The Severed Pines Read online

  The Severed Pines

  Jim Heskett

  Jim

  For Lisa, my hiking buddy and partner.

  Nick

  For Emily, who always inspires me to get outside and suck up some fresh air.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Want More?

  1. Ursus Horribilis

  2. Amisso Patre

  3. Iter in Principio

  The Enigma Strain

  Prologue

  Prologue

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Afterword

  About the Authors

  Also by Nick Thacker

  Chapter One

  Of all the poop-scrapers in Rocky Mountain National Park, Ben figured he was the best. Top three, for sure. It didn’t matter that he was probably one of only about three — he was definitely one of the best. Poop scraping, he’d learned, was both an art and a science, and Ben sometimes thought he’d found the perfect road between the two.

  Of course, Ben hated poop scraping with a red-hot passion, but he’d almost convinced himself he was okay with his job. As he woke in his sleeping bag, he stared at the fabric of his tent and took a few deep breaths to start the day.

  His destination this morning was the privy next to the ranger station below Haynach Lake, one of the most remote parts of the park. Geographically, it was smack in the middle of the park’s sprawling landmass, but Haynach was far enough from roads or visitors centers, it was a two-day slog in and out. Not that Ben minded. September in Rocky Mountain National Park was the kind of place where a slog of solitude proved to be exactly what he wanted and needed.

  He’d only worked at the park for four months, and the summer had been much hotter than he expected. At this altitude, he assumed he’d be fighting snow in July and August. But, most days, he could don the uniform of his green shorts and short-sleeve shirt and not feel a chill. Morning and evening still produced frigid temps, but every afternoon felt glorious in the sun.

  Temperatures had already started to dip, but Ben still relished the weather. The tourists were evaporating now that Labor Day was behind them. And Ben enjoyed that fact most of all. Being alone out in the wilderness almost gave him a sense of peace. Almost.

  At Yellowstone, where he had started as a park ranger about six years ago, there were always crowds. Infinite crowds. Vehicles backed up on the park roads for “moose jams” and casual hikers destroying trails with careless habits.

  As a volunteer, Ben more or less had to go where he was told.

  A volunteer ranger didn’t get the best jobs, especially ones on the ranger exchange program. So, he was a poop scraper. He wasn’t even the head poop-scraper. No, he wasn’t the guy to come along with the pack llamas to mine the compost. His job was much more menial. He would stir, add bark mulch, and remove objects that weren’t supposed to be there.

  The things people dropped into privies were beyond explanation. Maybe he would write a book someday about it. He enjoyed writing, but most of what he wrote was in a small journal he kept around to record thoughts and musings.

  Ben packed up his tent as his water boiled. Stomach grumbling, he was ready for the oatmeal now. Lack of sleep last night had made him hungry before the sun had even risen. A light dusting of snow during the night hadn’t helped matters, as he’d burned quite a lot of calories shivering in his sleeping bag.

  Still, as he sat on a stump and dropped the packet of oats into the water, he took a whiff of the air and let it relax him. The sounds of a nearby creek rushing along created the only noise in the air.

  “It’s going to be a good day,” he said to the quiet wilderness around him. A deer appeared at the top of a nearby hill, steam pluming from its nostrils. The deer eyed him for a moment, and then trotted away.

  After breakfast, Ben packed up the rest of his gear and headed for the ranger cabin, a mile up this trail toward Haynach. There was something appealing about the backpacker life; to carry your domicile on your back and put down temporary roots wherever it pleased you. Within the park-acceptable backcountry areas, of course.

  His boots shuffled through leaves and downed branches from creaking beetle-kill pines. A trail runner came sprinting by him, a woman decked head-to-toe in spandex. Pretty deep in the park for trail runners, but Ben had seen some day hikers tackle twenty mile in a single day. Eyes forward, white earbuds dangled from her ears as she huffed and puffed along the trail.

  He resisted the urge to turn his head and check her backside as she streamed past him. No, this woman wasn’t on his agenda today.

  For the next twenty minutes as the trail climbed uphill, he tried to remember the name of the ranger stationed at the cabin. He first thought it was Harold, but that wasn’t right. His brain kept getting stuck on names that started with H. Horace. Henry. Harper. Eventually, he broke free of his H prison and the name William leaped into his brain. William the full-time ranger, a guy with a scraggly beard and thick glasses that turned his eyes into circular orbs. A heavyset guy who liked to chuckle heartily at all jokes and had a penchant for local beers and expensive marijuana.

