Read The Devil's Footprint Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
"He had
to get to a phone," said the dispatcher.
"And then he said he found he hadn't a dime."
The lieutenant
shook his head.
Where did they find
them.
He was tempted
to log the call as requiring no further action, and then a thought occurred to
him.
He checked the map again.
He knew that clearing.
He'd patrolled that area.
Hunted around there, too.
"If this
is about a kidnapped woman, what would a helicopter be doing in
that
clearing?
It's only about a hundred feet
across."
He looked at the map again
and racked his brains.
"There's a
shitload of other places in the area you could land in more safely."
"Unless
you didn't want to be seen," said the dispatcher.
She waited a beat before adding, "
sir
."
The lieutenant
looked at her.
He was good at
looks.
This one connected.
Whatever the witness had said, given
proximity, it was most likely a military chopper on some damn fool
exercise.
Still, maybe not.
The red cockaded woodpecker was a protected
species.
The military, much to their
chagrin, had been instructed to give the bird a wide berth.
The word was they were even printing maps
with little woodpeckers printed all over them.
Hell of a note.
"Who is
the closest?" said the lieutenant.
"
The dispatcher
nodded.
"Sergeant Richardson,"
she confirmed.
"Tell him
to go to the clearing and have a look around.
He's got a good eye, and who knows... maybe the Russians are
invading."
The dispatcher
grinned and shook her head.
"
No
chance."
*
*
*
*
*
State trooper
Sergeant Andy Richardson had a reputation for thoroughness.
He was not academically bright, but he had
learned you could go a long way in police work by just being organized,
methodical, thorough, and healthy.
And
common sense did not hurt either.
He was
completing his notes on a minor traffic accident when the call came in.
It was not urgent, so he finished the cup of
herbal tea he had resting in the cup holder and completed his notes.
He then closed
his eyes and meditated for several minutes.
It was not exactly police procedure, but his wife Susan was a great
believer in cultivating inner peace, and it certainly seemed to work.
He did not complete his shift stressed out
like many of his colleagues.
He could
take most things in his stride.
Despite taking
his time, he reached the turnoff to the clearing only fifteen minutes after the
dispatcher's call had come through.
The
unpaved access track stretched out ahead of him.
The clearing, he recalled, was about a
quarter mile away.
The forest crowded in
on either side.
He was tempted
to drive on down the track, but he decided to think this one through.
If someone had been pushed into a helicopter
in the clearing, they had to have been brought there.
It could, of course, have been another
helicopter, but if so, why make a switch?
No, the chances were that a vehicle would have been used.
cruiser and examined the track carefully.
He could see one recent set of wheel marks in the dust heading toward
the clearing but none coming out.
The
hairs on the back of his neck started to prickle.
The supposed incident had happened about an
hour earlier.
The vehicle that had been
reported as being involved in the transfer should have left — or else it was
still inside.
There was one other
possibility.
He picked up
his radio and gave his call sign.
"Did our birdwatching witness drive to the clearing?"
"Negative,"
said the dispatcher.
"His home is
about two miles back, and he walked.
He's there if you need him."
"I've got
one set of tire tracks going in," said
"I'm going to block off the road and go in on foot.
I'll call you in ten."
"Need
backup?" said the dispatcher.
"No,"
said
"This probably doesn't amount to
anything.
But..."
He parked the
cruiser across the track.
Then he
unclipped his shotgun.
You never knew,
and the mere sight of
a
shotgun
tended to make potential assailants think twice.
There was something about the sheer size of
the muzzle.
He walked
carefully and slowly down the track toward the clearing, examining not only the
track itself but the undergrowth and woods on either side.
If someone had been struggling in the car,
they just might have been able to drop something out of the window.
Perhaps some identification
or a note.
Well, it was unlikely,
given the prevalence of air-conditioning combined with fully closed windows,
but he had to check and now was the best time.
It was
alarming how quickly the integrity of a crime scene could be compromised.
Items of value that might also be clues had a
tendency to vanish no matter how you tried to secure the scene.
Human nature was just that — all too
human.
Of course, this was not yet a
crime scene, but when you had a report you had to act as if the location might
be.
Certainly this was
He held his
shotgun in his right hand and used a stick to push aside the vegetation.
All kinds of things that crawled and
slithered and bit flourished in
Carolina
He smiled to himself, and then the joke lost
some of its flavor as his stick revealed a rattlesnake curled up next to a
rock.
The snake seemed to look at him as
if debating the odds, then shot into the undergrowth.
