Jeffrey King squinted in the bright sunlight, one hand shading his eyes so he could see what Bruce, his fishing buddy, was pointing at.
Smoke. From a distance, the smoke resembled a dark pillar against the grey-white clouds overtop Ives Peak. There was little wind that day and so the smoke rose straight up, high above the top of the forest. There had been a break in the rain and so Jeffrey, recent resident of Naches, Washington, took the opportunity to spend the day at Rimrock Lake. Located in the Wenatchee National Forest, he'd moved nearby for the fishing and had been generally enjoying his retirement.
Jeffrey knew that fires usually started from the carelessness of campers, neglecting to put out their campfires or throwing out cigarette butts that were still lit. The rest of the time, they were started by lightning strikes, so whoever started this fire was likely a lazy human and not Mother Nature herself. There had been no rain to speak of for a good stretch.
"Looks like a fire," Jeffrey said to Bruce, who sat next to him. They both craned their heads and saw the smoke.
"Looks like it," Bruce said and turned back to his fishing pole, giving it a half-hearted tug. They'd been out fishing since early morning and had a few trout in a bucket beside them.
"Maybe we should go up and check it out."
"Maybe we should." Bruce didn't sound too enthusiastic.
Jeffrey stood up from his lawn chair anyway, and Bruce followed suit, walking behind him to the truck. They left their rods perched against the rock they had been sitting in front of, using it as a table to store their gear. Jeffrey considered packing up and leaving since it was getting later in the day, but he wanted to spend as much time fishing as he could. They didn't have a boat. Instead, they'd found a secluded spot on a small outcropping of rock above the lake, acting like a natural pier. It served its purpose.
"Won't take too long," Jeffrey said, climbing in the old Ford truck's cab, starting it up.
"Likely won't," Bruce replied.
Jeffrey smiled to himself. Bruce wasn't much of a talker, which was probably why Jeffrey could tolerate the man. He was company and that was pretty much the end of it.
They drove down the narrow road towards the smoke, taking a side road off the main highway, past the Southfork Campgrounds, and down a rutted logging road that looked like it hadn't been driven on for years. There, a few dozen feet down a side road was a burning vehicle. An SUV, Nissan, the front hood open, the engine and front seat now fully engulfed in flames. Luckily, it was in a clear spot on the road, not too close to trees or brush.
"Looks like someone had car trouble and left it, but we didn't see anyone on the road on our way here," Jeffrey said, shaking his head."
"No, we didn't," Bruce replied.
Jeffrey grabbed the portable fire extinguisher from the back of his truck and approached the burning vehicle, but it was too large a fire to douse with the small extinguisher. Besides, the flames were at that point so intense that he couldn't really get close enough.
"Better call 9-1-1," Jeffrey said and pulled out his cell.
"Better," Bruce replied with a nod.
Jeffrey checked his bars and was in luck. There was coverage where they were.
He gave the dispatcher details of the location and then Jeffrey and Bruce moved the truck farther back down the road, parking in the narrow ditch to allow the firetruck to drive by when it came.
"Where do you suppose the owner is?"
Bruce shrugged. "Maybe he torched it."
"Wasn't too long ago. He must have gone east."
The side road doubled back and connected to the main road a mile or two away. Whoever owned the vehicle had probably walked that way.
Unless more than one person had torched the SUV, leaving it and driving away. There was always that possibility. It suggested someone wanted to burn the vehicle.
Which made Jeffrey think of those two young men from Canada who had recently gone on a killing spree, abducting travelers and then killing them, taking their vehicles and torching their old car. That ended in a double suicide and made Jeffrey reconsider being kind to strangers he met along his travels around the countryside.
He got out of the truck.
"Where you going?" Bruce looked concerned.
"I’m going to check around, see if there's any evidence of what happened."
"You should stay in the truck."
"It'll be a while before the firetruck gets here."
Jeffrey walked back towards the burning SUV, careful to stay far enough away that he didn't get burnt. He walked around the vehicle, checking the ground around it for clues. The forest was only a few feet away and he glanced inside the shadowy interior.
