The Severed Pines Page 10

  “Do you come down to this construction site often, Mr. Superintendent?”

  Taylor crossed his arms. “I don’t see how that’s any of your concern. I don’t know who you people are.”

  The four of them all all turned toward Taylor, forming a semi-circle around him. Out of the corner of his eye, Taylor watched the construction workers, all sitting on a concrete slab, eating lunch. They were looking on with rapt attention. Some of them with wary expressions on their faces.

  “You don’t need to know who we are,” said the greasy guy. “All you need to know is we have an interest in what’s going on here, and it’s not your business. You want to cause trouble? That’s going to blow up in your face, Snell.”

  “I’m going to have to ask you gentlemen to leave,” Taylor said. “You don’t have any right to be here, and it’s dangerous.”

  The greasy one turned to his associates, and most of them shrugged. One of the others—a shorter white guy with a shiny bald head—snapped his fingers, and Greasy Guy took a few steps back. The bald guy and the greasy guy whispered to each other back and forth a few times, and they both took stock of the crowd of construction workers gawking at the developing scene.

  Finally, Bald Head gave Greasy Guy a stern look, and something changed in his expression.

  “Mr. Snell,” Greasy Guy said, “maybe we’ve intruded. That wasn’t our intention. We know you’re just trying to do your job. There’s no reason for us to bust your balls out here today.”

  Without a word from the rest of them, they all collected themselves and wandered off toward their enormous Escalade. Gravel crunching and dirt shuffling under their shoes.

  Taylor stood, stunned, and watched them all file into the enormous vehicle. He had no idea what to say. A couple of them gave him dirty looks, but seemed content not to carry on the conversation.

  As the car drove off, Taylor eyed the construction workers sitting on the slab, eating lunch. All of them still mute and passively absorbing the situation.

  “Who the hell were those people?” Taylor said. “Gary?”

  The collective of workers all turned on Gary, waiting for him to answer the question. Gary looked around, then he cleared his throat. “We don’t know, sir. They’ve been here a couple times, and we thought it was none of our business. We were told to keep hikers and employees out. We figured they were neither.”

  “So you did nothing?”

  Gary frowned. “Sorry, sir. We didn’t think it was our place.”

  Taylor waited a moment, then he tried to breathe to settle the adrenaline throttling his system. He clapped his hands. “Back to work, everyone. The inspectors will be here any second!”

  The workers, startled, stashed their food and retrieved their hard hats. Taylor wandered back to his car to collect his as a new car arrived. The government vehicle drove along the path, insignia on the side. The inspector, a few minutes early.

  Taylor had to shift. He had to put on his professional face. If this didn’t go well, there would be hell to pay for everyone.

  And then, his phone buzzed in his pocket again. Yet another text from his wife.

  He felt like he was standing on the lip of a bottomless pit, trying to juggle flaming swords.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ben figured he would have no trouble accessing the back hallway to reach Taylor’s office. Nearing the end of the lunch hour, most of the administrators still hadn’t returned from lunch meetings in town or quick jaunts out into the park to burn off their soup and salad calories.

  There were a few visitors wandering around, but no one would see him lifting a keycard from behind the main desk. All he had to do was lean over the counter, snag it, then swipe and put it back.

  He’d started to reach across the counter to snag a keycard someone had left behind, when footsteps shuffled behind him. Ben dropped the card on top of the counter and whipped his hands back. He whirled to find one of the cashiers from the gift shop. She was an older woman, maybe thirty-five, with thick glasses and her hair in a tight ponytail. Her name tag glinted under the fluorescent lights shining down on them. They’d never spoken before, but had smiled at each other across the room a couple of times.

  Ben gulped and tried to look innocent.

  “Hi,” she said. “Harvey, right?”

  “I go by Ben.”

  “Oh, okay. Hi, Ben.”

  He tried not to look at her name tag, but it happened anyway. “Hi, Susan.”

  Her eyes flicked down to the keycard on the counter, brazenly sitting there out in the open like a murder weapon. “How is your day going?”

  Ben could see the hesitation on her face. “Good, Susan. How about you?”

  There were barely any people in the visitor center right now within earshot, but she moved a step closer to him. Ben instinctively wanted to pull back, but he told himself to stay put. Be confident and act like nothing was wrong.

  “Whatever it is you’re doing,” she said, “it’s fine with me.” Again, her eyes drifted down to the keycard. “After what you’ve been through? Believe me, you’re not the only person who has noticed all the strange things going on around here.”

  He let out a big breath, so much so that he swayed on his feet a little. “Thank you. I was just going to—”

  Susan raised her hands to silence him. “None of my business, dear.”

  He snatched the keycard, pressed it against the pad, then quickly replaced it after opening the back door. Susan gave him a wink as he mouthed thank you and disappeared into the hall.

  Ben eased down the corridor, looking suspicious, but trying not to look suspicious. He kept his eyes forward, not wanting to make eye contact with anyone who’d stayed behind during the lunch hour.

  At Taylor’s office, he took one look at the lock and knew how to break into it. Or at least, he thought he knew, based on dozens of movies and TV shows he’d seen. The gap between the door and doorframe suggested he could easily fit a credit card in there to give it a quick swipe.

