Wild Woods

2
Mourning After

Breaking News

KAREN AND GEE stumbled into Jitterz at eight-thirty. They hadn’t been home yet and weren’t headed there now. It had been a long night, dealing first with the discovery of the body, then the police, and finally, the Family heads.

“Oh, my. You two look wrung out. Double Birdie’s Special coming right up. What would you like to eat?” Violet asked as they reached the counter. The contrast of her ginger hair with her light caramel skin never ceased to intrigue Gee. He forgot to answer.

“Thank you, Violet. Two of the bacon and egg breakfast wraps, please,” Karen answered. “Sorry we’re so out of it this morning.”

“I’ll bet you aren’t going to sleep now, either,” Violet said.

“We have work to do,” Gee answered.

“Go find a seat. I’ll bring everything out to you.”

The two sat at their accustomed table and simply looked into each other’s eyes. Tears were not far from either after the exhausting night.

“In our woods,” Gee said. They’d repeated the words in disbelief throughout the night.

“There’s a darkness hanging over you,” Violet said, approaching the table with their coffees. “And when there is darkness over you, there is darkness over Rosebud Falls.”

“Are you following in your mother’s steps as a psychic?” Gee said, trying to lighten the mood.

“Maybe. But some things are too obvious to miss. High school kids come in for coffee on their way to school most days. I listen. Whatever it is that happened last night, I’d guess it’s all over the school by now.”

“Rumors,” Gee said. “We need to dispel rumors with news. There’s no paper this morning.”

“Is there anything you need from us?” Violet asked.

“Actually, there is,” Karen said. “I need to talk to Collin Meagher. Can you tell me how to reach him?”

“You’ll have to visit. He doesn’t have a phone.”

“I was afraid of that. I hate going down to that neighborhood.”

“I’ll go with you,” Violet said. “I seem to be in his good graces. I’ll fix breakfast for him.”

“Thank you.”

“How are things with you and Troy?” Gee asked. Over the past two weeks it seemed that Troy was with Violet whenever he saw her.

“Oh. He’s like a sandbur. Gets stuck in your clothes and you can’t get rid of it. You know, he’s only trying to date me because Wayne Savage got to Jo Ransom first. Troy gravitates to opportunity. As the new Meagher Family heir, I’m opportunity with a capital O. You know how that goes, Karen. I saw you suffer through it.”

“Try not to let my experience shadow yours,” Karen sighed. “But be careful.”

“I’m a big girl,” Violet answered. A bell rang and she went to get their breakfast wraps.

“I think I should go to the high school and set the rumors straight,” Gee said.

“I agree. Collin is the only Family head I haven’t spoken to and he’ll get the story in a little bit. It should be fine to talk to the kids. I’ll get the story in tomorrow’s paper but by then the rumor mill will have invented an entire graveyard,” Karen said. Violet returned with their breakfast wraps.

“Violet, you should know…” Gee began.

“Don’t say anything here,” she interrupted him. “I’ll find out when we talk to Uncle Collin. I’ll go make his breakfast and be ready in fifteen minutes. I need to let Mother know we are going over. She’ll probably meet us there.”

“Is there anyone I should take with me to the high school?” Gee asked when Violet had returned to the kitchen.

“I’m sure they’d let you in with no difficulty,” Karen said. “You are the City Champion. But just in case, why don’t you see if Mead or Judge Warren would go with you?”

Gee had seen the judge just two hours ago at the foresters’ office, so called him. While Karen and David debriefed the Family heads, Johnson and Mead had talked to the judge, coroner, and district attorney. The men had all been shocked silent.

Disbelief. “In our woods,” was all they’d said, over and over. Pàl took it especially hard. His company should have been stewards of the Wild Woods.

Not just a body, but a child.

“One of our worst fears,” Gee told the twenty students who had been volunteers over the weekend. Judge Warren, Principal O’Reilly, and the school’s counselor, Susan Parris, sat with them in a classroom. “You all worked this weekend in the Wild Woods. You know now why we’re concerned. But we have more questions than answers right now. What we don’t need is wild speculation. People will wonder what else the Wild Woods hides. I want to make sure you have the facts so you can reassure your classmates. Unfortunately, we don’t have any suspects, we don’t know who the victim was, we don’t know what else we might find. We’re depending on you to help control the rumors.”

“There could be others,” Ryan said softly. “There could be kids who aren’t dead… yet. Mr. O’Reilly, can we get extended time in the woods for charting and searching? I’ll… cut classes if I need to.”

“Don’t be too hasty, Ryan,” the principal said. “That’s what Gee is trying to warn us against.”

“There’s a delicate balance between moving quickly and potentially missing important clues. With more people, we are just as likely to destroy evidence as to find it. If Alyson hadn’t stepped back into the soft dirt, we’d have missed the grave.”

“Susan, don’t you think this merits an assembly?” Principal O’Reilly said. The counselor nodded.

“It would be best if the students hear the story directly from you, Gee. That way they’ll know that the source is as accurate as possible and that you’re using these kids as your information channel to the rest of the student body,” Susan said. Gee shrugged his shoulders.

“Okay.”

