Known (7 page)

Someone else has been here.

“Holy shit!” said Frisco, spotting the mess. “I was just here an hour ago and it didn’t look like that.” He slowed the snowmobile next to her Suburban and pulled a turn to reverse direction before they stopped and dismounted. They both slowly scanned the woods, Frisco resting his hand on the butt of the weapon at his waist. With the snowmobile abruptly silenced, the woods seemed eerily quiet.

Gianna’s gaze halted on the burned cabin.
Would someone hide in there?

Are we being watched?

The broken vehicle window simply made her sigh. There had been nothing to steal out of her old Suburban and there was nothing she could do about the damage right now.

“Maybe they were desperate. Perhaps their vehicle’s snowed in and they needed to get to town.” She scrambled to find a possible explanation for the broken window. One that didn’t alarm her. “I don’t know why the Suburban won’t start.”

“No one’s driving this out of here even if it would start. You wouldn’t get past the first turn in the road. The snow’s too deep. This was done by a jerk who was looking for something to steal.”

“Well, all they found was an owner’s manual. And my grocery bags.”

“I wonder what direction they came from.” Frisco gestured at the tracks Chris, Violet, and Gianna had made the previous morning. “I saw that path when I was here earlier.” Then he pointed at the far-off path that led east. “Is that the track you guys spotted when you left?”

“Yes, we made the ones that head west,” Gianna said. “But there’re definitely more prints now than when we left. Think he . . . or they . . . could be in the cabin?” she asked in a low voice.

Frisco looked in the cabin’s direction. “Hello!” he shouted, making Gianna jump. “I’m with the forest service! Does anyone need help?”

They waited. His shouted words were swallowed up by the woods and snow. They didn’t echo. They simply vanished.

“Anyone here?” he shouted.

Silence.

Frisco shrugged. “Either they don’t want to be found or they took off after breaking your window.”

Gianna felt as if a dozen eyes watched her from the woods, but she turned her attention back to her sad vehicle.

“Let me look in the truck first.” Frisco peeked through the windows, checking the back row of seats and the cargo area. “All clear.”

The vehicle was nearly ten years old but ran like new. It’d acquired a few extra squeaks and rattles since she’d first bought it, but it’d had no real problems until it had refused to start for Violet last night. “Are those marks from your snowmobile?” Gianna pointed at distinctive grooves in the snow and stepped carefully over to her vehicle.

“Yep. That’s where I turned when I came by earlier. And those are my tracks where I walked over to your vehicle. You were smart to leave it unlocked for me to find the note.” He winced and gave her an apologetic look. “I locked the doors after I found it. Maybe they wouldn’t have broken the window if I’d left it unlocked.”

“You did the right thing.” She sighed. “Wish I had some duct tape and plastic, but it’s not a priority right now.” She eyed the cabin again, curious about what might be inside.

Frisco slipped a small camera out of his pocket. “I’ll take some pictures before we make any new paths.”

“Good idea.” Gianna was a fan of as many pictures as possible when it came to collecting evidence. She’d testified in court several times and had found photographic evidence could be the determining factor when life insurance companies fought against claims. She’d seen a routinely snapped autopsy photo win a case for a mother with four young children after the death of her husband. Frisco took pictures of her truck’s window and the jumbled mess of deep footprints in the snow. He slowly expanded his range of shots, taking some far images of the cabin and then focusing on the path that’d been forged between the vehicle and cabin. Gianna followed as he moved closer to the cabin. She inhaled through her nose, searching for the odor that had convinced Chris someone had burned inside. She smelled only burned wood.

The mystery path traveled east from the cabin and away into the woods. Frisco took some close-up images of the prints in the snow, and from the cabin’s small porch he took a few of the path. He yelled again, asking if anyone needed help. Silence. “Let’s see if it looks safe to step inside for a few minutes.”

Gianna was ready. She hadn’t worked in a few weeks and the familiar excitement climbed up her spine, as it did when she received her daily assignments in the morgue. She’d been unable to get the possibility of a death in the cabin out of her mind ever since Chris had mentioned the smell.
A puzzle to solve
. She put her hand on the door handle and turned it, giving the door a push. It stuck.