  He picked an expired rewards card from a sandwich shop in Jackson, Wyoming, and raked the card up like he was processing a charge. At the same time, he pressed the door handle open.

  Taylor Snell’s office door popped open like magic.

  Ben practically jumped inside. With the door shut behind him, he took a few deep breaths. “Okay, Bennett, think. You need something like the invoices at Taylor’s house, but better. More concrete. Something so damning, they won’t care that you broke in here to steal it.”

  A murder weapon would be the ultimate bit of evidence. But, Ben had to remind himself, the sight of a knife all crusted with blood might not be the easiest thing to find — any killer with even a bit of intelligence would probably hide the weapon somewhere besides in plain sight. He also had to prepare himself for the possibility that the weapon was long gone.

  And then he began to dig around in the drawers and file cabinets. The drawers appeared mostly empty save for some pens and pencils and—oddly enough—a plentiful collection of plastic drinking straws. Mostly normal stuff, nothing too out of the ordinary.

  When Ben reached the bottom drawer, he found it locked. He glanced at his phone to check the time. Taylor could be coming back any minute now.

  What would he even say if Taylor walked in here right now? There was no good lie to excuse an invasion like this. Ben would have to launch into full accusation mode and hope it knocked Taylor off his game.

  Just in case, Ben took out his phone and opened the voice recorder app. He pressed record and then put his phone back into his pocket. Might be his only chance to snag a confession.

  He left the locked drawer alone and moved on to the file cabinets. They were chock full of papers. Mostly employee records, incident reports, purchase orders for toilet paper and employee lounge coffee filters. Nothing seemed too exciting, and Ben didn’t have a spare six hours to dig through it all. The smoking gun was not sitting out in the open, for sure.

  He stared at the locke
d cabinet drawer. If there was something juicy in this office it would be there. The only thing in the office he couldn’t easily access.

  But he didn’t have a key. A swipe of a sandwich reward card wouldn’t be enough to open this thing. He’d have to break the lock.

  To hell with it.

  Ben snatched a golden letter opener from the desk and jabbed it into the space above the drawer. He applied pressure. The wood creaked, the letter opened tilted, back and forth, back and forth, slipping it in a little deeper with each direction.

  And then something cracked.

  He applied a little more pressure and the drawer came flying open. Ben’s eyes landed first on a baggie of white powder, sitting on a small mirror, with a few lengths of cut straws next to it.

  “Holy shit.”

  Well, that explained Taylor’s penchant for sniffling during their few encounters. He had an affinity for the nose candy.

  He watched himself in the little mirror. His own eyes looked red and weary, like he imagined someone strung out on this powder might look. And then, something else caught Ben’s eye. A piece of paper, folded, with a loopy letter T scrawled on the outside.

  That handwriting seemed familiar.

  Ben opened the paper to find a recognizable scrawl of text on the inside:

  T-

  You need to think this through. I know you’re in a panic right now with everything going on, but now is not the time for us to take a break. Now, we need to be more united than ever. Believe me, this is something we can get through and come out on the other side together. Alone, we’re not as powerful. Together, we can lean on each other.

  Everyone talking about rangers missing? Rangers attacked? We need each other now. We need to be strong and together and to hell with what your wife knows.

  Don’t leave me. It’s a mistake.

  -K

  Ben stared at the paper for a moment. K for Kathryn, who had also written a creepy love letter to dead ranger William.

  The realization settled over him like a dense and sudden rainfall. But even so, the puzzle pieces still didn’t seem to fit.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Kathryn Delaney stood at the window of her trailer, watching the sun sink across the sky, threatening to disappear below the mountains. The beauty of the daily sunsets never failed to astound her, but today the purple and orange sky felt poignant and wistful instead of inspiring.

  She sniffed as the cocaine drizzled down the back of her nasal passages and merged with her bloodstream. Running, going, doing, pumping. The intention had been to calm her down and make her focus less on her problems. In actual effect, the coke was doing the opposite. Each foot pistoned up and down on the floor. She moved like she was at a hoedown, or what she imagined a hoedown would be like. Her arms were crossed underneath her armpits, and she was pinching her nipples between her thumbs and forefingers. Pinching gave her no pleasure, but it did send jolts of adrenaline and endorphins up and down her spine.

  One memory in particular careened around the inside of her head like dogs on a track, chasing a plastic rabbit. Not long ago, Taylor and Kathryn were parked in her car at the Fern Lake trailhead. The sun had set, and the parking lot was populated only with cars from the overnight backpackers. Silent, dark, and her tinted windows made it even darker. Given Taylor’s marriage situation, they couldn’t go out to dinner and a movie or have a few drinks at a bar. They couldn’t even drive down to Denver or Loveland because having a small child meant he had to stay close to home.

  These things were fine with Kathryn. She knew his situation was only temporary, and soon they would be together all the time. Taylor had explained how the uncoupling process from his wife would be complicated and lengthy and he needed lots of patience and room to be able to make the changed needed. Kat could understand those needs. She gave him all the space he required, because being with him was like a magic salve to her wounds.

