Fallen Mountains, page 19
“You smell that?” Mick asked.
Red nodded. He closed his eyes, concentrating. Sometimes, eliminating one sense could sharpen another. He wondered how far a smell could travel in the woods, with a breeze, with other scents—pine, dirt, that sweet and dizzying smell of autumn olive. Here, with so much space, he wasn’t sure how to track it. A shadow crossed over him from above, a momentary break from the sun’s force: a large bird circling. He looked up.
Red leaned back a little, watching the bird, trying to assess its path, determining where it was circling. He shielded his eyes and began walking west. Mick watched him for a moment and then wrapped the flagging around a tree to mark the spot where they left their course, and followed.
Red was focused now, like a predator honing in on its prey. He looked up, then down, up, then down. He stumbled awkwardly through the obstacle course of limbs and stumps. He tripped over a branch and fell to his knees, but climbed up quickly, keeping his eyes on the bird. Mick followed a few yards behind, slipping in his loafers, struggling just as much as Red with all the limbs and treetops tangling the forest floor.
“There,” Red said, pointing to a spot forty yards ahead.
Three more birds, these on the ground, eyed them with contempt. With their horrid red heads and black bodies, their beady eyes, they were ugly and menacing. One of the birds leaned over, pecked at something, and then opened its wide, sobering wings—seven or eight feet across—and took flight. The others followed suit. They flapped awkwardly to a nearby tree, a tall, scrawny pine. And there, they waited, high above the men, hovering, keeping watch.
“What are they?” Mick asked.
“Turkey vultures.” Red began walking to where the birds had been hulking along the ground, slowly, cautiously. Beside him, Mick reached for his piece, strapped to his belt. He rested his hand on it, following Red. Red pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and held it over his face. The smell was overpowering now, a dense, vertiginous smell of death. One summer, back when he was a kid living in The Rocks, a neighbor’s cat had died under the porch, and for weeks it just rotted there, stinking.
They couldn’t figure out what the stench was or where it was coming from. Morning after morning, he complained to his mother, until finally, he went on a search, circling their property, following his nose. At last, he found it. He grabbed a garbage bag, scooped it up, and took it out to the dumpster. He didn’t have the heart to walk over to poor Mrs. Gorajczyk’s house and tell her that her beloved white cat had somehow elected to kick the bucket under their porch.
In the clearing ahead, a throng of flies thicker than Red had ever witnessed hovered loudly over something they couldn’t see just yet. Red stepped to the side and waved Mick ahead. He doubled over, vomiting in a felled treetop, the smell too much.
“You all right?” Mick called over his shoulder. Red raised his handkerchief in response, and Mick slowly approached the place where the flies buzzed. When he recovered, Red followed.
A body lay in the dirt: a tangle of muscle and bone, the face gashed up, the eyes gone. The abdomen and chest had been splayed open and ripped up and—removed. There was no heart, no stomach, and over the rib cage lay a black and yellow Pirates t-shirt that had been torn to shreds. Next to what was left of the right hand lay a pistol, and farther away, a shotgun Red recognized as Jack’s.
“It’s him,” Red said, his voice hoarse. He wanted to run, far from that place, from the smell and sight of death, and he understood why the man had panicked and taken off the night before.
Mick kneeled at the bottom of the body. “Now that,” he said, pointing to Transom’s leg, caught in a rusty, bloody contraption of metal, “that is something I haven’t seen before.” He reached into his backpack, took out his tablet, and began circling the body, snapping photographs from various angles, kneeling, standing, leaning in close. He tapped some notes into his tablet and then began talking logistics—how they would get the body out of the woods, how they would preserve the evidence. If there was any evidence.
Red doubled over again, vomiting, hand wrapped around a tree for balance. It was all too much: the terrible sight of that body, the flies, the stench, the vultures flapping in the pine.
“I need you to call Tuck,” Mick said. “Tell him to come right away.” He wiped his brow with his shirtsleeve. “Do you think we can get a truck up here?”
