Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

The trail leveled out on a bench and we walked between the scrub brush and the cliff wall to an opening in the rock, close to the ground, no more than three feet in diameter, that looked like it had been gouged out of prehistoric clay by a huge thumb. It was black inside and we could feel the coolness of the air puffing against our faces and smell the wetness of the stone and the odor of field mice that nested on the ledges where the cave’s ceiling rose much higher than the entrance.

The sun’s last rays were pink on the crests of the ravine and I could hear Beau blowing down below. I untied the rucksack and opened my pocketknife and began slicing a red onion and a roll of salami and a loaf of French bread on a rock. Pete pulled my flashlight out of the sack and played with the switch, clicking it off and on, then squatted down and shined the beam back into the cave.

“Somebody’s living here, Billy Bob,” he said.

I stooped down beside him and looked through the entrance. Vinyl garbage bags had been split open and spread on the silt floor of the cave and a large sheet of canvas flattened on top of them in what looked like a sleeping area. A firepit had been dug close to the entrance, and smoke had blackened one wall and part of the overhang. Venison bones protruded like teeth from the ash in the center of the pit and there was a glycerin shine from meat drippings on the firestones.

Cans of Spam and sardines and Vienna sausage and boxes of cookies and crackers were stacked along a board shelf someone had wedged into the wall. A shiny gallon molasses can filled with water was covered with a piece of cheesecloth to keep out dust. Two sleeping bags were rolled and snugged tightly with clothesline cord, as though the owners lived in preparation for leaving hurriedly. Propped upside down with sticks against the wall was a pair of scuffed work shoes with leather strings and hook eyelets at the top of the tongues.

“You reckon it’s some bums come up from the train track?” Pete asked.

I picked up one of the work shoes and turned it over in my hands. “That’s jailhouse-issue, Pete. Let’s leave this be.”

“You mean these guys might be escaped convicts?”

“Could be.”

“We gonna call the sheriff’s department?”

“I don’t figure it’s our business.”

“They’re in our cave. They’re messing it up. They probably go to the bathroom anyplace they feel like. I bet they got B.O.”

“Pete?”

“What?”

“Don’t say any more. Let’s get Beau and leave quietly. Forget what we saw here.”

He looked at me quizzically, one eye squinted partly shut.

We rode Beau up the ravine, out of the shadows into the sun’s last yellow glow against the sky. Then we crossed a glade full of wildflowers and looked out on the valley owned by Peggy Jean and Earl Deitrich and, directly down below, their white home couched like a giant gold-streaked molar in the hillside.

I heard the sound of an engine grinding down a two-track road from the pines above us. Then I saw the black roll-bar Jeep turn out of the road and head toward us through the glade, the grass and wildflowers pressing flat into the soil under the Jeep’s cleated tires.

Four young men sat in the Jeep, wearing shades and T-shirts and camouflage pants, their arms and foreheads red with fresh sunburn, bolt-action scoped rifles propped next to them. I felt Pete’s hands tighten involuntarily on my waist.

The driver, Jeff Deitrich, pulled the Jeep in front of us and put the transmission in neutral. He grinned lazily at me, his eyes hidden by his shades.

“How you doin’, Billy Bob?” he said.

“Not bad. Y’all aren’t hunting out of season, are you?” I said, smiling back at him.

“The cops haven’t been able to find your friend Doolittle. We thought we’d help out,” he said.

“Let’s see if I have your friends’ names right. You’re Hammie, you’re Warren, and you’re Chug,” I said, moving my finger from one to the next.

“Pretty good,” Jeff said. “What are you doing on our property, Billy Bob?”

“This isn’t yours. The state has an easement through here.”

“Don’t argue with a lawyer,” he said.

“Skyler Doolittle is for the most part a harmless man,” I said.

“He’s gonna be a lot more harmless if we find him,” Chug said. He drank out of a quart bottle of milk, his face round and flushed with heat, his throat working steadily.

I flipped the ends of Beau’s reins idly on the back of my wrist.