November 14th, 2010
Sunday
“Ouch.” Gabriel winced as Maura swabbed his cheek with alcohol. It felt as though he’d been attacked with a series of dull, rusted razorblades. Fortunately, the lacerations were fairly superficial, but that didn’t mean they didn’t sting like hell.
“I may not be a doctor,” Maura said, “but I think you’re going to live.”
She opened the medical kit Cavenaugh had had the foresight to bring and taped a couple squares of gauze over the side of his face. It was frightening how well-stocked the kit was. Not only were there bandages, but syringes, splints, vials of lidocaine and epinephrine, and enough needles to make an acupuncturist jealous. What kind of trouble did Cavenaugh anticipate they would get themselves into up here?
Again he pondered what Cavenaugh might know that he hadn’t divulged.
Maura closed the kit, took it back into the kitchen, and set it on the counter. Gabriel remained seated in the doorway, oblivious to the snow blowing in his face as he was too busy watching the others where they crouched beneath the window. They had widened the hole under the house substantially, and were now excavating the small recess. Cavenaugh wore a pair of non-powdered latex gloves, and wriggled in and out of the orifice. Each time he returned with a few more small bones, which he set on the pillowcase Kelsey held stretched open in front of him. Will pointed the flashlight over Cavenaugh’s back and directed the beam under the floorboards, while Jess stared intently at the growing collection of skeletal remains.
“Hand me another baggie,” Cavenaugh said.
Will passed him a sandwich-sized Ziploc bag, and a moment later Cavenaugh scooted all the way back out of the hole and stood. He grimaced as he stretched his back.
“Let’s get out of this snow,” Cavenaugh said, leading the others toward the back door of the cabin.
Gabriel rose to allow them to pass and followed them into the living room, where Maura had the fire stoked to a roaring blaze. Cavenaugh opened the grate to light the room and gestured for Kelsey to spread out the pillowcase on the floor in front of it. Will shined his flashlight at the collection for good measure. Carefully, Cavenaugh began to separate the bones by species. There were thin rib bones, beaks, leathery claws, and wings that still bore feathers, which he moved all the way to the right. Other smaller mammalian bones, a hodgepodge of rodents, were placed to the left. The remainder, in a jumble in the center, all appeared to be human. There were more than a dozen phalanges, most of which appeared to be from fingers, while the shorter ones were obviously from toes. Some were still articulated with cartilage that had long since turned black, but the majority were loose and disjointed. They were all scored with the same teeth marks in the manila surface, and there wasn’t even a hint of flesh.
“Do you think…?” Will asked.
“No way to know for sure,” Cavenaugh said, “but I think so. Unless there are more bodies hidden in these mountains. Without DNA analysis, we can only work under the assumption that they are.” He sighed and turned to Gabriel. “What kind of animal did you say it was?”
“I didn’t get a very good look at it.”
“Do you think it’s possible it might have been a cat?”
“A cat? But we’re in the middle of nowhere and…” His words trailed off as realization dawned.
Cavenaugh produced two clear plastic bags, the first of which contained an assortment of whole finger and toenails. He set it aside and held up the second for Gabriel to examine. It was filled with a mess of hairs: some of them were long and stiff, others shorter and slightly curved. There were even pinches that appeared to have been shed in clumps. Some were white, but most were a subdued orange.
“Oscar,” Gabriel whispered. “How could he have survived out here all this time?”
“You’re missing the big picture,” Cavenaugh said. He dropped the baggie on the floor beside the bones. “This cat knows where at least one of the bodies is hidden.”
***
They had all followed the tracks through the snow and into the woods until the prints had vanished in the detritus beneath the heavy pine canopy where the snow couldn’t reach, at which point they had split into three pairs and headed in different directions. That had been close to an hour ago now, which was the designated time to turn around and head back to the cabin where they would all meet for an early breakfast. While Maura and Will had branched left and struck off to the north, and Cavenaugh and Kelsey had continued east in the direction the tracks had been leading them, Gabriel and Jess had veered south. They all understood that the tabby knew this forest better than all of them by now, and if it didn’t want to be found, then they didn’t have a prayer of finding it. But they had to take the chance. If Gabriel had startled Oscar badly enough, Lord only knew when he might return to his home.
Gabriel had given up calling for the cat. Oscar certainly wasn’t going to scamper out of his hiding place at the sound of Gabriel’s voice, but it had at least made him feel like he was doing something productive. Now he and Jess walked in silence, with only the crackling sound of dead pine needles, broken branches, and festering aspen leaves between them. They swung their flashlight beams ahead of them, making the tree trunks cast shadows that simulated movement, as though dark figures ducked behind them as soon as the light neared.
Jess wore the same look on her face that Gabriel had seen earlier in the night. They weren’t close enough for him to try to coax out whatever was bothering her, so he waited for her to voice her concerns.
“It’s time to head back,” she finally said. A cloud of her breath hung around her head. Her cheeks and nose were bright red, and she had begun to sniff every few seconds. She looked him in the eyes, then turned quickly away. “We aren’t going to find him regardless. Not like this anyway.”
Gabriel pulled a bottle of water out of his jacket, took a long drink, and offered it to Jess. She took it with a grateful nod, and tipped it back.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” Gabriel said. “I’m pretty sure the remains have to be fairly close for the cat to have been able to find them. If Oscar’s still living at the cabin after all this time, then he can’t possibly be roaming too far.”
“That’s why we need to find him.” She passed back the water and he tucked it into his coat. “Maybe he can lead us to them.”
“I don’t think so. By now, the flesh would have rotted and sloughed from the bones. There would be nothing left for him to eat, or at least nothing he would want to eat. I’m confident he gathered those…parts not long after they died, and has been living off of birds and ground squirrels since.”
Jess nodded. It obviously wasn’t what she had been hoping to hear.
They started walking back to the north. Several minutes passed before she blurted out what was really bothering her.
“I think we should call the police. Maybe finding these new bones would light a fire under their butts and get them back up here. We could always use the help.” She paused. “And the bottom line is now that bones are beginning to turn up, they should stop looking at this as a missing persons case, and start investigating it as murder.”
“They came out here after discovering Nathan’s femur, and that accomplished nothing.”
“But we know more now than they did then. They could bring dogs up here to track the cat, and maybe figure out where it came across the remains.”
Gabriel shook his head. By all rights, new evidence should be turned over to the police, but Cavenaugh was a cop, and seemed to think that calling in the authorities now would be a waste of time. At least at this juncture. He had suggested they use the next several days to search on their own before reporting the evidence. Besides, the police and FBI had both scoured the countryside over the prior two days and had found nothing. The appearance of a pile of phalanges wasn’t earth-shattering news either, at least from their perspective, and any subsequent search would be halfhearted, undermanned, and sloppy at best. It would be a self-fulfilling prophesy. If they expected to find nothing, then that was exactly what they would find.
Gabriel agreed with Cavenaugh’s assessment and the plan to buy themselves just a little more time, but he didn’t particularly care for the idea of withholding their findings any longer than that.
“You agree we should wait,” Jess said, making no attempt to hide her disdain.
