Page 18 of Look Deeper
Morgan paused on that. It was a reasonable question. The right question, actually, because it pulled the ownership thread farther back than the current unresolved estate.
She didn't know the answer. The Ridge Courier’s article hadn't addressed the campground's history, and she hadn't gone looking yet. Whoever NorthStar was, they had good instincts.
She scrolled back through the thread one more time, then set the phone face-down on the table and gazed out the window.
Should she contribute? After all, she was right here. She had professional context, having four years of experience reading scenes that were fundamentally inconsistent with preliminary rulings. Her administrative leave didn’t apply to this, and even if it did, no one in the group knew her real identity. Members were known only by their handles.
Except… she didn’t have anything to contribute. DeepTrace and the others had done an excellent job of laying everything out.
She picked up the phone, looked at the map again, and put it back down.
Outside, the sun was shining. The tree line was awash with autumn color against a sky that was once again, a clear, brilliant blue.
It would be a shame to spend such a beautiful day cooped up inside reading.
Suddenly a walk seemed like a really good idea.
Morgan had beento plenty of scenes off the beaten path, but few were as scenic. As she went deeper into the forest, the world around her went quieter, and she couldn’t help wondering ifthere were still patches of earth that hadn’t yet been trod upon by human feet.
The campground wasn’t hard to find. About a mile of forested land separated Frank’s property from the back edge of Sulley’s campground, the border line marked with faded but still readable signs. She was able to make out a snaking gravel-covered road flanked by occasional wood cabins and small clearings, presumably for tents and campers.
She followed the tree line along the property's eastern edge, getting a feel for the flow of the place, all while looking for potential alternate entry points, tire tracks, foot prints—basically anything that might provide insight.
She paused when the lake appeared between the trees. Took in the rising slope of the mountains on the other side, recognizing it as the same lake in the photograph on the guest room nightstand.
Setting that aside for later contemplation, she continued on.
The campground had been something once. That was obvious, even empty and going to seed as it was. Fire pits with proper rings of stones, the kind that had seen years of use, sat cold and ignored, now filled with leaves and detritus. Docks still jutted out into the lake, the wood and ropes weathered but sound. Some sites still had wooden lounge chairs arranged around the fire pits, though most had tipped over and not been righted. Near the front entrance, a rental shack that appeared to have been looted at some point.
It was easy to imagine families here. Dads commanding the cast iron grills, brandishing long metal spatulas. Moms spreading checkered cloths over wooden picnic tables and laying out bowlsof potato salad and chips. Kids squealing and running around in bathing suits and flip-flops.
Someone had built a good place here, once. What had happened? How long had it been going downhill? In another year or two, most of it would be reclaimed by the surrounding woods.
A vague sense of melancholy settled over her as she continued on. She’d never visited a place like this as a child, but she could grieve its loss. Bad things weren’t supposed to happen in places like this.
It wasn’t hard to determine where the body had been found. Ribbons of neon yellow police tape flapped in the light breeze, and the ground showed signs of recent foot and vehicle traffic.
She noted the placement of the cabin. Not too far from the entrance. Not too close.
Great. The vic was a Goldilocks.
She stopped and studied the scene from a distance before moving in for a closer look. In her head, she overlaid the sparse details described by the article, mapping out possible angles of approach. Wondered what had drawn the unlucky teens to this cabin over the others. Was it the door that now hung open, beckoning them in with the soft tap of wood against wood in the breeze?
Had they felt the same haunting presence of wrongness she did now, the kind that lingered after something wrong had happened? Intangible and yet unmistakable. She felt it calling to her in her bones, just as she had at nearly every scene that had involved an unnatural death.
The operative word wasunnatural.
This wasn’t the result of a medical event. There was no evidence-consistent scenario in which a man dying alone in a closed space produced an open door. He'd either tried to get outside—which meant he'd felt something coming and had no phone to call for help, and no vehicle to drive himself to help—or someone had opened it and left it open deliberately. Neither version was consistent with what the preliminary ruling was implying.
The lack of identification was still the biggest puzzler, though.
She stood at the tree line with her hands in her jacket pockets and let her brain do what it did. Entry points from the road: one visible, possibly others through the far tree line. Ground condition around the cabin: deplorable, thanks to the first responders who didn’t know the first thing about how to handle a crime scene.
The notebook was in her hand before she'd decided to take it out, her pen clicked and ready. This was what four years of field work did. Her hands knew the job even when she'd told them firmly that it wasn't their job today.
She made notes, brief and precise, in the shorthand she'd developed over years in the field. Then she heard it.
Footsteps. Heavy and confident, they moved with the unhurried purpose of someone who knew where they were going.
