by Sara Gauldin
“We'll find out one way or another. The evidence will tell its story if we've collected enough.”
“I certainly hope we have all the pieces,” Dr. Cleary added.
“Why is everybody waiting outside the house?” I asked.
Officer Johnson shook her head. “No one's here and we don’t have a search warrant. Officer Adams went to pick it up hours ago, but he hasn’t come back yet.”
“Officer Adams? I don't think I've met him yet."
"He's middle-aged and has a long scar that runs down one side of his neck," she said.
"I think I'd remember meeting him," I said. He had to have been the strange, creepy officer I'd caught glaring at me on my first day back at my desk. Could his late arrival be a coincidence? “Oh, well, I hope everything's okay. Has anyone called him?”
“I think so, but I’m not sure if they could reach him,” Officer Johnson said.
“Without a warrant we're at a standstill here. I think I'll head back to the station. I have a pile of paperwork that won’t end, and now I need to work on processing what we have on this case.”
“We'll give you a call when we can get into the house,” Officer Johnson said.
“Good. I’ll see what I can find out about the owners in the meantime.”
“I need to head out as well,” Dr. Cleary said. “My assistant went ahead with most of the remains, and I need to get started on my examination. Have a wonderful afternoon, ladies.” The doctor headed down the steps and jogged to his Jeep—he was surprisingly agile for an older man.
“Keep me updated!” I called. I needed to get out of these wet clothes and back where I could do something useful. The image of my name and Ryan’s written on the dead man’s hand was not one I could easily block out. It meant something, and based on the fate of the hand’s owner, it most likely was not good news.
I walked as quickly as I could into the rain and wind, without sliding in the mud. When I got to my car, I slid into the driver’s seat, thankful to be out of the storm. I turned the key and pressed the gas. The electric car came to life and lurched forward. I turned the wipers on high and looked for the opening to the long gravel road.
Navigating the primitive road had been tricky before, but the storm had made it ten times worse. I inched along, leaning forward and straining my eyes to see the ruts before they could swallow my wheels. I turned my radio all the way down so I could concentrate. The trees swayed around, whipping to and fro in the wind, as though they were dancing to some violent tune.
Dr. Cleary must have made better time than I did in his four-wheel-drive Jeep, because he was nowhere in sight. The logic of buying my tiny Prius for city commutes and easy parking now seemed like a poor choice.
I had been moving slowly away from the cabin for over ten minutes when I misjudged the ruts. I knew a fraction of a second before my right front tire slid into the rut and sunk into the mud. I pressed the gas and hoped, but the wheels only spun and dug themselves deeper into place. "No, come on car," I coaxed, "we need to get back to the office." I sighed and opened the door to see how badly the car had sunk and saw that the right front wheel was buried in the mud all the way to the axle. Nothing short of a tow truck would be able to remove it from where it sat. I climbed back into the car and out of the driving rain. I found my cell phone and scanned my contacts for the station’s number. When I found it, I pressed the send button and waited. The phone searched for a signal, but did nothing otherwise. I tried it again with no luck--my phone couldn’t find a signal.
All right, I thought, I can sit here and wait, or I can head back to the cabin and ask someone to radio for a tow truck.
The storm was beginning to quiet, so I decided to try to walk back to the cabin. I had been driving very slowly, so I couldn’t have made it very far. I walked along the makeshift road, hoping someone would see me on the way out. The rain had slowed, but since I was already soaked, I really no longer cared. My ruined shoes squished in the marshy soil in the center of the road. It occurred to me that whoever owned the extravagant cabin and huge amount of land could have spent a little more money on maintaining the access road, unless they liked that it was easy to overlook and hard to access.
As I walked along, I went over all of the evidence I'd collected that day in my mind.
A strange squishing sound caught my attention as my feet slid out from under me, and I landed on my back in the mud. Perfect. This is just what my day needed. I lay there for a moment trying to catch my breath. As I looked up into the canopy of trees, I saw the singular flash of one red, blinking light. I raised myself onto my elbows. Nothing seemed broken or damaged--the mud had given me a soft landing.
The red light flashed again, clear and bright in the dimly lit forest. I stood up and watched to see if the light flashed once more. What could be causing it? It had to be from something electronic.
Finally, the light blinked again, and this time I caught where it was coming from. A camouflaged rectangular box had been strapped to a tree, facing the driveway. I stood up and went for a closer look. The realization made up for the mud: someone had installed a hunter’s trail camera on a tree overlooking the road. The device was designed to be camouflaged and weather resistant, and intended to observe game, but this close to the trail, this camera had to have been intended to observe anybody coming and going. Since the area was an active crime scene, it was fully admissible. I reached for the camera in my pocket, and a sickening feeling came over me as I pulled it out. Had the fall and rain damaged it?
I inspected the camera. Thank goodness, it was still in one piece. I switched it on and took a picture of the trail camera. I snapped a few angles of the roadway, and tried to estimate the angle the trail camera would cover.
