Trace Evidence, page 14
Flint closed the laptop, ran a hand through his hair, and joined Drake in the hall.
As they walked toward the dining room, Flint said, “We’ll leave early tomorrow. Right after sunrise. We need to take a detour on the way back to Houston.”
“Works for me. Where to?”
“Huntsville.”
Drake raised his eyebrows and remained silent.
They’d been friends a long time. Worked together on some tough cases. Drake knew when not to ask questions.
-
Chapter Twenty
Red Maple Lake, California
Six Years Ago
After his shower, Josh donned Kevin’s jeans and sweater and felt almost human again. He paced the bedroom while he waited.
Dan had hobbled into the shower a while ago. The water was still running. His ankle was swollen to twice its normal size and he was moving more slowly than usual. Kevin had brought him an office chair on wheels along with clean clothes.
He wanted to make a plan. But Skip was unconscious and Dan’s behavior erratic. Probably due to his head injury, along with everything else that had happened. Whatever the reasons, both Skip and Dan were unreliable. It was up to him to get them all out.
Safely.
Soon.
His twisting gut told him he wasn’t being overly fanciful, either. He looked outside. Mixed rain and sleet had turned to snow as the temperatures dropped with the arrival of darkness. The compound was beyond remote. No other people for miles. No cell signals. No way to communicate with anyone.
Yet the three of them just happened to be wandering in the woods close to where the Cessna went down? How likely was that? Not very.
They said they were hiking. But they’d been carrying no fishing or hunting gear. No hiking gear, either, for that matter.
There were acres and acres of empty land here. He shook his head.
No. Not believable. Not even remotely.
Still, trauma, exhaustion, and imagination had fueled his misgivings. No doubt. He stretched his sore muscles. The shower had warmed him and he was in reasonably good shape, but the day’s events had worn down his reserves.
He didn’t know what these men were involved with and he didn’t want to know. But that Ruben guy looked downright menacing.
And Josh wasn’t sure how to describe Mark. He resembled his wealthy brother in appearance, but he was familiar for another reason. Josh simply couldn’t put his finger on it. Was it possible that he’d met Mark Wilcox before? He shook his head. Not likely. He didn’t travel in those circles. Not even close.
Kevin was okay. Probably. At least, he had done nothing to arouse Josh’s suspicions. Yet.
He heard the shower stop. Dan would be ready soon. They were expected in the dining room for dinner. His stomach growled. He was famished all of a sudden, and Dan must be, too.
Still, he’d have stolen the off-road vehicle Boyd Wilcox mentioned and driven to Red Maple Resort, even if it took him six hours to get there. He was that concerned.
But Skip couldn’t take the rough ride and Josh couldn’t take the chance that he’d make Skip’s condition worse.
He didn’t like it, but the only thing to do was get through the night and leave early in the morning on the helicopter, as planned.
Dan hobbled out of the steamy bathroom with a towel around his waist. He sat on the edge of the bed and awkwardly dressed in Kevin’s clothes. “This guy has some nice stuff, doesn’t he?”
Josh shrugged. “Cashmere and silk seem a little too much for this wilderness to me.”
“Yeah, but his clean sweater and jeans are great.” Dan slid his normal-sized foot into a sock and rewrapped the elastic bandage around his sprained one. “We should probably burn those clothes I took off. I’ll never wear them again.”
“I hear ya. Ready to go?” Josh pushed Dan into the dining room, the plastic wheels on the office chair traveling easily along the hardwood floors.
The others were already gathered at the dining table. The food smelled like something from a five-star restaurant. His stomach growled again and Dan joked, “Your stomach sounds like your throat’s been cut.”
The words were too close to Josh’s misgivings. He shrugged and said nothing. With every passing hour, his desire to leave here grew. His gut said staying in this place was a mistake. As the shock of the crash and rescue receded and his head cleared, these people seemed more suspicious.
Ruben sat at one end of the table and Boyd at the other. Kevin and Mark sat diagonally across from each other. Places were laid next to each of them, one for Josh and one for Dan, effectively between two of the others. Which made Josh wonder whether they thought he and his friends needed watching.
After they were settled, Kevin said, “I just checked on Skip. He’s still under. He won’t be able to eat anything tonight.”
Josh’s appetite dulled as the guilt slammed his gut again, but the normally finicky Dan tucked into the beef stew in front of him as if he’d never eaten before. Which was odd. His behavior had been more than a little, well, off since the crash. One more thing for Josh to worry about.
Dinner conversation consisted mostly of small talk. Boyd was clearly the leader of the group. The others deferred to him. He started the conversations and kept them on track.
Josh noticed that the topics Boyd chose were all about Josh, Dan, and Skip. Where they lived. Why they were here. How long they planned to stay. The questions raised his internal radar, but Dan seemed oblivious to anything amiss.
Dan had been too chatty his whole life, but tonight he seemed to have no off switch. Maybe he was just nervous. Or maybe it was his head injury.
He blathered about his fiancée, Skip’s wife, their kids, and how Josh was all alone in the world but looking for a good woman, if they knew of any, which got a laugh. He told where they lived, what kind of work they all did, how Josh was their pilot and they’d planned to stay at Red Maple Resort for a week to fish, and on and on.