  Taylor’s love helped to heal the pain of William’s rejection.

  And that night, they were in the back seat of her car, clothes on, passing a bottle of Absolut and a mirror, trading off each substance. Laughing and talking and nuzzling against each other. Even though there had been no hanky-panky yet, their collective heat still fogged the windows.

  “Let’s do something crazy,” she’d said as tinny music from her phone played on the seat between them.

  “What?” He raised an eyebrow at her, since she clearly had that look in her eye.

  “You know I was the stage manager for the theater department at Estes High, right?”

  He cocked his head. “No, I didn’t know that. Sounds very interesting.”

  Kat reached into the front seat and pulled her keys out of the ignition, then she picked through them to find the one key with the red S marked in nail polish. She muted her phone’s music and held the key out to him. “I still have a key to the theater.”

  He cackled, and she jumped into the front seat of the car, practically dragging him with her. Like Bonnie and Clyde they were, in that moment.

  That night had been magical. Like a long-ago dream that seemed it would only get better over time, and something she could hold onto for the rest of her life. Not like the nightmare of the last few days.

  Taylor had recently said they shouldn’t see each other any more. That William going missing and the attacks on Ben and Reese were drawing too much attention. He’d said their affair and its roots and complications would expose them both and ruin their lives.

  To hell with Taylor. They had built this together. They had taken a nothing and turned it into a something, and each of them had contributed fifty percent of it. He couldn’t pull away and think that the whole creation would evaporate.

  Maybe all his talk of “uncoupling” had been bullshit. Maybe he’d never intended to leave his wife in the first place.

  She paced in her trailer, feet landing heavy on the floor. “No, Taylor, you don’t get to get off that easy.”

  Her throat was thick. Words came at lightning speed, her tongue and cheeks numb. Her brain couldn’t keep up with the thoughts sprinting back and forth.

  If he wouldn’t change his mind, Kathryn would have to take drastic action. Make him see the truth. He had left her with no choice.

  She dropped down to her knees and crawled across the floor to her meager single bed. Underneath that bed sat a box, a heavy cardboard cigar box acquired from her father, a few years ago. One of the only possessions she’d kept from that man. This box had been with her since he’d died, and she moved it from place to place, despite the danger its contents posed.

  Kathryn lifted the lid and her heart skipped a beat when she laid eyes on the object inside it.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Ben slipped into his car as the sun initiated its slow descent behind the mountains to the west. He glanced at Kathryn’s trailer. A light flicked on, indicating she was home. Part of him wanted to storm over there and pound on the door. To confront her about her part in all this. She clearly had one, although Ben couldn’t quite sort that out yet.

  Why had she written that desperate love note to Taylor, just as she had to William? Was she in love with both of them? At the same time, possibly, or was one a rebound from the other?

  He had a hard time picturing Kathryn slashing William’s throat open and then dragging his body away. William had been twice her size.

  Unless she’d had help moving the body. Help from someone like new lover Taylor.

  Maybe their affair didn’t matter. What mattered was proving who’d killed William, and finding out what had happened to his body. Who exactly had attacked Ben and Reese didn’t even matter, at this point.

  Ben could uncover all the dead rats and love letters and suspicious purchase orders in the world, and none of it would come close to matching the hardcore evidence of finding the proof of William’s body. No body, no murder.

  If he could find that, the local police would have to take this whole thing seriously. Maybe even the st
ate guys or FBI would come in. Ben obviously didn’t want to become the center of any media circus. He only wanted the truth of what happened to William to find its way into the world.

  As he held the car keys in his hand, a terrifying thought jumped into Ben’s mind. Reese. He’d been there when they’d both been attacked, and while Ben’s attacker had smacked him around, they had barely scratched Reese. Reese had been the one to persuade Ben not to call the detective. Reese had conveniently not been there the first night Ben had been attacked, and had shown up not long after.

  At every turn, Reese knew things no one else knew. He had access and the means to move many of these chess pieces. From a certain point of view, everything could link back to him.

  Reese could be behind the whole thing. Was that even possible? Could Reese have killed William?

  Ben’s phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket to find Reese’s number displayed on the screen. His eyes bugged out and his breath shortened.

  “What do I do?” he asked the interior of the car, which gave him no reply.

  Chest heaving, he answered the phone. His hand shook as he held it up to his ear. “Reese?”

  “Hey, dude.”

  “Where have you been?”

  Reese groaned on the other end of the line. “I had a wreck. I’m fine, though, it’s no big deal. I was heading out on Highway 7 early this morning to pick up firewood for the trailer, and some asshole ran a red. T-boned my car, flipped me around, EMTs came, ambulance ride to the hospital. It was a whole big thing.”

  All the tension and confusion over Reese’s disappearance melted into a confused hum. But, hearing his friend’s voice, Ben knew Reese couldn’t have done all this. He couldn’t have killed William and then arranged those attacks.

  He didn’t know why, but Ben felt certain. Reese wasn’t capable of these heinous crimes. Adrenaline still pumped, but the suspicion faded like the ending of a song. “Holy crap. Are you okay?”