The Severed Pines Read online

  Ben was up to his armpit in muck and branches. The water from the creek rose to his shins. Reese had suffered the same fate, a few feet to Ben’s right.

  “You okay?” his friend shouted.

  Ben tried to move his legs, but he couldn’t. He was stuck deep in this mess, barely able to do more than wiggle. “Stuck. You?”

  Reese, who struggled to turn and face Ben, was buried to his waist. “Think I might have twisted my ankle.”

  Ben pushed a hand down through the tangled mess to unclip his walkie talkie from his belt. His arm was covered with a dozen scratches as he lifted it back out. He pumped the button a couple times. “This is volunteer ranger Harvey Bennett. I’m out on trail with Reese Goodall, and we’ve managed to get stuck in a collapsed pile of sticks. We’re on the trail toward Bierstadt off Bear Lake, and I think we’re in…” He looked at Reese for advice.

  “Mill Creek,” Reese said. “This is probably Mill Creek.”

  Ben relayed that over the walkie, and a moment later, a scratchy voice replied that help was on the way.

  Ben tried to wiggle a few times, to pump his knees up and down to create breathing room. But it didn’t do any good. Plus, if he moved too much, good chance the branches supporting him would give way, and the creek might swallow him. The whole thing was as unstable as quicksand.

  They stayed there for ten minutes while waiting for help. Ben kept thinking of how much distance the attackers could have gained in that time. Enough, probably. Those two pantyhose-clad guys were long gone by now.

  Ben heard the footsteps crashing through the brush before he saw anyone. The ground rumbled, making the branches and brush creak.

  Rushing across the trail alone was Taylor Snell. And he wasn’t wearing a walkie talkie.

  “Help’s right behind me, guys!” Taylor yelled as he paused at the edge of the brush.

  Ben and Reese shared a look. Taylor sure had gotten here pretty damn fast.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The police had no choice other than to believe Ben this time. Reese had been there and witnessed the whole thing. They would launch a full investigation, taking statements from virtually anyone they came in contact with. Ben, Reese, Taylor, and Avery all went to the police station in town to talk through what they had seen or knew about these activities in the park. That evening, the Estes Park police station was abuzz with activity. Several people who had already gone home for the day were called back in to do their jobs.

  Ben told them everything he could, and held nothing back. He was maybe a little angrier in his responses than he should have been, partially because he didn’t like having to be attacked twice to get some respect.

  Their stay at the police station in Estes Park lasted until late in the evening. Most of the time, they were all camped out in a waiting area inside the station, variously meeting with officers and admin people and sketch artists and other people who Ben couldn’t quite label.

  Ben gave his second full statement to a tall male detective, a white guy with a mustache and a suit. He had a briefcase with him, and this felt real to Ben. Much different from his statement he’d given to the hot female cop the other day. That cop was nowhere in sight, and Ben preferred it that way. If he had seen her, he might have wanted to launch into a fiery lecture about serving and protecting.

  After talking with the detective, he returned to the interior lobby. Reese also returned to the room at the same time, and they found a couple of chairs together. Both feeling broken and bruised, like old men.

  Taylor was now in the interview room, giving his own statement.

  “How’s your ankle?” Ben asked as he and Reese sat.

  “Fine. Just a little sore, but I can put my weight on it. How’s your arm?”

  Ben examined his arm, with the shirt sleeve rolled up. A collection of bandaids marked from his wrist to his shoulder. They’d used a few ounces of antibiotic ointment, making his flesh glisten. “The EMT guy said I could get these checked out if I wanted to, but he didn’t think any of these cuts needed stitches.”

  Ben looked over to the interview room, where he could see Taylor through a large side window. Unlike on the cop shows, there were no one-way mirrors. At least, not in the rooms he’d seen so far this evening.

  Ben watched Taylor, the way he seemed to jitter in his chair. He repeatedly sipped from the glass of water and refilled it several times. Also, he ran his hands through his hair once every few seconds.

  Reese poked Ben, and Ben jerked away. “What the hell?”

  “I asked if you were going to.”

  “Going to what?”

  Reese sighed. “Going to the hospital to see if you need stitches.”

  “No, no. I’m fine.”

  After that, Ben went back to staring at the interview room, waiting for Taylor to finish. And during that waiting time, Ben contemplated the superintendent of Rocky Mountain National Park. He watched the older man compulsively sip that water and have trouble sitting still.

  There was something shady about this guy. He knew a lot more about William’s disappearance and these attacks than he let on.

  Eventually, Ben came to a decision. He was going to have to find direct evidence on Taylor. And that would require drastic action.

  He had the beginnings of a plan, and although the plan was probably the riskiest thing he could have come up with, it was also the only thing he could come up with.

  Ben sat outside Taylor’s house, in a dark car with the engine and lights off. The street was on a hill, and so Ben felt like he was being pulled forward by gravity as he waited.

  He’d gone back to Moraine Park to pick up his car, and then drove around for a while before going to Taylor’s. He figured a half hour would be enough, but when he arrived, Taylor was nowhere to be seen. Ben had come back another half hour later just as Taylor cruised into the driveway.

