Chapter Eleven
We’re up the next morning at dawn. We debate taking Rory with us, but decide that would be worse parenting than leaving her in care for another day. Sometimes, it really is a coin toss, and take-our-daughter-to-work day is best done when we aren’t tracking a potential killer.
We don’t get away easily. One day with babysitters was a lovely distraction for a teething infant.
Now she wants Mom and Dad, which makes it all the tougher because we already hate to leave.
We take a few extra minutes to settle her in and distract her with toys and then it’s kisses on her head and promises to return as soon as we can, which is really more for us than Rory, already happily playing.
When we do finally leave, we have backup. This time, it’s Yolanda and Anders, who’ll form a second search team. We’d debated bringing Kendra instead, but if there’s any chance of that bear finding Haven’s Rock, I want Kendra there.
Anders knows how to search. He’s done it often enough. Yolanda has not, but she’s game and she’s good with a gun, which is really all we need.
Our first group stop is the former campsite. I’m looking for any sign that Gretchen returned. Ditto with the spot where we found the backpack. It’s still there, still buried, no sign that it’s been disturbed.
From there, Yolanda and Anders start a general search of the area. We’ll set Storm on Blake’s trail. That won’t get us to Gretchen, but it might get us to our crime scene, and that’s a start.
I brought Blake’s shirt. I’ve cut off the bloodied bits. Storm’s look says that doesn’t remove the stink of blood and guts and bear. But I’ve tried, and she sniffs it gingerly and then starts nosing around.
She wants to head west, but we already suspect that was their entry trail, so I take her back to the campsite and head east. She finds a trail and follows it … to a fast-running stream, where Blake would have soaked his broken ankle. We even find boot marks there.
Back to the trail. Try again.
She still wants to head toward the water, and no amount of coaxing will get her to do anything else, which suggests there is nothing else to do. There’s one secondary path east of the campsite, and it leads here.
Does the trail go beyond the stream? Maybe they returned here, soaked his foot, and continued east. I try to get Storm to search for that, but she keeps looking at me like I’m daft.
That’s when I see the handprint.
Along the muddy opposite edge of the stream is one perfect splayed handprint, like a child might make … or like someone might make if they fell.
“Eric?”
He’s been back at the main trail trying to see whether it goes anywhere else.
Now, as he approaches, I tell him what I’m seeing. A single handprint, plus broken foliage. He comes closer for a look as I stand back with Storm.
“Yeah, that’s a handprint,” he says after a moment. “Adult. If he fell here, his other hand would have gone down on harder ground. Wouldn’t leave a print.”
He demonstrates. Then he looks around and crouches. “This is torn up.” He pushes aside the undergrowth on our side. “Scuff marks here.”
“I was going to suggest removing the broken foliage to get a look at those marks. Sound reasonable to you?”
“Yep.”
He stands back while I get photos of the damage to the undergrowth. None of this will ever see a courtroom, but anything I collect helps us build our case, even if it’s only to be able to show the perpetrator that we aren’t pulling an accusation out of our asses.
Once I’ve done that, we gingerly remove the undergrowth, mostly by clipping it off close to ground level. We put all that aside and stand back to look. The ground shows scuff marks and several boot prints. I photograph them and then pull up a picture on my phone.
“They’re Blake’s,” I say. “Helpful for proving he was here. Not helpful for catching his killer.” I look around. “So he was ambushed while soaking his foot. That also explains the shitty job done retying the bandage and putting his boot back on.”
“Killer puts it back on, along with the bandages, so they don’t get left behind.”
“And, possibly, so if his body is found we don’t realize he’d been soaking his foot, giving us an obvious crime scene.”
And that means our killer knows someone out here would be investigating. Or that there’s a settlement—ours or the mining camp—that would take an interest.
We look for any other prints. The problem is twofold. One, the ground is hard except near the water. Two, I tramped about with Storm before realizing this was the crime scene.
We find more scuffs on the hard earth. Then, near the water, there’s what looks like a partial print that’s been erased, as if the killer spotted it and rubbed out any identifying characteristics.
We find more broken foliage, adding to our picture of the scene.