Every time Josh tried to redirect the conversation, Dan took over again.
Josh noticed a few pointed looks between Ruben and Mark, and at least twice Boyd and Ruben locked gazes and nodded. But no one interrupted, and Dan kept talking all the way through the meal.
Mark left and came back with a tray of desserts and coffee. Dan had moved on to stories about Josh and Skip’s more disastrous college exploits. The others seemed to be entertained while Josh became more and more uneasy.
“Now you know everything about us, down to our underwear preferences.” Josh looked up when Dan finally paused a moment. “What are you guys doing out here?”
The question seemed harmless. But no one answered right away. Kevin looked down at his plate. Mark looked at Boyd.
“Same as you.” Ruben was the one who replied. “We came for the fishing. Arrived yesterday.”
“This is a beautiful home you have here, Boyd. Build it yourself?” Josh said, more to keep the conversational ball away from Dan than any desire to know.
“The property has been in our family for years. Our dad bought it when we were kids,” Mark replied. “Boyd rebuilt the house when StellarSoft became successful.”
Josh grabbed the opening and steered the talk to business topics. Superficial conversation of the kind men engage in when they don’t really want to share anything personal.
After dinner, Mark said, “You guys have got to be exhausted. Weather report is looking good over to Tahoe early in the morning.
We’ll take turns with Skip and I’ll wake you about five.” His words felt like orders more than suggestions.
“Sounds good.” Josh pushed his chair away from the table and moved around to Dan’s makeshift wheelchair.
Kevin handed Dan a couple of white caplets. “These will relieve the pain in your ankle and let you sleep.”
Dan hated taking meds, but he swallowed both caplets without a murmur, which told Josh how much pain he was really feeling.
Kevin handed Josh a snifter of brandy. “This is Boyd’s best. Take it to your room and you can sip it before you go to bed. It’ll help you relax and get some sleep.”
Josh nodded and took the snifter. “Smells amazing. Thank you.”
He wheeled Dan back to the bedroom in the office chair and set the snifter on the bedside table while he washed up. When he came back to the bedroom, Dan was already in bed, deep into slumber. Within ten minutes, Dan’s snoring rocked the rafters.
Josh intended to sit up for a while, but he only took one sip of the brandy before he crawled into bed and turned off the light, overwhelmed by exhaustion.
Just before he drifted off to sleep, in that twilight between consciousness and oblivion, Josh remembered where he’d seen Mark Wilcox before. On television. When his wife was kidnapped a few weeks ago from a casino in Las Vegas. The story had been on the TV news and all over the internet because she was Boyd Wilcox’s sister-in-law. A ransom demand had been paid, but his wife wasn’t returned.
Maybe that’s why these guys acted so suspiciously interested in all of Dan’s revealing conversation. Maybe they’d been worried that Josh and his friends were involved in the kidnapping somehow. Or maybe they were simply distraught over the missing woman.
That made sense. And was oddly reassuring. There was a good reason for their strange behavior. Josh was a practical man. He’d have been suspicious, too, under the circumstances.
Everything made sense. Finally. He relaxed and fell into a deep, exhausted oblivion.
Until a noise he couldn’t quite place invaded his sleep. It sounded like a woman screaming. He opened his eyes briefly. He didn’t know what time it was, but it was full dark. No ambient light of any kind entered the room. He closed his eyes and lay quietly, listening to Dan’s heavy breathing caused by the chemically induced oblivion of the pain pills.
Josh waited a few seconds, listening for the woman’s screams again, but he heard nothing. His eyes were still closed. His breathing even. Vaguely, his brain searched for reasonable causes. The screams had been an animal foraging in the woods. Or he’d been dreaming something his subconscious dredged up. Frightening images of the Cessna crash flashed through his mind.
He listened hard. He heard the wind outside. Rain or sleet tapped the bedroom window.
When he heard nothing in the quiet house beyond Dan’s snoring, he drifted back to sleep.
-
Chapter Twenty-One
Red Maple Lake, California
Six Years Ago
Later, Josh awakened again, still uneasy, for reasons he couldn’t pinpoint. It was dark outside. He fumbled for his watch: 4:23 a.m. Mark would be coming for them at five, he’d said. Might as well get up now.
He tossed back the covers. The morning air hit him like a blow and stole his breath away. Man, it was cold in here.
He wrinkled his nose as he slipped into his pants and the blood, sweat, lake water, tears, and fears enveloped him, imbued with yesterday’s nightmare. But he slid his arms into his sweater and jammed his feet into his boots. He patted his pockets and found his wallet and his phone where they should have been. He would buy new clothes in Tahoe. Until then, these would suffice.
Josh had been to Tahoe before. There were shops and restaurants and a good hospital there. The commercial airport was in Reno, thirty-five miles away. He could fly Skip’s wife to Reno. As much as he dreaded facing Debbie, Skip would feel a thousand times better if she was here.
Dan was still snoring. Josh left him for a few more minutes. He’d check on Skip and confirm that the weather had cleared and get them all out of here.