  Where had Taylor been? Did it matter?

  Taylor parked and got out of his car, eyes glued to his cellphone as he went through the motions of locking his vehicle and marching up the front steps.

  Unease slithered around Ben’s spine. Yes, he’d broken into William’s trailer to fish around, but this was wholly different. William had been a “sort-of friend” — and besides, the door was unlocked.

  But this — this was on another level. Taylor Snell and his wife and child were home. Not only was he uninvited, and would have to break in to the home, he was here to find something Taylor most likely did not want anyone to find. Ben was no lawyer. Did all of that make this action a home invasion? Or maybe that only counted if he terrorized everyone, which Ben had no intention of doing.

  At the very least, this would be considered breaking and entering.

  All this criminal activity didn’t sit right with who Ben wanted to be. He’d had his bouts of “disreputable activity,” as he liked to think of it, but those were all instances of taking matters into his own hands. He’d never been one to shy away from justice, no matter the cost to his personal life, but he had yet to commit an actual crime.

  So just don’t get caught, he found himself thinking. He was arguing with himself, but he already knew which side of his conscience would win out. Whatever had happened to William was bigger than just a murder, and Ben was likely the only innocent person who had enough of the pieces to make it right.

  And after I do this, I won’t be innocent.

  He sighed, still fighting with himself about it.

  This hadn’t exactly been a typical week. Twice in four days, he’d had to fight off masked attackers. He’d had to see a dead man—barely even cold—with his throat slashed open on a backcountry toilet seat.

  There was nothing about these possibilities in the volunteer exchange documents he’d signed before transferring from Yellowstone to Rocky Mountain. Probably he would have taken a closer look if there had been anything about death and dismemberment in the documentation.

  Before entering his front door, Taylor paused to stab his phone’s screen with
his thumbs for a few seconds, probably sending a text message. Something about it intrigued Ben. If he could get that phone, he would have access to a wealth of information.

  Would Taylor sleep with it on the nightstand next to his head, or leave it plugged into a charger in the kitchen or living room? Everyone kept their entire lives inside those little devices. So many secrets. So many truths.

  If Ben took the phone, Taylor would know something was up. Might be better to leave no trace.

  “You should have made a better plan,” Ben said to his car’s dashboard.

  Taylor disappeared inside and Ben readied himself to wait. For the next three hours, the lights inside stayed on. Various lights flicked on and off, and Ben tried to figure out which bedrooms were which based on the pattern. The only one he could tell for sure was their kid’s room, because the light went on at eight and then off at eight thirty, and stayed off after that.

  Finally, at ten, all the lights turned off. Ben sat in the car, palms clutching the steering wheel, for another hour. A light rain drizzled off and on, creating a blurry palette of street lamps and porch lights reflecting off his windshield.

  At midnight, nearly asleep himself, Ben decided to take action.

  He left his car, carefully shutting the door behind him. As he locked his car, he raised his hoodie and looked around to make sure no eyes were on him. Nothing stood out, but he supposed someone could have a camera hidden in a porch light or something like that.

  If everything went well, that wouldn’t matter. No one would ever know he’d been here. Ben needed evidence that Taylor was involved in William’s death. Something to show Taylor knew something he wasn’t sharing, at least.

  Cold rain sent shivers all over his body as he huddled close and hustled across the street.

  The house was three bedrooms—maybe four—and two stories on what looked to be about two thousand square feet. Front door, back door, and a small side door. Front door was obviously not an option, and the back door looked like it opened straight into the kitchen. Side door seemed the best bet. Probably led into a utility room with washer and dryer. If Taylor or his wife happened to be awake, they wouldn’t be hanging out in a utility room.

  So, Ben hopped the fence and made himself low to sneak over to the side door. At this time of night, with a sky half full of clouds and half full of stars, and a street with only a few lights, he didn’t worry about being seen. Not outside. But, he worried plenty about being seen inside the house.

  All of this was so crazy. And yet, here he was. The last few days of his life had driven him to this.

  With two fingers, Ben tried the door and found it surprisingly unlocked. It shouldn’t have surprised him, because plenty of people in Estes Park didn’t lock their doors. But, he’d expected a little more resistance than this.

  He slipped inside to a room with tile flooring and washer and dryer. Utility room, as expected. He crept to the interior door and pushed his ear up against it. Nothing came back but the regular hum of the house.

  After a few seconds, Ben took the plunge and opened the door. Kitchen. A set of running lights illuminated the room from underneath the cabinets. One way led out to the right, toward a living room. The other, to a hall.

  A few seconds of indecision paralyzed him, standing there on the kitchen tile. The seriousness of the consequences of getting caught were looming. A devil on one shoulder, ordering him to keep going. An angel on the other shoulder, barking at him to get the hell out of the house.

  Ben set his sights on the hall. His goal was Taylor’s phone, most likely. Although, he wasn’t sure what he could do with it, especially if it was locked. It’s not as if he was some expert black hat hacker who could crack the phone’s fingerprint security. No, his best bet was that it was unlocked while charging, or if Ben could guess the passcode. Maybe something simple, like 1-2-3-4.

