Skullbelly

  Inside, Jeffers went to the reception desk and told the rotund little woman behind the bulletproof glass that he was here to see Chief Tim Horton. She smiled, revealing teeth that looked like they’d been put to use pulverizing bedrock, and told him to have a seat. There were only two chairs in the whole lobby, so he sat in the empty one beside a frail and ancient old man who, hidden beneath a checkered hunting cap and wraparound cataract glasses, reminded Jeffers of Claude Rains in The Invisible Man.

  “They vandalize your car, too?” the old man slurred.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Shitpoke teenagers.” Jeffers’s reflection floated in the black lenses of the old man’s glasses. “Keyed up m’ fuckin’ Bronco. Scratches all down the sides.”

  Jeffers turned away and faced forward. The old man reeked of mothballs and unwashed flesh.

  “I find them kids, I’m gonna string ’em up by their peckers,” continued the old man. “You see if I don’t.”

  Jeffers smiled and continued not looking at the man. He was thankful when the receptionist eventually called the old man’s name, Mr. Needles, and Jeffers was finally left alone.

  Twenty minutes later, the receptionist called Jeffers’s name and he rose and went to the cutout in the bulletproof glass partition.

  “Was Chief Horton expecting you, sir?”

  “I’ve left him several voice messages telling him I would be in town,” Jeffers said, “but he never returned my call. I was hoping to catch him in.”

  “He’s not,” she said. “He’s out at the moment.”

  Jeffers bit his lower lip. You couldn’t have told me this twenty minutes ago, you old bag? “Do you know when you expect him back?”

  “Might be this afternoon, might be this evening.”

  “Where is he, exactly?”

  “Fishing.”

  He uttered a meager little laugh. “No kidding?”

  The receptionist put one meaty hand on her telephone. “What did you need to see him about? I can put you in touch with one of the officers instead.”

  “What about the detective who’s working the missing persons investigation?” He dug his folded index card out from his wallet and scanned the names and numbers. “Detective Lyndon?”

  The woman frowned. “Missing persons investigation?”

  “Yes. The three teenagers that went missing in the forest three months ago? The kid who came into town with all the blood on his clothes?”

  She made a tight O with her mouth, her eyes sliding toward the telephone. She did not pick up the receiver. Instead, she drummed a set of bright blue acrylic nails on the desktop then said, “Lisa ain’t here either.”

  “Lisa?”

  “Detective Lyndon.”

  “Oh.” He’d been expecting a man. “She go fishing with the chief?”

  The placating grimace she gave him expressed her distaste. “Would you prefer to leave a name and phone number?”

  “Do you expect Lyndon in anytime soon, or…?”

  “Detective Lyndon keeps her own schedule. I don’t know it.”

  “Does she have a cell phone?”

  “She does, but the reception out here’s spotty at best.”

  “Can I have the number, see if I can get through to her?”

  “We don’t give out private numbers.”

  “I meant her work cell.”

  “She don’t have a work cell,” the woman responded, now clearly agitated.

  Jeffers fished one of his business cards from the inner pocket of his sports coat. He pushed it through the cut in the glass and set it on the receptionist’s desk. The receptionist stared at it as if it were a dog turd humming with flies.

  “Please see that Detective Lyndon gets that when she returns. And if Chief Horton happens to stop by first—”

  “I’ll pass it along,” the woman said, sweeping the card from the top of her desk and into an open desk drawer. She then slammed the drawer shut and, Jeffers was certain, had she possessed the ability to do so, would have locked it, too. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah. How do I get to The Happy Brier? It’s a motor lodge here in town.”

  “I know what it is.” She flicked one acrylic nail toward the wall of her office that faced the parking lot. “Head back out the way you come, make a right on Town Road Twelve—it’ll be your second right, and I guess you passed it coming down here before—and follow that straight out to the coast. The street don’t have a name but you’ll see the sign.”

  “Thank you,” he said, breaking out into the biggest kiss-my-ass grin of his life. “And it was a pleasure meeting you.”

  He left.