Red shook his head. “Not with all these trees down. Could try a four-wheeler, rig something up to it, maybe. Or a UTV with a bed in the back.” He thought for a moment, attempting to focus in the midst of the mess and smell, hoping to come up with a name of someone who might have a Cub Cadet or a Gator, someone who might be willing to loan their farm vehicle to haul a dead body out of the woods. How would he explain that, exactly? Who in the world would want to sign up for such a thing?
“Need you to call the coroner, too,” Mick said. He frowned. “You do have a coroner, don’t you?”
Red nodded. “Got someone we use over in South Tier. I’ll give him a ring.”
Mick opened his backpack and took out some fluorescent orange flagging. “Also, we need to mark this spot,” he said, “make sure we know how to find our way back. We need to figure out a way to get this body out of here, preferably in one piece, and we need to bring in Chase Hardy.”
BEFORE
Chase had hoped that the dull familiarity of milking the cows would allow him to clear his mind, that the labor would help burn down his anger. He’d thought that the barn, the soothing melody of the machinery, the low moan of the cows, might ground him, ease the throbbing in his head. Instead, the monotony seemed to have the opposite effect. Slogging through the chores spurred his wrath: as he worked, he reconstructed the past six months, piecing together the details. Transom had come at the precise moment when he knew Chase needed him, when Chase was grieving and alone and had no one else to turn to. He’d planned that camping trip the same weekend the forester was coming to mark the trees. He’d lied about trying to save the trees. He’d gone against Chase’s wishes—Jack’s wishes—and signed away the mineral rights. The one remnant of his family’s legacy, the one thing Chase had left—Transom had destroyed it. And it had been his plan all along, to take and take, no matter who got hurt along the way. It had been his plan all along to betray.
When Chase finished the chores, he walked briskly back to the house. It was still dark as he entered Jack’s office, slid his lightweight camouflage coveralls over his jeans and t-shirt, grabbed his headlamp and his Winchester 1873, still dark as he hiked quickly up the farm lane, loaded the weapon, and slipped into the trees. There’d been a miscommunication, he would say, later. A hunting accident. He’d say they’d both gotten turned around in those woods.
A thousand times Chase had walked this land without light; he knew the slant of the hollow, the strain on his knees as he traversed it. He knew the dip where Jack had removed some soil and hauled it to a wet and failing field; he knew to avoid the huge rotting log that some creature or other used as a den, year after year. But now, with most of the trees gone and stumps and branches strewn about like wreckage, everything looked different. Felt different. Smelled different, too. He switched on the headlamp, struggled to get his bearings, then switched it off again. He came to a large tulip poplar, and in the dark ran his fingers along the smooth bark. With its wide, magnificent branches and tall, straight base, it had been a beautiful tree, and still was, especially compared to its new surroundings—he could just make out its shape in the coming light. Chase flashed his light again and saw a rusty metal burn barrel nearby; the loggers must’ve forgotten to remove it when they finished. Or maybe the frackholes were still using it. He flicked off the light.
He leaned against the tulip poplar and closed his eyes. Something rustled close by, dry leaves shifting on the forest floor: a living thing, moving. He squinted, trying to discern a shape stirring in the dark. Transom? His heart thumped, pulse hammering at his temples. He flashed his light and caught a glimpse of glowing yellow eyes: bright, glittering beads in the dark, then a tail, gray and bushy. Fox. He breathed out and wiped his brow. Though the sun had not yet risen, it was hot, and he was overdressed and hadn’t thought to bring water. The woods spun.