After carefully examining the area, I returned to the trail camera. If it worked like a regular camera, then it should have a SIM card that could be removed. I had to pull myself up with a branch using my right hand, while trying to work on the camera with my left. The trees dripped the remaining rain into my eyes as I strained to look up at the camera. After several attempts, I found what I was looking for. Jackpot! The SIM card was small and frail, compared to the hefty, trail camera that once held it. I handled it with caution.
If this camera took a picture of anybody coming and going, then I bet it took a picture of whoever killed the men in the woods, and whoever got shot there, as well. It could be precisely the evidence we needed to find out who was responsible for the dismembered mess in the woods. I hoped it would also give me answers about why my name and Kain’s were written on the man’s hand, but I had a horrible feeling that it had something to do with the only case we had worked on together.
I continued my hike back toward the cabin. I was soaked and covered with mud, my car was entrenched in muck, and despite it all, I felt empowered.
Chapter 22
Officer Johnson dropped me off outside my apartment, still covered in mud.
"I'm really sorry about the mud. Can I go get something to clean it off?" I asked.
She shook her head. "No, it's not the first time that the car's gotten a little dirty. I'll take care of it."
"Thanks again for the ride. Are you going back to the cabin?"
"Yeah, I'm there for the afternoon, now that the storm has clear and I can get back to work."
"Let me know if you ever get those warrants. I'm really very curious about that cabin."
"I will, and I hope the rest of your day goes better," Officer Johnson said.
I laughed. "I hope so, too!"
***
Sometimes a shower and dry clothes make all the difference in the world. It was almost three o’clock before I left my apartment to head back to the station. I couldn’t wait to get started on reviewing all the evidence I'd collected. The SIM card, in its protective evidence bag, was waiting to tell me something important, I could feel it.
Dr. Cleary hadn’t called me back about any of the evidence he'd collected to test, but that was no surprise--for
ensics took time.
I hailed a cab, carefully stepping off of the curb to avoid the left-over puddles. The storm had temporarily broken the summer’s sweltering heat, but now it was on the rise. Mayflies shrieked in the bushes and trees, warning of the increase ahead.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. Kain? I took the phone out with renewed hope. Instead, I saw an unfamiliar number.
“Hello?” I answered.
A man cleared his throat before speaking. “Detective Rich?”
“This is she,” I said.
“This is Rudy from Nat’s towing. The department sent us out to pick up your car. You sure did get it stuck!”
“I guess I did. Were you able to get it unstuck?”
“Of course, that's what we do. Here’s the thing: when you went that deep in the rut, it damaged the car’s axle. If you try to drive it now, you'd only be causing more damage. Do you want us to take it to our shop to repair it?”
“I guess so. What choice do I have?” Great, all this before my second paycheck. I stepped back onto the curb to write down the address of the garage. I glanced up as the cab I'd been waiting for pulled off with another passenger.
Back to square one--I hailed a new cab.
***
I walked into the station and stopped at the booking desk.
“Excuse me; do you know if Officer Adams has been back to the station today?” I hoped that Officer Creepy had gotten the warrants and gone back to the cabin, but so far nobody had called me about a search.
“No, sir, I haven’t seen him. Do you want me to radio him?”
“No, that's all right. I was just curious about the status on a search warrant.”
When I made it back to my desk I found it abandoned. I thought about asking some of the other officers where Kain had went, but that seemed needy. I wanted to tell him about the writing on the hand and all of the evidence I'd collected, but I didn’t need to. I pulled my crooked chair back and sat down carefully, to avoid being dumped out onto the floor. As soon as I did, I realized that my seat was still warm, and Kain couldn’t have been long gone.
I focused on setting up the computer to transfer the images from the SIM card. Waiting for the program to connect was like waiting for Christmas morning. Finally, an image rolled onto the screen. Uggg, it was an up-the-nose shot of a wet and bedraggled police detective dangling from a tree as she tried to reach the camera.
“Interesting selfie.” Kain’s voice startled me. I looked back to see him standing behind me.
“I thought you were gone.”
“I went to get a cup of coffee and you took over my seat,” Kain said.
“You mean my seat,” I said.
“You were out and about, seeing the world. I was left with only a chair and a mountain of paperwork.” Kain grinned at me with that twinkle in his eye.
“That had to be terrible,” I smirked.
“Judging by your picture, I had the easier job today.” Kain moved a chair over to join me at my desk.
I glanced back at the screen. “That may be, but I think you'll find this crime scene very interesting, in a macabre sort of way.”
Kain wrinkled his eyebrows. “Avery, you know I'm only here to help with the one case.”
I grinned at him. This time I saw connections he did not spot. “True, but I think this case may be related to the bankers' case.”
“I’m listening,” Kain said.
“For right now, let’s see what is on this SIM card, and then I’ll explain.” I clicked to advance to the next picture. This one showed me flat on my back in the mud.
“I see you had a wonderful afternoon,” Kain said.
I blushed. “It had an upside and a downside.”
“And a muddy side.” Kain laughed.
