City of the Lost (14 page)

“But Hastings saw the corpse.”

“And might be telling himself
we
did that to it.”

“What? That you or Dalton butchered Powys post-mortem? Why?”

“To keep folks out of the woods. As a scare tactic, it’d be senselessly extreme and stupid, not to mention revolting and barbaric, but you heard Hastings—to him Eric is a savage with a badge.”

Dalton’s on the move again. We’re following.

“I know there aren’t any pets in town,” I say. “But wouldn’t it be good to have a dog for tracking?”

“Don’t need it,” Anders says. “We’ve got Eric.”

Dalton shoots him the finger and keeps walking along the forest’s edge. He stops abruptly and crouches again, and now I realize what he’s doing—searching for signs of where someone might have entered the woods.

When I say as much, Anders nods. “There are only two maintained paths heading in, but there are smaller walking trails if you know where to find them. Running pell-mell into the forest is crazy. Following one of those maintained paths is also crazy, unless you’re looking to get caught fast.”

We look over to see that Dalton has disappeared.

Anders sighs and calls. “Yo, boss! We missed the non-existent signal. Follow or wait?”

No answer. Anders glances at me. “That means follow. You eventually learn to read the code. It’d be easier if we just equipped him with signal lights. Red for stop. Green for follow. Yellow for ‘take a guess and get your head bitten off if you’re wrong.’ Except it’d probably be stuck on yellow most of the time.”

“I heard that,” Dalton calls back.

“Good. And yes, we’re following.”

I don’t see the path until we’re on it. I’ve hiked before. But my idea of a path is a groomed trail wide enough to ride a bike on. This is barely a slice through the trees, branches catching me on both sides. Even the worn dirt underfoot vanishes as the trees close in and the ground becomes a carpet of dirt and needles.

“Patrol check?” Dalton calls back.

“He’s asking about the daily militia patrols,” Anders explains. “They report in to me. One thing they look for is signs that someone went into the woods.”

“Patrol check?” Dalton repeats, with an added snap.

“I’m using a teaching moment. It’s the only way Casey will learn anything. And the patrols haven’t found evidence of a wanderer in three days.” He glances at me. “That tells Eric whether the signs he’s picking up could be from another day. It’s not impossible that someone wandered off without us knowing it, but we’ve got a good catch ratio. High penalties for wandering—combined with regular escorted trips—means there’s no excuse for breaching the perimeter.”

“Why not erect a fence?”

“There was one, years ago. First a wooden fence. Then a barbed wire one. Followed by some high-tech generator-powered boundary-marking system. The last just plain failed—it took too much power and it broke down easily. What Rockton learned from erecting fences, though, is that they don’t make people feel safe. They make them feel like captives. Folks breached that fence far more often than they breach our marked perimeter. They prefer us to treat them like responsible adults and say, ‘Look, we don’t want you wandering in the woods for your own good.’ With ninety percent of them, that’s enough. It’s the other ten that give us grief.”

“You done talking?” Dalton asks.

“I don’t know, are you going to
start
talking?”

“Sure, I’ll talk. We want Hastings to hear us, right? So he can find us and spend the rest of the night tied to a goddamn tree.”

“Okay, you can stop talking now, boss. We need to be quiet and listen.”

Another flashed finger. I whisper, “Is he serious?”

Anders nods. “Punishment for running? Spend a night out here tied to a tree. Course, we keep an eye on them, but they don’t know that.”

I should be horrified. But it is a fitting punishment, one that’ll teach them why they don’t want to be out here, as I’m sure every whistle of the wind becomes the howl of rabid canines.

I wouldn’t mind spending the night out here. Preferably not tied to a tree. I’m remarkably at peace in these woods. Maybe that’s because I’m a city girl—I don’t fully comprehend the threats I’d face. I think I do, though. I’ve never romanticized wild places. There’s danger at every footfall here, walking through dense, pitch-black forest, our lanterns kept purposely dim so our prey won’t see them.

Our prey.
Interesting way of putting it.

I’ll just say that I don’t feel what I expected to in these woods. I don’t feel fear. I don’t feel loss of control. I felt an odd exhilaration, as sharp and biting as the wind, but as refreshing, too, like whipping along on that ATV, knowing a single missed branch or rut could send me flying, but enjoying the challenge and, yes, the danger.

