by Ed Robinson
Brody and I stopped at Bodegas for some shrimp tacos and a beer. It was becoming one of our favorite restaurants in town. Stonewalls was higher-end, but it was too expensive to frequent.
“You knew more about investigating a crime than the Chief did,” I said.
“I’ve been involved in more than a few murder investigations,” she said. “He hasn’t.”
“Now we put our shoes to the street for some old fashioned detective work,” I said. “You up for this?”
“It’s how I found you,” she said. “The best technology that the FBI had to utilize couldn’t do it, but I did.”
“And the rest is history, as they say.”
“It will be fun to be out in the field with you,” she said. “In civilization, not in the boonies.”
“House to house,” I said. “Looking for clues.”
“Million to one chance we find anything,” she said. “He could have whacked her down by the lake. We don’t know where she went after she left the resort.”
“If he hit her because she caught him in the act, then it must have happened at a house,” I said. “If she saw him in the woods by the lake there’d be no reason to kill her.”
“Unless he’s just a deranged murderer,” she said. “She’s alone in the woods, and he takes her out. Crime of opportunity.”
“Why would a young girl go walking in the woods at night, over a mile from her cabin?”
“All the whys of this case are unanswered so far,” she said. “That’s where we come in.”
Five
Officer Sally handed us a list of seventy addresses the next morning. He explained that he couldn’t be sure they were all currently unoccupied. People come and go, and he didn’t know everyone that owned a home on the mountain. He hadn’t had enough time to research who owned each individual property.
“If we find something you’ll probably need to contact the owners to give us more access,” I said. “Until then, don’t worry about it.”
“It’s a good list,” he said. “All part-timers who haven’t reported a previous break-in. All within the search area. Good luck.”
“Thanks for your effort,” I said. “I hope it pays off, but don’t get your hopes up.”
“We all feel bad that we can’t do more to find the killer,” he said. “And a little bit embarrassed that you two are doing our jobs for us.”
“We’ve got the time,” I said. “Brody’s got the experience. It can’t hurt if we poke around. Maybe we’ll find something; maybe we won’t.”
“Better than us doing nothing,” he said.
We sat drinking coffee and eating pastries while we compared the list to the map. Brody asked the Chief if we could make marks on the map of the properties to be searched.
“Take the map with you,” he said. “Mark it up all you want. Just bring it back, so I have something to show for our efforts.”
“Thanks, Chief,” Brody said. “We’ll take good care of it.”
We went out to the car and used a marker to color the addresses we needed to visit. The Chief seemed more concerned with putting on a show for whoever might inquire than actually solving the crime. We didn’t give a shit about that. I’d be happy to hand over the perp to him if it ever got that far. He could have all the credit he wanted. Brody and I were better off remaining anonymous.
Not being intimate with the neighborhood, we decided to drive around our route to get a feel for it and try to maintain a sense of direction. The first thing we did was get lost. We somehow managed to drive in a circle and end up where we’d started. It was not an encouraging start. The twisting mountain roads were confusing as hell. The side roads were all dead-ends. It was not a place to casually drive through with no particular destination. Eventually, we picked an address and found it. There were no cars in the driveway. We got out and started combing the property, concentrating on walkways and doors first.
It was clear that no one had been there recently, but that didn’t rule it out. Our hermit would pick houses that he knew were unoccupied. Dead leaves covered the walkways. Nothing looked disturbed. Brody concentrated on the doors and sidewalks while I circled the property looking for anything that didn’t belong. We found no clues.
We continued to search property after property all day long, coming up with nothing. We stopped off at the Chief’s office on the way home to give him the addresses he could cross off his list. At the base of the mountain, we couldn’t drive by Bodegas without stopping in for a beer. The waitress talked us into lobster rolls for dinner. Her recommendation was a good one.
“So this is good old fashioned police work,” I said. “Pretty boring if you ask me.”
“It is most of the time,” she said. “It takes perseverance and patience. You sift through all the worthless fodder to find the one good piece of evidence. Took me many months to find you.”
“I don’t know that I want to spend months on this case,” I said. “If we don’t get a break in a few weeks I’m going to bag it.”
“Never say never,” she said. “We may get a small lead that takes us down another road. We keep following whatever the evidence gods give us until we hit a dead-end or solve the case.”
“I’d feel more useful out in the wilderness doing the things that I’m good at,” I told her. “Even if I came up empty.”
“Without a crime scene there may as well be no crime,” she said. “She wasn’t killed out in the boonies unless it was down by the lake. I don’t see her going there at night on her own. She’s not from here. She probably didn’t even know there was a lake on the mountain.”
“Someone could have taken her there,” I said. “Picked her up at the resort and went to do some drinking or necking or whatever.”
“They would have done that in a car,” she said. “That girl didn’t voluntarily go off into the woods at night with a perfect stranger.”
“We never considered the parking lot,” I pointed out. “It was overrun with cars and people when we got there. It could have been the crime scene.”
