Swan Peak (Dave Robicheaux 17)

“What for?” I asked.

“The sheriff, what’s-his-name, Higgins, thinks it’s just coincidence that kid was killed behind Albert’s place.”

“You don’t?”

“Higgins says Albert called the Shrubster a draft-dodging fraternity pissant in the local newspaper. The paper actually ran the letter. He helped run a PCB incinerator out of town. He got into it with some outlaw bikers over a barmaid. He has a general reputation for causing trouble wherever he goes.”

“Why would somebody execute a kid on his knees because he’s got it in for Albert?”

“Somebody called in a 911 on the loc

ation. The caller also said the kid was alive. He wanted as many people as possible to suffer as much as possible. I don’t think Higgins knows what he’s dealing with. I don’t believe Albert does, either.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“To use your own words, why do the shitbags do anything? Because they enjoy it, that’s why. Trust me, Streak, the guy who did this has got a beef with Albert.”

I followed him up a switchback trail to the top of the ridge, Clete wheezing and sweating all the way. Then we walked up a gradual slope through pine and fir trees to a level place where yellow crime-scene tape had been strung through the tree trunks. The tape had been broken in several places, probably by deer or elk, and the dirt road that led off the hillside was rutted by tire tracks. At the higher altitude, the air had become cold, flecked with rain, filled with the sound of wind sweeping across the enormous breadth of landscape below us.

I believed our climb up to the crime scene was a morbid waste of time. Even though the tape was broken, we had no right to go inside what was obviously a proscribed evidentiary area. Second, the ground was soft and already crisscrossed with the footprints of investigative personnel. In all probability, any forensic evidence there had already been removed, disturbed, tainted, or destroyed.

Except for one element that was still in plain view: blood splatter on a rock the size and shape of a blacksmith’s anvil that protruded from the softness of the ground. The blood looked like it had been slung from the tip of an artist’s brush.

Clete put an unlit cigarette in his mouth and peered down through the trees at the roof of Albert’s house. He removed his porkpie hat and messed with it idly, then replaced it on his head, the brim slanted down. Then he removed it again and twirled it on his finger.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“The guy who drove the kid up here beat the shit out of his own car. Why would he want to risk busting an axle or tie rod when he could have driven into the national forest just as easily? The kid died on his knees. The shooter probably made him beg or do worse. The shooter did all this right above Albert’s house. He could see Albert’s house, but nobody in Albert’s house could see him. He chose this spot deliberately, and he knew who lived down below. This fuckhead is a classic psychopath. He stays high on control and inflicting pain while he’s within sight of people who have no idea what he’s doing.”

“That doesn’t mean he knows Albert.”

“Maybe,” Clete said. But his attention had already shifted to something down the slope.

“What is it?” I said.

Clete worked his way about five feet down the incline, holding on to pine trunks for balance. He took his ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket and tried to pick up a leather cord and a small wood cross that lay at the base of a lichen-encrusted rock. The cord was broken, and it slipped off his pen.

“Don’t taint the scene, Clete,” I said.

“If we hadn’t found this, no one would have ever known it was here,” he said. But he didn’t touch the cord with his hand; instead, he lifted up the end with his pen. “Look, the break is dry and there’s no discoloration. The kid tore it off the shooter, or the shooter tore it off the vic.”

“A logger might have dropped it, too.”

“No, something weird happened out here. This isn’t a random abduction and killing. I’ll call the evidence in to Higgins,” he said.

“Okay, partner, but I think you’re overreading the information,” I said.

Clete pulled himself up the incline and stepped back on level ground. His face was blotched from exertion and the high altitude. He looked at me a long time.

“Say it,” I said.

“What’d the guy do to the girl before she died?”

“Everything he could without leaving his DNA,” I replied.

“We’re going to hear more from this guy. You know it, Dave. Don’t pretend you don’t.”

The mist was white blowing through the trees. The rock that was stippled with the dead boy’s blood glistened in the weak light. I picked up a pinecone and flung it into space.