BLOOD AND BACK STITCHES Page 2

  I stepped out of the car as he parked, and when he pulled me to his chest and held me close, I relaxed a little further. When I stepped back, he met my gaze. He didn’t have to ask if I was okay anymore. He could just look at me, and I knew that was his first concern.

  “I am glad you’re here, Santi.” I took his hand, and we walked toward the cabin. “You called Frank?”

  Santiago nodded. “On the way here. He’s coming up. He sounded genuinely shocked to hear a dead man was here.”

  I sighed. “I bet. I certainly was, and Frank O’Malley seems like the kind of guy who would have at least given me a heads up if he suspected anything untoward had been going on up here.”

  “I had the same impression.” Santiago stopped at the door and shook Saul’s hand. “If this doesn’t look like the crime was committed here, we may be able to get you all back to work this afternoon.”

  I heard a car pull in and looked to see Savannah Wilson, Santiago’s one and only deputy, step out of her car. She gave us a small wave and then began what I knew would be her careful perusal of the area around the cabin. Unfortunately, Saul and I were very familiar with this routine, so he’d already corralled his guys into one area so that Savannah could do her job. And I knew she’d ask the men where they’d walked and make a careful map of all the footprints she’d found. It wasn’t likely her usual techniques would yield much here given how much mud surrounded the cabin and how much prep work Saul and his crew had done to make the area passable for cars, but if there was something to find, Savannah would find it.

  “He’s in the back room,” I told Santiago, and then I watched him slip booties over his muddy boots and walk inside. Usually, he didn’t take that level of precaution, especially when others had been in the house before him, but given the mud, I guess he thought it best to try and preserve any footprints on the boards inside.

  I leaned against the side of the cabin and took in the view again. Despite my whimsical visions of living with Santiago and Sawyer up on a mountainside, I was really someone who took her strength from the base of the mountains. I loved looking up and seeing the gentle peaks of the Appalachians watching over me. They felt like a kind mother, a gentle woman looking down and lending me strength. I didn’t know if I could give that up even to have this sort of outlook from above most of life.

  My musings were interrupted when Santiago came to the door and said, “Just to be sure, neither of you knows that man, correct?”

  “Nope,” Saul said. I shook my head.

  “Okay, the coroner is on his way, but I don’t see any sign that he died here.” Santiago shook his head. “It’s going to be a long day.”

  I groaned. “So you think someone put his body here?”

  “The coroner will confirm, but yeah. I’d guess he’s been dead a week, maybe more.” He swallowed hard. “Without getting into too much detail about how the process of decomposition works, I’ll just say that I think he was probably moved here recently. Maybe even today.”

  “Today?!” Saul said. “So that someone would find him.”

  Santi nodded. “That’s my guess.” He turned to me. “Pais, I’m going to need to know the name of anyone who knew you were coming up here to start work today.”

  This time my groan came out as more of a roar. “I’ll print out my email list. I told everyone about the project in my newsletter on Saturday.”

  Santi’s face fell. I had just created a suspect list of over 1,000 people. The day couldn’t really get much worse for him.

  Fortunately, I was saved from contending with my own guilt for a little bit when Savannah walked into the cabin with a charcoal gray sheet. “Found this out behind the house.”

  “Looks like it might match what the guy is covered in,” Santi said and pointed toward the back room.

  Savannah gave me a nod and then set her hand on my arm. “You okay?”

  I sighed but then nodded. “Yeah. He’s in the back.” The two officers headed in and I went back to gazing at the view.

  Saul leaned his shoulder against mine and said, “You know, you could just gather things from auctions and stuff if this is becoming too much.”

  I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, and I appreciated that he was doing the thing men are trained to do, offer an idea but then look aloof about the response. Today, I needed that distance because his suggestion was pretty powerful. I had thought of it myself on a number of occasions, and today it was really, really appealing.

  But even as I turned the idea of visiting auctions and picking up items that I could make enough of a margin on to pay my bills, I felt distaste for the idea rising up. Part of why I loved what I did was that I was rescuing things that no one else knew had value. If I didn’t do this work, sure, someone else might step in and salvage these buildings and the bits and bobs of history that I gathered, but they might not either. Then, those things would be lost.

  Even more, though, I wanted to be the one to save them. I wanted to find these treasures and get them into new homes. That was part of my role in this world, and I would be hard-pressed to give it up.

  Finding dead bodies all the time was pressing pretty hard though, too. I let out a long sigh.

  “I know that’s not what you want to do, Paisley girl,” Saul said. “But know it’s an option if you need one, okay?’

  This time when I glanced over he was studying my face. I smiled as best I could and nodded. “Thanks, Saul.”

  Santi and Savannah walked out. “We’re going on a hike,” Santi said. “Want to come?” He looked at me and waited.

  “I’ll stay here, wait for the coroner,” Savannah said.

  “Me, too,” Saul said as he sat down on the step. “I just spotted a cedar waxwing.” Saul was an avid bird watcher, but that wasn’t something he told everyone. It didn’t quite align with the rough, rugged persona he projected for most people. I knew he was a softy, though, and I also knew he was trying to give Santiago some time alone while also keeping Savannah company. Saul was a good man.