  After another ten minutes traversing the trail, Ben noted the solitary wooden cabin off to the side of the trail. A small, one-room little structure shrouded by trees. Privy about a hundred feet away. Normally, Ben would go right to the privy and do his job, but when he noticed the trail of smoke leading up from the chimney, he thought maybe he should say hi. Plus, maybe William had some coffee brewing — or better yet, some of that amazing Wild Turkey 101 he’d given Ben a sample of a month ago. Amazing because it was nearly dirt cheap and therefore flowed freely out of William’s decanter. Ben wasn’t a whiskey connoisseur, as he typically preferred rum and Coke, but he was never one to turn down free booze, either.

  Ben wondered if his desire for a drink or a cup of coffee had more to do with his desire to interact with a human being. Even though Ben preferred solitude, he still could get lonely sometimes. Back at the trailer park where the rangers and volunteers were quartered, he tended to keep to himself, even though he had ample opportunities for socialization. Out here, with no one around, he craved a little human engagement. Ironic.

  Ben dropped his gear on the front porch of the cabin and rapped the side of his palm on the door a few times, screen door rattling. He waited for the shuffle of feet on the other side, but heard nothing. After ten more seconds, he knocked again.

  “Estes Park PD,” he said. “We’ve heard you have some weed plants in there. I can smell it coming out of the chimney, so no point in hiding it. Open up.”

  Ben opened the screen door and knocked directly on the wood, then pushed his ear against it. After a few seconds, still nothing. If William wasn’t home, then why was there smoke coming out of the chimney? Something about it didn’t sit right.

  “Actually, that was a joke. It’s not the cops.”
/>   Ben waited a full minute now, trying to still his breathing to listen through the door.

  “William?” he said, trying to make his voice loud enough to breach the door, but not too loud. “You in there? It’s Harvey Bennett. Ben, remember? I’m here to scrape the poop. If you’ve got coffee, can I have some?”

  Now, he took a step back, since he didn’t want to freak the guy out if the door opened. But, after standing there for thirty more seconds, there was still no activity on the other side.

  Ben stepped back off the porch. “Out for an early morning hike? What’s the deal?”

  Maybe he’d started a fire and went out to get a little more kindling. That seemed like a reasonable explanation. Ben shrugged and opened his pack to remove the supplies to treat the privy. And that’s when he got his first real feeling something wasn’t right.

  The privy stood fifty feet from the cabin, a wooden outhouse with an angled roof and area cleared of brush and grass in a circle around it. Like a pitcher’s mound. For some reason, as Ben walked the short distance form the porch to the privy, his heart raced.

  “What the hell is wrong with me?” he whispered.

  The privy loomed large as Ben approached it. A cold, rickety wooden structure, not much larger than a phone booth.

  But there was something about it that didn’t feel right. Too cold. Too small. Too barren. The blank emptiness of the area tickled Ben’s spine like a ghost’s finger.

  Ben set his gear outside the privy and knocked on the wooden door a couple times. “William, if you’re in there, it’s Ben. I’m really hoping I don’t accidentally see your bare ass, so please tell me if you’re inside this thing.”

  No response.

  Ben lifted the latch and pulled open the door, and what he saw inside drained all the color from his face. William, the bearded park ranger, was indeed sitting on the toilet. A knife jutting from his neck, his shirt a carpet of red.

  Dead.

  Chapter Two

  Ben staggered back from the privy, his eyes locked on the blood drained from William’s neck. Like a big red scarf all down the front of William’s parka. His mouth zipped tight, his head lolled to the side.

  But his eyes were still open, underneath the Coke-bottle glasses. That part bothered Ben the most. The eyes that seemed to bore into a spot on the ground. Ben looked down at that spot, an innocuous little square of land, just grass and a coupe of twigs. Was that the last thing William had seen before he died?

  Ben realized he was becoming lightheaded, he was sucking on oxygen so fast. He held his hands out to steady himself as stars dotted the edges of his vision.

  After a deep breath, he paused to think. He had to examine the situation. Whatever else was going on, Ben was first on the scene, and that was an important detail. He recalled all the collective knowledge from the cop shows he’d seen on TV.

  The blood wasn’t moving or dripping, so this kill hadn’t occurred within the last few minutes. But he also wasn’t frozen, so Ben didn’t think William had been out here all night.

  He’d been killed some time this morning.

  Ben knew he should go inside the privy to see if the body was cold, but he didn’t know if he could bring himself to touch it. William was dead, no doubt about it. With all that blood, and the fact that he hadn’t moved a muscle in the forty-five seconds Ben had been standing here.

  “Wait a second,” Ben whispered to the woods. Killed this morning. Killed maybe within the last few minutes.

  Maybe the killer or killers were still in the area.

  Ben whipped around, checking his surroundings. The cabin was nestled next to a hill dotted with pines. Several downed logs crisscrossed the hillside, some of the trunks large enough to hide behind. Ben stilled his breathing and focused on his ears. Aside from the normal creaking of beetle kill pines swaying in the light morning breeze, there was nothing. A faint hint of moving water from the Haynach runoff.

