“So listen, Zack,” Sarah said, a note of caution in her voice, “this has really just happened. They may not even have moved the body by the time you get there. In fact, I think Tracy has told them you’re coming, so they may leave things as they are so you can, you know, do an identification.”
“Okay,” I said. At the speed I was going, I’d probably be up there in a little more than an hour and fifteen minutes.
“I’ll come up, too,” Sarah said, and I knew she meant it.
“Why don’t I get up there, find out what’s actually happened,” I said, “and then I’ll let you know.” Because I am not normally someone to look on the bright side, or wait for all the facts before panicking, I was already making a mental list of people to call. My sister. The funeral director. The lawyer. The real estate agent. Sarah would be good at helping with that sort of stuff.
“What about Cindy?” Sarah asked.
I said I would call my sister when I knew everything.
“If I find out anything more, I’ll call you,” Sarah said.
The landscape changed so gradually as I headed north that I almost didn’t notice it happening, but when I was about half an hour away from Braynor I noticed, even in my preoccupied state, that the hills had grown more steep, the forests of pines more dense, signs of civilization less prevalent, and the road frequently walled on both sides with jagged rock where the highway had been blasted through a rise in the terrain. Every few miles the scenery would open up as the highway skirted the edge of a lake, and taking my eyes off the wheel for a moment, I could see small boats in the distance, some moving at speed, others sitting with middle-aged men hunched over their fishing poles.
I saw a sign reading “Braynor 5” and began looking for the lane into my father’s camp. I knew he was about three miles south of town, and before long I spotted the crudely painted sign up ahead, yellow letters painted onto a brown background, reading “Denny’s Cabins: Fishing, bait, boats. Next right.”
I slowed, saw the opening in the trees where the lane wound down from the highway, and turned in. It didn’t amount to much more than two ruts with a strip of grass growing in the middle, and I could hear the blades brushing along the bottom of the car as I navigated my way in. The grass on either side of the ruts was matted down, where drivers had pulled over when encountering a car coming from the other direction.
Not far down, the lane branched into two. You took the left to go to the farmhouse Dad had opted not to use, but I couldn’t have driven that way had I wanted to, because only a few yards ahead the lane was blocked by a wide wooden gate that was flanked on both sides by a neck-high chain-link fence.
The gate featured a collection of signs, some made from wood and sloppily printed, others commercially available metal signs, dimpled as though shot with BB pellets. They read “Keep Out!” and “Private!!” and “Beware of Dogs!” That last one had originally said “Beware of Dog!” but someone had painted a snakelike “s” at the end to make it plural. As if all those weren’t enough, there was another that said “No Trespassing!” and a homemade one reading “Tresppasers Will Be SHOT!”
I caught a glimpse of the two-story farmhouse and the large barn beyond it as I passed, taking the lane to the right and down over a hill, where the woods opened up and the five small cabins, lined up like little white Monopoly houses, presented themselves.
As did the police car, the ambulance, and a couple of other vehicles parked at random on the lane and on the lawn behind the cabins. The dome lights on the police car and ambulance rotated quietly.
As I pulled ahead, I saw several people gathered on the other side of the ambulance, a couple of them having a smoke, like they were all waiting for something. I parked, got out, my legs feeling a little rubbery not just from what I feared I was about to learn, but from the drive.
They turned and looked at me. Two were dressed in paramedic garb, there was a young dark-haired woman clutching a notepad I figured was the freelancer Tracy, a gray-haired man in a dark suit, tie, and wire-rimmed glasses who had to be the doctor doing coroner duty, three other men in plaid and olive civilian attire that suggested fishing, and a woman in her sixties in a kerchief, hunting jacket, and slacks.
Finally, there was the law. A man in his mid-thirties, I figured, black boots, bomber-style leather jacket, and a felt trooper hat. He took a step toward me.
“Can I help you?” he said. I had a closer look at him, his receding jaw, thin neck, eyes that blinked almost constantly. There was something about him, at first glance, that seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
“I’m Zack Walker,” I said, and cleared my throat. “I got a call. This is my father’s place.”
The young woman with the notepad spoke up. “Mr. Walker? Sarah Walker’s husband?” She was bordering on cheerful.
“That’s right.”
“I’m Tracy McAvoy. This is the guy,” she told the cop. “The one’s whose wife is the editor? At the paper?”
The cop held up his hand for her to stop, as if to say, “I get it.” He extended a hand my way. “I’m Chief Thorne. Orville Thorne.”
We shook. His hand was warm, and damp.
I said, “I was told you haven’t been able to find my father, and that you have a body to…” I seemed unable to find the words I needed. “That there’s, that you have…”
Thorne nodded, poked his tongue around the inside of his cheek, pondering, I guessed, whether I was up to the next step.
“Mr. Walker, we have had an incident. A man’s body was found in the woods just over there.” He pointed. The trees looked dark and ominous. “One of the guests here was out for a walk and discovered him this morning. We haven’t been able to determine just whose body it is, you see, but all the guests here at your father’s camp have been accounted for. But,” and Chief Thorne paused to swallow, “we’ve not been able to locate your father, Arlen Walker.”
“Maybe he’s away,” I said. “Did you consider that?”
Chief Thorne nodded. “There’s his pickup over there.” I looked over by the first cabin, the one I knew Dad lived in, and spotted a Ford truck. “And there’s no boats missing, according to the guests here.”
“I see,” I said.
“It’s an awful thing to ask, but maybe, if you wouldn’t mind, you could take a look for us.” He tipped his trooper-hatted head toward the woods.
I felt weak.
“Of course,” I said.
He led me toward the woods, everyone else following, silently, like we were already in the funeral procession. As I began to be enveloped by trees, the air felt colder.
There was a small clearing, and on the ground, a tarp, maybe seven by four feet, with something under it that couldn’t be anything but a body.
“Are you okay?” the chief asked.
I definitely was not. I said, “Yeah.”
Chief Thorne approached one end of the tarp, gingerly grabbed the corner, and lifted it up, revealing a body, as best as I could tell, from head to waist.
Like they say, nothing prepares you.
What I saw under that tarp looked like something that had been dropped to the ground through the blades of a helicopter. Flesh ripped away, bone exposed, blood everywhere.
Some flies buzzed.
I turned away. I wondered if maybe I was going to be sick. For anyone to die that way, it was unimaginable. But for my own father…
“I know it’s pretty impossible to tell,” Thorne said. “But did you notice anything, clothing, anything at all, that would tell you whether that’s your father?”
The surrounding pines seemed to be waving back and forth, as if in a high wind, but there wasn’t even a slight breeze. The blue sky was below me, the grass above, and then, seconds later, everything was back where it was supposed to be.
“No,” I said.
“We couldn’t find any sort of ID on him, so I was wondering…”