Chapter Twenty-Four

Piper and Zach had been running for forty-five minutes, and once their rhythms synchronized, they talked without panting all the way down the winding road. They left the Jeep at Teesh’s as planned, after delivering the invitation to her and leaving the picture tied with the bandana around one of the children’s necks on the Jesus statue. Piper remarked she hoped Charlie would find it in time for her aunt Harri’s fantastic stew, and especially the “Charlie Chocolate Chocolate Pie,” as Harri now referred to another of her signature desserts. She’d made the “m’rang” extra thick just for Charlie.

Zach stopped to get a rock out of his shoe. “Your mom and Harri are exceptional people, Piper. I can’t get over all those pies Harri baked just so Hank could take them to the crew at their camp.”

“You can’t get those pies out of your mind, can you?” Piper smiled down at Zach as he retied his shoe.

“I’ll have to admit, my stomach is rumbling at the thought of a big slice of Harri’s pie, not to mention the stew. It smelled wonderful. But what’s with fried corn on the cob? Isn’t that taking something healthy and making it unhealthy?” Zach started running again slowly. “Not that I’m going to refuse it, mind you. I haven’t tasted anything Harri’s cooked yet that wasn’t to die for.”

Just as they rounded a curve, Piper turned to Zach, her nose held tight with her right hand. “Speaking of ‘to die for,’ what is that smell?” Piper let go of her nose and pulled her T-shirt up over her nose and mouth.

“Damn! That’s bad, isn’t it?” Zach followed Piper’s example and pulled his shirt over his nose. “Let’s move over to the other side of the road. I think the smell is coming from your side.”

“Let’s run faster and see if we can hurry and get by it.” Piper sprinted, almost pushing Zach into the ditch on the other side in an attempt to get away from the odor. “I think we’re getting closer, not farther away. Maybe we need to turn around and go back. It’s probably a deer carcass, or some kind of road kill.” Piper’s speech sounded both nasal and smothered. She had her nose and mouth in her T-shirt with her nose pinched shut.

“Well, I think I see where it’s coming from. See those buzzards circling over there?” Zach pointed with his free hand to a small hill about a hundred feet from the road.

“That’s too far away for road kill. Wonder what it is.” Piper stared in the direction of the scavengers, two of which had now landed and were picking at something.

As they got even with the birds, Piper stopped. Her gaze lingered on the spot where the buzzards sat.

“Zach, that looks like clothing. You don’t think…”

Zach stared in the direction of the birds and lifted his sunglasses, propping them on his cap with the hand not covering his nose. “I see what you mean. I have to check it out, but if it is a human, he or she is too far gone for us to help now. Stay here. It will be more unbearable up close.” Zach took off his T-shirt, stretched it as long as he could get it, and tied it around his nose and mouth. Before he could stop her, Piper had copied his move, leaving herself in her halter sports bra.

“Tie this, Zach; tight, please.” Piper turned her back, holding the ends of her T-shirt out for Zach.

“Are you ready? I assume you’re going with me.” Zach’s voice sounded muffled in the T-shirt. Piper nodded her head in agreement, not wanting to risk opening her mouth even under the T-shirt. The two left the road and climbed over boulders to where the buzzards were now on full alert, watching the intruders approach.

When they got within thirty feet of the decomposition, Zach picked up several stones and threw them at the buzzards and all took flight, cursing Zach in vulture profanity. The birds circled overhead, ready to light and finish their feast.

“Holy shit! It’s definitely a body, Piper. We better not bother it or go any closer. We have to call the sheriff’s office. It looks like the body’s been dragged a good piece. See that black boot farther up? And the body has pieces of black leather, maybe a jacket, but it’s been torn to shreds, probably from animals.” Zach put his arm out to stop her.

“Piper, I don’t want you to go any closer. I’m going to circle around the main part where it looks like the animals have really been aggressive and try to get up there where that boot is.” He looked at Piper. For once, she seemed to be listening to him.

“Actually, I’m feeling a little nauseated.” Piper’s eyes watered above her T-shirt mask, and she wiped each eye with the tail of the shirt. “I think I’ll go back to the road. Maybe somebody will come by, and I can tell them to call the sheriff’s office.”

“Good idea. I won’t be long, and I’ll be careful not to disturb anything.”

Zach turned and circled the site, coming up the hill from the main part—or parts—of the body. He did not want Piper to see how anxious he was as he made sure the body was male and not female. His heart pounded into his throat, not from exertion, but from fear.

The boot looked like a man’s black lace-up boot, the kind a motorcyclist would wear, but he had to look farther and make sure there was not a female body in the area. When he took a closer look at the boot, he heaved. A decomposing foot filled the boot and was covered in maggots, indicating the flesh had been there for a while. But there was no way he could determine when the person was killed. The body was not decomposed much, but it could have been buried and then dragged from its burial site. Zach needed to know if another body had been buried with the motorcyclist. He hoped and prayed the man was alone in death.

