by BJ Bourg
Cade pointed down at his feet. “How am I supposed to walk with these on? It’s at least a couple of miles to the oak tree.”
“Can we take my truck?” I asked.
“Nothing larger than a four-wheeler would fit through there, but that was back then.” He glanced around at the large bushes that had sprung up across the parking lot over the years. “By the look of things here, we might need machetes and chainsaws to get to the spot on foot.”
I walked to my truck and, after shouldering my survival bag, grabbed my axe and the shovels. Kevin took one of the shovels from me, and I nodded to Stella. “You can remove the shackles. If he runs, we’ll shoot him and bury him next to the old man.”
As Stella bent over and removed the leg irons, Cade gulped and said, “I ain’t stupid. I don’t want Ms. Dawn to clobber me again.”
I glanced at Dawn, who had slung a crime scene backpack over her shoulder, and handed her a shovel. “You ready for this?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.” She grabbed Cade’s arm and pushed him forward. “You get to lead the way…and if you’re lying, you won’t be coming back.”
Although it was cool and the wind was blowing, sweat beads had formed on Cade’s head and begun pouring down his face.
“I’m not lying,” he said, leading the way around the lumberyard toward the back of the building. “I wouldn’t put myself through all of this for nothing. Believe me…I’d rather be back in my cell right now.”
No one responded to him. Stella took the last shovel and followed Cade. When we reached the back of the large building, we all stopped and stared at the dense forest up ahead.
“Right through there,” Cade said. “That dark spot in the middle is where the path used to be.”
Before us was a solid wall of greenery that looked unforgiving and impenetrable. There was the faintest hint of an opening down the middle, but breaking through would be no easy task. It wasn’t exactly what we’d all planned for our day, but it happened to be the cards we were dealt, so we took to it without complaint.
Kevin volunteered to lead the way and I nodded. Using the shovel I’d given him, he began swinging at the long-stemmed weeds and thick bushes that blocked the faded trail, slowly making a path we could all walk through. Cade was directly behind Kevin, followed closely by Stella and then Dawn. I brought up the rear, keeping a wary eye on our surroundings. I didn’t think Cade was capable of organizing a breakout—nor did I think he had the juice—but I wasn’t taking any chances.
We hadn’t gone a hundred yards when I almost bumped into Dawn’s backside.
“What’s going on?” I asked, craning my neck to look ahead of us to where Stella was holding onto Cade’s arm. Sweat had formed on the back of her uniform and there were pieces of tree branches in her blonde hair.
“Kevin’s getting tired,” Stella said. Her voice was laced with contempt.
“You want to try swinging this shovel?” Kevin asked, holding the shovel in her direction.
“I’ve got my own,” she said.
“Watch our backs,” I told Dawn. I pushed past her and Stella. Thick pickers grabbed at my flesh, but I ignored the sting. When I reached Kevin, I handed him my axe. “Give me the shovel. I’ll take the lead.”
Kevin didn’t argue, and he seemed grateful for the break. I asked Cade if he recognized where we were. He started to talk, but a coughing fit interrupted his response. When he was done, he said, “It’s not much farther along this trail. Once you see the giant oak tree, we’ll be there.”
“What if we already passed it? It’s so thick out here I can’t tell one tree from another.”
“Trust me—once you see it, you’ll know it. It’s the king of the jungle out here. You won’t be able to miss it.”
I took the lead and began swinging the shovel like a scythe, aiming the blade at the base of the weeds. Thistles grew tall along the trail and the purple flowers exploded into powdery dust with each strike of my shovel.
As I forged a path through the wall of greenery, my mind wandered back to my childhood and how independent thistles had made me feel. Anytime I’d get hungry while out in the woods, I’d simply lop the flower off the top of the wild weed with my knife—all it took was one swift swipe of the blade to behead the plant—and then chop away the prickly leaves. Once that was done, I’d strip off the plant’s tough skin with my knife and then eat the tasty core. In those early years, I felt like a survivor living off of the land…and it was a good feeling not to have to rely on anyone else for my food. Of course, it wasn’t as good as my mom’s pot-fried chicken and smothered green beans, but that and wild blackberries kept me alive during my day-long treks in the Louisiana backcountry.
