The Severed Pines Read online

  “I’m fine. They checked me out at the hospital, and I’m cleared. Took all damn day, though. Got a little neck soreness, but they gave me a script for some sweet pills, so I think it’ll be smooth sailing from here on out.”

  “Wow. I don’t even know what to say. I was worried about you.”

  Reese snickered. “Isn’t that sweet.”

  “How soon can you get back here? There’s some serious shit going down in the park today. I don’t know exactly what it is or what’s going on, but I feel like everything is about to come to a head.”

  Reese sucked on his teeth for a few seconds. “I don’t know. I can be back in an hour, maybe a half-hour if all this goes smoothly? My car is totaled, so that’s not an option. I’m going to get a ride to the Avis since insurance is paying for it. I don’t know how much I can hurry that part along.”

  “Understood. Just get back here. Text me when you’re near the park.”

  “Sure thing, dude,” Reese said, and then hung up.

  Ben breathed a huge sigh of relief. Not only because his friend wasn’t dead, but also he felt confident he could clear Reese off the suspect list. Plus, this meant Ben would have backup soon. Handling this situation alone wasn’t working.

  But could he wait an hour and do nothing? And, if he did do something, what would that something be?

  Maybe he should go into town and meet Reese at the Avis car rental place. There was only one in Estes Park, so it’s not as if they would miss each other.

  The uncertainty of not having a solid plan was like an uncomfortable chair. The longer Ben languished in it, the worse things became.

  Go to Reese, his brain said. It’s the only thing to do.

  Ben backed out of his parking spot and entered the street toward Highway 7, near the Wild Basin part of the park. This was the fastest way to get to town. The day hikers would be clogging up Highway 36 on their return trips to Denver right about now.

  And then he saw something that totally confused him. Driving the other way, in a car Ben had never seen before, was Avery.

  Wasn’t he supposed to be in Washington for meetings? And why was he in a different car?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Kathryn opened the cigar box and grinned down at the revolver inside of it. The gun had been her father’s. He’d taken his own life with it five years ago, but that didn’t taint it. At least, in her mind, it didn’t taint it. That fact gave the gun power. Gave it a gravity it wouldn’t otherwise have.

  Owning it was like having a piece of him with her at all times. It had ended him, sure, but that wasn’t so bad. He’d never been much of a father, so maybe having this gun was like remembering the best part of him.

  She lifted the revolver out of the box and sat back on the floor of her trailer. The thing was heavy. The weight reassured her. Her fingers slithered along the grip and the barrel, and she felt like water caressing it. Then, she snatched the box of bullets and popped open the cylinder. The click sent a surge of energy down the back of her spine and made her cross her legs.

  As she loaded each of the six bullets into its respective chamber, she felt a sense of power rushing through her. One round led to the next, each one shifting the balance of control back in her direction.

  Kathryn’s euphoric recall of her last great night with Taylor still rumbled around in her head. The events still played there, like a movie missing frames. The night they’d parked at Fern Lake and drunk themselves silly on vodka, and then drove to Estes Park High School.

  As a former stage manager for the theater department, Kat still had a set of keys to the main theater and the backstage areas. After graduating, no one had ever thought to ask her for them, so they’d sat on her keychain all these years.

  Giggling and stumbling, Kathryn led Taylor to the back door of the theater. She knew he was drunk out of his mind, because sober Taylor would never have agreed to such a crazy and risky adventure. But that’s one of the things she loved about him. His ability to throw everything up into the air to see where it landed. His adventurousness had to be coaxed, sure, but once it came out, he could get really wild.

  They sneaked into the theater, and Taylor pushed her up against the nearest wall, in a hallway, next to a display case lined with trophies won by the speech and debate team.

  “Not here,” she said. “I have a better idea.”

  His delirious expression didn’t change as he nodded and invited her to take charge of the evening. She led him to the stage, to a spiral staircase at the edge. Then, she pointed up.

  “No way,” he said, with a sense of wonder and danger and excitement all over his face. It was the cutest thing she’d ever seen. In that moment, he looked exactly like a teenager. He was much older than that, obviously, but she could see the childlike wonder and joy behind his eyes.

  “You bet your ass,” she said, and led him by the hand up the spiral staircase. As drunk and high as they were, it took them quite a long time to ascend the thirty foot stairs up to the catwalk above the stage. Slowly, carefully, her forcing them to be mindful of each step. It was a maddening exercise, since all she could think about was getting up there and tearing his clothes off.

  At the top, they both began to shed clothing, letting items plummet thirty feet to the stage. Within seconds, they were naked, exposed, free to the world and free from the world.

  Their bare feet clanked on the metal walkway, suspended in the air directly above the stage where Kathryn had been the stage manager for Our Town only a few years ago. Back then, she would have never dreamed of doing something so naughty.

  But that night, Kat and Taylor made it a reality. Always on the edge of getting caught, living their best lives, one second at a time.

  And memories like that burned into her mind as she held the revolver, feeling the cold grip on the inside of her palm.

  “We shouldn’t see each other anymore?” she said, her teeth gritted. Jaw locked tight.