“The end of third period bell will ring in ten minutes. I can preempt the class schedule with an announcement. We’ll assemble in the gym.” The principal and counselor left. Gee and Judge Warren followed the kids to the gym. The judge laid a hand on Gee’s shoulder.

“I’m truly sorry, Gee. I gave you the role of City Champion thinking it was simply an honorary title that would give you an ID. But ever since, we’ve heaped more and more responsibility on you. I had no idea how important it would become to our citizens. And more than anyone, to our youth and children. I’ll stand with you, but the hard work in this assembly is yours.” Gee sighed heavily and entered the gym.

“Was it…? Was it my Renee?” Collin asked when Karen told him about the body they discovered.

“No, Mr. Meagher. The body was of a boy, not more than ten, according to Dr. Gaston. Preliminary analysis of the site indicated the grave was less than two months old.” Karen said. Tears lurked behind her eyes, waiting for her to loosen control. Collin looked at her as if he were burning into her guilty soul. She dropped her eyes. “I’ve never stopped looking, Mr. Meagher. I never will. I won’t lose hope that I’ll find her.”

Collin struggled up out of his wooden porch chair and laid a hand gently on Karen’s shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault. You were just a child yourself,” he said softly. “I understand you want to visit the Family trees. Come with me.” He led Karen, Violet, and Birdie around the old house and stopped before a very old hickory tree.

“You ate a nut from here?” Karen asked. Collin nodded.

“Back in the beginning, the Forest made a pact with the Families. You can say I’m anthropomorphizing plants, but there is a pact inherent in our position. The Forest gives us its bounty in exchange for our protection. We all assume we’re supposed to protect the trees, but I’m sure there was more to it than that. We’ve forgotten more about our mission than we remember. Perhaps you will learn by talking to our Family tree. He’s waiting for you.” Collin led his nephew’s wife and daughter away from the yard, leaving Karen alone.

“What am I supposed to do?” she pled, looking at the old tree. She felt like such a fool wandering around talking to trees as if they could answer her. Most hickory lost production at about a hundred years old but no one actually knew how long they would live if undisturbed. If Collin was right, this tree was over two hundred years old, started as a seedling from the Patriarch tree. It seemed impossible.

In the Forest, when a tree lost its production value, it was marked for harvest for lumber. The foresters made sure that old growth trees were only cut when it was determined that their natural lives were ending. But who knew?

Karen leaned against the old tree and closed her eyes. Even standing up, she drifted into sleep. It had been such a long night and she still had so much to do. The story and photos of the discovery needed to be ready by the three o’clock deadline. Axel had already sent half a dozen texts demanding to know how soon he would have something to read.

In her brief sleep, leaning against the tree, she dreamed of the Wild Woods. She had been in it only twice—once when she was kidnapped and poisoned, and again last night. The area beyond the reach of the lanterns was dense and mysterious. She was certain the Wild Woods could not be as primeval as she imagined it. In her mind, all manner of sinister twisted forms rose out of its shadows.

Karen jolted away from the Meagher tree as if she had been physically thrust from it, a solid image of a tree in her mind.

I need to talk to Gee!

It had taken Gee all morning at the high school and he joined the students at Flor del Día for lunch. He was invited to a podium in the multipurpose room.

“Students and teachers of Flor del Día,” Gee said. “You live in the Forest. Well, the Forest borders three sides of the school. From conversations I’ve had with volunteers, I know you think of yourselves as part of the Forest. That relationship is so close that I’ve discovered over half of our foresters are former students from Flor. So, no doubt you’ve already heard that we found a grave in the Wild Woods last night. Maybe you didn’t hear that word, but that is what it was. We uncovered the body of a child, dead about two months.”

A few gasps, several sniffles, and a low buzz of angry whispers greeted the news. Gee continued once a minute had passed.

“I’ve met and worked with several students here, both in mapping the Wild Woods and during Harvest. I think you’re a lot like me. I don’t have any family other than those I’ve come to love in Rosebud Falls. Like you, I feel a deep connection to the Forest. We are hurt, not only by the loss of the child, but by the violation of our Forest. While the trees and nuts are of the same species, though, the Wild Woods are exactly that—wild. It is dense, untamed. And scary. I fear the secrets we’ll discover there. And I’m filled with hope and trust that we’ll be able, together, to rescue the Wild Woods and anyone who might be trapped there.”

“Mr. Gee, can we all work in the woods?” Jason asked. The small boy had been with Gee’s crew at the discovery of the grave.

“Yes, but probably not like you imagine. We have to be careful not to trample and destroy any clues. But there are tasks we need help with. They aren’t easy tasks. They aren’t glorious tasks. They’re hard labor. We need to have people following behind the foresters and mapping volunteers to remove the underbrush that we’ve cut. I got bawled out last night for cutting a path too narrow and leaving too much stalk in the middle of it.” There was a smattering of giggles before Gee continued.

“Seriously, we need to have the cut underbrush removed and fed into a chipper. Some of that cut brush includes berry vines, firethorn, hawthorn, and about anything else you can name that has a thorn on it. It’s going to be nasty. But if you are willing to spend a couple of hours hauling that stuff off the paths we’ve cut, widening them to accommodate the ATVs with trailers, and chipping the cuttings, we could use you even for an hour after school. All I’m asking is that you not try to search the Wild Woods yourselves. Leave that to the foresters and sheriff. They know what they’re doing.”