I frowned, wondering what my life would’ve been like had my family not been involved in that car crash. I’d been told many times over the years that these things happened for a reason, but I called bullshit on it. I didn’t believe there was any rhyme or reason to it and I didn’t believe anyone could explain it. If they could, I’d love to hear their explanation for why Lily was left all alone to fend for herself in this cruel world. Sure, she had other family members, but they were strangers compared to her dad and brother.
CHAPTER 29
Sneezing from somewhere in the rear brought me back to the present. Cade had been coughing intermittently and I stopped briefly to ask him if he was okay.
“My allergies are acting up,” he explained. “It happens this time of year.”
I nodded and moved on. If we wanted to find the victim before nightfall, we needed to get busy.
After about thirty minutes of trudging forward—my muscles aching and my shirt ripped from when I’d snagged it on a large branch earlier—I broke through the edge of the tree line and came upon an open field of tall grass with small saplings scattered about. Directly ahead of me at the center of the field was an ancient oak tree that rose toward the sky like a giant piece of broccoli. I stopped and stared for a moment, awestruck by the sheer size of the monster tree.
“That’s it!” Cade said, brushing by me and breaking into a stumbling jog across the field. “That’s the giant oak I was telling you about.”
I thought about stopping him, but decided against it. If he ran off out here, he’d be alligator food before sunup tomorrow morning.
When Kevin walked by, I noticed his eyes were red and his face was swollen.
“You okay?” I asked.
He rubbed his leaky nose on the short sleeve of his uniform shirt. “This shit happens every time I go out in the woods in the Fall. It’s a curse, I know, but someone’s got to have it.”
Dawn stopped beside me and threw the axe to her shoulder. “This is a big field. I hope he knows exactly where he buried the man.”
I glanced up at the sun. It was making a beeline for the west and I knew we only had a few hours of daylight left. Rumbling from the south got my attention and I turned to see dark clouds gathering in the area of the Gulf. I pointed to it. “I hope that’s not coming this way.”
Dawn grunted. “We need to get moving.”
While she dropped her backpack and pulled out her camera to photograph the area, I walked to where Cade was circling through the tall grass north of the tree. Stella and Kevin were watching him like vultures, almost eager for a chance to take him out.
“Well, do you remember where you buried him?” I asked.
Without answering, Cade lifted his chained hands as far as he could and lined them up with a second tree in the distance. He then backed up until he came into contact with the trunk of the massive oak. Keeping his hands trained on the second tree, he began counting out loud as he paced forward.
When he reached the number twenty-three, he stopped and stabbed at the ground with his heel. “This is the spot.”
“How sure are you?”
“I’m positive.”
“Would you bet your life on it?” My eyes narrowed and I took a step toward him, enjoying how he squirmed in his jumpsuit. “I’
m serious, Cade, this had better not be a hoax.”
“I…no, it’s not a hoax. I’m sure of it.” He indicated toward the oak tree with his head. “I remember it like it was yesterday—I walked off twenty-three paces from the trunk of that tree and started digging. I buried him right here.”
“Why twenty-three paces?” I asked. “That’s a random number. Why not an even number…like twenty or ten or fifty?”
“Because it’s the day I was born.”
“Makes sense. Did you leave the body in the blanket?”
He nodded.
“How deep did you dig the hole?”
“To my chest.”
“How tall were you back then?” I asked.
“An inch or two shorter than I am now, I think.”