“Shit, you’re right,” she said. “I can’t believe the cops didn’t think of that right away.”
“The Beech boys aren’t investigators,” I said. “Johnson isn’t really a detective either. They did the best they could with what they had.”
“We’ve still got an hour of daylight,” she said. “Let’s go back up there and scour the parking area and the park itself.”
The park had seen heavy traffic since the girl’s death. There was nothing to find in the gravel parking area but an abundance of tire tracks. The soft earth leading down to the water’s edge had been trampled by hundreds of gawkers. The new spring grass had been flattened. Even the muddy spots had been walked through. I tried to visualize what might have happened. Some guy picks up the girl and drives her to this scenic spot. He plies her with alcohol or weed or romance. They walk down to the lake, and he smashes the back of her skull and kicks her in the water. It matched the timeline attached to the events of the next day. She drifted with the current towards the flow gates until the water level got too low and she grounded in the middle of the lake.
Finding evidence to match that scenario was a different story. Too many people had been here since then. The pool of potential evidence had been tainted. Brody was undeterred. She crawled on all fours along the shoreline, looking for blood or hair or anything that might be useful. I admired her determination, but the loss of light ended her search.
“Damn it,” she said. “I was starting to get attached to the idea that she was killed right here. It makes the most sense.”
“You want to come back tomorrow?” I asked. “Before we start going house to house again?”
“Yes, I do,” she said. “Let’s get an early start. If we’re right, there could still be blood somewhere. That’s about all that we could find that would be useful.”
“Come on,” I said. “Red is waiting for us.”
It had been a long and fruitless day. Brody had do
ne this before, but I hadn’t. Just like Red, I liked to see some results for my efforts. I knew that I’d get tired of searching around those houses and finding nothing real fast. I suggested that we split up.
“Why don’t I go back to looking for our hermit while you canvas the property list?” I asked.
“It will take me twice as long to do it by myself,” she said.
“But our eggs are all in one basket,” I countered. “We have two working theories.”
“I think the guy picking her up at the resort scenario is the most likely,” she said.
“I just have a gut feeling that the hermit is somehow connected,” I said. “Finding traces of him while looking for her killer is too coincidental.”
“Because you don’t believe in coincidences,” she said. “I see where you’re coming from, but I have no such gut feeling.”
“I’ll go along for now,” I said. “But I’m not giving up on the hermit. If we come up empty going through our list, I’ll go after him.”
“I know that’s what you’re good at,” she said. “But you’re as good as me looking for clues. You have the necessary awareness to make a good investigator. Most of us have to be taught that.”
“It came with my lifestyle,” I said. “Before I met you, situational awareness kept me alive.”
“I’ve seen it first-hand since then,” she said. “I’ve admired it, actually. You’ll come in handy searching these properties. If there’s anything to be found, we’ll find it.”
I wished there was a need for Red on Beech Mountain, but the park was full of conflicting scents that would only confuse him. I had to leave him at home while Brody and I returned to the park at first light. She focused her efforts on the shoreline, while I examined the perimeter of the grassy area. We gave it a solid three hours before giving up. There was no telltale blood splatter to be found.
We went back to work on the list, sometimes traveling by foot from house to house. All the properties started to look the same. The main feature was mountainous terrain with partially cleared woods. Most of the lots were less than half an acre, with minimal flat ground. There was a sidewalk or wooden walkway leading to the main entrance. Most provided decent privacy, even if the neighbors were close. In the dark, no one would see a damn thing from next door.
We crossed another ten houses off our list that day. I let Red out to run after we got home. He’d been missing his daily exercise sessions, so I let him wander the yard as long as he wanted. He finally decided that he was hungry, so we both joined Brody inside the cabin. I got a good fire going while Brody fixed dinner. It all seemed so normal. Looking in from the outside you’d never know we were working on a murder mystery during the day. We were simply enjoying a peaceful domestic life by night.
We weren’t in Florida anymore. The drama of our life there overcame us. We had to escape or we’d lose our minds. I’d left a trail of trouble down there. Bad guys who’d prefer to see me dead, rescued maidens, one dead woman, high dollar drug deals, bullets flying; all of that was behind me now. In spite of the early difficulties I’d encountered in the mountains, we were finally settling into our new home. This mission could be left on Beech Mountain at the end of each day. No one was coming to our home to put us in danger.
That night I dreamt of the Beech Mountain Hermit, except he looked like my friend Pop. The old guy was frail and dirty, but he could move about the woods silently and unseen. I’d catch a glimpse of him, but then he’d disappear. No matter how hard I tried to track him, I failed. I knew he was there. I searched and searched, but never did find him.
The dream stuck with me after I woke. What made me think I could find the hermit? Sure, I’d gained some knowledge of the mountains and seemed to possess a certain aptitude for the woods, but this guy had survived in the wild for years without getting caught. He’d be infinitely better at the game I hoped to play with him. He’d probably laugh at the thought of me trying to catch him. The thought of it made me feel better about staying with Brody and working on our list.