  I followed Santi back the way Savannah had just come, and as we walked, I tried to get my nerves to settle. It would do no one any good if I was all jangly and awkward, and Santi didn’t need to be worrying about me while he was trying to get the lay of the land about a murder. So I took deep breaths and attended to the tiny shades of green that I was beginning to see among the trees.

  Finally, I asked, “What are we looking for?”

  “I have no idea,” Santi said as he stopped and looked around before taking my hand. “But given how pristine this place is, I think we’ll see anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Got it,” I said as I squeezed his fingers. “Lead the way.”

  We continued up the slope beside the cabin for a few hundred more yards until we came to an old fire road. “Looks like they keep this clear just in case,” Santiago said.

  That was pretty typical up here near the park. Lots of roads were kept brush-free just in case fire broke out and emergency workers needed more points of access. I glanced back down the hill to where I could just see the moss-covered metal roof of the cabin. “We might have just walked up the wagon access to the house,” I said.

  Santi glanced back. “Could be,” he said. “You got a source for old maps?” He winked at me since he already knew the answer to my question.

  “I might be able to find something.” I took out my phone to check for a signal. I had just enough to pull up the cache of images I kept of old maps. I looked closely at the one from the early twentieth century and zoomed in using GPS to pinpoint our location. “Sure enough,” I said and held the phone up for Santiago to see.

  “So this road goes right up to the ridge and down the other side to Elkton and then onto Harrisonburg.” He studied the image and then spun my hand back to me. “Right?”

  “Yeah,” I said as I zoomed in even further. “Looks like it parallels Route 33, but even on this map, the road isn’t very big. I’d say it was just a wagon road, probably for logging.”

  People up here had found ways to make money off the land whenever possible, and I knew a lot of the folks in this part of the mountains had harvested tree bark for the tanyards down in the valley.

  “Think it goes through?” He asked me as he looked up the logging road toward the ridgeline.”

  I slid my fingers over the image. “Sure seems like it did at one time. One sec,” I said as I opened up the map app on my phone. “It’s hard to tell, but it seems like it might be passable now.”

  We walked a bit further up the road toward the west, and after a few yards Santi stopped and bent down. “These don’t look that old,” he said pointing to tire tracks. He followed them back the way they came and then said, “Yep, they turned around right here.” He gestured almost directly to the trail we’d just come up. “Looks like we have our entry point.”

  “Does this mean we’re going four-wheeling?” I asked with a grimace.

  His face broke into a wild smile. “You know it.” He glanced at me. “And don’t even think about declining the opportunity. I need your maps.”

  “I can just give you my phone, you know?” I said nervously.

  “Nope. I need your navigation skills.” We headed back toward the cabin. “It’s only 1 p.m. The guys from search and rescue will have a Nebula up here in half an hour.”

  “A Nebula?” I asked, already bracing for the answer.

  “The team’s new UTV. It’s so fast.” His grin was as wide as his whole face.

  I sighed.

  “It’ll be fun,” he said, but his glee made me think his definition of fun and mine were not the same at all.

  Forty-five minutes later I was in a police-issue jacket, gloves, and hat, going what I considered to be far too fast on the dirt road through
the woods. Santiago was driving our UTV and Savannah and Saul were following behind in another. Saul had sent his crew home but insisted on coming along. “I’m not missing a ride through the woods, and you know that,” he’d said.

  I’d offered to give him my seat in Santi’s vehicle, but Santi had said I would prefer riding with him. “Savannah is a demon in one of these,” he said.

  He wasn’t wrong. At one point, the road got just wide enough for Savannah to pass us, and she did... at speed. I yelped when she and Saul flew by, three hands in the air and delight on their faces. They were having so much fun that I decided to let myself enjoy it, too. “You better catch her,” I shouted to Santiago.

  He looked over at me briefly and then said, “You sure?”

  I nodded before I can change my mind, and Santiago pressed the pedal down, launching us ahead. We rode along for a good quarter-mile before Savannah stopped in front of us and pointed to the right. Just off the path was a camo-print tent with a carefully laid firepit out front. It looked like it had been there a good while, given the fading on the canvas, but it didn’t look abandoned.

  We turned off the machines and walked toward the tent, Saul and I letting the officers lead the way. Someone had definitely been living here; even I could tell that as we walked up. There was a trail to what looked like a make-shift outhouse behind the tent, and next to it, someone had rigged up a canvas tarp. Beneath the tarp was a metal shelf full of canned goods. This was someone’s home.

  As Savannah and Santi carefully made their way around the tent to the entrance, Saul and I retreated back up the small trail toward the UTVs. Unfortunately, we were well-seasoned in knowing police procedure, and that procedure didn’t include us marching in on a potential suspect and complicating the situation.

  It only took a couple of minutes, and then Savannah gave us the all-clear. “They’ve moved on. Looks like no one’s been here in a few days.”

  Saul and I traipsed back down to the tent and watched as our friends gathered evidence – a hairbrush, a book that looked like a journal, and a few scraps of paper from the trash. I wanted to reach over and grab all the paper to look through it. But I restrained myself and trusted that if I could help with anything, Santi would ask for my help.

