The Severed Pines Read online

  He hunkered down under a tree to study it for a few minutes before attempting entry. Not a sound came from the building. No smoke coming from the fireplace.

  He tried to imagine what he would do if he opened the front door to find them snoozing on the floor in sleeping bags. He liked to think he would karate chop both of them into submission, but that was probably a pipe dream — especially since his entire understanding of karate came from the movie The Karate Kid and its sequels. If he did walk in to find them, his best bet would be to turn around and sprint in the other direction.

  Maybe then he would head toward Thunder Lake to intercept Reese before he came back to this cabin and stumbled into a nasty surprise. After losing William, if Ben lost Reese, he would definitely feel responsible for that one.

  And then, a terrible thought occurred: what if Reese was already gone? What if the two invaders had written that note yesterday? It’s not as if Ben was familiar with Reese’s handwriting.

  This extra bit of uncertainty brought on a massive headache, and Ben had to sit with his eyes closed to wait for it to abate. Too much going on in the last twenty-four hours.

  Several minutes had now passed, and the cabin sat silent and still. Against the backdrop of the mountains shrouded in early morning fog, this all felt like a postcard, not real life.

  Time to do it.

  After working up his nerve, he approached the back of the cabin and peered in a window. The interior was as empty as it had been when Ben showed up yesterday. No signs the invaders had been here or had even spent the night.

  Feeling a little more confident, Ben rounded the cabin to the front and opened the door, stick in hand. He tried the knob and found it unlocked, then he flung the door open. Still empty inside. The covers on the bed were in the exact same position as when Ben had whipped them off him a few hours before.

  “I’m armed, you pieces of shit,” he said. No response.

  He first went into the kitchen and exchanged his stick for a real knife from the wooden cutting block. There were only two places to check: the closet and the covered privy outside.

  Ben held the knife high as he opened the closet door to find a small, barren place. A couple of swinging coat hangers, a cluster of packaged emergency blankets, but that was about it.

  Same with the privy outside. When Ben was sure he had the place to himself, he let the tension roll out of his shoulders, and then he had a decision to make. The best course of action would be to get on with the business of reporting what he’d seen. But, his stomach was rumbling, and the cabin had food. The lingering headache from a few minutes ago needed food and caffeine to treat it.

  So, Ben decided to make breakfast. After being on the trail for a few days, he marveled at the refrigerator full of eggs and bacon and sausage. His eyes grew wide and he salivated so much, he had to spit into the sink.

  And as he prepared his morning feast, he kept the knife close by and his eyes on the door.

  Just as the bacon started to crackle, footsteps thumped from the porch outside. Ben snatched the knife and crouched behind the dining table. Heart pounding. He eyed his escape route: into the bathroom and out the window.

  The door flung open.

  Reese stood there, weighted down by a backpack. Ben’s tall and muscular ranger friend cocked his head and offered a smirk. “Bennett?”

  “Hey, Reese.”

  “Dude, what are you doing here? I thought you were further up north.”

  Ben let out a sigh so large, he had to steady himself against the table to keep from collapsing to the floor from lightheadedness. “Sit down and have some eggs. I have to tell you a story you’re not going to believe.”

  Chapter Five

  Ben and Reese rolled up to the Beaver Meadows visitor center on the east side of the park at about 4:30 pm, not long before it closed. But, Ben knew park superintendent Taylor Snell would be back there in his office. After much discussion on the hike out, they decided to take this right to the top. This was a murder and an attack by two armed thugs. Serious shit.

  Ben was about to cross the parking lot, when Reese grabbed him by the arm.

  “What?” Ben said.

  “You need to get your story straight before you go in.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Reese sighed. “I know you believe what you saw and what happened to you. I believe everything you told me about it. But this is a big deal, Ben. Like, monumental. Lots of people are going to think you made this up. Maybe even think you made this up because you’re the one who made William disappear.”

  Ben’s chest tightened. He hadn’t even considered this possibility. “I don’t know what to do other than tell my story.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. You’re going to walk in there and tell a story. And then you’re going to tell it to the cops, and maybe to the newspaper, if the park can’t keep it quiet. And, if your story changes at all—even a little bit—they’re going to nail you for it.”

  Ben studied his friend for a few seconds. Reese seemed to be holding something back, like an opinion he was hesitant to share.

  “I didn’t hurt William,” Ben said.

  “I know, I know. I just don’t want you to get hosed when this is all out in the open.”

  “Okay.”

  Reese frowned. “You good?”

  “I was,” Ben said, “until you came at me with all this conspiracy shit.”

  “Sorry. Just tell them what happened. I know your head is all over the place right now, so know I’ve got your back.”

  Ben sucked in a hitching breath, his heart pounding. He nodded, unable to find the right words. Then, they crossed the lot and entered the building.

  A few of the visitor center employees gave the two bedraggled park rangers strange looks as they shuffled through the exhibits about alpine tundra weather and vegetation. Stuffed mountain lions and a 3D topographical map of the park. This late in the season and this late in the day, there were few visitors wandering around inside the building. Two little kids were gaping at the mountain lion, until one of them lifted a finger gun and fired a few rounds at the lion. The other kid made pained meowing sounds and then they both cackled and ran away.