Jeanie and Jason joined Gee at a table after the assembly, much as Viktor, Alyson, and Shannon had at Rosebud High earlier. They had a sign-up sheet and several students volunteered. Flor del Día was a residence as well as a school, and their proximity to the Forest was a benefit. Gee discovered several students already volunteered a few hours a week to help the foresters in getting the Forest ready for winter.

It was late afternoon before Gee left the orphanage school.

A Cabin in the Woods

After the meetings at the schools, Gee made his way to the foresters’ office to sit down with David Lazorack and Gabe Truman. Now that he had volunteers, they needed a strategy for using them. It was clear that Gee would be central in that strategy.

“We don’t have another resource we can apply to this,” David said. “I’m shuffling things around to get as much done as possible. Gabe and I have talked. He’s going to switch from the Wild Woods to the Forest in hopes we can get the work done there before we’re bogged down in snow. That’s going to be a problem in the Wild Woods as well but it’s the best we can do. You’re going to be in charge of the Wild Woods but I’m moving Jessie and Jonathan over there full time as your support.”

“The snow falls on the just and the unjust,” Gabe chuckled from his chair in a corner of the office.

“It could be tricky in the Wild Woods,” David continued. “I was out there today and I’m not sure how that thick canopy is going to affect things. Most of the trails we’ve cleared are just getting into the thick part of the woods. The canopy could keep snow off the ground but that means it could be a hazard when it breaks free of the branches and falls in frozen clumps instead.”

“Is there additional safety gear we should be wearing?” Gee asked.

“Hard hats, goggles, and gloves are the best we can do. Just make sure everyone on your crew is wearing them,” David said. “Jonathan and Jessie will take charge of the mapping and searching out there. You and I will use our volunteers to clear and widen the trails. Those cuttings need to be hauled out and chipped or we’ll have a terrible time in the spring. It’s not likely that we’ll catch up with the mapping as it is. I hope a few of our volunteers are eighteen because we’ll need them to run the chippers. It’s a big damned job.”

“You know I’ll do whatever you need me to,” Gee sighed. “I need to call Nathan and tell him I won’t be able to come back to the Market.”

“I know I come off as harsh, Gee. I apologize in advance. You’ve proven you’ll do whatever is needed,” David said. “You’ll probably be able to go back a couple of days a week after we get heavy snowfall. No matter how willing we are to work, if we go out to cut trails after that, we risk missing things. We just won’t be able to see them.” He looked at Gee hard for a second as if trying to see what the man was made of. “You should consider joining us as a full-time forester.”

“Without training and schooling?” Gee asked.

“There are other ways to learn.”

“Dad! Jonathan said as he and the other foresters working in the Wild Woods that day came in from their tasks. “We found another cabin!”

The foresters all shed their coats in the warmth of the office and shook their heads when Gee, David, and Gabe started to reach for theirs.

“Too dark,” one said. “And the sheriff has it blocked off.”

“So, is this good news or bad news?” David asked. “Tell us.”

“We think we found the place where that guy Reef was living. We cut a path from there out to the quarry and Sheriff Johnson is out there with a forensics team from Palmyra. They sent us away so we couldn’t contaminate any evidence they found.”

“Nobody in the cabin?” Gee asked.

“No, but this cabin hasn’t been cleaned out like the two we found earlier. It’s rustic but looks fairly comfortable,” Jonathan said.

“Is this going to slow us down in getting the rest of the mapping done?” David asked.

“No. If anything, it’s going to give us a path to follow. We found a camouflaged trail from the cabin but the light was going and the sheriff asked us not to follow it until morning. He’ll send a deputy with a dog along with us. If we’re right, the trail will connect to the other cabins. It definitely doesn’t lead back to the quarry.”

“That’s good news. If there is still anyone living in a cabin, we should be able to find them,” David said. “Well done, son. Crew.”

“If it weren’t for the risks of missing something completely, we’d have gone out tonight,” Jessie said. “It gets dark out there a lot sooner than where it’s clear. Not to mention it’s extremely spooky. Since they found the grave, the sheriff wants to make sure we are alert to manmade dangers along the trail.”

Both Gee and Karen were exhausted by the time they got home. It was nearly ten and they fell into each other’s arms.

“How long has this day been?” Karen moaned. “Can we just go to bed now?”

“My estimate is somewhere around forty hours,” Gee answered, kissing her forehead. “We both need a shower and some food. If you want to get started on a shower, I’ll fix something to eat.”

“Can’t we do both together? I need you, Gee.”

Special Delivery

“Hello,” Larry Syres said when his phone rang. He popped another beer. Work had been light lately and all he had to do was drink. Roxanne was getting tired of him hanging around and if he didn’t get out of the house soon, he was going to smack her.

“We’ll have the usual flatbed ready to go early Saturday morning. Pick it up and get out before dawn. The new management out here has been breathing down our necks,” his contact at Savage Sand & Gravel said. Stone to go, Larry sighed.

“Where to?”

“The usual place southwest of Atlanta.”

“I hate those mountain roads.”