  4

  Apparently, the proprietor of The Happy Brier was a fan of those ironic nicknames, like calling your fat friend Tiny or the shyster with the missing digits Fingers, for the Brier looked anything but happy. It was a slouching, log cabin–type structure with a tarred roof overgrown with foliage and a circular parking lot of corrugated dirt. It faced the cusp of the great redwood forest, where the trees yawned like skyscrapers and bore trunks the size of upended locomotives. The rear of the cabin looked out across the sound, separated from the water by fifty or so yards of black-pebbled beach. The air smelled strongly of pine resin.

  Summer having recently ended, the parking lot was empty. The motor lodge itself looked like set dressing from an old western about a haunted mining town. A wooden sign inscribed with the lodge’s name hung from a pair of chains beneath the awning over the front door. Jeffers had hoped to see an OPEN sign, but there was none in evidence. And unless the proprietor walked back and forth to work, there was no one here.

  Nonetheless, he went up to the door and tried the knob. Locked. He drummed knuckles on the hollow-sounding frame then peered through the crescent of dark glass set in the upper section of the door. It was like trying to look through motor oil. Movement off to his left caught his attention and he quickly spun around to see several deer grazing in the grass at the edge of the parking lot, an enormous buck among them. The buck’s rack looked like an oversized bear trap. Its eyes were swampy.

  Jeffers went around to the rear of the motor lodge. Here, he could smell diesel fuel and, at the opposite end of the sound, could make out the framework of what he assumed was a logging flume but reminded him of slides at a water park. He walked halfway across the beach, pebbles roughly the size and color of squirrel pellets crunching beneath his boots, and inhaled deeply just as a strong breeze came in off the water and washed through the surrounding trees. The sound was like the buildup of an orchestra, climbing toward crescendo—the building susurration of whispering trees. Sssssss…

  “Can I help you?”

  The voice startled him and he spun around. A silver-haired man in a flannel shirt and faded dungarees stood beside a missile-shaped oil tank, the weight of a tool belt at his hip causing him to slouch unnaturally. He had welding goggles hanging down around his neck.

  “Hi. Is this your place?” Jeffers said, approaching the man with one hand out. He managed what felt like an affable smile though it took some work, as he was still a bit shaken from the man’s voice having startled him.

  “It is.” The man nodded succinctly. When Jeffers approach with his hand still out, the man took it reluctantly and seemed glad to be rid of it once the handshake was completed. “Name’s Lee Colson. You lost?”

  “No, I’m not, actually. My name is John Jeffers, I’m a private investigator from Seattle. I was hired by the families of those hikers who disappeared in these woods three months ago.”

  Colson bobbed his head up and down but he didn’t seem too impressed or interested. “Yeah, I remember that whole thing.”

  “There were four teenagers, three boys and a girl, and they stayed two nights at your place here. I was hoping maybe you’d answer some questions for me about them.”

  Colson pulled his welding goggles over his head and tossed them in the mud. “Don’t know what it is I could tell you, Mr. Jeffers.”

  “Do you
remember the kids?”

  “Well, now, that was three months ago. I remember the four of them coming in, staying a few nights like you said. We don’t get many vacationers down this way, even in the summer, so it ain’t hard to remember something like them four kids.”

  “What do you remember about them?” Jeffers asked.

  “Not a whole lot. Didn’t hardly talk to them at all, really. They came in midweek, I think, and got two rooms. I figured they’d want two rooms, what with one of them kissin’ up on the girl and all. A little privacy, is what I’m saying.”

  “Sure.”

  “If I recall, they were paying night to night, so I guess they didn’t have real fixed plans, you know what I mean? When they didn’t come back, I just assumed they decided to stay somewhere else. Didn’t think nothing of it, is what I’m saying.”

  “Did you happen to overhear any arguments between them?”

  “Arguments? You mean between the boyfriend and the girlfriend?”

  “Or any of the others,” Jeffers said. “Or did they seem like they were all getting along?”

