The cabin is an unintentional caricature.
The rustic simplicity of the interior is accented here and there by freakish splashes of some pretend reality, and I have to admit that I’m a little creeped out at being left alone inside. Still, the seven occupants seem harmless enough, so I suck it up and move through each room methodically.
The layout is fairly straightforward. To the right is what I would call a kitchen, though there are no appliances and the sink appears to be for show, since there’s no running water and the drainpipe isn’t connected. Inside the sink, however, is a plastic shopping bag with several empty candy wrappers, two empty Coke cans, and other miscellaneous garbage. Among this refuse I find the empty packaging of something else I recognize. I leave it in place but make a mental note to point it out to CSI.
Stretching across the top of several dilapidated waist-high cabinets between the kitchen and living room is a countertop that seems to serve as a breakfast bar and includes two high-backed metal stools.
One is occupied.
Her elbows are on the counter and she’s leaning forward, as if talking to another occupant who’s standing in the kitchen with a towel in her hand. The seated figure is dressed in dark blue sweats and white sneakers. The one with the towel is wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
Behind the kitchen, in the back-right corner of the house, is a space occupied by a single dominant feature: a barber chair. It’s not one of the old collectible barber chairs, but something more recent, less appealing. Against the wall are three cardboard file boxes, the type used by law firms and sold at office supply stores.
I learned long ago how to move through a building without tainting evidence. Crime scene investigators tend to be touchy about where you walk, what you touch, and what direction you sneeze. So, as I crouch to examine the first of the three boxes, the first thing I do is snap on a pair of latex gloves. Using both hands, I lift the cardboard lid straight up and keep it horizontal as I move it to the left, exposing the contents.
What greets me would have been somewhat surprising, even shocking, if I hadn’t already expected to find it somewhere in the cabin. Replacing the lid, I repeat the process with box two and box three, finding similar contents. I don’t have to count them; I already know they number seven, each with their own unique shine.
Something Murphy said comes back to me now, something about the soul residing in the face. That part, at least, is starting to make sense.
Moving to the living room, I ignore the three silent occupants and make a mental note of the old seventies-style console TV, the cheap exercise bike, the sofa, the two chairs, the four throwaway paintings on the wall.
The two tiny bedrooms to the left of the living room are equally devoid of evidence, except for their occupants and a single paperback book on one of the beds. Each space holds a twin mattress and box spring that rests atop a frame rail, as well as one nightstand and one picture on the wall—as if everything was purchased in pairs and then divided between the rooms.
Exiting out the front door, my mind still digesting everything I’ve seen, I pull my gloves absently from my hands. Jimmy joins me near the porch.
“How bad?” he asks in a low voice, expecting the worst. He saw my reaction when I first walked into the cabin, saw me glance around and take it all in, heard my utterance. I think he knew then, at that moment.
“It’s like Murphy said,” I reply heavily. “Seven victims.”
“Dead?”
I just nod. That’s the funny thing about shine: when someone dies, it ceases to pulse and glow, as if all the energy that once powered it had fled.
There’s a long pause as Jimmy looks over my shoulder at the cabin, and then glances around at the small clearing and at the trees beyond.
“Then where are their bodies?” he finally asks.
Where are the bodies?
It’s a good question; a logical question, considering what we found in the house. As soon as the words are out of Jimmy’s mouth, I motion for him to follow with my index finger, and move away from the cabin at a ninety-degree angle. When I think we’re fifty or sixty feet from the front door, I start walking a slow circle around the structure. It’s a three-hundred-foot circumference, mostly through trees and rough terrain, but it’s necessary.
Murphy’s shine is condensed in and around the cabin, almost all of it within twenty or thirty feet of the building. By putting some distance between myself and the cabin, and then walking a circle around it, I’ll be able to determine if he ever walked off into the woods or made his way to a nearby clearing.
As I walk, the ugly truth begins to settle on me: I’m looking for a graveyard.
It’s the only place this can end.
The victims were here, in the cabin. Their shine is on the floor and in the barber chair, and if Murphy took the trouble to bring them here, why would he take them elsewhere for disposal? He wouldn’t. What would be the point? It’s unlikely he’d find a place more secluded … unless he hiked them farther into the mountains, and that’s just not practical.
That means we’re close.
Somewhere out here is a shine-imbued trail leading off to who knows where. At its end, I expect to find a place of bones.
Minutes into my track, I glance to the left and note that the back wall of the cabin is visible through the trees—meaning we’re halfway through our search. A dozen potential paths have already presented themselves, only to quickly peter out as we followed them to their truncated ends. After each of these false starts, we return to the circumference and continue on.
When the trail finally comes into view, I immediately know it’s the right one. I know this because it’s heavily traveled by Murphy, whose shine paves a wide swath through the trees. Back and forth his feet march, as if he were building a rock wall at the destination and carrying the stones in one at a time.
“This is it,” I say to Jimmy, my words all but a whisper.
The stream of color leads away from the cabin, heading south along an old game trail. I can tell by the lack of footprints that the victims never walked this way. That they came this way is a certainty, but they were never under their own power. Murphy had carried them in his arms or slung them over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Their shine marks the trees that he brushed past and the ground where he set them down when he needed to rest.
As we follow the trail, it’s not long before I’ve accounted for all seven unique shines, all seven victims. And, arriving at our destination, Jimmy and I stare in rising horror as the slow realization of what we’ve found settles upon us. After a moment, he drags a toe through the dead earth at his feet, revealing the truth of it.
“Are they here?” he asks quietly.
I simply nod, speechless.
“Good God,” he mutters.