  Her heart thumped against her ribcage. Sweat dripped from her temple down into her eyebrows, making them slick.

  Taylor had done this. Taylor had set all of this in motion. He’d provided a safe haven to shelter her from the pain of William’s rejection. A shoulder to cry on. And that safe haven had become something more, something deeper. Their history proved it to be true. Or, it had been true. Maybe it could become true again, but not without decisive action.

  But there was always an obstacle. Always something in the way of them being able to fully express their love.

  Now, she knew what that obstacle was, and how to deal with it.

  Kathryn slid on her jacket and shoved the loaded revolver into the back of her jeans, then she eyed herself in the full-length mirror next to her bed. She could feel the freckles on her face, like a thousand little pinpricks.

  Kat pulled the jacket down over the top of the revolver so it wouldn’t be seen. She couldn’t let anyone catch her with this gun.

  Not until she’d set out to finish what she hadn’t had the courage to do before.

  Not until she’d removed the roadblock.

  Kathryn left her trailer as darkness descended on Rocky Mountain National Park. William’s face appeared in front of her vision, floating there. Kat wondered who’d killed him. She wondered if they would ever figure it out and catch the person or persons responsible. She’d tried not to think about it, since justice was so rarely given in this world.

  Sometimes, you have to make your own justice.

  She started up her car and put her endgame into motion.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  After seeing Avery driving toward Wild Basin, Ben turned around and headed back toward Moraine Park to regroup at his trailer. He needed to figure out what was going on. Or, more accurately, he needed to think through his suspicions to determine if he was on the right track.

  Everything felt like it was accelerating, but he didn’t know where it was headed, or even how to control the vehicle.

  In his trailer, he first stopped i
n the bathroom to splash some water on his face. As water slicked down his cheeks and dribbled into the sink, he eyed himself in the mirror.

  “Okay, Ben, what do you know? William is dead and someone hid his body. That person knows who you are, most likely, because they saw you there and took him a few minutes later. Someone—probably the person who killed him—has sent men to scare you into dropping this whole thing. More than once. Also, Taylor Snell has been acting strange. Nervous all the time. He had some documents in his home office that make it look like he’s laundering money through the new construction on the south side of the park. Finally, Kathryn the ranger wrote love letters to both William and Taylor.”

  He paused and passed a hand towel over his face. “And the strangest piece of all is that Avery said he was being sent out of town, but he’s here in the park, in a different car. Why did he come back early?”

  Realizations swirled around Ben’s brain. The pieces of the puzzle coming closer together, but they wouldn’t fit into one exact shape.

  He walked from the sink to his bed and checked out the window. Not much to see aside from the overnight campers huddled around the stoves, grilling dinners. People with headlamps walking to the bathrooms. Regular camp stuff, the same activities Ben had watched out this window every night since he’d been here.

  Except, one strange thing did happen. Kat left her trailer and marched toward her car, a grim determination on her face. She was in a trance as she started up her car and spun around to leave the parking lot. Ben would never quite understand her chronic oddness.

  Next, he strolled to the other end of the trailer and gazed out through the blinds at the valley to the west, and the darkened silhouettes of the mountains beyond. He couldn’t see the nocturnal animals, but he knew they were out there, exploring.

  Enough contemplation. Time to take action.

  He slipped his phone out of his pocket, along with the phone number Avery had given him. The phone number belonged to the detective down in Denver, who Ben had been reluctant to call before.

  He typed in the number and held the phone up to his ear as it rang.

  After the first ring, Ben’s heart started to pound, but he didn’t know why. After the second ring, he felt short of breath,

  After a the third ring, a voice picked up. “This is… Detective Boudreaux, how can I help you?”

  Something struck him. He paused, Ben thought.

  The pause the person gave before naming himself seemed wrong. Thoughts whirled around inside Ben’s head, making him sway on his feet.

  Ben sucked in a breath. His skin felt hot.

  Was this guy a real detective? He held the phone away from his ear and stared at it. The man on the phone continued to talk, and Ben tapped on the button to end the call.

  This wasn’t a real detective. It was a setup, a fake. A designed service to intercept this phone call and perpetuate a fraud.

  And then, Ben saw something on his floor, something he hadn’t noticed before. When he realized what he was looking at, all the rest of the puzzle pieces fit together. They tumbled onto the table and snapped into place. Enlightenment came upside his head like a baseball bat.

  There were scuff marks, in semi-circles, on the floor near the entryway of the trailer. Right in front of the door. The kind of marks that nice shoes would leave.

  Exactly like the shoes Avery wore.

  He’d broken into Ben’s trailer to leave the dead rat.

  Avery had been the one laundering money, not Taylor. All of it a setup to lay blame if it fell apart. But Avery had done a commendable job pointing the finger at his boss. That’s why he hadn’t minded the pictures Ben had taken of the invoices at Taylor’s house. Anything that pointed at Taylor as being the guilty one shifted the blame from Avery.

  Avery had put just enough fear into Ben about using those pics that Ben wouldn’t go public, but he didn’t protest too loudly about them. And that’s why Ben was still alive, to help point the finger at Taylor.

  Another moment of clarity hit Ben, and it seemed like the most obvious thing in the world.