“Let me try.” Frisco stepped forward as she moved back out of his way.

He turned the handle and pushed against the door with his shoulder. It flew open and ash billowed up from the floor.

Gianna’s heart dropped as she took in the blackened interior. “Ohhhh.”

We’re lucky to be alive.

The odor of death slapped her in the face. Burned death. It was unmistakable. A combination of barbecue and sewer. Chris hadn’t been wrong.

“Dear Lord,” muttered Frisco. “He wasn’t kidding.” He blocked Gianna as she tried to move past him. “Hang on a second.”

She stopped and took another look at the ceiling. Large pieces of roof hung from the burned holes.

“Someone’s walked in here since the fire.” Frisco pointed. “Look at the footprints. Is that from you guys?”

Gianna studied the large prints that led toward the back of the room. “Chris went back in to grab my boots. I don’t think he walked that far. My boots were right by the door and he didn’t want to be inside any longer than necessary.” Dread crept up her spine.

Who was here?

Did they set the fire?

“I want to take some pictures before we tramp through here,” Frisco stated. “I don’t want our prints mixed up with those.”

She nodded.

Frisco took wide angles of the entire room and then closer focused shots. Gianna spotted her cell phone and purse near the far couch. Both were barely recognizable. All color was gone, and they were partially melted and buried under ash. There was nothing she wanted from either object. She didn’t get attached to physical things; in her mind everything was replaceable. “Do you think it’s safe to go in?” she asked.

“I think it’s okay. It doesn’t look like any parts of the ceiling have fallen since the fire went out. Let’s take a look and see if we can find what’s causing that smell and then get out.”

“It’s coming from the back of the room,” she stated.
Where the footprints lead.
The first floor of the cabin was a deep rectangle with the bathroom at the rear and the kitchen to her left. The main room had a fireplace and two comfy couches. From their viewpoint they could see everything except the interior of the bathroom, the loft, and the area behind the farthest couch.

Frisco took measured steps across the great room, carefully photographing his way in. Gianna glanced behind them, seeing their footprints added to the existing path in the ash. The ranger’s shoulders tensed as he stepped past the second ash-covered couch.

He looked down and crossed himself.

Gianna held her breath and stopped beside him. The figure on the floor behind the couch was in the traditional pugilist’s pose of a burn victim: arms and legs drawn close to the body from the heat contracting the muscles. Some of his clothing had melted; some had burned. It was clearly a male body—his frame, boots, and masculine skull stating his sex. His head was charred, his hair mostly gone, and the bone of his skull exposed.

“Know him?” Frisco asked.

“No . . . I don’t think so.” He was burned beyond recognition.
How did the man sneak into our cabin
? “I don’t understand . . .” Gianna couldn’t speak. Had the man been in the cabin as she lay passed out on the other couch? Or had he entered after Violet had dragged her out? She crouched to get a closer look, part of her itching to get him cleaned up and on a table. “Look there.” She pointed at the base of his skull. Mixed in with the burned hair, roasted flesh, and ashy bone, she could see two holes in his skull. Frisco took another step and bent down beside her.

“Well, hello there,” he said softly. He pointed his camera at the head and took several angles. “It looks like our boy had a confrontation with a couple of bullets.”

“A confrontation implies he saw it coming,” said Gianna. “I don’t think he saw it headed toward the back of his skull.” Her mind spun with more questions.
Who shot him? When was he shot? Why is he in
my
rented cabin?

“I don’t think there’s much more we can do here,” Frisco stated as he stood. “Let’s get you back to the other cabin, and I’ll call the state police. This is above and beyond my job description.”

Gianna reluctantly straightened, unable to pull her gaze from the murdered man. Shock slowly built in her lungs. She’d seen a lot of violence in her career, but none that’d occurred this close to her and Violet. She veered away from her pathologist mind-set and let her mothering side take over. “Oh, my God. What if Violet had gotten hurt?” Her knees shook at the images that raced through her brain. “Why is he in here?”

