Timothy
The heat in the car blows overwarm, the world outside gray. Dead of winter. Bare tree branches reach into the dove sky, patches
of white from the last snowfall on the brown ground.
I pull into the shoulder, then sit looking at the map on my phone. The radio buzzes and hums. Judy from dispatch requests
a response to a vagrant on Main Street. A patrol officer answers. But I’m not really listening, processing the discovery of
Paul Hayes’s body, the things I’ve learned so far.
There are other, more defined, access points to Black River Park than where I have stopped.
There’s the main entrance with its big parking lot, bathrooms, and gift shop in summer. There are various trailheads with
smaller parking areas, as well as lesser-known unmarked accesses mostly used by locals.
But at any place along this particular road, Old Mill Road (RR63), you might walk in through the trees, hike the incline through
the forest, and wind up on one of the park trails eventually.
Where I have stopped here, according to my map, is the point at which Old Mill Road is closest to where Paul Hayes’s body
was found. A straight shot, if a difficult one, from here to there through the thickly wooded area.
I glance away from my screen and look outside.
Breathe. Think.
“He wasn’t killed here,” Beck had said when we first arrived at the site early this morning. He’d stood beside the grave,
looking down impassively at the grisly scene. He’s young to be a chief medical examiner, also the first trans person to hold
the post.
He’d pulled an e-cigarette from his pocket and gave it a surreptitious drag cupped in his hand. A sweet-smelling cloud disappeared
over his head. Vapers always seem like they’re keeping some kind of dirty secret.
“You should give that up,” I’d said, though it’s none of my business.
He ignored me, as I expected he would.
“I keep telling him,” said his assistant, Miranda, as she took a soil sample. She’s also the Medical Examiner’s Office receptionist.
Like every municipal department in the underfunded town of Little Valley, they operate on an impossibly tight budget, the
two of them doing nearly every job of the morgue and ME’s office. When my partner, Hitch, retired last year, his salary went
to cover shortfalls in the budget, and he wasn’t replaced. Since then, I’ve worked alone.
“Someone moved him,” Beck had continued, his eyes drifting past the corpse into the trees. “It couldn’t have been easy. He’s
a big guy.”
I remember noting his size the first time I met Paul Hayes. Broad through the shoulders, thick, heavy arms, a handshake like
a challenge. Men do that; we size each other up. Decide who would win if it came to a fight. I also noted: the soft skin of
his hands, his manicured nails, the light waft of aftershave.
Paul Hayes died ugly, mouth open, eyes wide, hands clawing at his throat.
Later animals got to him in the shallow grave; his innards were exposed, ropy and red, frozen solid in the cold.
It shouldn’t bother me; I’ve seen enough gore in my life and career that I could be one of those who resorts to gallows humor to cope.
It still gets me every time. I know too much about the human body and how it comes apart, breaks down, comes undone.
Mainly these days what I see is overdose. Fentanyl is a scourge, especially in semirural communities like this. A thousand
people last year died in this county alone. All kinds of people. Last month a wealthy doctor; the month before that, a waitress
after a night out with friends. Two college students found in the library; they thought, according to friends, that what they
were taking was Adderall. Died over their textbooks.
There have been car accidents, suicides, assaults, domestic violence, but in my five years on the Little Valley PD, this is
only my fourth murder. The three others were open and shut, domestic violence turned deadly. That’s the truth of it. Overdoses
and men killing women who they supposedly love. Like the flower he hadn’t meant to pick, or the bug he hadn’t meant to stomp.
“Why?” I heard one man wail. “Why did you make me do this?”
This is strange work, to be the person they call when the worst thing happens. To observe it, try to understand it. Solve
it if you can. Though there’s no solution to the violence we do to ourselves, to each other. Sometimes it feels like there’s
no justice either.
It keeps me up at night sometimes, how unfair it all is. Who gets away with what and why.
Now I step out of the car into the cold. The sun already seems low in the sky even though it’s only mid-afternoon; the temperature
is dropping. It’s that mean winter light, bright with no warmth. I dream of beaches; white sands and jewel-green water, swaying
palms.
I step in through the tree line, start hiking up the incline. It’s pretty hard going—the wet forest floor, icy patches. Just
a few feet and I am already breathing heavily. Imagine dragging a body, a big dead body. As I huff and puff, I think: You’d
have to be strong, fitter than I am.
