IT WAS JUST over two hours’ drive to the western edge of Louisa County, which was also about an hour south of Nicholson’s club. Those two locations triangulated easily with the spot on I-95 where Johnny Tucci from Philly had been pulled over carrying my niece’s remains in the trunk. Maybe we were actually getting somewhere with all this.
Yarrow’s vague sense of the cabin sent us down a handful of wrong turns before we eventually found the right gravel road off Route 33. Several miles back through the woods, it came to a makeshift dead end, with a row of rocks blocking the way. They’d obviously been moved there by hand, and it didn’t take us long to clear them.
Beyond that were two dirt tracks retreating into the brush, and another half hour of slow going before we saw anything man-made. Remy Williams’s nearest neighbor seemed to be Lake Anna State Park to the east.
The driveway, such as it was, came up on the back of a rudimentary single-story building surrounded closely by fir trees. It looked unfinished from here, with a galvanized standing-seam roof but just warped and silvered plywood over Tyvek on the walls.
“Very nice,” Sampson muttered, or maybe growled. “Unabomber east, anyone?”
It was bigger than Ted Kaczynski’s famous shack, which I’d been to once before, but the general feeling was about the same: madman in residence.
Around front, the two small windows under a covered porch looked dark. There was a dirt yard big enough for several cars, but no sign of any vehicle. The place seemed completely deserted, and part of me hoped it was.
It wasn’t until I’d driven around nearly full circle that I saw the wood chipper at the side of the house.
“Sampson?”
“I see it.”
It was an old industrial unit, with two tires and a rusted trailer hitch balanced on a cinder block. Most of the paint was long gone, just a few impressionistic flecks of John Deere green and yellow on the frame. Next to it, a blue tarp was folded on the ground, weighted down with a two-gallon gas can.
I kept the car running as we got out, and I pulled my Glock.
“Anyone home?” I called halfheartedly.
There was no answer. All I heard was the wind, a few birds chattering in the trees, and my idling car.
Sampson and I took the porch from opposite sides to check the windows first, then the door.
When I looked in, it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. Then I saw a man, sitting in a chair against the far wall. It was too dark for details; I couldn’t even tell if he was alive or dead. Not for certain. Not yet.
“Fuck,” Sampson muttered,
Exactly right. My thoughts exactly.