Frisco shook his head. “You’d be the first person I’d ask.”

She whipped her face toward him. “I don’t know anything about this.”

“I know that,” he said, pointedly holding her gaze. “But if I was an investigator who’d just been handed this case, you’d be the first person I would question. You
and
your daughter. Are you ready for that?”

Dread touched her spine, but she kept her face neutral and remembered how she’d dealt with officers back in New York. “Of course. We don’t have any idea how this happened. It will be frustrating for the investigators, but we aren’t going to be much help.”

“It could be that your daughter saw something.”

“She didn’t see anything. She was totally surprised when Chris brought it up.”

“Maybe she doesn’t realize she saw or heard something important. She was clearly rattled by the whole experience. Once she’s calmer and can think back on what happened, she might recall something.”

Gianna nodded but inside she tried to calm down about how close the assault had been to her daughter. As traumatizing as that night had been, Gianna believed Violet would have noticed a man in the cabin.

“Let’s head back. I was about to ask if you wanted to grab anything, but it’s probably best not to touch anything. The investigators aren’t going to like that we entered.”

“Tough,” muttered Gianna. “I’ll tell them we did them a favor by making sure it was human and not calling them out to discover Smokey the Bear had died in here. I don’t need anything from inside.” She felt a bit naked without her driver’s license and credit cards, but she was due to get an Oregon license, and new cards could be ordered. She moved to the front door and stared at her Suburban as Frisco took photos of the footprints they’d left across the floor of the cabin. A clear record of where they’d been.

Frisco stepped beside her and took a few more pictures of the snowy paths. “I love the quiet cold days like this,” he said. “Everything is silent and sleeping. You have to cherish that feeling to live up here. This isn’t a life for people who need constant action. Our year-round residents know how to change with the seasons. Winter means settling in and being prepared to wait things out.”

“I don’t mind it for a few days,” answered Gianna.

Frisco nodded. “That’s why we get a few tourists during the winter. They crave the adventure of being snowed in, but once it’s continued for more than a few days they start climbing the walls.”

Gianna thought about Chris Jacobs. He seemed the sort who could last for weeks in the solitude.

“We were lucky Chris came along,” Gianna said. “We would still have been sitting in my Suburban when you arrived this morning.”

Dread shot through her at the thought of having spent that much more time without heat.
Would we have survived?
A dizziness rocked her as she imagined hour after hour of dropping temperatures. She bent over and rested her hands on her thighs, putting the image of Violet slowly freezing to death out of her head.

A spray of warm moisture and small fragments covered her face and shoulder. She twisted away reflexively as the sound of a gunshot filled the silent forest. A hole punched through the cabin siding beside her, and she lunged to the side after she heard the second shot, leaping off the low porch and landing on her belly in the snow, knocking the air out of her lungs.

She looked over her shoulder. Half of Frisco’s head was gone.

Brain matter and blood.

That’s what sprayed me.

His body slumped in a heap on the porch. Horror paralyzed her, and she fought to find a breath.

He’s dead.

I can’t help him.

I’m next.

Get away.

Her brain shifted into flight mode as she looked forward at the forest.

The shots came from the woods.

Did he shoot the man inside?

Run. Snowmobile. Now.
For a brief second she considered dashing back inside the cabin.
That will protect me for ten seconds. Leave now.

Gun. Keys.

Voices screamed in her head as she forced herself to scramble to her hands and knees and crawl back up on the porch, keeping her head low. Her hands shook as she flipped the snaps on the holster that held Frisco’s gun, and she yanked on the handle. It didn’t move.
Push first.
She pushed down on the butt of the gun and felt the holster’s safety release. She slid the weapon out of the holster and shoved it in the deep pocket of her coat. She mentally thanked the cop who’d shown her how the release worked when she’d teased him in the morgue, saying that she could snag his gun. Frisco’s tiny camera lay beside him. She grabbed it.