There was nothing to identify who the owner was, and no signs that anyone besides some mummified mice had been in the cabin in a long time. Everything was covered in a fine layer of brown dust, and several of the food cans had no labels because mousies had torn them off to shred the paper for their nests. Cam guessed that the lingering death odor must be coming from vermin that had died in the cabin over the months, until he looked up into the rafters and spotted the rope. Well now, he thought.
The rope was Manila hemp and about five-eighths of an inch in diameter. One end was securely fastened around the lower ridgepole of the cabin. The other end had been routed over the top ridgepole and now hung straight down to just below the rafters. It had obviously been cut off, or sawn off, actually, because the three internal strands were splayed raggedly out at the end. The rope looked old, but the cut portion looked newer than the rope. Cam couldn’t reach the end of it, and there was no ladder visible in the room. He checked out back but found nothing that could get him up to that rope. He could hear the helicopter boring holes in the sky nearby, and he wondered how much time he had left.
He checked the interior of the cabin again, looking for any signs that someone had been here over the past few months. Then he realized that the dust layer was not uniform. There were places where it was quite thick, and others where it was not. He knelt down on the floor, directly under where that rope hung, and inspected the planks. It looked like there were stains there, but there was so much dirt and so little light, he couldn’t be sure. But what else would that rope be there for? Well, it might have served as a wintertime deer-dressing rig. Winter up here brought temps well below zero. If someone did winter over and killed a deer or some other large game for meat, he couldn’t dress it outside without a chain saw. But why would the rope be cut through like that, then? He wasn’t sure why he immediately associated the rope with suicide, beyond the fact that he’d seen other ropes like that, although they usually came with a black-faced human balloon dangling at the end and required a change of uniform afterward. More relevant, though, were the circumstances of Marlor’s life over the past few months, plus his banker’s remark that he seemed to be a sad but determined man on a mission.
He walked back to the front door, turned around, and studied the entire room, as if it could tell him something important. Unfortunately, it didn’t. It was just a very lonely, very remote mountain cabin, and it depressed him just to look at it. He began to regret touching anything in the cabin, as this, unlike Marlor’s house, might, in fact, be a crime scene. Maybe not a crime scene, but at least something worth a forensics look-see. He smiled at the thought of the CSI guys rappelling down a helicopter sling with all their fancy gear. But for the first time, he seriously began to entertain the notion that James Marlor might be dead. And he remembered his conversation that morning with Kenny: “You think he’s dead?”
He took the next fifteen minutes to walk around the immediate vicinity of the cabin. He looked in the outhouse, which was a primitive one-holer. His nose told him that it hadn’t been used in a long time, nor was there any toilet paper. There were no other structures in view, and no generator or electric chair, as far as he could see anyway. He then cut up the hill from the cabin to the edge of the woods and made a long circle around the cabin area, studying the ground. There were no visible tracks. All he could see were the steep, sloping hillside, dense trees and underbrush, and those long shadows in every direction, from which all manner of wildlife might be watching him with varying degrees of interest. The hills are alive, just like the song says, he thought. But is James Marlor still alive?
20
He changed to a clean uniform once back in the office and sat down to write up a report of his visit to the Marlor cabin. Bottom line: They still didn’t know anything. There was still no sign of Marlor or of the two cretins who’d done the minimart, but the absence of the three subjects didn’t prove anything, one way or another.
His phone rang.
“This is Jaspreet Kaur Bawa,” she said. “Do you remember me, Lieutenant?”
“Vividly,” Cam replied.
“Oh dear. Why vividly? Did I offend you?”
“No-o,” Cam said. “You didn’t offend me. I just remember that look you gave me after I met with you and Mr. Marlor. Plus your recommendations for dealing with those two criminals.”
“Mr. McLain told me that you were uncomfortable with my being involved with this investigation.”
“Which investigation, Ms. Bawa? I understood the Bureau backed out. I assumed you had backed out with them.”
“Please, call me Jay-Kay,” she said, sounding about three degrees more friendly. “In America, Ms. Bawa sounds too much like Mizz Bow-Wow. And you should never make assumptions about what the Bureau is or isn’t doing; surely you know that.”
“Well, Jay-Kay, I’m only going on what they told us.”
“I will be in Triboro this evening. I am giving a course at the Marriott tomorrow morning. Would you be my guest for dinner?”
Now this was a surprise. “Well, yes, I’d like that,” Cam said, hearing the hesitation in his response. “What time and where?”
“The hotel dining room is quite good. Eight o’clock?”
“Okay, I’ll be there. Shall I stay in uniform?”
It was her turn to miss a beat. “As you wish, Lieutenant. I never let men tell me what to wear, you know?”
Cam laughed, said he’d see her that evening, and hung up. Kenny, coming up behind him, said, “See who this evening?”
“A secret admirer,” Cam said. “What’s going on with our various searches?”
The short answer was not much. No hits on the electronic sweep on Marlor. No rumbles from the rat warren on K-Dog and Flash. Kenny looked a little tired. “Late night?” Cam asked.
He gave Cam a wry grin. “Baby-sitting duty at guess where,” he said. “Midnight to six. But I’m still young and strong, so it doesn’t show, right?”
Kenny Cox fancied himself an outdoorsman as well as an indoorsman of note. He went deer hunting every fall, turkey hunting every spring, and liked to push a bass boat sixty miles an hour way up into the back creeks and coves of the state’s many lakes to kill a big fish in the summertime. Cam had gone with him a few times, but he thought Kenny was an impatient hunter, which also reflected his approach to policing. Kenny was in it for the action, all the time. Cam debriefed him on his trip to the mountains.
“That rope made you think suicide?” he asked. His eyes were definitely red-rimmed, and Cam wondered if he himself could still stay awake from midnight to six and be of any use the next day. He tried to picture Kenny outside Annie’s house, looking in at the judge he despised so much, and wondered how Annie was bearing up under virtual house arrest at night.
“Yes, it did,” Cam said. “Or a game-cleaning rig for winter use. But if suicide, it begs the obvious question.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “Who cut him down?”
That night, Cam parked his personal vehicle, a twenty-five-year old stick-shift Mercedes 240D, which he’d owned for the past ten years, in the Marriott’s parking garage.
Jay-Kay was perched attractively on a stool in the little alcove bar, having a desultory conversation with a guy who looked like a traveling salesman. She was wearing a gray silk pantsuit that clung in all the right places alarmingly well. Cam had changed from his uniform into a dark suit. He kept a ready-service suit, shirt, and tie ready to go in the office for just such situations as this. She smiled at him over the salesman’s shoulder, nodded good-bye to the guy, and they went into the dining room. The maitre’d took them to a table, seated Jay-Kay, dropped menus, took a drinks order, and left. It’d been an unusually warm fall day, so Cam ordered a gin and tonic for a change, and so did she.