Even in the dark he could see how ugly this sacred ground had become, how spent and abused and ugly. He fumbled along slowly, unsure of his footing, thinking about the afternoon, the winter before, that he’d lain back on the boulders and decided to sell Transom the farm, to trust him. He remembered all the Sundays he’d spent in that hollow as a teenager, sorting out his thoughts when the details of his life confused and overwhelmed him. Now, the boulders he used to climb were no longer reachable. A colossal pile of trees, either dead or of little timber value, had been pushed and stacked close by, blocking access. As he took it all in, a swell of grief rolled over him: his parents, Maggie, Jack. The land, too—trees, field. So much had been lost, so much taken. Chase felt that same sadness, same rage, that sensation of losing himself, seething deep inside his gut. Usually that feeling disturbed him, made him uneasy, but this time he felt a familiar thrill, one he hadn’t felt in a long time: a dizzying rush like the quick burn of moonshine. What was it Transom had said, all those years ago in the woods? Feels good, don’t it. Kicking back at the world for what it done to you.
Yes.
He began making his way east, up and over the steep ravine and down into the next hollow. He moved quickly at first, knowing that Transom wouldn’t be able to hear him from far away. As he got closer to the Nest, he slowed his approach, moving carefully among the stumps and branches. He was feeling a little disoriented, with the trees and space he’d always used as landmarks gone, and so many new shapes and obstacles to negotiate along the way. There was plenty of cover for him, though, and he hunkered low, moving from one shadow to another. Around him, the gray light was growing lighter: soon, the sun would crest the ridge and the woods would become a labyrinth of beam and shadow. He had to hurry.
He could almost see the dying oak tree where Transom had told him he’d be: the Nest was still there, it hadn’t been destroyed in the logging. He walked a few more steps and then knelt behind a stump, about three feet tall, and peered over the top: it was a good place to hide and take stock of his surroundings. The Nest looked no different than it had the fall before, when he’d dropped off Jack to hunt there. He saw the branches he and Transom had dragged and stacked at the base of the tree to create a little wall, many years before. A fort it was, back when they were boys, a place where they’d played and hunted and pretended.
And there was Transom, tucked in behind that wall, leaning against the tree, staring at a white pine the loggers had left behind. What was he doing? Chase raised the Winchester, nestled the stock into his shoulder, found Transom through the scope. His camo jacket was open, a bright yellow and black Pirates shirt taut across his belly. Chase panned left and right. No turkey decoy set up to speak of, either. Transom slowly raised his hand and placed something in his mouth, tilted his head back, and continued gazing at the white pine. Another one of those pills.
Through the scope, Chase shifted slowly to find what Transom was looking at, watching with such intensity, and he saw that it was a nuthatch, Jack’s favorite bird, walking sideways, upside down as nuthatches do, its tiny white and black body hopping down the pine, its long black beak pecking at the bark, its small head turning to look at Transom from time to time, and Transom watching, mesmerized, at peace.
Then, just as quickly as his plan, his disturbing resolve, had come to him, it was gone, like a light switching on: Chase knew he couldn’t go through with it—his hands and body began to quiver and all at once he was fully aware of himself. He stayed low and turned away, crouch-running in the opposite direction, back toward the barn, sobbing and shaking and sweating hard. He dodged stumps and leaped over fallen branches and when he knew he’d moved out of Transom’s sight he dropped to his knees and buried his face into the bed of leaves on the forest floor and, for the first time in many years, wept.
AFTER
Red had arranged for an autopsy the day he and Mick found Transom in the woods, and earlier that morning, the report had come in. It had been hard to determine what had happened, exactly, because the body had been carrion for over a week. Not only the vultures, but other animals, too, had been feasting on the corpse, and that fact, combined with the regular process of decay in such immoderately hot weather, had made quite a mess of what remained. But the coroner, whom they’d summoned from forty miles away, felt with a good degree of certainty that he knew what had happened.
Transom had stepped into an old bear trap. The force of the trap snapping shut would have severed tendons, peroneus ongus muscle, extensor digitorum longum muscle, although much of the body’s flesh was gone by the time they found it. The trap had broken two bones, the fibula and tibia. Red carefully studied the coroner’s report; he’d seen the white shards of bone thrusting through the ruins of Transom’s battered body. He’d even looked up the bones on a sketch of the human body, trying to picture how it might have happened.