It was then he saw something that made him frown.
A boot. A cowboy boot sticking out from behind a thick tree trunk.
He walked closer, and finally peered around the trunk.
A man. A dead man with his face bashed in.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Jeffrey muttered, making the sign of the cross even though he hadn't gone to mass in decades and was no longer a believer. He turned to the road where Bruce stood. "Got us a dead body."
"You should come back," Bruce shouted and pointed in the direction of the truck. "Let the police deal with it."
Jeffrey was not deterred. He bent down and felt for a pulse on the off-chance that the poor bastard was still alive. He wasn't, which was a mercy. If he had survived, he'd have no face to speak of.
He called 9-1-1 again to report the body.
"Looks like we got a murder victim at the scene," he said to the dispatcher. "Better send cops, too."
On the ground beside the man was a small woman's handbag with fringes, like those his daughter Tabitha used to have. Hippie-style, suede. Jeffrey reasoned that it wasn't the man's purse. He opened it and inside there was a hairbrush, some Chapstick, and some gum. It looked like it belonged to a young girl for there was a small plastic animal on a chain with a smiling face. Jeffrey had seen them in the dollar store. They were electronic pets that young kids liked to play with. You had to feed them and tend to them online, or they'd die.
Schools had banned them from the premises because they caused so much disruption in class. The kids were always thinking about them, and grew distraught when they died from lack of attention or whatever.
He placed the purse back beside the man and stood up straight, his back hurting from bending down so long.
Getting old sucked.
He heard the wail of a siren on the way back to the truck, and was glad because the SUV was now fully engulfed and threatened to ignite the trees beside it. Jeffrey sprayed the trees and ground around the SUV with his fire extinguisher to keep the fire from spreading, but that was about all he could do.
Luckily, the firetruck rolled up the road towards them, and relief flooded through Jeffrey. The fire could have spread easily, given the dryness of the area.
They were just in time -- not for the dead man, but for the forest, at least.
That was all they'd need, given how dry it had been. The recent rains hadn't been enough. There had been too many forest fires lately and the summers had often been smoky, the sun blood red in the late afternoon from the smoke. Getting the fire under control quickly might prevent yet another forest fire that threatened the pristine forest.
The firefighters jumped off the truck and began unspooling the hoses, while one of the others went to the vehicle and checked around it, probably deciding where to place the firefighters.
One of them came over and spoke with Jeffrey and Bruce.
"What's the story?" the man asked, watching as the other firemen began spraying the vehicle with foam.
"We saw the smoke and came right away. I only had this small fire extinguisher, so we weren't able to do too much. By the time we arrived, the car was almost fully engulfed. There's a body over in the trees about ten feet inside. Head bashed in. And it looks like there's a girl's handbag beside him. I hope whoever did this didn't take a girl who was with the man. Maybe he was her father."
"Great, just what we need," the firefighter said. "Better take me there, but we have to be careful. Don't want to disrupt a crime scene."
Jeffrey took the man back to where the body lay and they stood about ten feet away and glanced around, taking note of everything.
"Jesus," the firefighter said and shook his head. "What a nightmare. You better stick around for the police to arrive. They'll want to question you."
"I didn't plan on going anywhere," Jeffrey replied.
They went back to the main road where the firetruck was positioned, the firefighters busy extinguishing the fire. Now, the vehicle was a burned-out hulk, the interior scorched and black, the glass having shattered from the heat.
Jeffrey didn't really mind staying and missing the last hours of his fishing expedition. He was happy to assist the authorities any way he could. Someone murdered the man in the woods, and possibly abducted the man's daughter.
That made Jeffrey's skin crawl, for he remembered his own daughter at that age.
Jeffrey would want to personally choke the life out of whoever would even think of doing something to a young girl. He said a silent prayer, hoping that the girl was safe, but he had his doubts. Anyone who would kill the girl's father, if that's who he was, wouldn't think twice about hurting the girl.
What a world...