by Blake Pierce
Charlie Holt/Will Albrecht picked those acorns up from the ground from somewhere within the park, she thought. What if the acorns can tell us where he had been…acting like footprints in a way?
As she followed Clements to the back of the police station, she pulled out her cell phone. It seemed like she was going to have to wake Bryers up after all. She called him and woke him up, filling him in on what had happened while she continued to follow Clements. She also told him one of the officers would arrive soon to pick him up and bring him to the station.
At the evidence locker, Clements unlocked it with a key from a chain on his belt. There were six acorns inside a clear plastic bag. One of them had been stripped nearly to its core. Mackenzie held the bag up to the light. Looking at the acorns, she saw that luck might be on her side after all.
Five of the acorns looked basically the same in appearance (except for the one stripped of its skin). But the sixth one looked different somehow. She knew nothing about trees but she was pretty sure the sixth one was different because it had come from a different tree.
While it could mean absolutely nothing, she had a feeling it might be a very big clue.
Over the course of the next half hour, Clements made sure his little conference room was cleaned and that the coffee was brewing. A few calls were made and Mackenzie did her best to compose herself. The night had been insane…hell, the last three or four days had been nuts. She felt herself slowly unraveling and did everything she could to stop it before it got any worse.
When Bryers arrived at the station fifteen minutes later, he was understandably irritated but not mad. He gave Mackenzie a slight nod of appreciation as he entered the conference room, where a handful of people had gathered. He took a seat to Mackenzie’s left while Clements sat to her right with the evidence bag of acorns. Across the table, Joe Andrews held a white plastic bag he had brought with him.
Clements had informed Andrews of not only his co-worker’s real identity, but of his suicide as well. Andrews was in an obvious state of shock. Even as they started their impromptu meeting, he seemed very much out of it.
“So,” Clements said. “Why do we care about the acorns?”
Mackenzie took the bag from Clements. In it were the six acorns that had been taken from Will Albrecht’s right pants pocket as well as the fragments of a few shells. She then took the bag that Joe Andrews had brought. There were fifteen acorns in that bag, all of which Andrews had taken from Will’s locker at work.
Twenty-one acorns in all. She hoped there might be an answer to be found in at least one of them.
“You said yourself that he was always picking them up and peeling them or sticking them in his pockets, right?” Mackenzie asked.
“Yeah,” Clements said. “He just had to fidget or something.”
“Him and those acorns,” Andrews said. “He was always picking them up. Sometimes I don’t even think he knew he was doing it. His pockets were always full of them. He’d just pick them up and peel them—almost like he was going to eat them. I always thought it was sort of weird.”
“That compulsive behavior is common among people with high anxiety or some form of trauma within their lives. But I wonder…Mr. Andrews, how much do you know about the forests out in the park?”
“In terms of animals and the river, quite a bit. But I’m guessing you want to know more about acorns, huh?”
“Yes. In particular, I’m wondering about the one in the evidence bag that looked to be different than the others.”
“Hold on,” Clements said. “Look…do we really want to delve into a study of acorns? I still think this is closed. This case…done. We caught the guy and he killed himself. I understand your theories and deductions, Agent White. I really do. But this is a waste of our time.”
“Sheriff, you have to think about—”
“No,” Clements said. “I really don’t. You’ve kept me up far too late and I really am not interested in wasting any more time on this. If you want to go hunting for acorns out in the woods, that’s your choice. But I’m not wasting any more of my time on it.” He then got to his feet and looked back to her as he headed for the door. “You’re welcome to finish your acorn study in my conference room. I’ll give you five more minutes and then I’m going to politely ask you to leave—and to leave my overworked men out of it.”
He took his exit, leaving Mackenzie, Bryers, and Joe Andrews in an uncomfortable silence.
“Well, that was a little dramatic,” Bryers said.
“It was,” Mackenzie agreed. “Mr. Andrews, you were saying?”
“I was saying that I can’t really help you with any in-depth knowledge on acorns, but we have an agriculture expert at the park with a background in botany. Any question you have about trees or seeds, he’s your man.”
“How soon can I speak to him?”
“I’ll get him on the phone right now,” Andrews said, pulling out his cell phone. “But I’ve got to warn you…he’s a little eccentric.”
“Given my last few days, I’d welcome someone eccentric,” Mackenzie said.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
The park ranger with a background in botany and agriculture was an older man—about sixty or so—with a thick moustache and a pair of glasses that looked like they’d been formed from the bottoms of glass bottles. His name was Barry D’Amour and he looked a little too happy to have been called in to work at six in the morning. He was already at work behind a laptop when Mackenzie and Bryers entered his office. Mackenzie carried the plastic bag of acorns Andrews had brought, complete with the six acorns that had been taken from Will Albrecht’s pockets.
“Ah, Agents White and Bryers, I take it?” D’Amour said as they walked in.
“Yes,” Mackenzie said. “Thanks for meeting with us so early. And at the risk of seeming unappreciative, we were hoping we could make this quick. If we can get results out of this, we could potentially unravel a new aspect of this case.”