“Ambushed from behind,” I say. “He was standing in the stream or had one foot in it. Hit in the back of the head. Falls across the narrow stream and lands on all fours. Attacker gets the rope around his neck and hauls him back, where these scrabble marks are in the undergrowth. Kills him here. Probably lays him down over there.” I point to flattened undergrowth. “Then the killer needs to drag him…”
I walk to that flattened undergrowth. There are definite drag marks.
There’s also a spot where a boot print has been erased.
Then the ground gets harder, and the trail is only obvious by the crushed foliage.
We follow for maybe twenty feet before it hits rock—smooth rock, easy to pull.
Another twenty feet gets him to the cave where we found the body.
“Forty feet,” I say. “How easily could I drag you that far?”
“We can try later if you like, but whoever did it wasn’t dragging him across the bare ground.” He points at some marks. “He was on something. A tarp probably.”
“Which would make it easier. It would also explain why Storm couldn’t follow that section of the trail. Tarps are also a standard part of camping gear. Okay, I can reasonably assume that Gretchen—a woman in good physical condition—could pull Blake on a tarp for forty feet.”
We continue searching for any trace, but after thirty minutes, I make the call. Time to move on and look for Gretchen.
At noon, we reconvene with Anders and Yolanda.
They accidentally got a little too close to where the miners are working, but they backed out before being seen.
That does mean, however, that they can report that the mining operation is proceeding as usual.
The camp hasn’t gone into lockdown, worried about potential spies.
Rogers accepted our story that Blake and Gretchen had moved on.
Or, I presume, he accepted it after his security team failed to turn up any evidence to the contrary.
That’s one piece of good news. The bad news is that there’s still no sign of Gretchen.
Yolanda and I head back to Haven’s Rock. I’m going to feed Rory and spend some time with her. Yolanda is accompanying me because Dalton doesn’t want me in the woods alone right now, and Yolanda has the least search party experience. He’ll continue on with Anders and Storm.
I take an hour in town, spent with my baby. Then she switches babysitters—Isabel this time—and Yolanda and I head out again with a packed late lunch.
We meet the guys at the rendezvous point, split the food, and break into pairs again. We’re searching north and south of Haven’s Rock now. Again, we’re out there for hours. Again, we find no trace of Gretchen.
We don’t meet up with Yolanda and Anders. We’ve agreed to head back to town for dinner, and we just do that. We do eat together, though, at our chalet, where we can discuss our findings, which are—for both parties—zilch.
“So she’s gone?” Yolanda says. “Killed her husband and got the hell out.”
“Presumably,” I say.
“But you don’t like that explanation. You think something happened to her?”
I chew as I think. Rory gurgles, bouncing on Anders’s knee.
I smile over at her and then turn back to Yolanda.
“If something happened to her—such as also being attacked by whoever killed Blake—that complicates things in ways I don’t want to consider.
The tidy solution is that she killed him and left.
The untidy part is that she’ll need to tell the authorities. ”
“You’re worried they’ll come here?”
“Not specifically here. If she killed him, she’ll lie about where he fell. But she may get searchers into the broad vicinity, and that’s still an exposure threat.”
“We’ll need to lock down,” Dalton says. “As of tonight. We’ll keep looking for Gretchen and also looking for signs of a search plane.”
Anders clears his throat. “I hate to mention another—and more alarming—possibility, but what if she fled and she’s not the killer?”
I grimace. “Yep, that’s an alternate solution. Someone else killed Blake, she witnesses it, and she runs for help. Eric and I discussed that. Of all the scenarios, that’s probably the most dangerous.”
“Because she’ll bring authorities to the correct spot,” Yolanda says. “Teams of people looking for both her dead husband and his killer. She’ll also report that she met you two. You’ll need to talk to Gran asap.”
“I’ve already messaged saying we’d like a call tonight.”
“Good.” Yolanda takes a bite of venison. “She’ll handle it. Whichever way this goes, she should be able to give us a heads-up when Gretchen returns to civilization. Gran has a full warning system ready for this sort of thing.”
The warning system being people on émilie’s payroll who work in some capacity where they’ll be notified of anything unusual in this area, including a woman reporting her husband missing or murdered. We just need to tell émilie what’s happened so she can put out the word.
To contact émilie, we use a sat phone with texting. My call with her is scheduled for ten tonight. She’s at a benefit gala on the east coast, and she doesn’t expect to get away early.