I looked at Ramsey. He was studying Gunner. The dog was tense. Ears back, head low, eyes fixed on the shack.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Probably an abandoned park service shed.”
“It has Gunner’s attention.”
“It does.”
“Could he catch a scent from this far away?”
“He’s done it before.”
“Is it possible for us to get down there?”
“The path from here to the first outcrop is in pretty good shape.”
I must have looked skeptical.
“How about I check out what’s tweaking Gunner,” Ramsey said. “Anything suspicious, I’ll report back.”
“Not a chance.” Sounding monumentally more confident than I felt.
“Okay, then. Let’s do it.”
Ramsey whistled once, short and shrill. The dog bounded to his right, vanished, and, seconds later, reappeared on the Devil’s Tail. A flash of brown, then he was gone.
Ramsey took the lead. I followed, eyes glued to the ground.
The deputy’s “pretty good” translated to steep and treacherous. Lurching from tree trunk to tree trunk, I picked my way downward as though traversing a minefield. Now and then a boot skidded, sending pebbles and clumps of mud cascading before me.
As I progressed, my brain logged information. The scent of pine. A faint trace of skunk. Lichens. Black lace branches overhead. A delicate chain of silver bell at my feet.
Birds cawed complicated grievances. Far below, a river carved igneous rock. At one point I heard a flurry in the underbrush followed by a truncated shriek. I paused, breaths puffing from my mouth like tiny fog clouds. I pictured a hapless rabbit or squirrel, eyes already filming, fur darkening with blood.
My mind flashed possible predators. A copperhead. A timber rattler.
Ignoring my overly gruesome imagination, I continued for what seemed another five miles. Actually, ten more yards and the gradient leveled off.
Gunner was on his belly, gaze fixed on one corner of the shed. Ramsey was beside him, jacket unzipped, elbow flexed, hand poised at his hip. Shadows marbled his face like deep purple bruises.
For one lunatic moment I felt a chill, as though some feral presence inhabited the dark stained-glass world we’d invaded.
Shake it off, Brennan.
I crossed to Ramsey. Up close I could see that the shed was barely managing to hold together. The roof was tin, each sheet rusted and pulling free from the nails meant to secure it. The walls were crude pine planks, probably homemade and quickly slapped together. Here and there a board had fallen free, or loosened at one end to drop to an unworkable angle.
Wordlessly, Ramsey pulled a Maglite from his belt and gestured me behind him.
Really? I questioned with lifted palms and brows.
“Another reason the trail’s unused is the hefty black bear population.”
“Right.” Moving to Ramsey’s back.
“I’ve spotted no scat. Still, it’s wise to avoid surprises.”
“What about Gunner?” For some reason I felt compelled to whisper.
“What about him?”
“He’s okay with bears?”
“He ignores them, they return the courtesy.”
Without warning, Ramsey banged the tin with his torch. Causing me to jump.
No hibernating hulk jerked awake with a snort. No enraged mama Ursus charged out to confront us.
“Yo!” Ramsey shouted.
Silence.
Satisfied that no one was home, Ramsey rounded the corner of the shed. With me beside him, he pushed with his free hand, and the door swung on its hinges. We both craned forward.
The shed’s interior was a tangle of shadows. Where the curling tin and errant boards had created gaps, faint gray slashes crisscrossed at disparate angles.
Ramsey thumbed the switch, raised the flashlight to shoulder level, and we stepped across the threshold. The air was cold and dank. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, my nose took in earth and damp wood and rotting vegetation.
Ramsey swept his light slowly and methodically. Particles of dust twirled and danced in the bright white beam.
Wooden shelving lined the wall directly ahead. I noted a roll of chain linking, several saws, pruning shears, a long-handled ax, a stack of park service signs, all rusty and coated with grime. On and among the tools lay the desiccated remains of generations of spiders and insects.
The beam crawled on, probing. Found a rake and shovel leaning against the north wall. A ladder at its base.
“Sure enough,” Ramsey said, perhaps to me. “Park service storage.”
Every angle in the place was thick with cobwebs. One corner held a crumbling bird’s nest. Below it, white rivulets streaked the walls and dried twigs scattered the floor.
“Looks like no one’s been in here for a while,” I said.
“Looks that way.”
Ramsey ran the beam across the floorboards.
“Zero evidence of trespass.”
I referred to the absence of the detritus typically found in abandoned dwellings: cigarette butts, fast-food wrappers, empty cans and plastic bottles, used condoms. The reek of human feces and piss.
