In the Woods Page 7

  "Oh, yeah?" Alex threw the stock up to his shoulder, taking aim. "Watch me hit that bee hive!"

  "No! Don't!" Wayne gripped the barrel in a panic, pushing it off the mark. Alex grinned at him.

  "Gotcha!"

  "Jerk."

  As they started off again, Alex mentioned, "I could be wrong, bwana, but I don't recall this being any particular hunting season."

  "It's not," Wayne replied.

  "Then what are we doing out here, stalking big game with guns?I believe that's called poaching."

  "We're hiking."

  "With shotguns?"

  "For protection."

  "Whose? I saw that last shot."

  "The woods can be a dangerous place," Wayne advised him sagely."Better to be prepared." He reached out and snapped a few tree branches. At Alex's inquisitive look, he explained, "So we don't get too lost."

  Which implied they were already a little lost?Fabulous news.

  "I feel much better."

  And surprisingly, he did.

  The exertion and unexpected sense of camaraderie felt good, flushing the unpleasant realities of life away. At least for a little while.

  Alex took a deep breath and for the first time noticed the tang of pine and the wintergreeny snap of mint growing wild around them.Nice, invigorating, clean. He hadn't been out hunting since he was a teenager, an excuse to skip school on opening day to do some earthy male bonding usually with a case of beer. He'd always remembered the splitting headache, the ice cold butt from sitting on the ground too long, the boredom and impatience of youth. But there were other things, too, looking back from the experience of adulthood. He'd forgotten how much he enjoyed the fresh air, the chest-beating feel of stalking in the wild, the primal freedom. And he was suddenly grateful to Wayne for bringing him along, for this opportunity to relax and be at peace with himself in the midst of this bigger panorama.

  Abruptly, Wayne halted in front of him and let loose with a blast from his .12 gauge. The report was all but deafening as it echoed for miles. Up ahead, a squirrel tumbled from a high branch. Wayne walked over to it, and after a nudge with his barrel to make sure it wouldn't leap up and attack in a maddened frenzy, he lifted up the mangled remains—a shotgun wasn't exactly delicate—to display his trophy with pride. Alex applauded.

  "I suppose you're going to cut it open and eat the liver in honor of all that is wild in the forest."

  "Are you crazy?" Wayne scoffed. "That's your job."

  Chuckling, Alex plopped down on a handy log and took a moment to rummage through the pack he'd been carrying. He took a long swig from the canteen he discovered, swallowing down the cool, metallic liquid while Wayne did the same. Questions returned to his mind, and the need to know chafed in the comfortable silence.

  He took a minute to study his companion, then asked point blank what had been bothering him from the start.

  "Why did you invite me to come with you?"

  "Your sterling personality? Don't buy that, huh?" Wayne sat down on a neighboring stump, his expression sobering. It was cut to the chase time and Alex got the feeling he wasn't going to like the destination Wayne had in mind. "I heard whispers that you and Helen were having problems at home again, and that they were job related."

  Alex's defenses snapped up. In the back of his mind, he was scrolling down the list of who might have spilled this particular can of very personal beans to their boss, as he said, "It's not that bad."

  His body language said something altogether different, something like, Mind your own business, Bub.

  Wayne wasn't deterred by the lie or the bristle of attitude.He leaned forward, elbows on knees, to remark casually, "Don't bullshit me, Alex. I didn't get to Fire Chief overnight. I climbed up the pole, slid down and climbed back up, again, just like all of you. I know what job stress can do to a marriage, if you let it.You've got a wonderful woman. Take it from a man who's managed to hang onto his wife. Pay attention to her. She probably doesn't understand every detail of what we do, but she sure as hell isn't dumb. Be open with her. She can be your salvation. You don't have to go to the bar like the rest of those fools to find a shoulder to cry on. Been there, done that, and believe me, it's a dead end in the domestic department. A one way trip to divorce court."

  Alex was still tense, in the denial stage, so Wayne continued.