Even the smells surprise me. Conifers and soil and rainwater and greenery and the occasional whiff of musk, like we’re downwind of invisible woodland creatures. I hear them, too, scampering and calling and rustling and bolting. Dalton knows exactly what each sound is and whether the creature making it is big enough to be Hastings, and he stops for those but ignores the others.

I’m fascinated watching him track. I remember Anders saying Dalton has lived here all his life, and I can see that now, his comfort in these woods, the way he moves as sure-footed as I would down a city street.

Eventually, though, Dalton loses the trail. He backs up and double-checks, and I ask if there’s anything I can do to help. He doesn’t answer and Anders shakes his head, nicely telling me not to interfere.

Five minutes pass of Dalton pacing and examining and even squinting into the treetops. Then, “Fuck.”

After a few seconds of silence, Anders says, “Can we buy a few more syllables, boss?”

“Trail ends there,” Dalton says, pointing.

I walk to the spot and peer around.

“I, uh, don’t think he swung through the trees,” Anders whispers when he sees me squinting into the dark treetops.

“No,” I say. “But I noticed Sheriff Dalton—”

“Call him Eric,” Anders says. “Please. Otherwise, you set a bad precedent.”

“Okay, well …
Eric
looked up, and I realize what he was checking. The tree cover is unusually dense here. That explains why the ground cover is unusually
sparse
. Which means there aren’t any signs to show which way Hastings went.”

“Just say that, then,” Dalton says.

“Teaching moment,” Anders says. “Which I appreciate. Okay, so the solution is to split up. I know you hate that, Eric, but we’re all armed and this patch isn’t more than a few hundred square feet. No one’s going to wander off and get lost. Right, Casey?”

“Right.”

Dalton grumbles, but it is the efficient next step and he assigns us directions. Then he says to me, “We’re looking for prints, crushed moss, broken twigs. If you see any, call me over to make sure it’s not just an animal.”

We get to work. The toughest part? Checking for signs of passage without leaving them yourself.
Wait! I see a footprint! It’s a boot, about size six … er, never mind.

I move slowly and methodically. I want to impress Dalton. I won’t deny that. I’m a woman and I’m a visible minority, which means when I made detective and zoomed up to major crimes, people blamed affirmative action. I’m accustomed to proving that I got my position because I deserve it.

I find prints, but they’re all animal. As for broken twigs or crushed undergrowth, my section is the barest—not by accident, I suspect. Dalton can be an ass, but he’s an ass in
support
of the job, not
against
it. In other words, he isn’t going to hand me a challenging segment to check, so I can screw up and let Hastings escape.

Without vegetation to examine, I cover my strip quicker than the others, despite moving slowly. I’m near the edge when I find a spot with bent twigs, as if something large passed not long ago. I’m looking for prints when the wind flutters through the trees, and out of the corner of my eye I catch sight of something white. Too white to be natural in this forest.

My hand drops to my holstered gun. As I step to the left, squinting into the darkness, I can see a pale oval against a tree. A face? It’s the right size.

I glance back for the others. No sign of them. I’m within shouting distance, but I’m sure as hell not going to shout. Nor am I going to walk away and give my target time to escape.

I creep forward. I’ve turned off my lantern. I’m dressed all in dark colours. I pull my hat down farther, and hunker low as I move. I can see the white shape now, on the other side of what looks like a clearing.

I have to inch through the trees to get a better look. I move at a snail’s pace, and the whole time I’m hoping Dalton or Anders realizes I’m out of sight. But no one comes and I can’t leave my target, so I continue easing forward. Sliding my feet keeps me from crunching small twigs. It does not keep me from rustling when my foot slides straight into a pile of dead leaves. The crackle sounds as loud as a twenty-one-gun salute and I freeze, my gaze fixed on that pale oval, hand on my gun.

The oval doesn’t move. I pick up my pace, certain I’m going to realize I’m seeing moonlight reflecting off a tree or something equally innocuous, and then I’ll be really glad Dalton didn’t come running …

I stop. I see black patches where the eyes and mouth should be. The height is about right to be a person, though. It’s as I’m measuring that height that my gaze drops and I see …

Beneath the oval is a tree trunk, maybe two feet wide. I don’t see shoulders or arms—just the narrow straight line of the trunk.