  “Think, Ben, think,” he said, trying to calm his racing heart. His eyes traced over every available piece of the scenery, and he couldn’t find anything weird or out of place.

  He pulled up his walkie talkie and pressed the side button. In his panic, he completely forgot the walkie protocol.

  “This is volunteer ranger Harvey Bennett. I’m up near Haynach, on privy duty. I’ve got a code… red, I guess? Some serious shit has happened up here. I need help immediately.”

  He let go of the button and held the walkie out in front of him, awaiting a response. He focused on the little indicator light near the top of the walkie, waiting for it to blink green. When none came for thirty seconds, he hit the button again.

  “Seriously, I need help. I’ve got a dead body in the woods and it looks like he was murdered. If there’s anyone out there this morning, please respond. This is not a joke or a drill or anything like that.”

  Again, he held out the walkie and waited for someone to tell him what to do. Any response at all would have been helpful at this point, since he felt so completely out of his depth in this situation. After a minute of silence, he checked the batteries and fiddled with the knob on top. Everything seemed to be working correctly.

  “Where the hell is everyone?”

  Ben holstered the walkie and fished his cell phone out of his pocket. No service. With the density of the trees and the cloud cover this morning, it made sense. Maybe he needed to get higher to get a signal.

  But Ben felt a little weird about leaving William here. Like he needed to stay with the dead ranger out of some kind of mourning.

  Forget that. It’s not as if this is a garden-variety bear or mountain lion mauling. There is a human killer on the loose.

  Ben did shut the door to the privy as he set out to hike up the hill and locate some open ground where the trees weren’t so dense. It would take him a few minutes to crest this hill, so he had to hurry.

  Stupid Rocky Mountain National Park. He rescinded all the nice things he’d been thinking about it this morning. Something like this would never happen at Yellowstone. Sure, there were plenty of bear incidents, mostly due to idiot tourists on day hikes trying to get close enough to snap selfies with wild beasts. He had mixed feelings about bears and humans sharing the same spaces, but in most cases he tended to err on the side of the bear.

  Humans usually had no concept of or consideration for their effect on the environment, and how easily they could screw up a natural habitat. Even if they left their campsites spotless, there were other things they often overlooked. He’d seen more than one incident of a group of hikers who’d left their sandwiches in the back seat of their cars with their windows cracked, shocked when they returned from hiking to find a sea of glass in the parking lot and their car doors ripped off.

  And then, of course, they’d complain and try to blame the park staff. Or they would ignore the park speed limits and then break their necks when they slam into a herd of moose coming around a tight corner.

  But still — he’d never seen a murder in his years of volunteering up there. Never anything like this. He’d joined the park service to have a job where he didn’t have to deal with concerns like humans who would slash the throats of other humans.

  He’d joined the park service so he didn’t have to deal with humans, in fact.

  And being an exchange volunteer and not a “tenured” full employee, Ben didn’t have too many close friends among the park staff. William had seemed like a decent guy. He and Ben had shared a few beers at the Wheel Bar in Estes Park. In addition to being a craft beer and weed enthusiast, William was a big gamer, always talking about the new video game coming out soon and how the Xbox and Playstation versions would be different.

  Ben grunted as the hill steepened. Without a trail to climb, he was shuffling through bushes and fallen trees so old and wet they were disintegrating like crumbly cake.

  In another minute, Ben reached a clearing at the plateau atop the hill, and he whipped out his cell phone. One bar. He pumped the walkie’s button a few times to
hear the static, then he repeated his distress call from earlier. He waited, staring at the sky and hoping for a break in the clouds.

  Still nothing.

  He holstered the walkie and unlocked his phone. A moment of panic made him shudder when he realized he had no idea who to call. He didn’t have the numbers of the other rangers in his phone. Not even the superintendent’s.

  With one bar and no high-speed internet, Ben opened a web browser. The basic search page took a full sixty seconds to load. Meanwhile, a cluster of moose had wandered to the other edge of the clearing, casting huge brown eyes at him. As long as they didn’t wander this way, Ben wouldn’t sweat it.

  Moose were more dangerous than bears in Rocky Mountain National Park. They had drilled that into him on his first day at Yellowstone, and then again at Rocky Mountain. Moose were territorial, excitable, and very good at getting their way.

  Finally, after an eternity, the page finished loading. Ben typed in rocky mountain national park, and waited for the search to complete. Another eternity. He found a page with the park’s general info phone number, and he tapped that link to place the call.

  As it rang, static on the phone was a bad sign. After five rings, the park’s automated system picked up, and Ben could barely make out the recording. Tinny, far away, broken up by static. This call would disconnect any second now if his service blanked out.