Also: You would have had to transport the body from the kill site to the point of entry on Old Mill Road in a vehicle.
Can’t do that without leaving DNA evidence in the trunk, or wherever you hauled it.
You think you cleaned it up. You didn’t.
Blood and bodily fluids leak, work their way into cracks and crevices.
Somewhere there’s probably a vehicle hiding evidence, or a tarp, or a rug, whatever was used to wrap and transport.
Meanwhile, there’s a camera at every traffic light, each gas station, every shop; most residential homes have doorbell cams
that detect motion. People don’t realize that there’s a network of electronic eyes; facial recognition software improves every
year. It’s very hard to hide these days, harder to hide what you’ve done.
I’m fully panting now, air cold in my lungs, the smell of wet leaves pungent. Oh my god, I seriously have to get back to the
gym. No more late-night pizza with the guys after the game.
If they came up this way and not from the trail above, there had to be more than one person.
I stop, a stitch in my side, look around for evidence of something being dragged, and think I need to bring in the tracker,
a guy I know called Old Bob. He sees things that most of us don’t; he can tell you if a deer or a rabbit nibbled on a branch,
identify a game trail. I’ve seen him follow crows to a dead body deep in a corn field—a lone hunter who had a heart attack.
We went looking for him when his wife called to say he hadn’t come home. Old Bob found him in the early morning hours the
next day.
People have stopped seeing what’s right in front of them, he told me once. I’m only paying attention. I stop to send him a text, ask if he can meet me here. He answers right away. See you in an hour.
I keep walking. Picking my way up, cracking branches beneath my feet, grabbing trunks for support. I stub my toe on a root,
leaving a scuff on my boot. That’s what we do, how we leave traces of ourselves everywhere.
Ahead, through the barren trees, I spot the red and blue flashing lights of the vehicles at the scene. As I get closer, I hear voices. Someone guffaws. Not even a half mile from Old Mill Road to the grave site, all up hill, heavily forested. A hard passage hauling a heavy load.
But there would have been no way to get a vehicle from any of the park entrances onto the hiking trail; the narrow gates prevent
it. Park rangers use Gators, small all-terrain vehicles; all of those are accounted for. It’s nearly three miles from the
main trailhead to where Paul Hayes was found.
It was Beck who said that they probably came up through the trees from the road, between puffs on his e-cigarettes. After my hike up, I’m thinking he was right.
I stop again, try to catch my breath, look around me. Cold air in my nostrils, crows overhead. The sky threatens snow, a grim
watercolor. I breathe into the stillness, eyes falling on the ground littered with leaves, the trunks of the trees.
If there’s something to see, I’m not seeing it.
I crouch down. Think.
I’m still puzzling over my encounters today:
Delivering the news to Paul Hayes’s sister, listed as his emergency contact at the DMV.
The interrupted brunch hosted by the wealthy and connected Vera Blacksmith, her husband a big donor to the police department,
as well as one of its biggest contractors.
Ana Blacksmith, who—well, I don’t want to think about where we’ve met before, and why I didn’t know her name. It’s a personal
problem.
I found Hayes’s sister in a barn that doubled as an art studio, down a path from her house seated on a large swath of property just outside of town.
When there was no answer at her front door, I followed the sound of blaring music to the other structure and found her in front of a giant canvas that was painted in angry swaths of red and black.
Regina Hayes has a gallery in town, where she sells her own art and the art of other regional artists.
I knew this from the quick web search I did before heading her way.
I knocked on the door that stood open, once, twice, then loud enough to startle her over the music. She spun, the expression
of blank concentration morphing to concern. Wearing just a tank top and leggings on her too-thin frame, she reached for a
robe.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” Annoyed. Scared underneath.
“Detective Timothy Bandeau.” I offered my shield. She moved in to take a closer look, tightening the robe about her. “Regina
Hayes?”
She ran a hand through close-cropped orange hair. Her fingernails were painted black. “What’s happened? Is it Paul?”
It seemed odd. Why would she ask that? I made a note of it.
“I’m afraid I have difficult news,” I said when she turned off the music.
There’s no good way to deliver this type of information. I’ve learned to just let it drop, as gently as possible, keep my