  "You don't have anything to prove, Alex. You're not a cocky kid anymore. You've made your bones more than once to everyone's satisfaction. I thought you put all that kid stuff behind you, and so did Helen. We’re expecting better thing from you now so don’t let us down.”

  Alex sighed, relenting all at once to the overpowering need to talk about it to someone who would understand. "I know. We had a discussion about it last night. When I got home from Double-Vision smelling like a brewery. I thought she was going to hand me my walking papers, and I wouldn't have blamed her. It was a stupid thing to pull, especially after all I put her through before. She hung on through some tough times, and I'm a bastard to put her through that hell again."

  "Terry's death hit you hard, Alex."

  Alex looked up, startled. He thought he'd hid the guilt and personal anguish better than that, but Wayne just smiled, a bit sadly.

  "We lose people in this business, Alex. Sometimes they're strangers, sometimes, friends. But it doesn't have to be loved ones, not if you keep your head together and your priorities straight."

  "I don't need a lecture, Wayne," Alex began testily. The beating he was giving himself was punishing enough.

  "Yeah, I think you do!"

  Wayne's curt tone clicked Alex's mouth shut with a snap. He was about to launch into a heated protest when he got to looking closely at Wayne. Something in his still features hinted that the topic had shifted from Alex Kerwood to a much bigger picture. One whose scope Alex couldn't see. Not yet. So, his chief went on, his voice roughening with each word.

  "Family is everything and if you don't believe that, you're a damned fool. If you can't appreciate what you've got at home, you deserve to lose it."

  "And you know so much about my home life," Alex challenged, threatened and alarmed because, apparently, he did.

  "Cut the crap. I know. I have eyes. I have ears. One of my own starts screwing up, it gets back to me. On the job or off it, it's my business because if affects how you do your work. You can moan and groan all you want about how bad you have it, but until you spend an evening with a friend, an employee, crying his heart out in your arms because you had to tell him his little girl is most likely dead at the hands of a maniac, don't expect me to feel sorry for you. I was Laurie Walshank's godfather, so don't whine to me about how sad your personal life is. You go home and get down on your knees to your wife and beg her to forgive you for being such an idiot as to take her for granted for even a second. You may not get another chance."

  Wayne took a deep breath to steady his careening emotions. In the face of his raw pain, there was nothing Alex could say. But Wayne had made his point. He'd made Alex feel petty in his own guilty grumbling.

  For a minute or two, the men sat in commiserating silence, deep in their own thoughts. Then Wayne broke in to say, "What a bitch.A father isn't supposed to outlive his daughter. It's just not normal."

  Grateful to turn the topic from his own miseries, Alex launched his own impassioned opinion. "Nothing's normal about that nut running loose. I wish there was a way to get the cops to turn him over to us for a few minutes after they catch him. We might not be able to bring his little girl back, but we sure as hell could make the pay back fit the crime. Most likely, when they get him, some slick lawyer will hire a fleet of quack doctors to say he was a victim of society, that he slaughtered innocent people because his father drank, his mother whipped him and his dog chewed up his baseball cards. And he'll get a slap on the wrist, a year in the nut house and be back out doing the same damn things again."

  Wayne nodded. "If they catch him."

  "They will. Sickos like that always slip up sometime. Then he'll
get his."

  "If there's a God," the chief concluded grimly. Then he slapped his hands down on his knees. "Okay, Romeo, let's get moving. I'd like to see a bit more of this place before it gets too dark."

  Alex glanced at his watch and was surprised to see how much time had passed since they'd abandoned civilization. Dusk would be creeping up on them in an hour or so but under the heavy canopy of trees, light could be gone much sooner. And the last place he wanted to be after dark was in the woods.

  Especially with thoughts of a deranged serial killer foremost in his mind.

  Hoisting his pack and tucking the shotgun under his arm, Alex stomped after his fearless leader. He hadn't thought it possible for the forest to get any thicker, but now they were battling their way through it, branches scraping their faces, poking through their clothes, snagging at their packs. A pleasant hike became a difficult progression.