Another day going house to house produced nothing but tired feet. We started having doubts about this line of attack. It seemed like a reasonable idea when we drew it up, but the real world results were disheartening.
“We just have to keep at it,” she said. “Diligence creates opportunity.”
“I think you’ve been to one too many inspirational speaker conferences,” I said. “This is starting to look hopeless.”
“If you lose hope you lose the case,” she said. “I once spent a month staking out a suspect before I got what I needed.”
“Our government pays people to sit in the bushes for a month?” I asked.
“Depends on the value of the target,” she said. “The FBI is not involved in low-level crime.”
“I wish we could set up a decoy house,” I said. “We could sit inside comfortably and wait for the perp to come to us.”
“Except he may never show,” she said. “The break-ins have been infrequent. He’s spread them out to keep the attention level low. I’d bet most of them were during severe weather. We should check on that.”
“It’s springtime now, or close enough,” I said. “If the girl caught him red-handed, what was he doing here?”
“Who knows?” she said. “Maybe he just wanted to get a shower. Maybe he needed a new pair of socks. You don’t have much confidence in that theory, do you?”
“If our hermit was involved, he wouldn’t do it here,” I said. “That’s doesn’t mean someone else didn’t do it here. We’re right to keep looking, but I’m not sold on any of our possible scenarios. Not enough evidence to support them.”
“Not yet,” she said. “That’s what we’re looking for.”
“We missed the chance to get something at the park,” I said. “I still think that’s where it went down.”
“It’s hopelessly contaminated now,” she said.
After five days we’d covered just over fifty properties. We kept crossing them off the list and moving on to the next one. We’d begun to learn our way around the neighborhood. We’d talked with a few curious neighbors, none of whom reported seeing the hermit or anything else unusual. Two of them were suspicious of our activities. A quick call to the police chief cleared that up for them.
Since the news of the girl’s death had spread through the community, the police department took a dozen new calls reporting past break-ins or suspicious activity on their property. None of these events were recent. The homeowners had shown up for a weekend and noticed something odd. Originally, they didn’t deem it necessary to report, but now they suddenly remembered it.
Mostly it was added fodder to a long list of non-leads.
Six
I let Red up on the couch so he could rest his head in my lap. I sat there stroking his fur and thinking. I stared at the fire, feeling a warm dog at my side. A pretty woman sat on the other side of Red, trying to learn how to hook a rug. I had a book, but I wasn’t into it. The Beech Mountain mystery was foremost in my mind. I kept coming back to the hermit. Brody was right. I didn’t believe in coincidences. He had to be connected somehow, even if it was only as a witness.
Maybe that was it. My gut told me to pursue the man, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was the killer. We knew he came close to the park and the lake. We’d found a few of his haunts. I tried to piece a new scenario together in my head. The hermit came down to the lake after dark to bathe or pick through the trash cans or whatever. A car pulls in, and the girl and her killer get out. He watches what happens next. He’s a witness to the crime but doesn’t want to be discovered. He backtracks his trail to cover any trace, then disappears. The last thing he wants is for cops to start asking him questions.
Maybe he realized that he’d automatically become a suspect. His word wouldn’t amount to much. He’d be an easy patsy for the police to lay the blame on. He didn’t know the girl or feel any responsibility to help solve her murder. His main goal in life was to avoid society. He
r death wouldn’t change that. It might even intensify it. I was in the unique position to sympathize with him. Not only had I avoided society for a long time, but I’d also been friends with another hermit in these very mountains.
The difference between them and me was that I would have seen it as my responsibility to report what I’d witnessed. Hell, I’d taken responsibility for finding the killer even when I hadn’t seen a thing. I still believed in justice, even if it was vigilante style. I knew right from wrong. I’d put myself in danger more than once to assure that justice was dealt out proportionately.
I made up my mind to find the hermit. I’d let the list play itself out. I’d stick with Brody on our search. Maybe we’d find some clue, some small piece of evidence that would direct us. Either way, I knew then that the hermit had to be found. I also knew that no one but me could find him.
On the sixth day, we almost had something. One of the properties had been disturbed, ever so slightly. We did not find a bloody rock or a broken window, but the subtle signs told us that someone had been there. The dusty door, surrounded by cobwebs, had a doorknob devoid of both of those things. There was also a handprint on the door frame, but no fingerprints. Someone wearing gloves had either entered or attempted entry. There were foot-shaped impressions in the mossy brick sidewalk. We got the Chief to call the owners, who reported that they hadn’t been to their cabin in months.
With permission, the Beech Mountain PD entered the home to look around. Brody and I accompanied them. The Beech boys were one step above rent-a-cops, but Brody knew what to look for. She found an empty beer can in the otherwise empty trash can. The abundant dust was disturbed on the refrigerator door handle. The toilet seat was left up. There was still some water on the shower floor. Was it the hermit, or someone else? Who else could it be? Was it connected to the girl’s murder in any way?
