A Shadow Fell (20 page)

             
             
             
             
             
             
             
48

             
When I woke up it was morning.
Dried blood covered my clothes, face, and hands. I was within twenty feet of Henderson’s butchered body.
I had fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep practically within reach of the carnage I had created.

             
My
body
began
to
tremble
uncontrollably
.
I
t took a long time before I could even stand on my wobbly legs. When I did stand I
vomited what little there was in my stomach.

             
In the clear light of a new day everything
was
different.
M
y mind grappled with the reality of what
I had done, what
kind of man I had become
.
By committing
these
dreadful
acts I had
revealed
I was no better than Henderson. My reasons for undertaking them m
a
y have been more understandable, but that didn’t make them any more acceptable.

             
I was in a morbid panic but I was lucid enough to know
I now had some hard decisions to make. Did I
go to the law and
take responsibility for my actions? If I did, the likelihood that I would spend a long time in jail was
certain
.
But that wasn’t all of it.
What about
the stigma attached to a man
responsible for such
butchery
?
Such things
were
never forgotten, n
ot by anyone. Certainly not by the law and especially not by
the
woman who had loved me.
How could I ever face Callie again? What would she see when she looked into my eyes?
If I had simply shot Henderson there would have been no problem. I’d have probably been given a medal. But nobody was going to honor
someone
that
had
chopped a man to pieces with a hatchet
,
n
o matter how contemptible that man may have been. There would
probably
be those who would say ‘Good for him. He gave that bastard exactly what he deserved.’ But they wouldn’t say it in public. Those comments would be reserved for
very
private moments
between those accustomed to extreme violence
.

             
So, what was the alternative?
Become a fugitive
?
Spend the rest of my life running
? That didn’t hold a lot of appeal either.

             
Did I have any other choices
?

             
Only one
came to my mind
.

             
If I had been in a clearer frame of mind it’s unlikely I would ever have considered it, but there was nothing clear about my thought processes at this stage.

             
There was a man back at that campsite that was probably dead of his wounds by now. By all indications he was a loner.
It was u
nlikely that anyone was going to report him as missing, at least not for a long time. He was close to my age and, although thinner, of similar stature. I could grow a full beard, lose fifteen pounds and, with glasses
and a cap
, probably
look enough like him to
pass a
routine
inspection. He had all the documentation I would need to establish myself somewhere far away from his home state of Nebraska.

             
The only way to make this work would be to dispose of Walker’s body in such a way that he was mistaken for me. An idea came to me that,
in my
unbalanced state
, I actually
thought
might have possibili
ti
es.

             
I had to move fast. If I was going to pull this off I had to get it done before a serious search for Con and me was undertaken. We
had already
been gone far longer than I had intended. I wasn’t going to make any bets on whether or not anyone would make the connection to this mountain.

             
First, though,
for my plan to work
I had to d
ispose of
Henderson’s body
and all its parts
.
And
I h
a
d
to hide
them
well enough
that
they
would
never be found.

             
             
             
             
             
             
             
4
9

             
Back at Walker’s camp
I was faced with yet more problems. Walker wasn’t dead.
Although i
t’s unlikely he’d have lasted more than a few more hours
his heart was still miraculously pumping blood.
But I didn’t have a few hours to sit and wait for him to expire naturally. I
couldn’t give
myself time to sit and hesitate over anything.

             
Walker’s breathing was so shallow
that I was able to convince myself I would be committing a simple act of mercy.
I pinched his nostrils together with one hand and covered his mouth with the other for thirty seconds. Except for a slight jerking movement a few seconds into it, he barely moved.

             
I
removed
Walker’s boots
and put them on my own feet.
Luckily they were a good fit.
I checked his pockets for anything personal.
Other than
a small pocket knife
and some loose change
there wasn’t much. I put
the knife
, together with his wallet and watch
,
in my own pockets.

             
My next task was to dig a large grave a few yards into the woods, away
from
the camp. Once done I
threw in all my personal possessions,
pulled Con and Walker into it, doused the bodies with gasoline, and t
ossed
a match on them.