“Certainly,” D’Amour said. He made a quick business of removing the clutter from his desk: the laptop, a few notebooks, pens, and scattered papers. The only thing remaining on his desk when he was done was a small lamp.
“Are those the acorns in question?” D’Amour asked.
“Yes,” Mackenzie said, handing them over.
D’Amour peeked inside, grinned in an almost boyish fashion, and slowly dumped the twenty-one acorns out onto the table. When they were on the table, he worked quickly to align them in rows and piles. As he worked, he looked up to Mackenzie for a moment and asked: “What am I looking for?”
“Well, I noticed that there was one acorn in the evidence bag that was different from the others,” Mackenzie said. “It was a different shape and a slightly different color. I was wondering if you could cross reference the acorns with the area of the park the bodies were found in. I’d also like to know if there are any that stand out to you for being different than the others.”
“Your first question is going to be almost impossible,” D’Amour said. “The vast majority of these acorns look to be from white oaks and chestnut oaks. These, along with a few laurel oaks, are going to be what make up at least eighty percent of the acorn-producing trees in Little Hill State Park. I can almost guarantee you that these acorns would have been on the ground at any of the sites.”
“Okay,” Mackenzie said. “You said the white, chestnut, and laurels are pretty common. Are there any oddities in the piles?”
D’Amour pointed to a pile where he had pushed three acorns away from the others. Mackenzie was pretty sure one of them was the same one she had spied in the evidence bag that had first aroused her suspicion.
“One of these, as you can see, is a little too worn to make a good estimate,” D’Amour said. “But I think it’s the same as the other two. These acorns come from a swamp chestnut oak. You can tell from the color, the almost fat bulge to the body of it, and the toughness along the crown. As far as I know, there aren’t any of these anywhere in the park. Swam
p chestnut trees tend to grow best in moist locations. Sometimes you’ll see them along the banks of rivers in the South. Or, as the name suggests, in swampy or marshy regions.”
“And are there any acorns like that in the park?” Bryers asked from behind Mackenzie.
“No, not that I know of,” D’Amour said. “But there may be a few scattered along the outskirts of the park—back toward the western corner of the property. Out there, some of the trees get scraggly.”
“Is there a river or swamp out there?” Mackenzie asked.
“There’s a little creek that winds through it all but it never gets big or smooth enough to be considered a river,” D’Amour answered. “Many years ago, before laws buckled down on the use of public parks, people used to camp out there and go frog gigging. When there was that homeless problem, some of the homeless stayed out there in little shacks that were put up just outside of the park’s boundaries. Those shacks were built by hunters but never got much use other than from the homeless and adventurous frog giggers.”
“What the hell is frog gigging?” Bryers asked.
“Ever eaten frog legs?” D’Amour asked.
“Can’t say that I have. I’ve heard of people eating them, though.”
“Frog gigging is going out near marshy areas or creek beds and hunting for frogs. It’s mostly done with pitchforks. A lot of that kind of stuff used to go on in the Deep South not too long ago.”
“Do you think there would be any swamp chestnut oaks out there?” Mackenzie asked.
“Oh, I can almost guarantee it. That would be the only place I could think of within the whole park where they’d grow. You’ll know them by sight because they tend to grow a little smaller. The branches typically sprout a little lower to the ground that most other oaks. And there should be lots of acorns on the ground around them because the acorns of the swamp chestnut oak mature in just one season.”
Mackenzie took the three acorns in question and pocketed them. “You said this area is on the western edge of the park?”
“Yup.”
“How far?”
D’Amour shrugged but still looked very excited. Mackenzie assumed that a man with a botanist background that spent his time studying trees and seeds usually didn’t get involved in this sort of thing very often. “About twenty miles from here,” he answered. “About fifteen or so from the main entrance of the park.”
“Can you show me where on a map?”
D’Amour went into his desk drawers and pulled out a map of the park which he spread out on his desk. He skimmed his fingers over the paper and tapped at a location on the left edge of the page. “Right there.”
“And those shacks are still up?” Mackenzie asked.
“To the best of my knowledge.”
Mackenzie and Bryers exchanged a look. He nodded.
This might just be where the killer was.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
When Mackenzie stepped into the forest half an hour later, it felt much different than the first time she and Bryers had entered Little Hill State Park. By taking Barry D’Amour’s route, she and Bryers were able to guide the agency sedan carefully down an old stripped logging road. The dirt track branched off of the main road three miles away from the western perimeter of Little Hill’s border. As they headed down it, the growing morning light looked dusty and almost apocalyptic.
The road was rough but passable. Still, it took her ten minutes to cover the mile and a half or so that ended at a small dead field. The logging road kept going on beyond the field but this was the spot where D’Amour and Andrews had told them to stop. From here, they were to walk on foot into the forest until they came to the edge of the park’s perimeter about a mile or so into the forest.
When she took her first step into the woods with Bryers by her side, she turned and looked back to the dead field. The sedan looked alien sitting there, like some spaceship from an advanced land.
“You okay?” Bryers asked her.
“Yeah. It’s just very quiet.”
“You think this acorn thing is the answer to it, don’t you?” he asked as they walked deeper into the forest.