  As Ben crept into the hall, his eyes flicked around to every electrical outlet, hunting for a phone charger. Near the front door, he found one, but no phone plugged into it.

  “Damn,” he whispered. The phone was probably in the bedroom. That’s where he always kept his, right near his bed. Ben stared at the stairs leading up to the second floor, where the toddler and Taylor and his wife Delilah slept. The entire family, just waiting to call the cops on an intruder — or worse. He had no idea if Taylor had a weapon in the house, and if he and Delilah had been trained to use them in the case of a home invasion.

  No. Too risky to go up there. Ben was becoming increasingly convinced that Taylor’s phone was charging on a bedside table. Entering his bedroom to steal it would be suicide.

  There has to be some other way.

  Dead ahead, on the other side of the entry hall, was a large, closed door. Ben crept across the room and knelt down so he could press his ear against it, to listen. No sounds came back, so he opened the door.

  Jackpot. Taylor’s home office.

  A single heavy desk sat in the middle of the room, with stacks of folders overstuffed with papers littering the top of the desk. File cabinets flanked the desk on either side.

  Ben shut the door behind him and first went for the file cabinets. He checked a couple and found little besides old tax documents and hanging folders filled with construction paper drawings Taylor’s son had made.

  “Okay, no luck there,” Ben whispered.

  He opened a folder on the desk and uncovered a thick stack of printed pages. When his eyes adjusted to the dim moonlight coming in through the windows, he noted an invoice for equipment and materials. Some lines of text at the top noted the materials were for the new construction happening near the Wild Basin area of the park. The new park visitor center and headquarters.

  But some of the things listed didn’t make sense.

  Six porcelain toilets were itemized for the bathrooms, at a cost of forty thousand dollars each. That seemed quite a bit expensive for toilets. And paint for the interior of the bathrooms had been priced at five hundred dollars per paint can.

  “What in the world is this?” Ben said.

  None of this made sense. Every piece of material listed on this invoice seemed to be at outrageous prices.

  What’s up with this new construction?

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ben parked a half mile past the entrance to Wild Basin, at the edge of the construction area. Wild Basin was at the southeastern edge of the park, an isolated area with relatively few trails and no established visitor services. That’s what the new construction was supposed to fix. The project would result in a new visitor center with offices and conference rooms for administrative staff and rangers. Plus a new backcountry permit office specifically for this area of the park, to reduce the load on the other permit offices.

  But for now, all Ben saw here was the wooden frame of a building on a concrete slab and a few parts with drywall husks connecting those frames. Some parts seemed more completed than others, with the construction being rolled out in phases.

  He stretched in his car’s seat, rolling the tension out of his shoulders. His late night escapade had left him exhausted, since he’d only had a few hours of sleep. Had it been worth it? Hard to say.

  His phone buzzed, and he took it out to find a text from Reese.

  Reese: Where did you go last night?

  Ben: Nowhere.

  Reese: I stopped by your trailer.

  Ben: Just out for a little while.

  Reese: Mm-hmm

  Ben: Wut?

  Reese: Think that’s a smart idea?

  Ben: Think what’s a smart idea?

  Reese: come on, Ben. I’m pretty sure I know what you were doing.

  Ben paused and stared at the text message chain, considering his next reply. Maybe Reese knew what he’d been doing, but more likely, he didn’t. Ben doubted Reese had guessed the lengths he’d gone to after they’d all left the police station last night. Maybe Reese assumed Ben had followed Taylor, but he’d done so much more. Breaking into the boss’ house was serious business.
He tried not to think about how easily he could have gotten caught. It made his chest constrict to ponder the gravity of the trouble he would’ve been in.

  But Ben was in deep now, and he had to see it through. He finished the text conversation by saying he’d catch up with Reese later, then stowed his phone. A few breaths to calm his nerves, then he rolled his head around his shoulders. Not quite awake yet.

  He left the car and zipped up his jacket against the morning cold. The air stung his cheeks and made him wince as cool inhalations felt like sniffing ice.

  He wasn’t sure what he was doing here, but this seemed like the place to be. After those strange invoice documents he’d found in Taylor’s house, Ben had a suspicion about what was going on. If true, this was the kind of bomb that could explode all over everyone. He hadn’t yet considered if he wanted to be responsible for detonating the thing.

  He only knew that this morning, he could confirm his suspicion. One way or the other.

  As Ben approached the structure, a few construction workers emerged from an opening at the far end. The cluster of them hopped down from the concrete foundation, onto the dirt which appeared to be a site of a future parking lot.

  All of the construction guys were tall, beefy, with ruddy faces and scraggly facial hair. To Ben, they seemed a lot more east coast than locals. Construction workers Ben had seen in Colorado were mostly neo-hippies with dreadlocks, tattoos, and beards thick enough to house bird nests.

  None of the guys smiled or welcomed him in any way. They were headed toward a small set of trailers parked at the side of the dirt lot.

  One guy, the shortest one of the bunch, did stop and make eye contact with Ben.

  “Hey, you,” the worker said.

  Ben slipped his hands in his pockets and nodded. “Yeah?”

  “You can’t be here.” His accent was definitely east coast, like Jersey or New York.