  Ben set his sights on the back door, to the business offices in the hallway behind the little auditorium where the park showed the intro movie on a recurring loop.

  Reese held his ranger badge against the keycard panel. As a volunteer, Ben had to ask for entry to the back offices. No good reason for it other than politics, which Ben resented, but he was accustomed to it already from his time up in Yellowstone. The little guy always has to put out the extra effort.

  The door opened and Ben blinked against the harsh fluorescent lights lining the corridor. The interior of this hallway felt like a tunnel, the end of it twisting a bit like a theme park horror house.

  He heaved a few more deep breaths. All of this was so surreal.

  “Taylor’s office is back there,” Reese said, then he tilted his head and raised an eyebrow as he looked down the hall.

  “What?” Ben asked.

  “I dunno. I’ve never seen his door shut before. That’s weird.”

  Ben strolled up to the door and knocked a couple of times. He’d wanted to bang his fist against the side of it, but he paused for a moment first to collect himself.

  “Wait!” said the harried voice of the superintendent on the other side. “Just a moment!”

  Ben and Reese shared a look. Odd.

  A full thirty seconds elapsed before the door opened, and during that time Ben knew something was happening on the other side. Shuffling, moving, but Ben couldn’t see any of it. There were no windows in the door or on the side, so Ben had to wait.

  When it did finally open, there stood Taylor Snell, a lanky white guy with a weathered face and bushy eyebrows. About forty, maybe a few years older. His face seemed a little flushed, his shoulders rising and falling as if he’d been in the early stages of a panic attack. He most certainly ha
dn’t been expecting visitors right now. Maybe he’d been taking a late afternoon nap?

  “What?” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Uhh,” Reese said, “Mr. Snell, you remember Harvey Bennett?”

  “I do,” Taylor said, running a hand through his silvery hair. “You go by Ben. I remember. Please, call me Taylor, both of you.”

  “Sure,” Reese said.

  Taylor cleared his throat and wiped a hand across his brow. “What can I do for you?”

  “We need to talk to you, sir. There’s been a crime.”

  Something on the elder man’s face twitched, but only for a moment. A microscopic wiggling of his lips. “Okay.”

  Reese motioned inside the office. “Can we come in? We need some privacy.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Taylor said, stepping back so he wasn’t blocking the doorway. As he ushered them into the room, his eyes flicked everywhere, checking things. He reminded Ben of someone who takes on an unexpected house guest and then checks the living room to make sure there are no dirty clothes sitting out.

  Ben and Reese sat in the two chairs opposite Taylor’s desk. Taylor settled into his chair, but he sat at the edge of it. His hands clasped in front of him, resting on the wooden desk. On the desk was a small contraption, a metal cage with five ball bearings hanging from strings. Ben remembered them from school. You pull the edge ball bearing back from either side, and then let it go to smack the others, and the outer ball bearing on the other side moves. Back and forth, back and forth. A Newton’s cradle, that’s what they were called.

  “Go ahead,” Taylor said.

  “There’s been a murder,” Ben said. “And then I was attacked.”

  Taylor’s reaction came in three parts. First, he gave no reaction at all. This lasted about a half a second. He stared blankly ahead, as if the words were taking time to reach his ears. Then, his lips pursed slightly and his eyes fell to his hands. Studying them as they were clenched out in front of him. Finally, Taylor drew a deep breath, which hiccuped on the way in.

  “I see. If this is the case, we’re going to need details.”

  Ben didn’t much like the ‘if’ in Taylor’s reply, but after a second, he understood. Ben was making quite an outrageous claim, so he would expect Taylor’s reaction to be one of doubt, at first.

  “We’ll have to call in Estes PD and get them involved,” Taylor said. “We have a lot of steps we need to undergo in a situation like this.”

  While Taylor was speaking, his gaze constantly shifted back and forth between Ben and Reese. Occasionally, he sniffed, like he had a cold. But not looking them in the eye. Taylor kept his look a little down, focused on their lips.

  Ben didn’t know what was up with this guy, but he didn’t trust him. Not one little bit.

  Chapter Six

  Ben watched the revolving blue and red lights of the police cars through the window as he waited for his turn to speak to the police. None of this made sense. He was the one who’d seen the murder. He was the one who’d been attacked, but the cops seemed to want to talk to everyone else first.

  Reese’s words about no one believing his story haunted him. But, they hadn’t slapped handcuffs on him. At least, not yet. He wasn’t sure what he would do if they asked him to get into a squad car for a trip to the police station.

  This was his first time interacting with police in Estes Park, the town butting up against Rocky Mountain National Park. His first experience with Colorado police in general, actually. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but there were four cops who’d arrived in two cars. Three of them were women, and all three were attractive. Slim, with uniforms that hugged their curves in all the right places. Ben didn’t know hot female cops even existed — he’d always just assumed the ones in movies were an exaggeration, so the fact that seventy-five percent of Estes’ cops were hot women seemed like something that belonged in the Guinness Book of World Records.