Eventually, Transom probably would’ve bled out, the coroner said, but the thing that had killed him, the actual cause of death, had been a gunshot wound to the head, a .44 bullet from the fancy pistol they’d found with the body. Suicide, Red concluded, ready to close the case. Transom’s prints were on the grip; traces of gunpowder residue were found on what was left of his hand. It was clear he’d been the one to shoot the weapon.
But Mick wasn’t ready to shut things down, not just yet.
Which is why they were at the back of the police station again, sitting across from Chase Hardy, contrite and grief-stricken. As much as Red missed Jack Hardy, he was glad his old friend didn’t have to see all of this, because, sensitive soul he’d been, he may not have been able to handle it. Not just those beautiful woods, now pushed and cut to a wasteland, not just the compressor station being installed at the top of his field, but also this, now, too: the mangled, eaten-up body of someone he and his wife had raised as a second grandson, dead on Hardy property.
“Here we are again,” Mick said, the oscillating fan whirring in the doorway, lifting the papers on the edge of the table every few seconds as it made its rotation.
Chase leaned over the table, his hands folded, a position of penitence, of prayer, maybe.
“I thought he’d up and left,” Chase said, finally. He didn’t look up, but he began to rub his thumb over the back of his hand. “I thought he felt bad about everything—the farm, me— and he just decided to leave.” He paused again, then turned to face Red, his blue eyes startling and sad. “That’d be the way he’d do it,” Chase said, “if he wanted to make things right. That’s what I thought, at least.”
Mick reached behind Red and grabbed a photograph of the .44 they’d found on Transom. “You recognize this?” he asked, sliding it across the table to Chase.
Chase frowned, eyeing the black grip and fancy gold filigree. “Transom’s father collected them, fancy pistols like that. Had a thing for Smith and Wessons.”
“It wasn’t registered,” Mick said.
Chase shrugged. “Probably bought it a long time ago, before they had all these rules about guns. Besides, Mr. Shultz was never really one for playing by the book.”
“That’s for sure,” Red muttered. He leaned forward and started to stand. Chase had confirmed it: the weapon was Transom’s. They were done here.
But Mick folded his hands. “What do you think Transom was doing out there in the woods?”
Gripping the table, Red eased back into his chair.
Chase swallowed.
“He didn’t have a hunting license—we determined that right away with a call to the Game Commission—but it looks like he was hunting.” Mick slid another photograph across the table: Transom dead, face swollen, flesh missing, the camo jacket rumpled and dark with blood.
Chase turned his head and shuddered.
“Come on, Mick,” Red said. There was no need to put anyone through the pain of seeing the photographs. Red could barely look at them himself.
Mick took a swig of coffee, stood, and leaned against the filing cabinet. “Did you know about the trap?”
Chase shifted his weight around in his chair. “Yes and no.”
“What do you mean, yes and no?”
“He said he was going to set it. I told him I thought it was a bad idea.” He wiped his brow. “I thought he was just messing around, just talking. He did that sometimes, mouthed off. I didn’t know he was really gonna do it.”
“Are there more?”
Chase shrugged. “Jack only had the one bear trap. But I guess there might be other ones, smaller. Hard to tell.”
Mick jotted something down in his tablet. “It could’ve been you,” he said. “You could’ve stepped in it. Or those men who are out at the property working. Or Red, or me.”
Chase nodded. He turned to gaze toward the front of the building, out the window. “I know.” He traced a crack in the tabletop.
“If Transom’s the one who set the trap, why didn’t he know it was there?”
Chase shook his head. “I told him he needed to do a good job of marking where they were. I told him he needed to keep track of them.” He wiped his eyes. “I don’t know. Like I said, I didn’t think he was really gonna go through with it.”
Mick sighed. Earlier, Red had also pointed out that the woods would’ve looked much different than they had, the winter before. “How do I know you didn’t set it?” Mick asked. “You had motive. You stand to inherit the whole farm.”
