Ridley Pearson - Killer Weekend

The group dispersed. Walt turned to Brandon. “You and I will take the Hill Trail. I’ll take the first entrance; you’ll take the second.”

“I’m on it,” the man replied.

By the time Walt reached the Hill Trail, muddy clay was sticking to his boots like wet concrete, heavier with each step. Twice he stopped to scrape globs off the treads. He followed the narrow path up into the trees over rocky, rutted ground roped with exposed tree roots. With the low clouds and thick forest, an unsettling darkness overcame him.

Fiona’s arrival was announced over the radio. She was photographing the Volvo. In his mind’s eye Walt saw Search and Rescue spreading out over the trail and covering ground. He checked in with Brandon. The two were approaching each other from opposite directions.

Discovering a snapped branch-the ripped bark green-Walt knelt and studied the disturbance in the trail’s soil. Normally dry and powdery, the ocher-colored dust was skimmed with a layer of rain. If prodded, the crust of darkened soil gave way to the fine dirt beneath. He followed some impressions that told him two things: First, the leg that had snapped the branch had done so prior to the rain falling; second, it was a man’s flat-soled shoe, size nine or ten, walking slowly and deliberately, not the long strides associated with exercise, not an athletic shoe.

He kept off the path as best as possible and followed the shoe prints, calling ahead to Brandon to switch frequencies. When he met him again on the radio, Walt instructed his deputy to keep an eye out for the tracks, and not to disturb them.

But Brandon professed to know nothing of any shoe prints. It was then that Walt picked up two other such impressions, both heading back toward the parking lot.

The rain fell heavier now, the shoe prints washing away before his eyes. Walt peeled his coat off and lay it across the trail, attempting to protect the matching shoe prints-both heading in different directions. He didn’t dare lift the coat to see if he’d managed to cover them, the rain falling steadily now.

He raced ahead, staying off the trail, dodging trees and stumps and massive rocks. “Tommy,” he called ahead on the radio, “how many times have you seen a guy in office shoes out on one of these trails?”

“Sneakers,” Brandon called back.

“No. These things have a heel and smooth soles. Keep your eyes peeled. Something’s not right.”

The cold rain soaked through the shoulders and back of Walt’s uniform. He wiped his face on his sleeve in order to see.

“Fucking cats and dogs,” Brandon said over the radio. The rain had greatly intensified.

Walt was running now, looking left and right, up the hill and down, the narrow trail meandering just below him.

“I got a million running shoes and hiking boots, Sheriff,” Brandon reported. “But I got nothing like what you’re talking about. No office shoes.”

“Keep your eyes peeled off-trail,” Walt ordered.

“Roger, that.”

Walt felt a tension in his chest-a knowing fear. He relived watching the shoe impressions melt behind the destructive power of the rain. Though but a few miles from downtown, a half mile from the highway, these woods were national forest and subject to the laws of nature, not man. Bears were commonly spotted. Cougar. Elk. Any number of which could scare a runner off a trail, pursue the intruder for dinner or out of defense of a calf or cub. The combination of the discovery of the unexpected shoe prints and the now torrential, cold rain drove home an anxiety that peaked with Brandon ’s next radio transmission.

“Sheriff? What’s your twenty? I think I’ve got something.”

A moment later Walt flinched with the sound of a dull gunshot just ahead on the trail: a flare.

Brandon had found her.

A woman’s body, bloody and splayed in a tangle of limbs. The top of her running suit was ripped, baring her chest. Her neck was canted inhumanly to one side.

Walt placed a space blanket over her to keep off the rain. Ailia Holms had been mauled. “Bear?” Brandon asked.

“I’m no expert, but I’m guessing cat. Bite marks on the neck, the narrowness of the claws.”

Walt ordered the Hill Trail cordoned off. He and Brandon established a perimeter around the body using dead sticks. With Brandon lifting and replacing the space blanket, Fiona, who had trudged up through the woods, shot dozens of photographs before anyone disturbed the scene. Others arrived through the forest: deputies, a pair of paramedics, and a local doctor, Royal McClure. At Walt’s request, he would serve as medical examiner, an assignment certain to piss off the county coroner, but Walt was intent on doing this the right way. Electing a mortician as coroner did not make him a medical examiner.

McClure, a wiry man in his mid-fifties, had tight, green eyes and a high raspy voice. “I’ll be able to tell you more later. Much more. But for now you’ve got a body dead twelve to eighteen hours. Trauma, blood loss. All the appearance of an animal attack.”

Walt asked, “What are the odds that two cougars attack humans within a day of each other?”

“Who said anything about two?” McClure asked. “These cats cover a lot of ground.”

“We darted one and locked it up yesterday. Down at the Humane Society, the pound,” Walt said. “She sure as hell didn’t do this. I’ve lived here, off and on, for most of my life, and I can only remember one other cat attack before this-and that one was provoked. Now we lose a yellow Lab. Danny Cutter gets run out of the Big Wood by a cat. We dart one, and that same night, another kills a woman out running. Are you kidding me?”

In the midst of removing the space blanket for Fiona, Brandon suddenly pulled the Mylar sheet aside and let it fall to the ground, like a magician who’d given up on his trick.

“Keep her covered, Tommy,” Walt said, turning from McClure.

“Check it out, Sheriff,” Brandon said, kneeling close to the body. “What the fuck is that?” The rain continued to fall in sheets as it had for the past half hour. Brandon dragged the space blanket back over her once again, covering her head and face, to below her waist, leaving only her lacerated legs exposed.

Walt stepped closer, seeing for the first time what Brandon now pointed to: a small circle of white.

“Paint?” Walt guessed.

“It’s dissolving, whatever it is,” Brandon said. “Dissolving fast. And look there, and there.” He pointed. Then he lifted the Mylar and studied her more closely. “It’s all over her.”

Fiona, of her own volition, scrolled through digital shots while carefully screening her camera from the rain. “I made pictures of those,” she said. “I count seven…no…eight on her chest and torso. Another four on her head and hair.”

“It’s feces,” McClure said, having touched it with his gloved finger and lifted it to his nose. “Bird feces.”

“Birdshit?” Brandon asked. “How’s that possible? Look around her. Nothing.”

None of the leaves, sticks, or plants surrounding the body showed any sign of the white splotches.

“Doc?” Walt asked.

“It’s not my place to comment on physical evidence.”

Walt looked up into the rain. No coverage here, the tree branches not touching. So where had the birds perched?

“You know that blood-splatter course?” Brandon said. “If birdshit’s anything like blood, then the size of these, and the tightness of the rings, means it didn’t fall very far. A bird takes a crap from up there, it’s going to hit like a bomb.”

“Expert testimony if I’ve ever heard it,” Walt cracked.

“Not to mention she rolled all the way down the hill,” Brandon said, ignoring Walt’s jab. “So it’s got to be fresh, right?”