“Kids looking for a place to hang out?”
“Hang out?”
“Drink beer. Smoke weed.” Jesus. Was this guy clueless?
“Same answer. There are much easier places to do the do.”
Do the do?
“What about outsiders?” I asked.
“The trail hasn’t been posted online or in park service brochures for years.”
“You and I spotted the shed from above.”
“We were looking.”
“You don’t find it surprising that no hikers, climbers, hunters, bird-watchers, bat counters, mushroom collectors, or stargazers ever came here to squat?” A bit too sharp.
Not bothering to answer, Ramsey did another round with the torch. He was right, of course. Still, it bothered me. It’s basic physics. When a space is devoid of matter and energy, something moves in to fill the vacuum. In the case of abandoned structures, that something is inevitably Homo sapiens.
An icy gust sliced through a crack and whirled in an eddy around me. I zipped my jacket to my chin and jammed my hands in my pockets, wondering if I was on the dumbest wild-goose chase in history.
Or was the chill I felt triggered by forces other than wind?
“Come on.” One last sweep, then Ramsey clicked off the flash. “There’s nothing here.”
We were moving toward the door when we heard a bark. Just one. Loud and firm.
Ramsey paused, a sickly slash of gray turning his face cadaveric. Then, “Gunner’s got a hit.”
Eyes scanning three-sixty, we hurried from the shed. Gunner was no longer at its corner.
“Where are you, boy?” Ramsey called out.
The dog gave another solitary yelp, muffled by the trees. He was below us and off to the right.
We hurried to the edge and peered out into the gorge. Ramsey’s right arm was again cocked and ready for action.
My eyes registered a few thousand shades of brown, here and there flashes of a trail I wouldn’t have tried when decades younger and Crank-Up-the–Enola Gay drunk.
“There.” Ramsey pointed downslope. “On the ground. Do you see that?”
I sight-lined his finger to a giant pickup-sticks jumble of trees. At first I saw nothing but a tangle of dead trunks and branches.
Then I spotted Gunner, down, snout pointed at a slash of blue.
“What is that?” Squinting and shielding my eyes.
“Gunner’s question, precisely.”
An image popped from some corner of my mind. Recent intake. I pushed it aside for later consideration.
“Can we get to it?” I asked.
“Follow me.” Ramsey’s voice had a tense edge. “Lean your weight toward the mountain and place your feet and hands as I do.”
Ramsey eased off the ledge onto what remained of the trail and began inching downward, body paralleling the slope. I followed, heart going like mad.
This third step down of the Devil’s Tail was like the first two on steroids. Intent on mimicking Ramsey’s every handhold and breath, I didn’t think about the return trip.
A lot of panting, sweating, and, on my part, cursing, and we finally maneuvered the last few feet. Gunner flicked us a one-second glance, then refocused on the scent that had tickled his olfactory lobes.
The dog was staring at a swatch of blue plastic impaled on a stub of pine branch wind-whittled to a shiv-like point. I leaned down to inspect it. Saw a segment of rim and a small round hole that had once held a handle.
“Looks like part of a bucket.” Trying not to sound disappointed.
“That’s not why he alerted,” Ramsey said.
I straightened to look at the dog. Gunner was staring at a rock lying slightly downslope, wedged among the upended roots of a long-dead hardwood. His eyes, huge and eager, showed far too much white.
I edged closer to Gunner’s find and squatted.
The thing was rocklike, but not a rock. Though solid and gray, its sides were symmetrically curved, its top and bottom flat.
I reached out and touched one flat surface. It felt rough and gritty. Using two hands, I flipped the object. Though heavy, its weight was much less than I’d expected.
Seeing the down side clarified the lack of poundage.
I stared, puzzled.
Then, slowly, an improbable possibility shaped up in my mind.
I dropped to my knees and repositioned myself for a different view.
Barely breathing, I raised my gaze to the impaled fragment of bucket.
No.
My mind rejected the notion.
Yes.
A feeling cold as a grave washed through me.
“It’s concrete.” My heart was thudding, fast and hard.
Ramsey just looked at me.
“Concrete was added to the contents of the bucket and allowed to set. The bucket was thrown from the trailhead, intended for the gorge. On the way down it hit the shed and cracked.”
I looked to see if Ramsey was with me. He was.
“When the bucket landed here and impaled on the pine, already damaged, the plastic burst and the hardened concrete rolled free.”
“How do you know the bucket hit the shed?” With nothing at all in his voice.
“Gunner alerted at the southeast corner. There are blue flecks embedded in the boards. I noticed them earlier, but it meant nothing until now.”
Ramsey thought about that. “Why would concrete and plastic interest a cadaver dog?”
“They wouldn’t.” I gestured at what had been the down side of the bucket-shaped mass. “Take a look.”
Ramsey dropped to a knee beside me. For a very long moment, he studied the concrete. Then, “The center’s hollowed out.”
“Yes.”
“In the shape of a head.”
“Half a head.”
“The aforementioned bucket contents.”
“Yes.”
“Someone put a severed head in a bucket, added concrete, then tossed the works into the gorge,” he summarized tonelessly.
I nodded, though he was still looking down.
“So where’s the head?”
“The concrete popped out of the bucket, somehow split down the middle. Maybe water got into a crack then froze. Whatever. Once exposed to the elements, the head began to go south. Scavengers smelled the decomp and organized a picnic.”
Ramsey’s brows dipped, but he voiced no disapproval of my turn of phrase. “Gunner’s picking up on that.”
“The concrete may retain traces of organic material. Skin, hair, blood.” Brains. I left that out.
“Which could yield DNA?” Suddenly meeting my eyes.
I waggled a hand. Maybe yes, maybe no.
Ramsey’s face remained impassive but I could see the gears meshing behind his eyes. “The head left a negative impression.”
“Yes. It created a mold.”
“Like the ones used to make death masks.”
“Similar concept.”
“Using the mold you can create a three-dimensional cast of the victim’s head and face.” Thinking it through aloud. “A bust.”
“I can try. But this is only the right half.” I indicated the concrete, then the forest around us. “The left half’s somewhere out there.”
“Well, then.” Ramsey rose to scan the mountainside. “We sure as hell need to find it.”
I stood, knees protesting the imposition. Brushed dirt from my hands and jeans.
Almost smiled.
So Deputy Do-Right could cuss after all.
Without warning, something lifted the tiny hairs on my arms and neck. At first, not so much a noise as an anomaly in the air. I paused, listening.
Before I could identify what had tripped the alarm in my neurons, a force blasted me sideways onto the ground. Breath exploded from me, and my lungs knotted into spasm.
As I struggled for air that wouldn’t come, sound gathered into a soft rumble that grew in volume. Added thrashing, cracking, the snapping of dry branches.
Sweet Jesus!
Something big was skidding and jumping directly toward us! Drawing my knees to my chest, I tucked my chin and threw my arms over my head.
None too soon. In seconds, a heavy mass struck the pile of dead trees at my back. Soil and bark spit upward, then showered down. I heard a whoosh, a thud, then the object continued thundering downhill.