  “Seemed fine to me.” Colson wiped grimy hands down the thighs of his dungarees then folded his arm. He had a slight tic at the left corner of his mouth that Jeffers couldn’t pull his eyes from. “Didn’t notice nothing out of the ordinary, is what I’m saying.”

  “What about a possible confrontation with someone else, maybe someone from town or someone else staying here at the lodge?”

  “Weren’t no one else staying at the lodge that week. Was slow.”

  “And you didn’t hear of them getting into something with someone from town? Maybe one of the locals?”

  “That sometimes happens, sure,” said Colson, “but I don’t recall anything like that with these kids. Didn’t hear nothing about that, anyway. I only saw them when they were here, though.”

  “Did anyone from the police department ever speak to you about this?”

  “Why would they?” The old man’s eyes narrowed.

  “To get a witness statement, like I’m doing now.”

  “Witness to what? I didn’t witness nothing.” He pointed across the beach and beyond the parking lot and the nameless dirt road to the massive redwoods that staked out of the ground and disappeared in the low cloud cover. “Some folks from town saw one of them come down the old logging road, said to have blood on his clothes. Wounds, you know? Course, I don’t know much about that. Cops came, took him to the hospital in Brookings or wherever.”

  “So the police never came here to talk to you, or maybe look at lodging records, receipts?”

  “No. Never spoke to no cops.”

  “How far away is the logging road from here?”

  Colson bit at his lower lip and rubbed a bony finger along the side of his nose, leaving behind a streak of grime in the shape of a comet. “A good couple miles. It ain’t in use no more. You’ll see it ’cause they put up a big chain across it so vehicles can’t get through.”

  “Who did?”

  “Who did what?”

  “Who put the chain up?”

  Colson shrugged his bony shoulders. That tic worked madly at the corner of his mouth now. “Whoever puts up chains, I guess.”

  Jeffers smiled and nodded.

  “Say,” said Colson, a small, pink tongue darting between his thin lips, “you look to be in good shape. You want to give me a hand moving some chairs into storage?”

  Jeffers made a big deal about checking his wristwatch.

  “Help out an old fool,” said Colson.

  Jeffers sighed.

  5

  He had worked up a good sweat moving chairs from the dining area of the lodge to the storage shed out back, the old man working soundlessly right alongside him. He felt severely out of place, his tweed sports coat draped over the counter and the sleeves of his Hugo Boss shirt cuffed to the elbows. His necktie crooked and his hip and leg aching, Jeffers was at least rewarded with a cold beer from a cooler that sat behind the registration desk.

  “Got any rooms available?” he asked Colson, who was cranking the cap off his own beer.

  Colson growled laughter. “You joking, right? Hell, we got the Queen of England checking in tonight!”

  “Well,” Jeffers said, grinning, “if you can spare it, I’d like to get a room for tonight. Possibly for the next few nights.”

  “Spare it, hell.” Colson went to a leather-bound ledger at the edge of his registration desk. He opened it and a plume of dust clouded the air. “For helping with them chairs, I’ll cut you the best damn rate you ever seen.”

  Jeffers peered down at the ledger. A few lines up from the empty space where Colson was printing Jeffers’s name, Jeffers saw Tommy Downing’s name and signature, along with a room number and the license plate number of Megan Harper’s Jeep—4EVRHOT.

  Somehow, darling, I sincerely doubt that. Not anymore, anyway, wherever you are, he thought, though not meanly. It was simply the first thing that popped into his head.

  “Can I get that room?” Jeffers said, pointing to Downing’s signature block.

  Colson eyed him ruefully...then turned and retrieved a brass key affixed to a plastic fob from the pegboard at his back.

  While he finished his beer, he surveyed the wall-mounted trophy fish on the lacquered mahogany shields that surrounded him, watching him with their dead, plastic eyes. Some of the fish were enormous, with mouths like miniature railway tunnels.

  “Say a guy wants to go fishing around here,” Jeffers asked Colson. “Where’s the best place to go?”

