From Lake Collier Road, Bet turned into the picnic area parking lot, where the white-and-orange temporary barricade Dale had set up stood in place. She passed the END COUNTY MAINTAINED ROAD sign not long after and traveled the Colliers’ private drive while the trees closed in around her.
As she pulled up in front of George’s house, a motion detector light popped on, and she waited. If George was home, he would come out on the front porch.
In the glow cast by the outdoor light, Bet could see the nose of George’s old Willys pickup truck sticking out from behind the cabin. Bought new by George’s grandfather, it now had more rust than green paint, but George kept the drivetrain in perfect running order.
After a few moments went by and no one stirred, Bet stepped out of her vehicle. The air turned cold now that the sun had set. She let Schweitzer out of the back and asked him to heel. He fell in, the reassuring weight of his shoulder against her leg.
“Hullo!” The stillness of the forest swallowed her voice. Not even moonlight could reach the cabin, backed up against one of the granite peaks and surrounded by stately old-growth Doug firs. A gray layer of lichen covered the trees, and the forest felt hushed in anticipation. The logs of the house were almost black and moss and ferns grew from the cedar-shingled roof, as if the forest claimed the building as its own.
“George?” She could smell wood smoke and meat. George kept a herd of goats, and Bet wondered if she’d find one of them hanging alongside deer or rabbit or whatever else George might have killed. Schweitzer wagged his tail and gave out a whine Bet guessed to be from the thought of a snack, not imminent danger. He looked up at her and his tongue rolled out of his mouth.
“No meat for you.” She dug into her pocket and came up with a biscuit. “This will have to do.”
Polishing off the treat in one big crunch, Schweitzer faced front again. Bet walked along the side of the house, the big dog matching her step for step. As they rounded the rough-hewn wall, another motion detector light popped on and Bet could see the old smokehouse. A gray cloud puffed from the exhaust pipe on the sharply pointed roof. Roughly the size of a tall phone booth, the front door closed with a simple latch. Django stood in a nearby corral. He whinnied softly and trotted over to see who’d come calling.
Bet crossed to the smokehouse. A horror-movie fantasy of finding a body hanging on a meat hook, turning into a slab of bacon, shimmered in her mind. She swung the door open to find strips of meat in neat rows.
“No way that’s anything but goat or rabbit,” Bet said to Schweitzer, who licked his chops in agreement.
After closing the door, Bet crossed over to stroke Django’s neck, the big animal leaning against her outstretched hand.
“George’s out somewhere tonight without you, is that it?” Django’s eyes slid to half-mast as Bet scratched the crest at the base of his mane. George owned another horse, an older mare named Constant. Though the elderly horse was mostly a companion for Django, George still rode Constant on occasion. She anticipated he’d be home soon now that night had fallen.
Bet pulled out her flashlight and lit up the pathway leading from George Stand’s house to the Collier residence and decided to walk on the trail. The road would be closed at the Colliers’ locked gate, so she couldn’t drive there anyway. With a final scratch for Django, she started off through the trees, relieved that the community caretaking exception to the Fourth Amendment allowed officers to access private property without a warrant, locked gate or no locked gate.
The driveway curved around the small manmade lake the Colliers had dug out a century ago and stocked with fish, whereas the path led directly between the two homes. In the past, the pond had been open to the local community. Bet remembered fishing there with the Chandler brothers, her closest childhood friends. Dylan, the same age as her, and his older brother Eric, the boy she had idolized as a child. The brothers both moved away after they had turned eighteen. Their father Michael had left years ago and their mother Tracy died last year. The people who’d felt most like family were gone.
Bet reached out to put her hand on Schweitzer’s head as he strode along next to her. “It’s just you and me, buddy.”
Access to the Collier property ended when Robert Collier Senior moved and closed up the house, though Bet knew local teenagers still snuck in sometimes. The rumor of huge trout in the forbidden pond lured them in.
The Doug firs that kept George’s house in darkness thinned into the open glen where the Collier mansion stood. The light of the moon glinted silver on the trees but did little to light her way. The path came out on the east side of the house, which loomed over her in the dark. As she expected, no lights were on in the building. The Colliers had built the structure in the late 1800s from local timber and granite. It resembled a hunting lodge more than a house, with a grand entrance of stone steps and huge, solid double doors fronting the three stories. Bet wondered what it would be like to keep such a big house clean.
As they moved around to the front, Schweitzer’s ears perked up and he looked in the direction of the garage, originally designed to hold horses and buggies and later retrofitted to house five cars. Bet stopped for a moment to listen.
Someone moved in the garage.
Bet put her hand on her service weapon. Had someone broken into the place? This could be her crime scene, complete with killer.
The large rolling doors on the front of the garage were closed, but a side door stood propped open, light spilling out onto the ground. She made her way over to get a better look. A figure bent over the engine compartment of a black Ford Bronco. Light shone from under the hood, but Bet couldn’t get a clear view.
“Hello in there,” she said in her no-nonsense sheriff voice. “Sheriff Rivers here. I need to ask you a few questions. Can you come out here, please?” Schweitzer crouched, waiting, the hand on her gun signaling him to high alert.
The figure backed away from the Bronco and turned toward Bet. She felt a ripple of unease at the looming shadows the action created. With no light shining on his face, Bet couldn’t see his features, but she could tell by body weight and height it wasn’t George Stand, the only person who had any right to be inside the building.
With his head turned sideways, she could see the outline of his beard, neatly trimmed. She reeled back as images from the nightmare flooded her mind. It was the same silhouette as in her dream, just before the shrouded body slid through the hole in the lake.
Her heart beat fast and heavy against her chest. The vision felt real, as if it wasn’t a dream but a memory.
“What’s wrong?” she could hear her father’s voice ask her on that long-ago night when she got home from the lake. “You’re trembling. What happened?” That wasn’t a usual part of the dream. That fragment of dialogue was something new.
The shadowy figure started to reach behind him.
Schweitzer growled.
“Please keep your hands where I can see them.” Bet unsnapped her holster. Her hand shook from adrenaline and fear.
“Well, now,” the voice drawled. “I was just going to wipe off the oil.” He held his hands up. “See?”
He stepped out into the glow of her flashlight. “Name’s Robert Collier. My family owns this property. Want to explain what you’re doing here?”