flicked his head and they continued west up the mountainside.
“I don’t hear anything anymore,” Wilson whispered.
Rachette ignored him. He stepped between the dense pines, the trunks as thin as his forearm and no more than five feet apart. They needed to burn this part of the forest to the ground, damn it.
Five minutes later he stopped, breathing hard out of his mouth to try to catch his breath, happy to rest his legs, which ached from the incline.
Rachette shone his beam on Wilson’s face and saw he was clearly the worse for wear. The forest had thinned out considerably, and it seemed a good spot to get their bearings.
They stood still for another minute, listening to crickets and a mourning dove.
Behind them, down the hillside the way they’d come, branches smacked, and then there was a thump on the ground.
“What the hell was that?” Rachette swept the forest with his beam, seeing only pine trunks.
“I don’t know. Sounded like something falling from the trees.” Wilson pointed his flashlight. “That direction. Probably a hundred feet.”
They crept toward the noise, keeping pistols aimed and flashlights pointed.
Rachette darted the beam left and right, wondering what they were getting into. It had not been a natural sound. If palm trees on a desert island had surrounded them, then something falling and thumping to the ground would have made sense. But barring an owl dropping dead and hitting the forest floor, that noise was man-made.
Blood swished in his ears. His breath quickened. His limbs felt clumsy with the excitement pulsing through his veins, but his pointed pistol gave him all the courage he needed.
“Who
’s there?” Rachette called, realizing they might accidentally shoot one of their own. But they were the only ones out here. Patterson and Yates were down at the Heeter place. He wasn’t thinking straight.
Wilson led the way, and then they reached a clearing. Wilson swept the forest floor with his flashlight beam and homed in on a rock.
“I think this was it.” Wilson leaned down and picked it up.
Rachette swung his flashlight in a circle. There were a few more rocks twenty or so feet away, but they had clearly not been disturbed in ages. Pine needles were naturally laid on top of them, parts of them settled into the soil.
Wilson twisted the rock in his beam. It was caked with mud on one side, but it had not been embedded in the ground. It had been sitting on top of the pine needles.
“Someone threw it,” Rachette whispered. He swallowed, wondering what the hell was going on. Had someone thrown it for a diversion, escaping in another direction while bringing them to this spot? Or had someone lured them here? If so, why? Rachette couldn’t help but think that the person who’d decapitated seven people and sunk them in the lake was literally a stone’s throw away.
Olin Heeter? A seventy-one-year-old man? It didn’t seem likely, unless Heeter was a fitness buff, but the pictures they’d found of the man said otherwise—one of him holding fish, and another with his wife—showcasing quite a gut on the man. He was the kind who spent hours on end fishing on a boat, not wandering the dark forest.
Wilson dropped the rock and swept his beam in a circle.
Rachette did his own sweep, trying to peer deep into the woods, but it was no use. The beam only went so far in the surrounding dense pines.
“I vote we get the hell back down.” Wilson’s voice had an edge. “Come back in the day time.”
Rachette nodded, taking a shaky breath. “I agree.”
Chapter 42
The Pony Tavern was a boxy log structure on Main Street, known for its pool tables and craft beer. Located a few blocks to the south of the station, it stood across the street from the Edelweiss, where Kimber was holed up for the second night in a row.
Wolf parked his SUV and crunched across the parking lot, eyeing Kimber’s black Chevy Blazer across the street. It was just like her father’s old missing one in Wolf’s report, but not identical. It was her mother’s old truck, a final gift before ditching out on her daughter.
Stepping inside, he was surprised to see her talking animatedly with the bartender.
He sat next to her and ordered a double whiskey.
“You’re early and going for the hard stuff, huh?”
He smiled.
“You know they have the best selection of beer in Rocky Points here.” She pointed to the sign that said We have the best selection of beer in Rocky Points hanging on the wall.
“I’m in the mood for something with a little more bite.”
“I’ll take one of those, too.” She pushed her beer aside. “Too bitter anyway.”
Wolf’s first sip was like gasoline going down his throat, but he enjoyed the immediate warmth traveling through his torso.
They sat in silence for a minute, watching muted baseball highlights on the screen above the bar, the soundtrack, instead, of two men shooting pool, the clack of their balls piercing over the faint country music coming out of the jukebox in the corner.
“This place is rockin’ tonight.” Kimber swiveled on her stool.
Wolf watched in the bar mirror as one of the men missed his eight-ball shot. “It’s perfect.”
Wolf watched Kimber’s reflection as she studied the place. Her hair was pulled back, a thick brown ponytail resting in between her shoulder blades, a cream-colored silk blouse shining in the yellow overhead lights.
Her perfume was subtle and flowery and she was wearing more makeup than he’d ever seen on her.
He felt a tinge of self-consciousness looking like he was making zero effort in the self-presentation department. His jeans were dirty and he wore the T-shirt that he’d been wearing under his uniform all day, both probably smelling less than breezy.
“You eat yet?” he asked.
“No. You?”
“Nope.”