  Maybe it was just the topic of their recent conversation, but Alex had the crawly feeling that they were not alone. It was almost as if the forest had taken on a life force of its own around them, a living, breathing, expectant life force that wasn't totally receptive to their intrusion.

  Of course, they weren't alone. The woods were full of furry and feathered creatures, but those weren't the animals Alex fretted over.He was thinking of a two legged beast, the kind that stalked and killed at random and left fingers as grisly trophies of the crime.

  He was thinking of Pete Walshank's heartache and what Helen would go through if she were to receive the same grim news. It did funny things to his perspective.

  Alex winced back as a limb snapped him in the cheek, drawing blood. "Ow! I think we should turn back." He had no more interest in being a Boy Scout or Stanley to Wayne's determined Livingston.

  Wayne didn't slow. He pointed ahead. "It looks like a clearing.Let's check it out, take five, then turn back. All right?"

  "Sure," Alex grumbled. He dodged the slap of another branch springing back from Wayne's passing and his scowl increased. He risked a quick look around them, seeing nothing but a maze of tree trunks, then red as a limb smacked him in the forehead to remind him to watch where he was going. He was relieved to stumble free of the press of hardwoods and into the opening Wayne had spotted. But as he stood there at Wayne's side, the sense of thanksgiving drained away, replaced by a foreboding chill.

  "Wayne, what the hell is this?"

  It was no natural clearing they'd stumbled upon. That much was obvious. The opening was approximately twenty feet in diameter. A nearly perfect circle had been carved from the native wilderness, leaving barren ground of rock and coarse soil. Not a blade of grass grew within that oval void.

  Which was why the one thing planted there stood out so graphically against the starkness.

  A cross.

  Made of rough branches lashed perpendicularly together with ancient thongs of leather and twine, the cross was less than a yard high. Though it had the appearance of weathering timeless passages, it stood straight, unbent by years, unbowed by time. As if it was planted deep and religiously tended where it jutted up from out of a gentle mound of dirt.

  A mound of specific size and shape that could only be one thing.

  A grave.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  "Wayne, where are we? What is this place?"

  "I don't know," Wayne whispered back, his stare on that crude cross.

  "Tell me it's some family burial plot or something," Alex almost pleaded.

  It was weird, too weird. The clearing, the cross, the mounded earth.

  The sensation of the woods having eyes was back, too, stronger than before, crawling over his skin like the marching feet of a battalion of army ants. The urge to chafe his palms over prickling flesh was overwhelming, but he couldn't seem to move.

  Too weird.

  Then Wayne walked across the clearing to that lonesome grave.He bent down and actually dug his fingers into the soil, scooping away a handful of the dirt. Alex's creepy crawlies were in full swing by then. Even the hair at the base of his neck rose to a quivering attention.

  "What the hell are you doing?" he hissed.

  The answer was incredible in its insane simplicity.

  "I'm digging it up."

  Digging it up . . .

  Wayne shrugged off his pack with a violent hurry and fumbled inside, withdrawing a folding camp shovel. He buried the spade in the earth, pushing hard, flinging a fallout of dirt behind him.

  Alex's paralysis snapped.

  He rushed to the circle's center and knocked Wayne hard, shoulder to shoulder, toppling him from his kneeling position onto his rump. But Wayne came right back, pushing him aside just as hard.

  "What's the matter with you?" he growled, not sounding like calmly competent Wayne Higley at all. Not with that gritty texture in his tone.

  "What's the matter with you? What the hell are you doing, Wayne?" Alex shot back as a quiet panic gained momentum toward full blown hysteria. "Let's get out of here!"

  But Wayne was staring at the mound, his gaze funny. Not funny, ha-ha, but funny, Twilight Zone. "Alex, do you know what this is?"

  "It's a grave!"

  "And what do people put in graves?"

  "Don't talk to me like I'm an idiot." Fear ran hot and cold inside him, fever and chills.

  Then the sensible Wayne took charge from the raving lunatic Wayne, but that wasn't much better as it turned out.

  Not to Alex.

  His boss pointed to the roughly constructed cross with an accusing gesture. "Do you have any idea how many people are missing from this town? Do you, Alex? I mean missing without a trace?"