“None,” Ramsey said.
“That strike you as odd?”
“Can’t imagine the locals slogging down to pilfer old tools. Too much sweat hauling the junk back up the mountain.”
“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.
&nbs
p; “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.
Stomach in free fall, I stayed fetal, pulse banging in my ears.
“You okay?” Close to my ear, yet a million miles off.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
Again the voice. Anxious.
Ten wild heartbeats, then my lungs relaxed a micron.
I inhaled. Inhaled again, deeper.
The oxygen helped. The trembling in my limbs began to subside.
“Were you hit?”
Still, I didn’t trust my voice to answer.
Lowering my arms, I pushed to all fours and ran a wrist over my mouth. Spit soil and muck.
“Are you hurt?”
I shook my head, mind still numbed by panic.
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
I glanced sideways. Ramsey was up on his knees, face filigreed with shadow from the branches above. Dirt and dead flora decorated his jacket and cap.
“What the hell?” Rotating to my bum.
“I’m guessing a rock. Which is now at the bottom of the gorge.”
“How?”
Before Ramsey could answer, Gunner made his entrance.
“And where were you, chicken balls?” Still rattled, I fell back on humor.
The dog cocked his head but didn’t reply.
Ramsey got to his feet and extended a hand. I took it and pulled myself up. Tested my legs. Reasonably steady.
“You good to climb?” Ramsey looked genuinely concerned.
I nodded. Not sure that I was.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I jabbed a thumb at the bucket fragments and concrete. “What about—?”
“I’ve got it.”
Our ascent took close to forty minutes. Very tentative. Very cautious. You can imagine. I’ll skip the details. Once topside, Ramsey drove until we both had signal.
Reconnected with the wonders of wireless communication, I phoned the MCME. Took three tries. Still stoked on adrenaline, I kept fumbling the keys.
Larabee bounced me, as expected, to the chief ME in Raleigh. The directive was the same as before. Collect any small stuff and take it to Charlotte. If there’s big stuff, call for a van.
While we were talking, an incoming call lit up the screen. I
recognized the number. Hazel Strike. I ignored her.
Ramsey phoned his boss. Briefed him on the bucket and concrete. And the rock.
The sheriff, Kermit Firth, unlike his predecessor, was a certified criminal investigator. Firth said he’d give a courtesy heads-up to Burke County but felt his department could best handle the situation. The Avery rescue squad would search the mountain, and Avery techs would handle any evidence recovered.
Listening to Ramsey lay out the plan, I sensed a wee bit of jurisdictional rivalry. Wasn’t sure, didn’t care.
By the time we returned to the Devil’s Tail, my stomach had settled and was voicing serious complaint. I offered to share my sandwiches and coffee. Ramsey accepted and threw in Twix bars.
We moved to the trailhead, where we could look down on the shed. Though far too much time had passed to worry about scene preservation, cop instincts die hard.
We ate in silence, eyes roving the shadowy little ledge below. The gorge. The distant mountains in their smokelike mist. Gunner stayed by Ramsey, not begging, just looking hopeful and alert.
I was jamming wrappers into my pack, idly skimming my gaze over my surroundings, when my hand froze.
“Jesus.” On a sharp intake of air.
I scrambled to my feet and crossed to the point on the promontory’s edge where Ramsey and I had stood early that morning. The boulder on which I’d braced my boot was gone. In its place was a gash in the earth, dark and moist, like a fresh wound on the edge of a lip.
Deep gouges marred the walls of the gash. Freshly turned soil littered its perimeter.
Hearing Ramsey approach behind me, I stepped sideways. He studied the hole, the scoring, the fresh sprinkling of mud. When his eyes met mine they were dark with anger.
“Someone put some effort into dislodging that baby.”
“Yes.”
“Not likely a coincidence that we were downslope.”
“No.”
“That thing could have killed—”
Ramsey’s thought was interrupted by the hum of engines. We both spun toward the road. The deputy signaled to his dog with a slap to the thigh. Gunner joined us and we moved into the shadow of the trees.
The hum grew louder, cut off abruptly. Doors thunked. Voices sounded.
We waited.
In minutes, six people appeared lugging a lot of equipment. Four wore jackets identifying them as rescue squad members. Two were in civvies. With them were a German shepherd and some sort of Border collie mix. Gunner eyed the dogs with suspicion but stayed with us as we stepped out into the open.