“I think there’s a good chance,” she said. “My hope is that in his habitual acorn-collecting, Albrecht just happened to pick one up when he met with whoever it is that he is helping.”
“So you’re convinced Albrecht wasn’t the killer?”
“Almost one hundred percent. But if we get out here and somehow find otherwise, I’ll be the first to apologize to Clements.”
Bryers nodded his agreement. When he did, she saw that his eyes looked tired. It might have been her imagination, but she was pretty sure he was also laboring a little too hard to draw in his breath. But he forged on without complaining. He stayed directly behind Mackenzie, never further than two steps behind.
She scanned the area for trees that matched the picture she had pulled up on her phone on the way out here. So far, though, she saw nothing that resembled a swamp chestnut oak. D’Amour had told them that she’d probably have to walk at least a mile or more until she started seeing them.
They walked on in silence. As they did, Mackenzie couldn’t help but wonder what Kirk Peterson was up to at that moment. Because of the time difference, he was probably still sleeping right now, but she wondered what else he had come across in the Jimmy Scotts case. That then led to her conversation with McGrath; she was still in a glad sort of shock over the fact that he was subtly giving her the go-ahead to take the Scotts case and, as a result, her father’s reopened case. She wondered if he was doing it because he was starting to believe in her or if he was setting her up to fail.
She shook the thought off when she noticed a scattering of acorns on the ground. She knelt down and picked them up, sorting through them. None of them were a match to her swamp chestnut.
As they walked further on, Mackenzie started to wonder what sort of killer would need an assistant to kidnap his victims. While Will Albrecht had never actually come out and admitted to it, she was fairly certain it was the case. Even Clements and Smith had seemed to believe it, too. Of course, that had been during the excitement of the revelation that Charlie Holt had been Will Albrecht all along. In that moment of jubilation, they may have agreed with just about anything.
Thinking about how a man could so easily swerve his abductee made Mackenzie think that they were dealing with a man who had a charismatic sort of charm—especially to corrupt a child into thinking that the act of killing was part of a very important work. That it was not just okay, but necessary.
Got to be careful, she thought. This guy is more than just a killer. He’s damned smart, too.
The brutal styles of the killings…having an accomplice…knowing the woods well. This was something he had planned out for a very long time. And that made him all the more unpredictable.
She was broken from her train of thought by Bryers’s voice behind her. It was harsh and ragged.
“Got to stop,” he said.
“Are you okay?” She turned around and saw that he was beyond winded and growing pale.
“I will be,” he said, taking a seat on a nearby stump. “I just need to catch my breath. My lungs are burning. Chest feels a little tight. It’s happened before, so I know it’ll pass. You go on ahead, though. See what you can find. I told you I would make sure I didn’t hinder your progress.”
“Well, I can’t just leave you here,” Mackenzie argued.
“Sure you can. Just make a point to come back and find me. And for God’s sake…if you do find something, don’t be a hero. Come back for me and we’ll take it together…or call for backup from Clements.”
Mackenzie considered this for a moment before finally nodding and continuing on. She figured there was nothing that could happen to him while sitting alone on the stump. The car was less than half a mile behind them. And if she did come upon something questionable, she would just turn back and they could regroup.
“Yell for me if you need me,” she said.
“Yes ma’am. But don’t worry about me,” he said, patting his sidearm. “I’ll be fine.”
Mackenzie continued on, walking through the forests as the morning sun filtered through the branches overhead. She found herself growing anxious with the passing of each moment. She then realized that she had reached into her pocket and started to roll one of the acorns between her fingers. An eerie chill passed through her and she quickly pocketed it again.
She looked into the woods ahead of her and tried to picture the scene…how Will Albrecht had come across the swamp chestnut acorns. Did he meet with the killer out here somewhere? Was there a lair of sorts somewhere ahead of her where Will met with the killer? Did the killer give Will instructions? Who to take? How to take them? She tried to picture Will out here somewhere, speaking with the killer and absently picking up an acorn that was slightly different in appearance than the others he had picked up and nervously picked and peeled at.
Out here in the quiet of the forest, it was actually quite easy to imagine.
She carried on and had walked perhaps another twenty minutes when she saw the first swamp chestnut tree. It looked exactly like the picture Barry D’Amour had showed her. It was mostly stripped of its foliage; she could see the dark lumps on the ground, the almost circular shapes of the acorns scattered along with the leaves.
She went to one and picked it up. She compared it to the acorns in her pockets and found that it was an exact match. She looked ahead and saw several other swamp chestnut trees. They weren’t as numerous as the other types of oaks and firs standing all around, but they seemed to grow in number the further into the woods she peered.
She followed them like a trail, realizing that her pace had slowed. The swamp chestnuts seemed ominous to her, like a signal that something was wrong here…
After another three minutes, the ground dropped off slightly. Just ahead of her, she saw the muddy banks of the meandering creek D’Amour had mentioned. Further along it, she saw an old dilapidated shack. It looked almost like an outhouse. Its roof was mostly caved in and the boards were rotted. This, she assumed, was one of the old frog gigging shacks D’Amour had told them about.