  6

  The room was just as he’d expected it to be—tight, unadorned, and haunted by the odors of occupants past. This did not bother him in the least; quite the contrary, he was comfortable with the expected. He’d felt that way ever since the shootout that left him injured and useless, and the two divorces that had blindsided him.

  Blindsided is unfair, he counterbalanced, dropping his duffle bag onto the bed the popping the stiff tendons in his back. I just wasn’t paying close enough attention.

  He checked his cell phone for any missed calls, but there were none. He called Chief Horton’s line again but got his voice mail. Decidedly, the pep in the faceless chief’s voice was beginning to set Jeffers on edge. He left a message, hit end, then dialed the police station’s main line. He recognized the nasty receptionist’s voice when she answered, and he tried to disguise his own by being overly casual.

  “Detective Lyndon, please.”

  “Can I ask who’s calling?”

  “George Jetson.” Fuck—it was the first name that came to his mind.

  “Hang on a minute, Mr. Jetson.”

  Static-laden Muzak filtered into his ear. While he waited, he flipped open the case file and returned to the photo of Megan Harper’s Jeep Cherokee. It was parked at an angle beside a band of dirt roadway that, from what Jeffers could tell from the photo, led up a slight, wooded incline. There were ferns in the dirt and the trunks of the redwoods were visible. Harper’s Jeep was the only vehicle in the shot. Looking more closely at the photo, he could not see any other tire tracks in the dirt.

  “Mr. Jetson?” the receptionist said, cutting back on the line.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll transfer you now,” she said.

  Holy fucking bingo.

  A click, then another woman’s voice came across the line, equally as stern as the receptionist’s but with a more pleasant, musical quality to it. “Detective Lyndon.”

  “Hi, Detective. My name’s John Jeffers, I’m a private investigator looking into the matter of the hikers who went missing three months ago.” He prattled quickly, not wanting her to cut him off. “I’m here in town this afternoon and was hoping you’d have time to meet with me. I understand you’re the detective assigned to this case, and I’d really like to—”

  “What’s your name again?”

  He swallowed. “John Jeffers. The Downings hired me. As did the Harpers and the—”

  “Whe
re are you now, Mr. Jeffers?”

  He felt the strange compulsion to lie. In the end, he settled for a happy medium. “I’m in town.” Then he hurried on: “I’m sure you’re incredibly busy, Detective Lyndon, and I won’t take up much of your time. If you could possibly meet with me this afternoon, or later this evening, that would be fantastic.” He’d winced when saying the word “incredibly” because he thought it sounded too condescending. Now, he held his breath and awaited Detective Lyndon’s response.

  “Can you find The Lighthouse?”

  “Uh…” He remembered the lighthouse outside his motel room window last night, but then quickly amended that that had been where he’d stopped last night, up north along 101, and not here in town. “Is there…?”

  “It’s a restaurant,” she clarified, clearly agitated.

  “Oh. Yeah, sure, I can find it.”

  “Be there at eight.”

  “Great. I’ll be the guy with the eternally grateful look on his face.”

  “I’ll be the woman with the badge and gun,” Lyndon said, and hung up.

  7

  Redwood Outfitters was just about as modern as one could hope for in a place as isolated as Coastal Green, Jeffers thought as he pulled the Crown Vic into a parking space outside the shop. It was a two-story stucco façade with plate glass windows behind which outdated, paint-flecked mannequins attempted to assemble a bright blue nylon tent. The shop was located at the center of town, along a strip of smaller boutiques and mom-and-pop dives, to include a family-style restaurant called Moe’s, which had also appeared on the kids’ bank statements. Like the suspiciously absent interview of Lee Colson, the police report included no witness testimony from anyone employed at Redwood Outfitters. Considering this, one hand drumming on the old Vic’s steering wheel while Sketches of Spain blew erratic notes and prolonged sequences on the tape deck, it occurred to Jeffers that the police could have conducted many interviews, in fact, but just failed to turn that information over to the families. He knew the Harpers had gotten a lawyer involved early on, but that didn’t ensure that the paperwork they’d requested and received was all there was.