             
I watched for hours as the
bodies burned.
Each time
the flames started to die down I added more fuel. The only thing I made a point of not soaking with gasoline was one of Con’s legs. When the bodies had finally all but turned to dust, with the exception of Con’s leg, I threw in one of my boots and let it burn almost to nothing.
I covered the ashy remains of
the
fire with Walker’s canvas tent
and filled in the hole
.
I
did a superficial job of hiding the burial site by covering it with debris from the forest floor. Then I
deposited the boot I hadn’t put on Walker in the woods between the camp and the burial site.

             
I was almost done. It was time to plant some DNA evidence.

             
I
sliced open a finger with my pocket knife and smeared blood on two cartridges from the rife. I
fired
the
two
rounds
into the ground where I would have been shot if not for Winston.
After that I dripped blood over the earth above them until I started to feel feint.

             
As my final act I
gathered together and packed up
everything that gave the camp the
outward show
of permanence.
When I was done I surveyed my handiwork with a critical eye. As far as I could see anyone coming upon this s
pot
would
gain
the impression of a temporary stopover for
a
camper who had long since moved on.

             
Of course it wouldn’t fool an FBI forensics team. But then, I didn’t want it to.

             
I said a silent farewell to m
y loyal and loving pet. He had deserved a much better end than he got.

             
With the dirt bike loaded down with all the gear I had gathered up I took off in search of Henderson’s cabin.

             
Although I had a new identity
I wasn’t anxious to put it to the test.
I needed to grow a full beard and lose some weight
before I tried to pass myself off as Eldon Walker.

             
And then I needed to figure out where Walker had left whatever vehicle he had brought to this mountain.
I had his keys to a GMC
vehicle
but I had no description other than that and no clue how to find it.
In the meantime I needed a place to hide and rest. Henderson’s cabin, if I could find it, seemed to offer the best hope of remaining undetected. After all, he had used it to avoid discovery until now. Presumably it was stocked with everything I would need to survive until my appearance changed enough that I could venture out into the world.

             
Finding the cabin was no easy task.
Before I killed him Henderson had given me a rough indication of the direction, but
two hours by foot in a straight line from where he had died
left a great deal of real estate to search
.
If not for the dirt bike I would never have been able to cover the distance
involved
considering all the
exploration
it took.

             
When I finally came across
the cabin
it
was not what I expected it to be. In fact it was not a cabin at all really, more a clapboard shack
constructed many years before
from old barn boards. It was approximately twelve feet square with walls that were deteriorating, a roof that would not deter rain, and a packed earth floor.
             
There were no windows.

             
A narrow wooden cot along one wall
, made from the same boards as the shack,
and a roughly hewn table with the stump of a log for a chair served as the only furniture i
n
this
decrepit little hovel
. But there were provisions. A couple of shelves along one wall contained a months supply of canned goods and a couple cases of bottled water were stored in a corner. A box of candles and matches
sat
on top of
these.

             
The prospect of spending the next couple of weeks
here was not something that filled me with
any
joy.
Visions
of sleeping on the same cot that Henderson had used made me nauseous. But I had set my future back in those woods the day before.

             
There was no going back now.

             
A few days later
I listened to
t
he thumping sound of helicopter
rotors to the east
. The shack was well camouflaged by nature so I wasn’t worried about being spotted from the air. I
could occasionally see the choppers
flying grid searches
although
they never ventured very near my hideaway. This went on for several days
during which time t
he only precaution that seemed necessary was to avoid building a fire.

             
Eventually the skies went quiet again.

             
With the benefit of time my mind began the slow process of healing and my thoughts became more logical.
I
had begun to seriously
wonder
if my ploy
had worked
.
Had
the Feds b
ought
the scene I had constructed? I had tried to make it appear that Henderson had gone to great lengths to cover the murders of Con and myself so that his presence on the mountain would remain unknown.
The fact was
I was up against some very smart people.
The more thought I gave it the less
confident
I became
that they would
fall for my ruse
. My
greatest anxiety came from worrying
that Henderson’s body
would
be discovered. I had, after all, buried him very quickly while in a
seriously
deranged frame of mind.
If they found him
everything would fall into place
pretty fast
for the investigators.

             
The need
to run rippled through me.

             
I
had already lost ten or so pounds
and
it had been weeks since I had shaved. If I spent a little time shaping my beard I could look enough like the picture on Eldon Walker’s drivers license to get by.

             
It was time to put as
much distance between m
ys
e
lf
and this nightmare
of a mountain as I could
.