  Alex's nerves were jumping, twitching like spasms of electro-shock therapy. "Jesus Christ," he all but screamed, not wanting to think about what Wayne was inferring. "It's probably somebody's pet. A cat or dog or gerbil. Wayne, come on! Let's just go! It’s nothing we need to fool with."

  But they both knew that wasn't true.

  They both knew what lay covered by dirt under that simple cross was not somebody's pet.

  It was somebody's body.

  And Alex didn't want to find out whose. He was in the business of bringing 'em back alive not digging 'em up dead. Whoever was under that pile of forever was beyond his help. No dramatic rescue on his part was going to change that. Not now. It was too late.

  Too late!

  He adjusted his gear, which suddenly pulled upon his shoulders as if he were carrying a VW bus in back. His hands slipped on the straps, running wet with sweat, just like his imagination was running wild. His gaze flew around the clearing, searching out the spot where they'd entered. Finding it. Wondering crazily if he could find his own way back to the truck if Wayne continued this insanity.

  But Wayne didn't look insane now. He looked deadly serious.Which was worse.

  "What if it's not a pet?" he began with an ice cold rationality."What if there's a clue under here? Some piece of evidence for the cops. Maybe the remains of someone who's been missing. How can we leave, Alex, not knowing if we could put some family at ease, knowing that their loved one isn't out there being tortured somewhere?"

  Alex hesitated, heart hammering, blood sluicing in tidal waves.He didn't want to look down at that mound of dirt again, to see where it had already been violated by Wayne's first scoop. God . . . anything could be under there.

  Something best left undisturbed, whispered through him on a chill.

  "We'll call someone," he suggested reasonably. Reasonable when you compared it to the alternative of desecrating someone's grave.

  Wayne turned on him in a full blown fury. "I had to wake Pete up to tell him that his daughter was missing! Me! Not the police!"

  Alex stared at him, muscles stiff with panic and dread. Mind swimming with the awful knowledge that it could be Laurie Walshank under that indifferent earth. Laurie with her sweet sorority girl smile and innocent laughter. He remembered how Pete swelled up with a father’s pride every time he spoke of her accomplishments and how he’d talked with su
ch animation about his daughter’s bright future.

  A future that might well be in the ground at their feet under the hand-made cross. Didn’t she at least deserve a marble monument and neatly trimmed grass where her parents would be able to visit with fresh flowers and sorrowful tears? Didn’t she deserve a farewell funeral and her parents the grim certainty of knowing she was resting in peace . . . and where?

  Then Wayne continued, calmer now. "This is personal. If you could’ve seen the look on his face . . ." He took a cleansing breath with eyes closed, then waved a dismissing hand toward the woods. His tone was flat but firm with inner strength. The strength it would take to tell a father that his daughter was missing. The strength it would take to dig down into that concealing soil. "If you're going, get out of here. I'll do it myself."

  Wayne knelt back down, and after a moment's pause, stuck the spade in deep once more.

  Alex watched him pitch the first shovelful. And the second. He glanced at the woods then back at Wayne who was now digging furiously. Alex muttered an oath and slipped his gear, coming to kneel across from his chief, ignoring his startled look, the way it transformed with a gritty pleasure, as he joined in to dig with both hands.

  The soil was cold, giving easily.

  "I can't believe I'm doing this," Alex murmured.

  "Just dig."

  Working steadily, they cleared a good-sized area in the first ten minutes. Brushing the sheen of perspiration from his eyes, Alex glanced up at the cross. It was in their way now. He straightened and gripped it at the crossbar. With a firm yank, he pulled it free from the soil and gave it a careless toss to one side as if it were an indifferent piece of wood with no significance.

  It landed with a thud on the barren ground, and at that moment, every natural sound in the woods went still. The insects, the animals, the birds, even the wind and rustling leaves stopped, going completely silent. The only noise was the labored breaths of two men afraid to stop and just as scared to go on until an area approximately three foot by seven foot was etched down twelve inches.

  Uncovering a burlap sack.