Lisa Gardner - Say Goodbye

Harold took a steadying breath. “I’ll climb up.” He tested a few branches with his hand. “I think I can get high enough that I can lean out and cut the rope without disturbing the knot.”

“And then the poor soul can crash to the ground?” Rachel inquired.

“Oh, oh yeah. Hmmm. I’ll climb up,” Harold said again, “get closer to the rope and see what our options are.”

“Okay, you do that.”

Harold donned a pair of heavy-duty leather gloves and started to climb, working his way gingerly from branch to branch.

Sal moved over to where Kimberly was taking in the action. “How do you get a body out of a tree?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” she murmured. “Never came up at Body Recovery School.”

“That body’s not alive, is it?”

“I doubt it.”

“Then what’s making it move?”

“We’ll find out soon enough.”

Harold was ten feet up, dangling out on a limb now, edging closer to the body. The tree branch dipped down precariously. Harold whistled nervously.

“I found the end of the rope,” he called out. “He has kind of…an elaborate system here. From what I can tell, the rope loops around a variety of branches, almost like a pulley system. I think if I partially cut the rope here, then climb up to the highest branch and yank hard, I might gain enough rope to lower the body to the ground. At least, fairly close.”

“How close?” Rachel demanded.

“I don’t fucking know,” Harold called out in exasperation, which raised Rachel’s and Kimberly’s eyebrows as they’d never heard Harold swear before. He seemed to catch himself, soldier on. “We could try a ladder,” he started to say, then, “ah jeez.”

The body was moving again. The nylon bulging around the crisscross pattern of the rope wrapped around the mummified form. It didn’t look like arms and legs struggling to get free. It looked…alien. A separate life-form, rippling beneath the surface.

“Rachel?” Harold called down in a strained voice.

“All right. Do what you think is best. But save the knot.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Harold muttered, earning more raised brows.

There was the sawing sound of Harold working on the rope. Then a deep, concerned sigh before Harold resumed his climb up to the higher point of the subject’s pulley system.

This limb was noticeably thinner than the lower branch, and as Harold once again eased out on his stomach, the branch began to dip. Then several things happened at once.

The rope snapped at the half-sawed cut, whipping up the tree with a scissoring slice. Harold yelped, grabbed for the nylon line with his gloved hands, and the whole body careened down five feet before yanking to a halt.

“Holy mother of…” Harold exclaimed. “I can’t…It’s gonna… Shit! ”

He lost the end, and the body crashed down another five feet before the rope tangled and the body lurched to a halt. Harold wasted no time, sliding down the tree trunk in a shower of green needles. He reached the lower branches, shimmied straight out, and grabbed the rope again.

“Incoming!” He untangled the line. The body dropped, two deputies rushing to grab the form and lower it gently onto the waiting tarp.

This close it was easy to discern the tightly bound shape of a human body, wrapped in a camouflage-patterned fabric, bound with brown rope. The nylon material rippled again, and with a little yelp, one of the officers fell back.

“All right,” Rachel said, taking control of the situation as Harold swung out of the tree and everyone gathered around the twitching form. “Anyone who is not me drop back. We’re gonna do this slow and controlled.” She donned booties, as well as a hairnet, mask, and gloves. The tarp was the crime scene, meant to catch whatever trace evidence fell out from the nylon wrapping. Rachel’s job was to limit cross-contamination of the scene.

“I’ll do it,” Harold said immediately, reaching for the knife Rachel had in her hands.

“It’s okay, Harold. This is why I get the big bucks.”

Despite her brash tone, Rachel approached the form warily. For the first time, Kimberly could catch the smell. Decay, light but pervasive.

Harold hunkered down at the edge of the tarp. Kimberly moved closer to him. Sal, too. They watched as Rachel gingerly made her way across the blue plastic, eyeing the thick rope that started at the ankles and wound all the way up the body.

She was looking for knots, Kimberly knew. It was always important to preserve knots. Just ask the officers who pursued the BTK killer in Kansas.

Rachel found the first knot at the ankles. She went an inch above it, slid the blade of her knife beneath the rope, and carefully sawed through the tough nylon. It took some time. Then the rope gave, falling away from the feet. Rachel pulled gently, easing the rope from underneath the body, slowly starting to unwind.

The whole form shifted slightly, seemed to sigh. Rachel caught herself, continued on. She was crouched above the head now, the majority of the body directed away from her, allowing for a quicker getaway.

She fished the last of the rope from around the neck. Now Kimberly could see the folds of the nylon fabric, how it wrapped around the form.

“All right,” Rachel said quietly. “I’m gonna start at the middle. Everyone, look sharp.”

She stood up. Bent over. Grabbed the first seam of fabric at the body’s waist, gave it a firm tug.

The form exploded. Like Jiffy Pop, Kimberly thought wildly. The unbound material burst open and a flood of spiders poured out, black and brown, big and small, eight-legged shapes scurrying desperately from their nylon prison while Rachel screamed and fell back, and Harold leapt to his feet, shouting, “Well, look at that!”

Then a rifle boomed from the trees and red bloomed across Harold’s shoulder and he exclaimed a second time, “Well, look at that!”

Harold fell to the ground.

“Take cover!” Rachel cried, already scrambling for the bushes.

As Sal fell on Harold’s injured form, Kimberly leapt toward her father and Rainie’s side, hunkered behind a larger boulder.

As they all learned what the Burgerman knew how to do best.

THE RAIN STOPPED, THE SUN BREAKING THROUGH briefly before once more being replaced by the gray pall of dusk. By mutual agreement, Rita and the boy didn’t turn on any lights. They maintained their vigil from the relative sanctuary of the shadowed kitchen, supping on cheese and crackers, the occasional sip of orange juice.

Together, they had wrestled an old armoire through the house, propping it against the back door, which Rita perceived as the weakest point in their line of defense. Next, Rita had brought down old linens, holding them in place while the boy tacked them over the lower-level windows. She didn’t want the man peering in, watching their movements, planning his attack. And if he did break the glass, she hoped the tangle of old fabric would buy them precious minutes. Three, four? She wasn’t sure, and as she and the boy went from room to room, reinforcing and reconfiguring, it occurred to her that their hastily erected defenses, geared at keeping one man out, inevitably trapped both of them in.

She did not tell the boy this. He had his knife strapped to his thigh with a strip of cloth he’d torn off an old pillowcase. She thought he had enough on his mind.