"Must be a doughnut sale on," remarked Angel.
A second car came down the main street, spun on its rear tires as it made the turn, then headed after the first vehicle.
"With free coffee," he added.
I tossed my keys in my hand, then nudged Angel off the hood of the Mustang, where he had just taken up a position. "I'm going to take a look. You want to come along?"
"Nah. I'm a-waitin' for Black Narcissus to finish making himself lovely for us. We'll hold off for you, burn some furniture to keep warm."
I followed the lights of the lead cars as they glanced against the trees, the branches like hands outstretched over the road. After a mile I caught up with the cruisers as they headed up into the forest through a private logging company road, the wooden barrier thrown to one side to enable the cars to pass. Beside the barrier stood a man wearing a wool hat and a parka. A path wound down behind him to a small house on the edge of the company land. I figured that maybe it was he who had made the call to the police.
I stayed close behind the rear car, watching its taillights as it swerved and dipped along the narrow, rutted track. Eventually the cruisers came to a halt beside a Ford truck with a Ski-Doo in back, a huge bearded man with a belly like a pregnant woman's standing beside it. Jennings emerged from the lead car, Ressler stepping out of the car behind at the same time accompanied by another patrolman. Flashlights blinked into life and the line of three cops headed over to the back of the truck and peered inside. I took my own Maglite from the trunk and walked over to them. As I went, I heard the bearded man say:
"I didn't want to leave him out there. There's snow coming on, means he might have been lost till the thaw."
Faces turned toward me as I approached, one of them that of Rand Jennings.
"The fuck are you doing here?" he said.
"Collecting berries. What you got?"
I shone my flashlight beam into the bed of the truck, although what was there didn't need the extra illumination. It needed darkness and dirt and a headstone six feet above it.
It was a man's body, laid out on a sheet of tarpaulin, his mouth wide open and filled with leaves. His eyes were closed and his head was twisted at an unnatural angle. He lay, crumpled and broken, amid the tools and plastic containers in the truck, his hair touching the empty gun rack.
"Who is he?"
For a moment, I didn't think Jennings was going to answer. Then he sighed and said:
"It looks like Gary Chute. He was a surveyor for the timber company. Daryl here found him when he was out checking some traps. Came upon his truck back a ways as well, couple of miles from the body."
Daryl looked like he was about to deny the traps part of the statement. His mouth opened briefly then closed again at a look from Jennings. Daryl looked kind of slow, I thought. His eyes were dull and his brow low, and his mouth, though closed, was in continual motion, as if he was worrying at the inside of his bottom lip with his teeth.
Beside him, Ressler was flicking through the dead man's wallet.
"It's Chute all right," he said. "No cash in the wallet, though. Credit cards are still here. You take it, Daryl?"
Daryl shook his head wildly from side to side. "No, I didn't touch nothin'."
"You sure?"
Daryl nodded his assent. "Sure," he said. "I'm sure." Ressler didn't look like he believed him, but he didn't say anything more.
"Why didn't anyone look for him?" I asked, although, from what Martel had told me, I could guess the answer.
"He's a freelance consultant," said Jennings. "He wasn't due to report until next week and his wife only got worried a day or two ago, when he didn't show like he'd promised. I hope you're not trying to imply anything here, Parker. I've had just about my fill of you."
I ignored him and turned to Daryl. "How did you find him?"
"Huh?"
"I mean, what position was he in?"
"Lying at the bottom of a ridge, near buried by the snow and the leaves," replied Daryl. "Looked like he just slipped, hit some stones and trees on the way down, then caught his neck on a root. Must have snapped like a twig." Daryl smiled uneasily, unsure that he had said the right thing.
It didn't sound very likely, especially with the money missing from his wallet. "You say there was snow and leaves on him, Daryl?"
"Yessir," said Daryl eagerly. "Branches too."
I nodded, and shone my flashlight on the body once again. Something caught my attention at his wrists and I let the light linger for a moment before flicking it off. "It's a shame he was moved," I said.
Even Jennings had to agree. "Shit, Daryl, you should have left him where he was, then let the wardens go and get him."
"I couldn't leave him out there," said Daryl. "It weren't decent."
"Maybe Daryl's right. If it snows, and it will, we could have lost him until the spring," said Ressler. "Daryl says he found the body at Island Pond, wrapped it in the tarp and hauled it back ten miles to his truck with his Ski-Doo. Island Pond's quite a ways from here and, according to Daryl, the road turns into one big snowdrift way before you reach the pond."
I glanced at Daryl with new respect; there weren't many men who'd haul the body of a stranger for miles. "No way anyone can head out there in the dark, assuming we could even find the place," concluded Jennings. "Anyway, this is a matter for the wardens and the state police, but not us. We'll arrange to have him taken to Augusta in the morning, let the ME take a look at him, but that's the end of our responsibility."
I looked up, beyond the trees and into the black night sky. There was a sense of heaviness, as of a weight above us about to fall. Ressler followed my gaze.
"Like I said, Daryl was right. Snow's coming."
Jennings gave Ressler a look that said he didn't want any more details of the discovery spoken of in front of Daryl and, especially, me. He slapped his hands together sharply. "Okay, let's go." He leaned into the bed of the truck and covered Gary Chute's body with the tarp, using pieces of scrap metal, a wheel iron and the butt of a shotgun to hold it in place. He crooked a finger at the patrolman.
"Stevie, you ride in the bed here, make sure that tarp doesn't come off." Stevie, who looked about eleven, shook his head unhappily then climbed carefully into the truck, squatting down beside the body. The other cops went back to their cars, leaving only Jennings and me.
"I'm sure we all appreciate your assistance, Parker."
"Funny, but I don't think you mean that."
"You're right, I don't. Stay out of my way, and out of my business. I don't want to have to tell you that again." He tapped me once on the chest with a gloved finger, then turned and walked away. The cruisers started almost in unison and formed a convoy with the truck-one ahead, one behind-as Gary Chute was brought back to Dark Hollow.
Leaves and branches, as well as snow, had covered Chute's body, according to Daryl. If his death was accidental, and Daryl had taken the money from his wallet, then that didn't make too much sense. The trees were bare, and it had been snowing pretty regularly over the last week or so. Snow would have covered the body, but not leaves and branches. Their presence indicated that someone could have been trying to hide Gary Chute's body.
I walked back to my car and thought of what I had seen in the flashlight's glow: red marks on the dead man's wrists. Those marks weren't made by a fall, or by animals, or frost.
They were rope burns.
When I got back to the motel, Angel and Louis were gone. There was a note under my door, written in Angel's strangely neat hand, telling me that they had gone to the diner and would see me there. I didn't follow them. Instead, I went down to the motel reception desk, filled two plastic cups with coffee and returned to my room.