“You get paid to hate them. Drop the trailer at the loading ramp and deadhead home. We won’t be using that one again.”

“No return delivery? I could pick up a contract on the way back.”

“You’ll get a bonus as big as the fee if you’re back in bed and asleep by eight o’clock Monday morning.”

“Forty-eight hours to make sixteen hundred miles? Yeah. I can do it.” It would be pushing regulations on how long he could drive without a rest but Larry had made the run enough times to know where to be careful.

“And Larry, try to keep your mouth shut about this. They’ve been poking into everything since that bar incident a couple of months ago.”

“I’m still going to dig that bastard’s grave.”

“I’m sure you will, Larry. I’m sure you will.”

Coming Up Empty

The story of the shallow grave ran in Tuesday morning’s newspaper. Of course, Troy had broken the story on the radio Monday morning but had only sketchy details. His normal process was to read stories out of the newspaper and he didn’t have a news staff to support his air time. He grumbled all morning, commenting that the town really needed a daily newspaper that didn’t skip Sunday and Monday. He was none too subtle in his request that the publisher get with it.

“This is Troy. I’ve got one eye on Main,” he said as he answered the blinking light of his phone.

“And I’ve got an eye on you. What’s with taking digs at the paper? We’ve always worked together,” Axel said.

“Nothing wrong with the paper that two more days of publication wouldn’t cure,” Troy growled back. “I’ve had phones ringing off the hook with nothing to put on the air.”

“I’d send Karen over but she’s a Family head now and I can’t order her around. Cameron warned me already.”

“Just give me a buzz if anything comes around before I get off the air.” Troy hung up the phone.

Tuesday morning, when the lines lit up, Troy had the newspaper in front of him, complete with photos of the grave. It turned his stomach.

“While there is no news on the identity of the body, police do not want to hold the case open longer than necessary. I’ve talked to Rev. Reinhold Nussbaum at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church and he says he has been asked to conduct a funeral on Thursday this week. The body will not be interred at that time, but will be stored ‘in a peaceful setting’ until such time that identification and contact of the nearest relatives can be made,” Troy said, looking at the paper. “I’ll try to get Rev. Nussbaum in for an interview later this week to find out what his take is on the whole affair. Reinhold, if you are listening, stop by sometime for a chat.”

Overall, the newspaper and radio coverage left more questions unanswered than answered.

Most of the trails that had been cut into the Wild Woods were not wide enough to drive one of the forestry tractor and trailers down. Gee and David’s crews discovered the benefits of their long sleeves and gloves quickly. There were now half a dozen access points into the Wild Woods from the Forest and quarry. They led to an estimated mile and a half of trails that had been cut from tree to tree.

“What’s going to happen to all the trees that are too small to be marked, Gee?” asked Trevor Graves, an eleventh-grade student at Flor. He was too young to operate the chippers but was strong and capable when it came to loading and hauling the brush wagon out of the woods. The crew of eight students grabbed their water bottles to take a break before Gee answered.

“I’m concerned about that, too, Trevor. The foresters have a standard approach to thinning the trees and maximizing production. But part of the agreement with SSG in giving over management to the foresters was that no hickory would be cut unless it threatened the life of another. And then, other alternatives have to be assessed first,” Gee answered.

“Like what?” asked Rebecca, a twelfth-grader on an afternoon release from Flor.

“Well, in the case of trees under five inches DBH, the first option is to transplant. The problem will be finding a place to transplant to. There is room for a few in the Forest as part of the continuing nursery plan but space in the Wild Woods is at a premium.”

“And if they’re over five inches across?” asked Trevor.

“It’s a risky proposition to attempt transplanting a tree that size. As I understand it—and remember, I’m not a forester—it’s difficult to capture enough root ball on a tree that size to keep it healthy. If it is very close to larger trees, the root system of its neighbors could be compromised. The scenario most frequently proposed for a tree between five and twelve inches is that it will be harvested for lumber. But none of us want to do that.”

“Why?”

“First, we committed to saving every tree in the Wild Woods that we can. We’re discovering a unique ecosystem here—much different than the Forest. I’m not even in favor of removing all the understory like the foresters want to. There’s something special about this. And second, there’s a pragmatic reason that slows down even the foresters. If too many trees are cut, we could flood the market with Rose Hickory and reduce its value. Trees below eight inches don’t produce that many board feet of usable lumber, so the most likely scenario would be to dry them and create briquettes out of them.”

“You mean like charcoal?”

“Yes. Or straight wood for smoking and such.”

“We need more land,” Leslie, a freshman, said.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a lot of land around the quarry that’s just empty—like sometime in the past it must have been cleared,” she continued. “We should get that land from SSG and transplant the trees we can to it. Rosebud Falls doesn’t need another housing development. It needs more trees. If the Families were serious about how important the trees are, they’d start acquiring more land bordering the edge of the Forest that’s outside the city limits. I sometimes go running out along the roads east of town and there’s plenty of land. All the Rose Hickory was cut from it a hundred or more years ago. We could extend the total acreage of the Forest by five hundred acres or more if the Families got off their fat asses and did something.”