They ordered burgers and he another whiskey, and then ate the meal in silence. She seemed to have something on her mind, and Wolf certainly had plenty to think about as he ate.
She swallowed the last bite of burger and said, “Wanna talk about it?”
“About you?”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I thought you were asking if I wanted to talk about what I was thinking about.”
She blushed and ducked into her drink. “Really? About me?”
He nodded. “About you and your family.”
She set down her drink. “Pretty screwed up, right?”
His phone vibrated and he fished it from his pocket.
Rachette.
“I‘ve got to take this.” Into the phone he said, “Hey.”
“There’s definitely someone up there.” Wolf could hear wind buffeting Rachette’s cell.
Wolf stood and headed toward the jukebox, glancing over his shoulder at Kimber. She sat still, sipping her whiskey and staring at him in the mirror behind the bar.
“Where are you?”
“Up at Heeter’s. Wilson and I were out in the woods, looking for whoever you saw the other night, and we’re certain there was someone out there.”
Wolf leaned on the jukebox with one hand. “Did you see them?”
“Nope. Wilson thinks he saw someone, but just a glimpse.”
“Description?”
Rachette paused. “None. He just saw, you know, a person. But we heard him. Running pretty fast away from us, then he threw a rock to fool us.”
“A rock?”
“Yeah. He threw a rock. Freaked us out.”
“So it’s a he?”
Rachette paused again. “We both think so. We think it was a young male. The person moved fast. And then he threw the rock.”
“What happened at the house? Any prints?”
“Whoever left that blood everywhere was wearing gloves. Otherwise, they found a few usable prints inside the house. Heeter’s ex-military, so they got a quick hit on those. All prints were his. But like you know, someone went to town scrubbing the place clean.”
Wolf rubbed his face and stepped away from the jukebox as it exploded with sound. “And the rifle?”
“It’s a Thompson Center ICON .308. Looks like it’s been fired recently. Registered eleven years ago to Olin Heeter. A few of the cartridges were missing from that box. No prints on any of it. Just blood. Lorber’s working the samples now, but he says it could take a few days to see a hit in CODIS. Says ‘work is piling up faster than elephant shit.’ His words. Not mine.”
“And what about Heeter’s truck? You find anything of interest?”
“We found a gas receipt from a week ago in the center console.”
Wolf paused in thought, looking over at Kimber, who was laughing with the bartender. “A week ago?”
“Yep. From the Pumapetrol station.”
“Where are you?”
Rachette hesitated. “We’re at the marina. We were thinking of heading back to the station.”
“Good. I don’t want you guys poking around up there in the woods at night. You might have been lucky. We still don’t know what we’re dealing with. We’ll get up there with the cavalry in the daytime and do a thorough search. Let me talk to Patterson.”
A pause.
“Where’s Patterson?”
“She headed back by herself. I’m with Wilson.”
“Okay. What did she find out?”
“The rescue divers found something. Say it’s just the right size to be a body, right where Heeter told your dad he saw something dumped. They say they can’t pull it up until tomorrow. Too deep. The equipment they had today wouldn’t reach.”
Wolf eyed Kimber again. “I put a VIN on yours and Patterson’s desks. We need
to know everything about the owner. And I want you to look deeper into Heeter. His business. His wife’s death. His children. His business partners. His potential enemies.” Wolf looked at his watch. “Do what you can tonight and then get some rest. We’ll get back on it tomorrow morning.”
Chapter 43
Wolf hung up and walked to Kimber.
She raised her watch and made a show of looking at it. “Work never ends, eh?”
Wolf sat and sipped his whiskey, grateful for the melted ice diluting the taste.
Staring at the muted televisions in silence, Wolf made more progress on his drink than she did on hers, so he ordered another one. When it came, he took a generous pull and looked over.
“You’ve never gotten the sense that someone is up in those woods? I mean, besides you or your neighbor, Mr. Heeter?”
Something like fear flashed in her eyes, but she shrugged and it disappeared. “No. Not really. I mean, I get alarms all the time. But there’s all sorts of animals in those woods, and I just got so sick of being scared that I started ignoring everything.”
“And you said it’s been a couple of weeks since you’ve seen Olin Heeter?” Wolf asked.
She nodded. “Yeah. Not that I keep tabs on him or anything, but I can usually see when he’s up there. You know, lights on at night, and he goes out in his boat a lot.”
Unable to tell whether she was lying, Wolf turned back to his drink and took a slurp. “You got sick of being scared, you just said. So you’ve been scared before?”
“No, not really. I mean, I used to be scared about being all alone at first, but I got used to it.”
Wolf watched a tough person who’d been abandoned by both her parents, at least that’s how she’d perceived it all these years. It was clear she had built up a wall around her feelings and it was thick. Or she was hiding something and this was her poker face.
After a sidelong glance she turned and looked at him. “Why? Do you think someone’s up there?”
Ice tinkled in Wolf’s glass as he stirred it. “I came across someone up there Friday night, and my deputies just had another encounter tonight.”