  When the police did finally come to him, Ben spoke with a tall blonde who he guessed did some modeling on the side.

  “My apologies for keeping you waiting,” the cop said. “Park protocol says we have to speak with the superintendent before questioning any employees or volunteers at the park.”

  “Ahh. I was wondering.”

  “I know it’s late and you probably want to get back to your apartment or house or whatever and get some sleep, so we can make this quick.” She eyed him, her head cocked a little. “You okay?”

  “Honestly? No. I’m pretty shaken up about the whole thing.”

  “I understand.” The cop flipped to a new page in her notebook and raised her eyebrows at him, waiting.

  Ben gave his statement. He explained finding William’s body and then how it had disappeared when he returned a few minutes later. He explained how he hiked across the park to meet up with his friend Reese, only to be attacked by two knife-wielding thugs in the cabin. He gave his best description of the one whose face he’d glimpsed, but he hadn’t seen much to begin with. The cop promised to send a sketch artist later, but she didn’t seem too confident in his description of the guy. Ben wasn’t, either. Hard to pay much attention to the shape of someone’s nose or type of eyebrows when that person is trying to open your stomach with a serrated hunting knife.

  When he was done, the cop went on furiously scribbling notes for several seconds. She shook her head back and forth.

  “What’s that?” Ben asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “You were shaking your head.”

  The cop eyed him, then she sighed. “No disrespect, Mr. Bennett, but this is a wild tale. Estes Park is a small town, and we’re not accustomed to handling cases of this nature.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “In my tenure here, I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this. Not even close.”

  “It’s the truth,” he said, the words sounding meek as they left his lips. He cleared his throat and repeated the sentence, this time with more conviction.

  The cop closed her notebook and inserted it into her breast pocket. As she clicked her pen shut, she said, “We’ll be in touch if we need anything. If you plan to leave the city, please let us know first.”

  She passed a business card across to him, and Ben took it and stared at it. The action felt so final, like he would never see these cops again and they would all have a good laugh about it back at the station.

  After handing him the card, the cop walked away. A sense of confusion unsettled him. Yes, it was a wild tale, but he’d recounted everything exactly as it had happened.

  They didn’t believe him. And, he couldn’t do anything about it. He’d collected no evidence. There was no surveillance camera footage of any of it. One hundred percent hearsay and anecdote.

  Ben continued to stare out the window as the futility of it grew on him like a straightjacket. A light snow fell, trickles of white dusting the tops of the cars in the visitor center parking lot. The sun had set, a purple sky blanketing everything above.

  And then, suddenly, the whole scene ended. The cops packed up and walked out the front of the building. They were going to leave?

  Reese came to sit with him, at first saying nothing. Ben shot up out of his chair when he saw the cops strolling through the parking lot. He headed through the office area to follow them, but Reese chased after him and grabbed his arm.

  “Whoa, dude. What are you doing?”

  Ben pointed at the front door. “Where are they going? They haven’t done anything.”

  “Come with me,” Reese said as the few remaining park tourists in the visitors’ center eyed them. Plenty of cars had turned around and avoided coming in the front entrance when they’d seen the cops, but it’s not as if they had shut the park down. Some park visitors didn’t even seem to pay attention to the police wandering around. They were too busy unloading gear to get tents set up before the dark of night fully descended.

  Ben followed Reese into the little auditorium room. The last movie of the
day had already finished. Reese pointed at a seat, and Ben obliged. Reese sat a few chairs away, facing.

  A moment later, superintendent Taylor joined them. Taylor seemed to have calmed down considerably since the strange scene in his office a little while before. He’d gone into admin mode while talking to the police. Ben chalked Taylor’s previous weirdness up to the surprise of it all.

  “What’s going on out there?” Ben said. “Why are they done?”

  Taylor cleared his throat and had a seat in one of the theater seats near them. “They’re going back into town.”

  “What?” Ben said. “That’s it? That cop talked to me for maybe ten minutes. They’re not going to head into the park to do forensic stuff?”

  Reese shrugged. “There’s no body, Ben. There’s no evidence any crime has been committed at all, even.”

  “What about the fact that William has been missing for two days? Isn’t that a big deal?”

  Taylor frowned. “I talked to Avery about it a few minutes ago. Technically, William is not missing. He didn’t report in for the end of his shift day before yesterday, but he had time off coming to him, anyway. Nothing weird about that. I’ll call his emergency contact number, but he’s not missing, as far as anyone knows.”

  Ben bit his lip. For a moment, he had to question his sanity. Had he seen something else in that privy near Haynach? Assistant Superintendent Avery was hardly ever around, but if anyone knew where William was supposed to be, it would be him. Avery seemed to think there was no problem.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” Ben said. He met Reese’s eyes. “You believe me, right?”

  Reese nodded, and Taylor spoke up. “I do, Ben, but there’s not much we can ask the police to do at this point. They’re going to send a helicopter to check out the cabin, but you said yourself the guys who attacked you didn’t leave behind anything, right?”

  “No. Not that I could see. But I did rush out of there pretty quickly.” A moment of panic hit him. “Do I need to get a lawyer? Are they going to try to pin this on me?”