I push past the last tree, and I move too fast, stumbling into the clearing. Hand still on my gun, I catch my balance and look up and—

I let out a curse. I don’t mean to. But I see what’s on that trunk, and I can’t stifle an oath of surprise. At least I don’t scream.

I yank my gaze away to do a slow sweep of the clearing, making sure I haven’t stumbled into a trap. There’s no one else here.

I look again. It’s a human skull nailed to a tree. The remains of a pair of jeans are nailed up below it. Boots sit below the cuffs.

The jean legs are in two pieces, bottom and top, the middle shredded and completely dark with blood. The top half of the jeans is flat against the tree. The bottom is not. I grab a stick and move closer and prod at one of the lower legs, and the fabric falls, propped up rather than nailed. I’m looking at a mangled and bloodied lower leg, hacked away at the kneecap.

As I back up, brush crunches underfoot. I spin, hand on my gun, as Dalton strides into the clearing. His eyes are blazing, and it takes everything I can muster not to step backward.

“Did I tell you not to take off?” he says.

“I saw something. I thought it was a person.”

“I don’t give a damn what—”

I point at the skull. He stops. Then he mutters, “Ah, fuck.” That’s it. Like I’m pointing out signs of illegal campfire activity.

“You’ve seen this before, I take it?” I’m struggling to keep my voice steady.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s a territorial marker for one group of hostiles. Never this close to the town, though.”

His gaze drops to the boots. And that severed leg. That’s when he stares. And when he says “Fuck” this time, it’s in a whole different tone.

“That’s not normal, I’m guessing.”

“Hell, no. Like I said, the skull is a territorial marker. Primitive tribes used shit like that to scare off others. We had one of the skulls removed and tested, and it was fifty years old. Something they’d dug up and put in the sun to bleach.”

“Not an actual enemy’s head, then.”

“No, no. They don’t do anything like…” He trails off and his gaze returns to those amputated legs. “Fuck.”

I take a closer look with my lantern. “They don’t appear fresh enough to be Hastings. Powys, I’m guessing.”

“Yeah. I recognize the boots.”

“So we keep looking for Hastings?”

He shakes his head. “Trail’s lost. We’ll do a wider search in the morning. ATVs. Horses. Full militia.” He turns and calls. “Will? I need you over here.”

And thus ends our hunt. With the three of us staring at a pair of amputated human legs, staged in jeans and boots, before Anders marks the tree with bright yellow tape and we return to town.

We’re back in Rockton. I’m shivering. I don’t think the guys notice—everyone’s lost in their thoughts—but before we separate for the night, Dalton says, “You know how to build a fire?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Fuck,” he mutters. Wrong answer, apparently.

Anders cuts in before Dalton can continue. “I know you don’t want to impose, Casey. Especially at four in the morning. Up here, though, no one’s going to give you brownie points for toughing it out, and some of us”—a pointed look at Dalton—“will get pissy if you try.”

“It’s a waste of time,” Dalton says.

“Right. Inefficient, to put it a nicer way. If you don’t know how to build a fire, admit it. If we’re both too tired to come and get one going tonight, we won’t offer. I’d tell you where to find extra blankets. Eric would say, ‘Then you’d better learn.’ Either way, no one’s going to—”

“Speaking of wasting time…” Dalton says.

“Go home, Eric. I’ll get Casey’s fireplace going.”

“No.”

“It’ll take me five minutes—”

Dalton cuts him off with a snort.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Anders’s words turn brittle.

“Five minutes? You go over there, you won’t leave again before dawn.”

Anders’s eyes narrow. He murmurs for me to “Hold on a sec” and then leads Dalton aside. They walk about ten paces, not far enough for me to avoid overhearing in the stillness of the night.

“You want to yank my chain?” Anders says. “Go ahead, but there’s a fine line between needling me and insulting me, and that crossed it.”

“How?”

“She just arrived today. Travelled all yesterday. Was trapped in a car then a bush plane with you for hours. Lands to find we have a body she can’t investigate. Then discovers we have cannibals in our woods and spends her night tramping around those woods, only to find a skull and severed legs. Do you really think I’d invite myself back to her place in hopes of getting laid?
Seriously?
”