“Yeah. That whole parcel east of Silver Lake was cleared for a luxury housing development and only has a dozen houses. No one wants to live in a barren area. Surrounding it with more Forest would increase the property values of the homes that are there,” said another of the kids. Gee tried to remember the names of all his crew but would have eight new faces tomorrow.

“Hmm. Not a bad idea but I’m not one of the Families and I don’t personally have the funds to buy a stamp, let alone an acre of tillable land,” Gee said.

“But you are the City Champion. You could tell them.”

“I’ll definitely mention it.”

“We think we found what used to be the lab,” Jessie said as the foresters gathered back at the office when it became too dark in the Wild Woods to continue work. “Each time we find a cabin, we have to vacate the area so the sheriff’s deputies can perform forensics. This place had been stripped and cleaned, but apparently, whoever was operating out there didn’t have time to take apart the workbenches or unbolt them from the floor. It definitely was not set up as a residence.”

“And that’s the only place the trail led?” David asked. Gee was glad David was asking the questions. He challenged every forester’s assumption and was good at managing the investigation.

“There’s a definite exit route from the lab out to a pickup point that showed recent use. It had been poorly camouflaged,” Jonathan answered his father. “Tomorrow, we’ll be able to take a crew from Reef’s cabin to the lab and carefully look for side trails. What I’m wondering now is whether these trails were so carefully hidden to keep people out or to keep people in.”

“That’s a sobering thought,” Gee said. “I hate to think there is anyone abandoned out there who can’t find a way out.”

“We’re hampered by the short hours of daylight,” Jonathan said. “We’ve got people who are anxious to find more trails but we just can’t work in the dark.”

“Pull anyone out of the mapping process you can use and focus on finding those cabins,” David said.

“Assuming there are any others,” Jessie said. The other foresters agreed. There were still too many unanswered questions about what lay in the Wild Woods. It was easy to walk past a clue in the dense undergrowth and several were speculating there was nothing else to find. It was a drug lair and nothing else.

Gee was hesitant to admit they might be right.

Forensics

The following two days were tedious and disappointing to everyone. Two more cabins were found on side trails farther south. Every cabin had been emptied and scrubbed down.

“One thing we know from all this is that someone has been active over the past few weeks,” Sheriff Johnson said to the gathered Family heads. “We’ve been lucky to have Forensics Detective Pete Remington on loan from Palmyra to handle the evidence. Pete? Do you have anything to add?”

All seven Families were represented. Meagher had asked Gee to represent him at the gathering and Karen represented the Roth Family in the stead of Ben Roth.

“This is kind of unusual to expose investigations to non-police. Are you sure this is okay, Brad?” Pete asked. He was younger than most of those gathered in the room. He wore light blue scrubs and carried a box of latex gloves under one arm. The meeting was held in the first cabin discovered during the search for Karen nearly four weeks previous. It had long-since been cleared as a scene of interest and the foresters had established it as their field office in the Wild Woods. The late-night gathering was shielded by the dark.

“It’s the way we do things here in Rosebud Falls, Pete,” Mead said. “These people can shake loose whatever resources we need for the investigation. It’s okay.”

“All right,” the forensics geek said. “I’ll tell you this. Whoever scrubbed these cabins is a hell of a housekeeper.” The comment got a light chuckle from the gathering but they were intent on what had been uncovered. “The removal of all signs of human habitation is, in itself, a sign of human habitation. I’ve even been able to identify the cleansing agents that were used. To some extent, I can tell the order in which the cabins were cleaned and how long ago. This cabin and the other one we found four weeks ago had been cleaned out and sterilized over a year ago. The layers of accumulated dust showed no sign of disturbance until the activities of that night. Cabin three, the apparent residence of the man known as Reef, bore no sign of having been disturbed since that man’s death. There were still dirty dishes, for example.”

“How did these people live?” Heinz demanded. “There are no windows in this cabin. There’s no heat. How did they stay warm? What did they eat? Where did they get water?”

“All good questions. If we use Reef’s cabin as an indicator, propane gas was used for cooking and heating. There are connections in each of the cabins, but no tanks were found. There are also kerosene stains that indicate lighting, at least at one time, was kerosene lanterns. Reef’s cabin had battery powered lanterns and a stock of new batteries. I’d guess waste disposal was done on a periodic basis. Reef had a composting toilet inside.”

“Completely off the grid,” Heinz mumbled.

“The most recently cleaned cabin may have been done this week, perhaps while foresters were working to find the place. The cabin identified as the lab was cleaned out within the past week, according to what I’ve been able to gather. Definitely since you opened the woods a week ago Tuesday,” Pete concluded.

“And beyond that there’s nothing?” Pàl asked. “Even after we took over the company, they were so confident they kept their operation going until we moved into the woods!”

“This all seems to indicate a big business,” Loren Cavanaugh said. “I mean they even have housekeepers? How the hell can they keep an operation that size quiet?”

“Illegal immigrants,” Mead suggested.

“This isn’t Texas,” David scoffed.

“And we’re not talking about Latin Americans,” Mead agreed. “Almost a quarter of our ‘undocumented immigrants’ are from Asia, Europe, Africa, and Canada. Sorry, Gee. That’s all information I dug up when I was trying to find out who you are and where you’re from.”

“No problem.”