He slipped out of the bedroom and pulled the door closed behind him. He walked quietly down the hallway to Skip’s room. He opened the door.
Instantly, he sensed something was wrong.
His body began to thrum as if he’d been plugged into a high-voltage electrical tower.
Skip was alone. Mark and the others had promised to take shifts sitting with him all night, but no one was there.
Josh walked over to the bed and touched Skip’s face. His skin was as cold as the room. Why had no one turned the heat on?
He placed three fingers on the side of Skip’s neck to check his pulse. He felt nothing. He pushed harder against Skip’s carotid artery. Nothing. He checked the other side. Still no pulse.
He bent down to put his ear close to Skip’s face. He felt no breath emerge from Skip’s nose or mouth. Instinctively, he pinched Skip’s nose and opened his mouth to start CPR. He began the count. He put both hands flat on Skip’s heart and pushed.
A deep part of his mind supplied the truth, but he ignored it.
He continued CPR for several minutes. Sweat formed on his brow. His arms fatigued. His breathing labored. He felt tears streaming from his eyes and still he kept going.
He began to accept that his efforts were failing. He continued to try for a long time before he gave up. He felt exhausted in spirit. He clamped his jaw, hard, to stop the screams that rose from his chest. He balled his fists instead of throwing something as hard as possible.
How could this happen? Skip was one of the best men on earth. He was young. He had a pregnant wife. A kid. He had the heart of a lion and yet he was kind and gentle. Josh didn’t know how he would live with himself now.
Finally, he simply stood over his friend’s body and sobbed until he’d used up all of his tears and then he stood a bit longer to let the truth sink deeper into his heart.
He’d killed Skip, his best friend since he was eighteen years old.
After a while, he went into the bathroom and pulled a long strand of toilet paper to blow his nose. He splashed cold water on his face and tried to get himself under control.
He squared his shoulders and took a few deep breaths to steady himself. Now what?
Kevin would know what to do. He was a doctor.
Josh left Skip’s room and opened the next bedroom door. Kevin’s bed was empty. He moved to the other rooms. Ruben’s and Mark’s beds were empty, too.
Josh hesitated, thinking about whether to wake Dan or keep looking for the others. He heard noises outside and was reminded of his nightmare. Was it possible that he’d actually heard a woman screaming? Had the others heard her as well? Is that where they were now?
Josh ran toward the front door and onto the porch. The wind and sleet had stopped during the night, as the weatherman had predicted. But the cold front had left a thin layer of frost covering the ground.
He paused to listen. Noises. Coming from the west side of the house. Definitely.
He dashed down the stairs and his boots crunched across the frost as he ran toward the noise.
He entered the woods where it was so dark he could barely see. He hadn’t thought to grab a flashlight. He slowed his pace.
His feet slipped on the icy ground. Branches slapped his face and neck. He pushed them aside and slowed further. The last thing he needed was to fall and break something.
The air was so still. He continued to hear noises in the distance and navigated carefully toward them.
He rounded a bend and saw the faint light of a campfire ahead. Mark Wilcox was on the far side of the campfire. He was bent at the waist. He held a shovel in his hands.
Josh stopped. He controlled his rapid breathing. He allowed his eyes to adjust to the campfire light.
Now he could see that Mark was digging. He counted seven holes, each with a small pile of dirt next to it.
The scene made no sense. Why was Mark Wilcox digging holes in the darkness? Where were the others?
Near the campfire, not far from where Josh stood, was a red and white plastic cooler, the standard fifty-two-quart size. The kind Josh and his friends used to hold beer cans for tailgating during college football season.
The lid was open. Josh stood on his toes to peer over the rim.
He saw ice inside.
And something else.
The weak campfire’s glow provided insufficient illumination. What was in that cooler?
The scene was surreal. Alarming. Josh blinked to refocus his eyes and turned his head slowly to examine everything he could see in the dim light.
Which was when he first noticed the other items.
A knife on the ground between the campfire and the cooler. Larger than a machete. More like a sword. He’d seen something like it in news reports. Swords like that were used in ritual killings in some parts of the world.
The blade was covered in something dark and gooey.
Two small piles snugged close to each of the holes Mark had dug. One pile was the dirt from the hole. But the second pile was something else.
Josh’s grief-stricken mind finally grasped what he was seeing. Horrific images. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head as if to erase them from his corneas.
Surely what he saw here was nothing more than another nightmare. He was lying in the bed next to Dan’s, back in their room. That’s what this was.
He opened his eyes. The scene had not changed.
Beside each hole was a pile of fleshy stumps. Body parts. He could make out a forearm. A foot at the end of a short calf. A small woman’s hand with fuchsia-pink polished fingernails.
Hacked expertly from a torso by that blade on the ground.
The blade splashed with dark, gooey blood.
His eyes widened and his mouth opened in horror. He slapped a palm across his lips to avoid crying out.
He raised up on his toes and peered into the cooler again. Now that his eyes had adjusted, he could see the severed head, face down inside the cooler. Long brown hair, starkly distinguishable from the ice upon which it rested.
His knees buckled. He fell to the ground and pushed himself upright. He backed away from the scene as quietly as he could, jaws clamped to keep the horror from spilling into the night.
