Dispatching Henderson in the other direction, Claude is now making his way toward me.
“Mr. Madriani,” he says. “I thought you should be here. I hope it’s not too much of an inconvenience.”
“No,” I say. “I’m glad you called.” We put a face on it, the usual pleasantries, like what could be better than hovering over death on the ground on a bright Sunday.
He shakes my hand. In this he is formal and stiff. He is one of those skinny men of wiry sinew. Claude has the kind of thin, worried expression that makes you believe his chief maladies might be ulcers or hemorrhoids.
“Because you are new, I thought it best that you be kept informed.”
“I appreciate it,” I tell him.
He has been called here from a picnic with his family. He is not happy with this, but he says his family understands. If this is true they are more accepting than my own.
“Do we know who they are yet?” I ask. I am motioning toward the two bodies.
“No identities yet,” he says. “We’ll check their clothing for ID’s after we have all the photos.” The cops are not disturbing anything, not until they have precise drawings and photographs chronicling the location of every item around the bodies.
“Kids walking along the creek found them this morning,” he tells me.
He points toward two teenagers, one of them being questioned and the other twenty feet away, leaning against the trunk of a patrol car. The one being questioned is flushed with excitement, the other is a little green around the jowls. Investigators will keep these two apart until they are finished with their interrogation, this to ensure independent statements, stories that can later be checked against each other.
“They were quail hunting,” says Claude, “trespassing on private property. Rushed a little more than they bargained for.”
I look toward the bodies. “The MO,” I say. “Like the others?”
Claude makes a face, something from the Old World, a lot of wrinkles and a screwed-up mouth, then nods. “Pretty much,” he says, ignoring the obvious, that these two on the ground are no college students.
It is the third set of murders in less than two weeks for this rural county where big news is usually the column listing the drunk driving arrests on Monday after a heavy weekend.
“We’re trying to get the cast of a tire track. Out there off the gravel road. A single vehicle parked behind some brush,” he says. “It’s a long shot,” he concedes, “could have been made by the killer last night. Could have been made by a family on a picnic last week.” He shrugs his shoulders. “Also we got a partial shoe print inside the tape.”
My interest is piqued a little with this.
“Looks like a running shoe, pretty small,” he says. “We think it probably belongs to one of the kids. They got scared.”
“Understandable,” I say.
“They left little tracks like chicken scratchings all over the place.”
Over by the patrol car an evidence tech is taking a cast of one of the kid’s shoes to compare it to the partial on the ground inside the tape.
There’s commotion in the brush beyond the tape, across the shallow creek, a dozen reserve deputies, part of the local search and rescue team. They have drawn the poison oak duty. One of them crosses the creek, moving toward Claude.
“Lieutenant, you should take a look at this.” The cop is mud to the ankles of his heavy boots. He’s wearing the togs of search and rescue, an orange jumpsuit with belts and metal rings for every occasion. In his hand he has a plastic bag. Claude takes this in his open palm and examines it. A small, twisted piece of metal. It appears to be broken off from something larger. Dusalt makes a face.
“What is it?” he says.
“Part of a foot-cam,” says the cop.
Claude shrugs, like this means nothing to him.
“Used in climbing ropes. I think you’d better come across the creek and look for yourself,” he says.
Claude moves away from me now, shouldering me out, talking to the officer. Their voices drop and I cannot hear this.
Ignoring me, the two men start toward the creek. Unsure whether I should follow, I walk behind them, a little tentative. Claude turns to look at me. From the pained expression I wonder if he’s going to chew my ass for following, too many footprints messing up the scene.
Then he says: “Forgot my boots.” There’s a stupid grin on his face. Claude has driven here, like me, in the family sedan. His field clothing and boots are locked in a patrol unit back at the county yard. He looks down at his white training shoes, $120 Nike Airs, then shrugs a little. With that he is mud halfway to his knees, following the other cop across the creek. I look down at my $200 Boston loafers, what was handy in the closet when the call came in, and I think to myself, “He who waits also serves.” Curiosity has its limits. I am stranded high and dry on this side of the creek, left to contemplate my circumstances.
What had begun as a case of care-taking for a friend is now a burden that monopolizes every aspect of my life. My wife is furious-ready I think perhaps to leave me-my child neglected, my private practice in Capital City twenty miles away is a shambles, all because this favor for a friend now consumes every waking hour. Two days ago came the crushing blow, a phone call at three in the morning, a voice I did not recognize, a nurse at Good Shepherd’s Hospital. Mario Feretti was dead. The judges of Davenport County now have me strapped and secured for the duration.
I watch as Claude and the other cop move through heavy brush to the base of a large tree. I can no longer hear what they’re saying. But the big cop is pointing up, into the tree. I look, but I can see nothing. Several of the search and rescue guys are moving around. For the first time I notice there’s an evidence tech there with them. Like the reluctant bride, they are helping this guy with something, a heavy belt around his waist. There’s a little argument now, from the technician. “I don’t get paid enough. . ” he says. His voice trails off. They are cinching this belt down between his legs now. Claude is busy, holding the guy’s evidence bag and talking to him like a Dutch uncle.
One of the search and rescue guys reaches out with one hand, and as he moves I notice it, gossamer in the bright midday sun, floating down like a spider’s web, a sheer strand of rope descending from the trees above. They are clipping this thing to the belt around the technician’s waist.
Three of the bigger rescue guys take hold of the rope and begin pulling hard. The technician is off the ground, the little evidence bag dangling at his feet. The three guys pulling on the rope start singing, a slow mournful chant:
“Haul, haul away, we’re bound for better we-a-ther. . ”
Before they can finish the first verse they’re all laughing.
“Go slow,” says the tech. “Take it easy.” The man sounds like some kid about to be pushed off the high dive.
“Hang on tight,” says Claude. Another chorus of giggles. The technician is now twenty feet off the ground and rising fast. In three seconds he disappears through a canopy of leaves, like the space shuttle through a deck of clouds. From my angle across the creek I can still see him. And for the first time I can understand why he was not anxious for this duty. The man is now fifty feet off the ground, suspended only by a thin rope.
Claude has the palm of one hand shading his eyes like a visor. But he’s lost sight of the guy. Seconds later he’s tripping through the creek toward me and a better line of sight.
He’s laughing when he gets to me. At the scene of a gruesome double murder it is the kind of jocularity that only men who deal in pain on a regular basis could understand. I feel like an outsider. My sympathies are with the poor evidence tech who is now dangling a good seventy feet off the ground.
Then I see it, above his head in a direct line, a small wooden platform laid in the crotch at the intersection of two large branches. But for the rope going to this thing, it is masked perfectly in the trees.