“Here in the Northeastern part of the US, we’re far more likely to draw from that twenty-five percent than from Latin America.”

“So, a Chinese laundry worker comes in and scrubs down a bunch of cabins in the middle of the night and then disappears?” Heinz barked.

“Could be Canadian, Heinz,” Brad said. “The likelihood, however is that they don’t speak English, are not familiar with US laws or customs, have lived a life where silent servitude is the norm, and may be scared for their lives. If they don’t actually see a dead body, they aren’t likely to remember it as anything other than housecleaning.”

“So, what is the minimum number of people it would take to run this operation?” Jan Poltanys asked. “Assuming a cabin like this could hold six kids and we’ve found four that could be residences, that’s twenty-four kids. How big a staff would they need?”

“We’re talking about Reef and at least one and probably as many as three working in the lab. Figure each house has a resident to watch over the captives. Make it eight on-site. Then someone is transporting drugs and maybe trafficking children, managing the operation, housekeeping, cracking the whip. Maybe a dozen or more who are probably residing somewhere in our jurisdiction,” Brad said.

“We got a call from LaRue Chemical this afternoon,” Mead said. “One of their star researchers hasn’t shown up to work this week. Since the guy lives alone, we went over to investigate.”

“What did you find?” Gee asked.

“It reminds me of Reef’s cabin. The only thing that would make me believe he wasn’t just at work was there were no clean clothes. At all.”

“Lived like a slob?”

“Very few dirty clothes. It’s more like he packed a suitcase with everything clean and left.” The group sat in silence for a moment until Jan finally voiced a concern on all their minds.

“What was his area of research?”

“Distillation of RDH from Rose Hickory nuts.”

Work in the Forest and Wild Woods stopped on Thursday afternoon as the foresters and volunteers joined close to two hundred others at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church for the memorial service. Nearly every relative, near or extended, of the seven Families filled the pews.

The other ministers of the town, including Pastor Beck, were also in attendance. Not knowing the faith or origin of the child, the Catholic priest and the Jewish rabbi also said a prayer over the closed casket.

“Gentle children of God,” Reinhold began his homily. “We are gathered in memory of this child who passed without our notice. I know that sounds harsh. We’re good people. We didn’t want a child to die alone in the woods. We didn’t know him or know that he was out there. It wasn’t our fault. Yet a child died without our notice.”

Gee and Karen were both unaccustomed to the formalities of church services but had managed to stand and sit as directed in the first part of the service. Gee supported Collin on his right, beyond whom sat Violet, Birdie, and Red Lanahan. Collin had tears in his eyes from the moment they entered the church and Gee heard him whisper to himself, “Renee. My precious little Renee.” His grief extended far past the unknown child.

“This service is not really in memory of the child,” Rev. Nussbaum continued. “We have no memory of him. This service is truly in memory of ourselves—the part of ourselves we have lost in the Wild Woods of our daily lives. It is in memory of the part of ourselves we have lost while paying bills, while cooking dinner, while arguing with a co-worker, or complaining about a manager. It’s in memory of the part of ourselves we lose each day while doing more important things.

“What is this part? It is compassion and kindness for those outside our immediate sphere. Of course, we are compassionate. We are kind. But we reserve those emotions for our family, our friends. No doubt, any one of us would go to any length to help a friend or protect a family member. But few of us would extend an effort to help and protect a stranger. Fewer still would help or protect a foe. Each person we look at, we judge as to whether he is worthy of our help.

“But Jesus said, ‘Let the children come to me, and don’t try to stop them! People who are like these children belong to God’s kingdom.’ We pray that this child lying before us has found the Kingdom of God. But let us remember the next verse after this famous passage from the nineteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew: ‘After Jesus had placed his hands on the children, he left.’ Did Jesus leave because he was no longer concerned? Because he was finished with them? No! He left because he had deputized his followers, you and me, to care for them.

“It is that which we remember today. We, gathered here today, are people of different beliefs than Luther’s ninety-five theses, or Matthew’s Gospel, or the Torah, or Koran, or even the Bhagavad Gita. We are a disparate and diverse population. But within each of our hearts is a light that illuminates our beliefs and our actions. I ask only that you let that light shine on the memory of this child and guide your action as our foresters search for any other children that might have been abandoned in the Wild Woods. Let us unite as a community to care for our children—all our children, whether of our blood, our spirit, our community, our nation, or our world.”

Rev. Nussbaum left the pulpit to stand behind the tiny coffin. The other ministers, priests, and rabbis stood with him in a silent arc. The Nussbaum Quartet stood in the choir loft and began Céline Dion’s haunting melody led by Elaine’s incredible voice.

Every boy and girl
Should dance on dreams
Around this world.
Aren't they all our children after all?
Who will dry their tears
And lift them up
If they should fall?
Aren't they all our children after all?

The Last Cabin

“I think we’ve found all the cabins there are,” Jessie said. “We have the aerial photos Gabe took last week and have circled the areas where we found the six cabins. We overlaid the map of trails we’ve cut. You can see we’ve got pretty good coverage over the northern half of the woods. The spider trails in this area are paths between the cabins that we’ve located. As we get farther south, the old growth thins and there isn’t as dense a canopy. We think any cabin that far south would have shown up in the pictures.”