It did not like shotguns either.
snakes, but that kind of eyeball-to-eyeball encounter certainly got the
adrenaline going.
He waited until his
heart had stopped pounding and then radioed in.
This time he
was transferred to the lieutenant, who was becoming somewhat frustrated at how
long checking out one simple call was taking.
Particularly when it was almost certainly nothing.
"Hurry it
up, Andy, will you?" said the lieutenant.
"Roger
that, Lieutenant," said
He entered the
clearing a few minutes later.
If he had
read the tracks right, there should have been a car there, but there was
nothing.
This was all getting
ridiculous, he decided.
They would be
talking flying saucers and little green men soon.
In the real world, vehicles did not drive
into lonely clearings and just vanish.
Life was much more mundane.
Solid
stayed solid and flesh stayed flesh.
And
visible stayed visible.
All good
sensible thinking, he reflected, but he still could not see that damned
automobile and there was no track out of the clearing.
He started a
perimeter search.
The trees were growing
too close together and too irregularly for a vehicle to have been driven
between them.
Then he saw the break in
the tree line where maybe there had been a lightning strike or storm
damage.
Anyway, a couple of trees were
down.
The vegetation had been cut away
and then replaced in a crude attempt to buy time.
He pulled the
cut undergrowth out of the way.
It did
not take too long, and then there in front of him was the trunk of a Dodge
sedan.
A rental, by
the look of it.
The hood pointed
into the forest.
The trunk was
locked.
He tried the doors and they were
open.
There were no keys in the
ignition, but he found the trunk release lever.
He recognized
the odor immediately.
It was an amalgam
of blood and excrement and fear.
It was
the smell of violent death.
He edged up
the lid of the trunk with his stick and looked in.
Staring up at
him, wide-eyed mouth open in a rictus grin of fear, was the body of a young
woman.
Her throat had been cut and it
looked as if she had bled to death there.
Her clothing and the inside of the trunk itself were saturated in blood.
her lying there terrified and helpless in the confines of the trunk as her
executioner stood over her, knife in hand.
There were severe slashes on her hands.
She had tried to defend herself.
Closer examination showed blood on and around the front passenger
seat.
She had been hit there, he
surmised, and then dumped as she was dying.
The callousness was chilling.
Subdued and
depressed, he called in.
He could take
traffic accidents except where they involved the injury or death of children.
This kind of
wanton butchery shook him.
He thought of
Susan.
It could have been she in there.
Procedure
dictated that he wait for the scene-of-crime team, but he had to do something
and he knew he was professional enough to do it right.
He started searching the clearing slowly and
thoroughly, working to an imaginary grid.
There were
clear signs of the reported helicopter and of activity surrounding it.
Leaves and small branches had been dislodged
by the downdraft, and some branches in the center of the clearing by landing
skid marks suggested that the pilot had maybe clipped the tree tops coming
in.
Out of practice, inexperienced, or
just a hotshot?
Hard
to know.
A novice would scarcely try landing in a
narrow clearing like this.
After twelve
minutes of searching, he saw a glint in the sandy earth fairly near the skid
marks.
Whatever it was seemed
practically covered.
Dropped
by accident or deliberately.
He bent down
and scratched the earth away with his stick.
It was an unusual charm bracelet made of two types of gold, by the looks
of it.
He hunkered down, hooked the
bracelet on the stick, and brought it close.
The design was abstract, but one of the charms looked like a harp.
It was an expensive item and had both a clasp
and a safety chain.
This had not fallen
off by accident.
He read the
inscription inside.
evidence bag out of his hip pocket and slipped the bracelet inside.
He was thinking.
The kind of gutsy person who dropped this
will have tried to drop something more than once.
But he had found nothing on the track, and
the car's windows were, as he had expected, closed.
Maybe she had been kept in the trunk with the
other woman.
Hell, maybe there was only
one woman and the witness had been mistaken.
She had struggled as she was being put on board and had been killed.
No, that did
not feel right.
The witness had proved
out so far, so why not give him the benefit of the doubt and assume two
women?
That meant the kidnap victim
could have been kept either in the trunk or in the back of the car.
Either way, it
meant searching the car, and that was very much against the rules.
On the other
hand, in a kidnapping — and now he was fairly certain there had been one — time
was crucial.
He found the
telephone message slip pushed down behind the upholstery of the backseat.
It was the kind of thing you would jot down
to remind you what room you were in.
There was no date, but the paper looked fresh.