  Now, though, it was time to head further up the road and leave the rest of this scene to be processed by the deputies from Orange County that Savannah had requested before we headed out. We had about an hour before I had to pick up my son, and the most crucial thing, according to Santi, was that we figure out where this road came out.

  Back in the UTVs, we made our way up the hill, all of us scanning the sides of the roadway for more residential spaces. We didn’t see anything, but only about a half-mile past the tent, we came to a metal gate. Beyond it, a two-lane road ran perpendicular to ours. The Blue Ridge Parkway, as I had expected.

  The Parkway is a closed road with very limited entrances that are monitored by park rangers. But if you’d lived around here long, you knew that there were also all these fire roads or simply old roads that hadn’t grown in yet that intersected with the roadway. Many of them had been turned into hiking trails, and almost all of them were closed to vehicles by gates just like this one. But from what Santiago told me, a lot of UTVs and dirt bikes just went around those gates if they weren’t closely monitored. He spent a fair amount of time, especially in the summer, working with the rangers to track down people joyriding from the roads onto the Parkway without paying the entrance fee or attending to the traffic laws up there.

  We turned off the vehicles and stepped up on to the road. Savannah jogged one direction and Santi went the other, and within five minutes, they were both back to tell us we were between Mile Posts 7 and 8, some a bit south of the entrance at Skyline Drive. “Guess this is how they got in with the body?” I said feeling a little obvious.

  “Yeah, it looks like this is kind of well-used trail for hikers and some vehicles, too,” Savannah said as she knelt near the ground. “Going to be hard to tell what is what.”

  “But there were no tire marks near the tent, so I expect that person was walking in and out.” Santiago stared back down the mountain. “The tent and the body may not be related at all.”

  Saul huffed and then said, “Oh, sorry.” But when Santiago continued to stare at him, he said, “You can’t really believe that, right? I mean a dead body in an abandoned cabin on the same road as someone’s summer home.... “

  Santiago nodded. “You’re right, Saul. But I can’t make any assumptions, so I need to explore the avenues separately and let a connection arise.”

  “I got it. But you know there’s a connection.” Saul laughed.

  Santiago rolled his eyes. “The other thing we need to consider is that someone might have gotten the body in via the road you made, Saul. When did you clear that?”

  “Yesterday,” Saul said, “but I dropped two huge logs across it overnight. Someone would have needed to use big equipment to move them, and I saw no signs of that.”

  Savannah looked around. “So we have our way in, but why here? I mean there are other places that are more accessible but just as abandoned, maybe more so if this camper isn’t related to the crime?”

  Something was pinging in the back of my mind, but my practice with this sort of investigation told me that if I chased the noise, I’d lose the thread. I just made a mental note to hold onto Savannah’s question as the investigation continued. It would all come together sometime.

  The ride down was far less nerve-racking in terms of the investigation, but Savannah and Santiago made sure to up the adrenaline ante by flying down the road at top speed. All I could do was hang on for dear life and make Santiago promise not to take Sawyer for a ride like that until he was at least my age.

  When I picked Sawyer up from school, he was all words, a whole frenzied bundle of words. He wanted to tell me about how they “always” do this at school and they “always” do that, and I let myself enjoy his monologue because it was, for the first time, a chance for him to tell me something about his life that I didn’t already know. It made me a bit sad but mostly just happy. He had loved his day, and he was so excited to go back in “one sleep.”

  The whole ride home he kept slipping between the kind of reverie he went into when he was really tired and the need to tell me about something else that happened from his new best friend Winston to the fact that he ate his entire roast beef sandwich at lunch but had traded his raisins for goldfish. He had all these stories, and I could tell he was weighing them like I did – what did he keep for himself and what did he share. It was a good lesson for him to consider.

  Between his talking jags, I was pondering much the same thing. On the ride back from the cabin, Santiago and I had talked on the phone so that he could get a bit more information about the cabin, the O’Malley family, and Frank especially. “What’s your sense, Pais? Is he involved?”

  I had taken a deep breath as I turned onto the small road in the industrial park where Sawyer’s school was located. “I don’t think so, Santi. I really don’t, but I’ve learned from you not to rule anyone out.” I had paused before asking my question because I knew it might put my boyfriend in a difficult position. “You think I could tell him, though. I mean you could, should be there and everything, but this is going to be a big shock for him, I think. And it might be easier for him to take coming from me instead of the police.”

  The pause on the other end of the line had been long, but then he’d said, “Someday, I’m just going to need to permanently deputize you, you know?”

  I had smiled and taken that as a yes. But now, as I thought back over our conversation and our plan to go see Frank first thing tomorrow, I wasn’t sure what I should share with the owner and what I shouldn’t. Obviously, he had to know we’d found a body, but I didn’t know if it would be wise or dangerous to tell him about the tent. I knew Santiago would coach me, but I also knew he’d give me a lot of leeway. I didn’t want to damage the investigation with my big mouth.

  Sawyer was so tired when we got home that he ate his dinner – a new favorite, chili – without complaint, played outside with Beauregard for a bit, and then went to bed a half-hour early. My boy was tuckered.