“How about this area on the far east side?” Gee asked, pointing at the section on the map that seemed not to have coverage. Jessie, Jonathan, Gee, David, and Gabe had established a routine of debriefing each afternoon. Everyone wanted to leave a little early on Friday so they could get to the last football game of the season.

“There’s a remote chance of habitation in that area but the terrain is extremely rough,” Jonathan said. “Here, you can see there are outcroppings of rock, for example. We need to continue mapping, but I don’t have any hope of finding another cabin. We might not even be able to penetrate it fully before snow and cold block us.”

“I have to agree,” David said. “How about you, Gee? Any feeling we should be pursuing?”

“I don’t know that my feelings count for anything,” he laughed. His relationship with David had relaxed since working together with their brush hauling teams. Roughly half the trails cut during mapping had now been cleared.

“You keep going back to that spot, though,” Gabe said as Gee continued to scan the area of the rock outcropping. “Something bothers you.”

“I don’t know if I’d call it bothered, but I can’t help but think there is something important over there. It’s not so much that I think there are cabins or graves there. I hope not. I just think it is important to continue exploring that direction.”

“That’s good enough for me. You have a crew tomorrow. Who else do we have?” David asked.

“Jessie and I both have crews,” Jonathan said. “The other guys have put in seven straight days and need the weekend off.”

“You’ve all put in seven straight days,” David reminded them.

“Nine,” Jessie corrected him. “I don’t mind. I have a nice warm bed to go home to at night. If there are children out there…”

David sighed. “Three crews. Focus attention on getting into this section. It looks to be a bit over a hundred acres, give or take.”

“We’ve only covered about three acres per day per crew,” Gee said.

“We’ll use the same strategy as we did in looking for the cabins,” Jonathan said. “Instead of going from tree to the nearest tree, we’ll move from one to the farthest one we can see. We’ll spread out like fingers instead of a checkerboard.

“We need to recruit some more volunteers,” Gee said. “If we put more focus on cutting the paths, we can stay ahead of those doing measurements.”

“Good idea.”

“Granda, how much does stone weigh?” Wayne asked. He’d stopped by his grandfather’s office at Savage Sand & Gravel to pick the old man up for dinner before the football game. While waiting, he stood at the window watching the shift workers leave.

“What kind of stone? Most of what we ship is construction grade limestone. It comes in at about a hundred fifty pounds a cubic foot. We don’t quarry here any longer. The rose limestone is a thing of the past. We buy from quarries farther north or as far west as Indiana and it’s shipped to us in blocks of two to five tons each. We cut and polish or do single roughs before shipping it to the customer. That’s still only about ten percent of the business these days. It’s almost all sand and gravel.” Pàl continued to work on the notes in front of him as he talked to his grandson. He was only too happy the teacher was taking an interest in the family business.

“How much can come in or go out in a truckload?” Wayne persisted. Pàl looked up and saw him tapping on his phone’s calculator.

“If an order exceeds twenty-two tons, it has to be split. We can do about forty tons on a tandem but don’t. It’s too much weight for drivers to pull safely. What are you working on?” Pàl stood to look out the window in the direction Wayne was facing.

“That flatbed out there. Assuming it’s limestone under the tarp, it’s a pile roughly four feet high, eight feet across, and twenty feet long. If I did the calculations right, that’s forty-eight tons. What else do we ship?”

“Let’s go take a look,” Pàl suggested.

Friday Night Lights

“Hey, cousin. How you doing?” Karen asked Jo Ransom as she took a seat in the football stands.

“Cold,” her cousin complained. “I spent my college life at Alabama. I completely forgot what it was like up here in the snowy North.”

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Karen laughed. “We’ve only had three hard freezes since Halloween. Though I’ve heard the highest we’ll see now until the end of February is forty-five. Our weather contact at the newspaper says it will be a heavy snowfall year. Each morning, I expect to wake up to a foot of snow.”

“Please, not yet,” Gee groaned. “We have so much left to do out there.”

“How’s it going?” Jo asked.

“I guess the stats will be published in tomorrow’s newspaper,” Gee said. “We’ve cut nearly two miles of trails and mapped over 400 trees. We’ve found six cabins. Only Reef’s cabin showed recent signs of life. And one body.”

“That’s grim.”

“I’m looking for more volunteers for tomorrow,” Gee said. “I expected to see Wayne with you tonight.”

“I did, too,” Jo sighed. “He called a little bit ago and said he needed to stay over at SSG to help his grandfather for a while. Wouldn’t say what, other than ‘company business.’ I know he’ll volunteer, though. Put both of us down. I could use a little exercise.”

“I suppose that means I’m in, too,” Karen laughed. Gee took a firm hold of Karen’s hand. “What have you been doing with your time, Jo?”

“Oh, job-hunting. I know, theoretically, I have an income from the investments I just inherited. But practically, I don’t feel right without working. I mean, you’re head of the Family and you still hold down a job. It isn’t about money. I just want to feel useful,” Jo said.

“I understand. I’m only the figurehead of the Family, not the head. But Ben is getting so frail that he wants Leah and me to handle all the Family business.”

“How’s Leah taking not being named heir?”