I took the axe from where Dawn had placed it on the ground and waited for her to finish documenting the area. When she nodded that it was all clear, I waved everyone back. With the sun beating down on my back, I took aim at the large roots that snaked across the spot Cade had identified and began chopping them up one at a time. Some only required a single chop, while others required several. Working in a circle large enough to fit three bodies, I continued chopping at the roots until I’d severed all contact between them and the monster oak tree.
Once I was done, Dawn and Kevin helped me jerk the roots from the ground. Some were harder than others, because their tiny veins were embedded deeply in the ground, but we finally cleared the circle and tossed them aside. Arming ourselves with shovels, we started digging into the earth, removing scoop after scoop of the tar-like mud.
The digging was slower than I liked, because there were countless roots hidden just under the surface that would stop our shovels dead in their plunge. We’d then have to use the axe to clear it away and dig until we hit another root.
Stella and Kevin took turns working one of the shovels and they even gave it to Cade for a spell, but he didn’t last long. Every now and again, I caught myself staring at Dawn’s arms as she worked her shovel. They were feminine, but toned, and she had good stamina.
Once we broke through the top layer of soil, we stopped and dropped to our knees, removing large clumps of mud and broken roots from the area. Dawn worked much harder than Kevin and Stella combined. Although they were switching places, there were many times when they would both stop and sit around to rest. As I watched Dawn, I began to wonder if she would outlast me. I wasn’t tired yet and hadn’t taken any breaks, but neither had she.
“You’re well conditioned,” I said after a while. “You’d make a good sniper.”
She didn’t say a word at first as she cleared out her corner of the dig site, and I began to doubt she’d heard me. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and sweat poured down her beautiful face, leaving streaks of dirt trails across her skin. After throwing a large clump of mud to the side, she leaned close and looked me right in the eyes, her perfect nose about an inch from mine. Even though she was covered in mud and sweat, she still smelled great.
“If I were to become a sniper under your supervision,” she said in a low voice, “we wouldn’t be able to go on that date. So, which would you prefer?”
I felt excitement growing in my chest and I nodded. “Point taken. There will be no more talk from me about you becoming a sniper.”
She grinned and pushed off the ground. Snatching up her camera, she photographed what we had done so far and we then went back to digging through the next layer, and then the next, recording each step of our progress. We were careful not to stab too hard with the shovels, because we didn’t want to damage the body.
When we had dug about four feet into the ground, I stabbed my shovel into the mud and made contact with something hard. We hadn’t hit a root in a while and I knew it could only be one thing…bone.
CHAPTER 30
“I’ve got something,” I called to Dawn, who was working the opposite side of the hole. Kevin had quit digging about fifteen minutes earlier and was lying on the cool ground under the shade of the ancient oak. Stella was seated beside him rubbing her brow with a handkerchief she kept in her back pocket. I caught movement from their direction and saw Kevin’s head pop up and Stella jump to their feet. They hurried to the hole and gathered around.
Dawn retrieved some latex gloves from her bag and handed me a pair. After pulling it on, I dropped to my knees and began clawing at the ground with my fingers. Dawn joined me and began doing the same, her head inches from mine in the cramped hole. As we removed one handful of dirt at a time, a dark and tattered blanket began to materialize. As we revealed more of the fabric, we backed away to allow room to work, careful not to rip the blanket or disturb the body wrapped inside.
I glanced up when we had fully exposed the blanket and noticed Cade was still sitting under the tree.
“You were right,” I called to him. “This is it.”
He only nodded, refusing to look in our direction. He was clearly bothered by the exhumation and I was glad to see it.
After Dawn finished shooting a bunch of pictures, she broke out her measuring tape and I helped her record the dimensions of the hole and the location of the body as it related to the giant oak tree. Once that was all done, she looked at me and nodded. “Let’s make the introductions.”
She slid back into the hole near the victim’s feet and I slid in on the side nearest the head. The blanket was rotted and fragile, so we carefully grabbed the edges and pulled it away from the body. It was overlapped, so we rested the top side against the wall of the hole and reached for the inside flap. It felt brittle under my fingers and it began to rip as I tried to pull on it.
