“If you are going to be my freelance assistant on this case, you need to get a lay of the landscape. I’d like to start by showing you where our third victim, Roger Fay lived.”
“Sounds fine to me.”
As Derek backed out of the crushed stone driveway of Straus’s lodge, he took notice of the large maple tree wrapped with police tape almost directly across from the driveway.
“I take it that something fatal happened at that tree?” Derek asked as he stopped his car near the tree.
“Yup. As far as we can tell, that there tree is where Roger Fay was killed. Looks like old Roger had a knife plunged straight through his neck. Damn knife went a few inches deep into the tree itself. Lots of strength to do that.”
“Then his body was dragged into the lodge?”
“More likely it was carried. There are no drag marks, just a whole bunch of blood splatters. Like the blood had fallen from a few feet above the ground. We found Roger all dead and pretty close to naked on the floor next to them other doctors.”
“Naked?” Derek asked.
“Folks who saw Roger walking that day said he was wearing some cowboy type of hat and black boots. All of them items were taken off by what I assume to be the killer.”
“Did you know him?”
“Probably met him a time or two. My officers tell me that I had, but I don’t recall. I know he was some type of a writer who lived up here year round. Just killed by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, we reckon.”
The route to Roger Fay’s home included a short time spent on New York State Route 8. When Derek’s car reached the intersection of Route 8, Ralph spoke.
“This is Route 8. Our Doctor Straus was seen turning right out of here and speeding down that a way,” Ralph said pointing to his right. “Ain’t no use us heading that way and following him, as I’m sure you’d agree, so take a left here.”
As Derek turned his car onto Route 8, he asked Ralph why he hadn’t seen a car parked near the lodge last night, though Ralph was obviously there.
“I do like to be close to my work. But mostly I stayed at the lodge last night because the state police didn’t want me to. They thought I’d sully up the scene. But I figured since I am the man in charge that I’d go ahead and do what I damn well pleased. I had one of my officers bring my car back to my house yesterday afternoon. I figured that if Alexander or anyone else involved in this here crime had to get back inside the lodge that they’d be more likely to do so if they thought there was no one around. Turns out the only person who showed up was some freelancer.”
The route to Roger Fay’s home was just under a mile away from the maple tree across from Straus’s lodge. Derek turned off Route 8 and onto a road that followed the shore line of Piseco Lake and then circled back towards the direction of the lodge. When they reached the trailer park that Roger Fay called home, Ralph had Derek pull his car over to the side of road in front of Roger’s double-wide but suggested that they not do any outside investigation.
“Ain’t nothing we gonna learn by traipsing around his old trailer. State police wasted a whole lot of time looking for any clue that connected Roger to Straus and came up with a handful of nothing. I just wanted you to start piecing together the events and time frame of our murder. Go ahead and drive straight for a bit. This ain’t the way to the diner still, but I want to show you something that I find very peculiar down the road a stretch.”
Derek continued driving down the road as his mind began retracing the timeline of the murders. He tried to imagine what Roger Fay had seen or done to get himself pinned to a tree. His imagination failed him again.
It was just over two miles past Roger Fay’s home when Ralph told Derek to pull over to the side of the recently paved road and onto the hard-packed dirt shoulder. Without saying a word, Ralph opened up his door, pulled himself out, and started walking across the road. Derek followed quickly behind.
“Tell me what you make of this,” Ralph said, pointing to an outcropping of large rocks on the side of the road. The rocks were set back twelve feet from the road and seemed to be in the same position they had been for the last million years. Painted on the rock in red was an image of a heart.
“Looks like some local kid wanted to spray paint a message to his girl and was interrupted,” Derek offered, not sure why Ralph seemed to think that the spray painted heart may have been important.
“That may be true, but the neighbors all say that they hadn’t seen this graffiti before a few days of the murders. And if you head on back this little trail right next to the rocks, you’ll see something else that I find a bit interesting.”
The small trail that started right beside the rock formation seemed to be made several years ago. Weeds and ground plants had recaptured much of the trail, making the task of keeping on trail a bit of a challenge for Derek.
With Ralph trailing behind and breathing much heavier and louder than Derek thought the simple hike demanded, Derek navigated his way through the overgrown path for roughly one hundred yards before Ralph breathlessly called from behind.
“Now if you pause a moment,” he said as he used a trailside tree as support, “and take a look around, let me know if you see anything peculiar.”
Derek glanced around the trail, then off towards the dense undergrowth that bordered the trail. He knew that Ralph wouldn’t have asked him if he saw anything “peculiar” unless Ralph felt that there was something that he found to be “peculiar.”
A second before Derek was going to report that he couldn’t see anything of interest, he noticed a small, white birch tree twenty-feet off the right of the path. On the tree was spray painted a small, red heart. The image was small but stood out clearly against the white, paper-like bark of the tree.
“Think that’s a trail marker?” Derek asked.
“Head on over, and let me know what you think,” Ralph answered, still challenged to capture his breath.
Derek hopped some small bushes and bounded over to the white birch tree. Once there, he noticed a small pile of twigs and leaves just behind the marked tree.
“Okay to see if anything is under this pile of sticks and leaves?” he called to Ralph.
“Ain’t no reason since I know exactly what’s under it. Git on over back here, and I’ll tell ya what I found.”
When Derek returned to the path, Ralph had found his breath, though his brow streamed with sweat.
“Damn hot out here. Muggy as all hell. You’d think that an ole Texas boy would be accustomed to heat and humidity but, damn if this upstate New York heat doesn’t get me every time.”