“Not badly. I’ve asked her to keep handling the investments and business side of things. Aside from sitting with the other Family heads, her responsibilities haven’t changed. She said she had considered naming me her heir anyway since she doesn’t have a son who is competent.”

“She has a daughter-in-law who would like a chance,” Gee surmised.

“Judith is a graspy little bitch,” Karen exclaimed with unaccustomed vehemence. “She’s at least fourteen or fifteen years younger than Joseph and controls him like a sock puppet. I doubt the marriage will last past her twentieth birthday. Sorry. Too much dirty laundry. I guess I’d have to say Joseph got exactly what he deserved.”

The game was a close loss for the Fireflies, ending their season at six and four. It was understood county-wide that Rosebud High School and Flor del Día would forfeit one game a year when Harvest came around, so neither would ever have a perfect season. It was a good evening for Gee, however, as he recruited two more volunteers from those he’d worked with before who would come to help Saturday morning. Gee, Karen, and Jo were near the gate when Troy Cavanaugh caught up with them.

“What’s up, Gee?” he said casually.

“Hey, Troy. Just recruiting some volunteers to help in the Wild Woods tomorrow. Do you have plans?”

“Well… I usually sleep in on Saturdays. I guess I could put in a few hours,” Troy stammered. “Oh, hi, Jo. Where’s the Savage?”

“Got tied up with his grandfather at SSG tonight,” Jo said. “Where’s Violet?”

“Oh, you know. Preparing for the after-game crowd at Jitterz,” Troy said. “Hey! We’re all young and single. Why don’t we go over the Pizza Palace and get warmed up?”

“Saturday is usually my day to sleep in, too,” Karen said. “But I promised this slave driver I’d go traipsing about in the woods at dawn. I think I’ll go home and hit the sack.”

“Sunrise is too early, even with the end of Daylight Saving Time,” Jo said. “I’m heading home, too.”

“I skipped dinner before the game,” Gee said. “I could use a pizza. We haven’t had much chance to catch up since it got too cold out for basketball. Why don’t the two of us head over to the Pizza Palace?”

“Oh. Uh… Okay,” Troy said. “Sure you ladies won’t join us?” It was clear where his interest lay.

“Have fun you two,” Karen said quickly. She gave Gee a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t wake me up, okay? Need a lift, Jo?”

“Thanks, Karen. See you guys tomorrow.”

Gee and Troy headed to the Pizza Palace without female company.

Cargo

“I’d rather not wait until morning, Pàl. If there is contraband in there, I’ll want to follow the truck to its destination and see who receives the shipment. It’s your call. I can have a warrant in half an hour,” Sheriff Johnson said.

“Can you do that? The manifest gives a destination in Florida,” Pàl said.

“It depends on what we find. If all we have is a suspicion, I’ll have to call the feds.”

“I’ve been scrutinizing the employee rosters pretty carefully. This was loaded and prepared by the second shift crew. Let me call the first shift supervisor and get him out here to help. He’ll know who’s dependable and can get us some muscle. According to the scales, the load is certified at nineteen tons. By measured volume, it should be more than twice that.”

“With luck, it won’t take long to find a hollow container under one or two layers of rock,” Wayne said. “Let’s do this.”

Loading and unloading palettes of rock is neither a pleasant nor fast job. By midnight, Pàl resolved to make sure the three-man crew received a healthy bonus for this unexpected overtime. Binding straps that held the cargo in place were cut and Darren O’Neil recorded the seal numbers so he could reproduce them when it was time to get the cargo ready to roll before morning.

“That, to my untrained eye, is lab equipment,” Johnson said when they opened the first container they uncovered.

“And those are Rose Hickory nuts. Probably enough to keep the lab running for a year or more,” Pàl added.

“I don’t think we have enough labor to empty the crate and get everything sealed up again. There’s room for another container ahead of this one and we should be ready to follow the shipment when it leaves in the morning.”

“The bill of lading says Kissimmee, Florida. We could be down there waiting for it,” Pàl confirmed.

“My instinct tells me this isn’t going where the bill of lading says,” Johnson said. “Let’s seal it back up and confirm what’s up front.”

They sealed the container as two of the laborers kept working on the front portion of the trailer. As soon as the container was sealed, Wayne and the third man started covering the back container with even rows of rock once more. It took another two hours of heavy labor to uncover the front container. Once enough rock had been shifted, they released the lid of the second container.

“Jesus Christ!” Wayne breathed as he lowered himself into the container.

“Janice,” barked Johnson into his cell phone. “I need an ambulance at SSG immediately. Use your cell phone to dispatch. Do not—I repeat—DO NOT use the open channel dispatch radio. Do you understand?”

“What’s going on, Sherriff?”

“You have all the information I am free to give and that you need. Get on it, now!” he yelled at the dispatcher.

“Yes, sir.”

Johnson had no more than disconnected when he thumbed another number on his phone.

“Poltanys.”

“Doctor, I have an ambulance incoming. Patients need the utmost of care and security. Mead Oliver will be present when they get there. Do not put them through admissions. No one is to know.”

“Them?”

Johnson looked into the container where Wayne held a mass of wool blankets in his arms.

“Yes. Three children.”

❮ Chapter 1 Chapter 3 ❯

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