“It’s stuck to the body,” I said.
Dawn nodded. “My side, too.”
Leaning close, I gingerly stuck my fingers between the fabric and the body and tried to work the blanket free. A thick and musky smell rose up to meet my nostrils and I grunted as I recognized the familiar scent of a body long laid to rest. I’d experienced that smell several times in the past during official exhumations and it was one to remember. While not as shocking to the senses as a freshly rotting corpse, it was dark and foreboding, as though hell waited directly around the corner.
Dawn had worked her side free and we both pulled the inner layer back in unison, laying it to rest on the opposite wall of mud.
“I don’t recognize him,” Dawn said, pointing to his exposed skull. Most of the flesh had long since fallen from the bone, but there remained a few strips of leathery skin and a thick patch of white hair. She suddenly leaned closer. “Wow, look at that.”
She pointed to his skull, which was missing a round chunk of bone about the size of a half dollar. The area around the injury was shattered, branching out from the hole like a spider’s web.
“It looks like he was hit with a hammer,” I said. “His jaw’s also broken. Shit, we won’t even need an autopsy—his body’s already opened up for us to examine it.”
Dawn nodded and began taking pictures of the injuries and then the rest of the body. The man wore a thick flannel shirt. While it was dry rotted, it had been mostly preserved by the blanket and I could make out the red and blue plaid pattern nicely, except for the area that had been turned black from the blood.
He was a short man, probably about five-four, and his shirt was small. His jeans were still intact and were also small. The hems were worn away as though they had been too long for him. Leather cowboy boots covered his feet and they were a man’s size seven.
“What kind of skin is that?” Dawn asked.
I shrugged. “It looks like snake skin, but I’m far from an expert in boot patterns.”
I stepped back so Dawn could shoot a different angle and felt a cool breeze caress my face. I turned and tested the wind with my nose. It smelled like rain. “We need to hurry and get him out of here. The sky is about to come down.”
I walked toward the oak tree, where Kevin and Stella were waiting with Cade, and removed a body bag from my rucksack. I looked over at them. Their faces
were pale. “Care to help?” I asked. “Four sets of hands are better than two.”
“Nah, I’m good.” Kevin rubbed his back. “I think I slipped a disc swinging that shovel.”
I didn’t bother telling him it was impossible to slip a disc.
“I’m spent,” Stella said, grabbing at the front of her uniform shirt. “I think I’m about to have heart failure.”
I grinned and walked away, tossed the body bag next to the grave. It took about ten minutes for Dawn to finish documenting the body, and the wind was already kicking up pretty good. We could feel the moisture in the air now.
Dawn stretched out the body bag. “We need to get him in here before the rain comes and washes any evidence off of his body.”
I helped her situate it parallel to the old man and I pulled the zipper open. After wrapping him in the blanket again, we carefully slipped our hands under him and lifted him from the hole.
“Damn, we could’ve used a child-size bag,” Dawn said when he was zipped up.
“He’s literally a bag of bones.” I grabbed both straps and lifted him from the ground. “Hell, he can’t weigh more than fifty pounds.”
I walked the bag over to the tree and placed him near the trunk, where he would be out of the weather. I surveyed the sky. Although the sun hadn’t disappeared yet, the black clouds made it seem later than it was.
I shook my head. “We’re not going to make it out of here before the rain hits. I think we’ll have to hunker down until the storm passes and keep the body bag as dry as possible.”
“What?” Cade twisted around to face me. “What if we get stuck out here all night? I’m not spending the night with that body!” He pointed to the Heavens, which were rumbling in anger. “The gods are pissed at you for disturbing the dead. We’re all going to die!”
“At least the grave is already dug.” I chuckled, but Cade was not amused.
“That’s not even a little bit funny.” He was thoughtful and began licking his lips. It looked like he had something on his mind.