I clicked through the pictures, one by one. I was seeing the images in reverse-time order. I spotted the blurry image of me driving by in the rain before I had had to abandon my car in the mud. There were pictures of the patrol cars, rushing to the location when the discovery of a body was reported, their flashing lights distorting the image. The pictures then became less frequent. There were images of a small herd of deer passing through, and one of a fat opossum. “Come on, be there,” I demanded. I clicked six more times before I found evidence of human beings.
An oversized, silver pickup truck raced down the access road and away from the cabin, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. There were two images taken in daylight. The make of the truck would be easy to identify. I peered at the picture, expectantly. I could make out part of the license plate, WGL-4, but the other digits were lost in the dust. The truck’s tinted windows hid whoever was inside.
“You found a truck. Do you want to tell me why this truck is important?” Kain asked.
I pushed the print button. “This truck is likely involved in whatever happened to those men in the woods.”
“Men in the woods? I thought you got a call about a body being found.”
“That’s just it. There were at least three. The M.E. only called me because of this.” I pulled out my camera and flipped to the image of the hand with our names clearly printed on the back. I handed the camera to Kain. He looked at the image for a long moment. The teasing smile faded from his expression.
“I was wrong when I said you'd be safe in your apartment.” Kain’s voice was quiet.
“Whomever this was, he must have been looking for us.”
“That would be the logical conclusion,” Kain said.
“Well, the owner of the hand is no danger to either one of us anymore. Now I have to find out whom these men were, and what really happened to them.”
Kain nodded. “May I look at the other pictures of the crime scene?”
“Of course. I was going to ask you to have a look, anyway. There's a connection there, the names make me sure of it.”
Kain nodded his agreement. His eyes never left the tiny display screen of my camera.
I turned my attention back to the image of the truck. I knew that it had left the cabin, but when had it arrived? I clicked to advance the pictures. Each image was time stamped and dated. An entire day passed and the only thing the camera had captured was more deer. Finally, another image appeared--a sleek, black SUV was rolling leisurely down the access road, toward the cabin. I was able to gauge the speed because it didn't raise the dust that the truck had in its hurry.
“Hello, license plates," I said. "TDW- 4532.” Kain glanced up for a moment as I printed the page. I advanced the pictures. The same SUV passed by, going to and from the cabin, four times. I examined each picture, trying to make out who was driving the vehicle.
“Tinted windows. I can’t get a good look at anyone’s faces,” I mumbled. “Wait a minute, here's something!” In the third image, one of the occupants of the SUV had rolled down the back seat window. His arm rested on the window's ledge. I couldn’t see the man’s face, but the sharpie marks on the back of his hand left me little doubt. This man, who was riding to this cabin as a casual passenger, somehow became a victim of whatever had happened in that forest clearing.
“Ryan, look at this.”
Kain finally pried his eyes from my camera. “Whoever they were, they don’t look like they arrived under distress.”
“They didn’t leave under any, either, but they did leave in pieces.”
Chapter 23
I now had more information than I could process at one time. As promised, Officer Johnson emailed me a copy of the initial report for the homicides in the clearing. The original call had been made by a Mrs. Green who could not reach her brother, James Maple, and was concerned when she noticed vultures circling the forest. She also filed a missing person’s report on her brother.
“Kain, this missing person, James Maple, do you think it could be our Jim Maple?”
“It has to be.”
“But he was arrested after White’s murder,” I said. I pulled up his case on the computer. The case file rolled slowly onto the screen. Seeing his mug shot b
rought back memories of the night Douglas White was murdered. I had a feeling he was dead because he had unwillingly met with us. I scanned the record and sighed. “Oh, he was arrested and out on bail the same day.”
Kain smirked. “Money can buy many advantages."
"I guess so, not that I would know, first-hand. If Maple's the missing person, I wonder if Parker is a possible victim as well." I typed in Tom Parker's name and case number. “It doesn’t look like being released worked out in Maple's favor. He should have stayed in jail. According to the records, his accomplice, Tom Parker, is still alive in lockup."
“We'll find out if it was actually Maple, soon enough,” Kain said.
I clicked on the tab and returned to the report Officer Johnson had sent over. “The cabin was owned by Claudia Maple. The department has successfully contacted her at her vacation home in Barbados, where she was spending the summer with her children. She says she's not heard from her husband in several days.”
“So, it's likely that Maple bought his way out of jail and was staying out at the cabin.” Kain connected my camera to the printer and began printing copies of the crime scene photos.
“It's possible, but he wasn’t alone." I picked up the photos I printed from the trail camera. "That black SUV comes and goes several times.” I held up the image that clearly showed the SUV’s license plates. “Who are you, visitor?” I turned back to my computer and ran the registration of the license plates. “It’s a dead end for now. It's a rental.”
“You can contact the rental company,” Kain said.
“I will, but I think I'll just send an officer with a warrant for the records and the whole vehicle to process for evidence. That way we can take care of all of it at once.”
“That makes sense,” Kain said. “I have to wonder if that was Jim Maple’s hand with our names written on it.”
I shook my head. “I doubt it. He already knew my name. He wouldn’t have had to write it down.”
