“Good idea, my man. C’mon, give us a hand. We can take some drinks up for ‘em, too.”
A group of willing hands made short work of the chore. I lowered my butt into a rocking chair on the patio, casting an appreciative eye at the moon floating over the hills.
“Mind if I join you?” Sammy asked, grunting while lowering himself into another rocker nearby. “Hear you were the one that spotted the bear tracks by Connie’s body.”
“Connie?”
“Conrad. We called him Connie, though. Been workin’ up here the past two seasons in the kitchen.”
I rocked my chair, looking at the moon threatening to be blocked by several clouds. “Was he from around here?”
“Yep. His family came from west of Spruce Pine a few miles up the Parkway from here. Connie got in some trouble, and disappeared for around fifteen years. ‘Bout the time he came back four years ago, his folks died. Guess he decided to stick around after that.”
“You know anyone who might’ve had some trouble with him?”
Sammy stopped his rocking and turned towards me. “Now why would you ask that? The police said it was an accident. Or d’you know something they don’t?”
“Um, no, it just seems-well…”
“Yeh, it’d be a good way to cover up killin’ him, wouldn’t it?”
Now it was my turn to face Sammy. “You know anything about his past?”
“He was in jail for a few years after he first left. Then when he came back, he was a changed man. Instead of a blustery guy who tended to bully folks occasionally, he was real quiet and withdrawn. I got the feelin’ he was hiding from the world.”
A couple minutes later Sammy excused himself. I got my rocker going, vainly looking for a glimpse of the moon. No joy there. It’d disappeared behind a bank of clouds that were slowly covering the sky, blotting out the stars while they moved. Have to remember to call my office tonight. I’d only given them a sketchy report earlier, and Alice was probably pitching a fit by now. A cool breeze started, convincing me it was time to head for my room. I stood, giving one last glance around before heading off.
CHAPTER FIVE
The next day after lunch, I was back where the body had been found. Something still bothered me about it. From the edge where he’d gone over, there wasn’t anything I could see that would have tripped him up. This was my second trip to the site since the body had been found, and everything was the same as before. Including the man standing off the trail in the heavy undergrowth thirty feet behind me.
I turned around, staring at the wall of brush between us. “Come on out, I won’t bite.”
A thin sandy-haired man warily stepped onto the trail. His stance looked familiar, like someone who’d spent years in martial arts training. I felt myself tensing up. Why was he so wary? And why was he slinking around like a thief in the night? A glimmer of light dawned in my usually fogged up brain.
“You like to explain why you killed him?”
For several seconds the man stood immobile, then relaxed. I felt myself ease up from the readiness stance I’d been in.
“He was one of the men who killed my family.”
The calm, unhurried manner he’d made the statement jarred me as much as what he’d said. What the hell was I getting into? “When did this happen?” I asked.
He shuddered, and stepped towards me. “You mind if we sit down?”
I led the way to a bench several feet further down the trail, where we sat. I absently noted the spectacular view of a forested valley. “I’m Francis Baker.”
“Dave Cutlip,” he said with a nod. “It’s been five years since Crystal and Marie died.”
For the next ten minutes he told a horrific tale how his wife and child were victims of a break-in. He’d been a captain newly arrived at Fort Benning, Georgia. He and his family had settled into off-post housing just a mile from the post. Early one Sunday morning while everyone still slept, three men forced their way into his home.
Two of the men had baseball bats and did their best to kill him, fracturing his skull in the process. He was still semi-conscious when they left him for dead and began on Crystal. She managed to get a hard kick into the crotch of the leader, who was trying to rape her. One of the others, the leader’s brother, became enraged and began strangling her.
Mercifully Dave passed out at that point, and woke up days later in the hospital to find out not only Crystal, but his three year old had been killed. He’d received medical retirement from the military, due to head injuries from the incident. With that and a trust fund his wife’s parents had originally set up for the family, he wouldn’t have to work again if he didn’t want to.
“I used my time to search for those three,” he said. His eyes hadn’t wavered from the thousand-mile stare he’d kept during the entire story to this point. “I had a name, and the images of them burnt in my mind.” Now his gaze shifted to the ground. “Three years it took. Three long years before I got a nibble on the first one. Tortured him for the other names. He gave them up pretty quick. I kept torturing him until he finally died. Made it look like he’d been run over by a truck. No one guessed different.”
He glanced at me, eyes empty. “It wasn’t until four months ago I located Billie, Conrad’s younger brother. He’d left the U.S., and was working at a resort in Mexico. Was haunted by what they’d done that night. He said they’d been high on cocaine and booze, looking not only for money but to do something none of them had done before.”
I finally got the nerve to ask a question. “So