  I know where William’s body is.

  Ben snatched his car keys from the counter and raced out of his trailer.

  Ben skidded to a stop at the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center. When he killed the engine, he could hear his pulse in his ears. Energy. Except now, instead of panic, he felt a rumbling sense of determination coursing through him. Anger and power and a sense of justice powered the chemicals making his synapses fire.

  A light coat of slick rain covered the parking lot. With the sky now full of pregnant clouds, the evening no longer felt like the sun had set. The temperature had dropped fifteen degrees in the last ten minutes. And now, a slight resurgence of pre-dusk emerged as a gray light filtered over everything. Within seconds of his awareness of the weather, flakes of white cascaded from the heavens.

  Ben jumped out of his car and raced toward the front door. Technically, it was after the visitor center’s closing time, but he knew the front door would be open. Still lots to do after the official closing time. Plus, Taylor’s car was still in the lot, now collecting a fresh dusting of white.

  Ben whipped the door back to find Susan the sympathetic gift shop cashier holding the cash tray from the register on the far side of the room, a security deposit bag in her hand. And, past her, Taylor Snell, closing and locking the hallway to the admin wing of the building.

  Taylor’s eyes met Ben’s, and the older man looked like he was watching a vampire skulking in the doorway. His mouth dropped open, his complexion faded to a pale white.

  “Mr. Snell,” Ben said. “Taylor. I know everything.”

  Taylor, key in hand, took a step back, a horrified expression on his face. The cashier’s eyes flicked back and forth between them for a moment, then she lowered her head and went about her business.

  Ben strode across the room, stopping a few feet from Taylor.

  “We need to talk,” Ben said. “It can’t wait, and you’re not going to put me off any longer. We talk, now.”

  Taylor’s body vibrated like a bomb about to explode. “I don’t know what you mean. We don’t have anything to talk about. Come back and see me in the morning.”

  Ben pointed to the closed door, and then flicked his eyes toward the cashier as she was closing up the gift shop. “You do not want to have this conversation out here. This is going to happen, and I don’t care if you don’t like it.”

  Taylor’s shoulders sank, but he unlocked the door and stepped inside the hallway. Like a prisoner resigned to his fate, Taylor’s feeble attempt to put Ben off had fizzled, and he now made no effort to fight.

  Ben slid inside the hall and closed the door behind him.

  “You’re having an affair with Kathryn Delaney,” Ben said.

  Taylor gave a chirp of an incredulous laugh, but the ruse fell quickly when his face contorted into a grimace and tears leaked out of the corners of his eyes. He lowered his hands and took a couple steps back, until he bumped into the wall. Heaving deep breaths.

  “I’m not here to expose you,” Ben said, “And I’m not here to blackmail you. I’m not going to tell your wife. That’s something you’re going to have to do on your own. But I need you to confirm it to me, because it’s the last piece of the puzzle I’m not totally sure about.”

  “Every day,” Taylor said, his hands shaking, “all I can think about is what a terrible mistake I’ve made. How I’m going to lose my family and my job over a stupid fling with a park ranger. How something so simple and easy at first turned into something so complicated and messy. How could I have been such an idiot?”

  “You didn’t send Avery to Washington DC for meetings, did you?”

  “What?” Taylor said, his face twisting in surprise. “No, of course not. There are no meetings I know of in DC.”

  There it was, as far as Ben was concerned. The ultimate proof that Avery had been the architect of the whole thing.

  And then, Taylor’s expression cha
nged, and he seemed to understand where he was and who was standing opposite him. As if he’d come awake at that exact moment. “Wait a second. How did you know about Kathryn?”

  “Taylor, you need to listen to me. Avery Krafft is the one who killed William. Or, had him killed. I think he did it because William somehow figured out that Avery has been laundering money through the new construction at Wild Basin.”

  “He’s doing what?”

  “Inflating costs and faking all the documentation. He’s been trying to blame it on you. If all this goes bad, it’s your signatures on the purchase orders.”

  Taylor’s hands turned into fists as he stood tall and bumped the back of head head against the hall a few times. Eyes shut tight. “Of course. I’ve been so focused on… other things. I didn’t really pay attention to the purchase orders.” Taylor sucked in a breath. “That son of a bitch. He killed my nephew William?”

  Like a light appearing over his head, Ben now understood one of the last mysteries that had been plaguing him: why William got his performance reviews from Taylor, and not from Avery. They were family.

  “I think he did, sir. To cover up the laundering. I don’t know that for sure, but it’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

  Taylor wiped tears from the corners of his eyes. “I can believe it. I don’t understand why, but I believe it. He’s been different lately. Avery. For several months now, actually. He handled most of the construction bidding and I let him, because I have no experience with all that.” Taylor paused a moment, sucking in haggard breaths. “What do we do?”

  “I just saw him headed toward Wild Basin. And I think I know where William’s body has been hidden these last few days.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Kathryn started the car to turn on the wipers as she watched the house from across the street. The windshield was blurry amid the wintry mix of snow and rain. Kat didn’t need to see clearly, though, because she knew what she was looking for and exactly where it was.