Piper watched Zach disappear over the hill. She wished she could have stayed to help him, but she just could not take the close proximity to the only human remains she had ever seen. Minutes seemed like hours, and she wished Zach would hurry and return. She paced, mostly in circles in the road, and then she spotted a boulder beside the road. She sat on it, pulling her feet up on the rock while holding her shirt even tighter over her nose and mouth and burying her face into her knees.

Come on, somebody! Anybody, except the murderer who did this!

She stretched her neck to see down the road but saw nothing but miles and miles of curved dirt road. Wondering where Zach was, she almost called out to him when she saw something shining on another boulder just to the right of where she sat. Leaving her rock perch, she bent over and picked up the shiny object lying on its side in a small crevice in the rock. A few inches from it, she found another of the same object. Clutching the small items tightly in her right hand, she returned to her perch. She stared at the objects in her right hand.

Buttons. No, not buttons…snaps.

She rolled the snaps over and over in her hand, looking at them closely.

Snaps from a cheap western shirt, the kind Dad hated and never wore. He referred to men who wore western shirts with snaps instead of buttons as drugstore cowboys.

Piper was deep in thought when Zach came over the hill. Before he got close to her, he stopped, pushed his T-shirt down around his neck, and heaved.

“Zach, are you all right?” Piper stood, dropped the snaps, and ran toward Zach.

“No! Stay there, Piper!” Zach was still leaning over. “I’ll be okay. Just give me a minute.” Piper did as she was told, and in a couple of minutes, Zach walked toward her, wiping his eyes and mouth on the tail of his shirt. Then he pulled the T-shirt mask back around to the front and covered his mouth and nose again.

“I should have gone with you, Zach. It must have been awful.” Piper put her arm around his waist.

“The worst thing I’ve ever seen.” Zach wiped his eyes on his shirt again. “It’s a guy, looks like a motorcyclist, by the leather jacket and boots. Found bits and pieces of denim, too—blue jeans, I guess. I didn’t get close enough to really see the body, or what was left of it, but I found where it had been dug out of a shallow grave and dragged down to where most of the remains are. There was no sign of another body as far as I could see, so I guess he was alone. There were animal tracks all around the gravesite. It looked like whoever buried him placed rocks on top to keep the animals from getting to him. Obviously, it didn’t work.”

“I wonder how long ago he was killed. I assume he was murdered; he didn’t bury himself.”

“No way of telling. It’s just now beginning to get warm up here, and it can still be below freezing at night. Cold temperature and being buried, even in a shallow grave, would slow decomposition. The authorities will be able to tell, and from the looks of him, there’s enough left to get DNA, but probably not fingerprints. Looked like de-gloving has already happened.”

“De-gloving?” Piper asked, never having heard the term.

“After a few days, the outer skin sloughs off the hands, and if it’s not caught in time, no fingerprints can be deciphered. If you can catch it early, you can soak the skin to soften it, then stretch it over your own hands, over rubber gloves, of course, and take a fingerprint. It’s pretty amazing.”

“And you know this how?” Piper cocked her head to one side and stared at Zach.

“I watch CSI.” Zach said it matter-of-factly, trying to lighten the mood but without success. “Actually, I know someone in forensics with the FBI who works at the Anthropology Research Facility, ARF, or The Body Farm, as it’s known. It’s part of the University of Tennessee Medical Center. They actually place bodies, cadavers, in an open forested area in East Tennessee and study decomposition under different situations. It helps law enforcement determine time of death, among other things, about cases involving decomposed bodies.”

“Sounds like a disgusting and nasty job.” Piper cringed at the thought.

“After seeing this, I have a lot more respect for my friend the forensics expert.” Zach turned away from Piper, and she thought he was going to throw up again.

“Man, I’ll never get that smell out of my head, even though it’s not like I thought it would be. Kind of a sickening, sour/sweet, pungent smell.”

“Yep, that pretty much describes it. I know I’m wearing this T-shirt over my face until we can leave here.” Piper looked down at her halter bra. “Thank goodness this sports bra is pink. Maybe if someone comes by, they won’t realize what I’m wearing, or not wearing.”

“I see dust on the road. Maybe we’re in luck.” Zach moved to the other side of the road. Piper crossed and stood beside him, prepared to flag the driver down.

“Piper, you need to ride up to Teesh’s cabin with whoever this is and get the Jeep and go call the sheriff. I’m staying here to watch the site until the authorities get here. I don’t want any tampering, and once we tell this person on the road, the word will spread.”

A man in an old blue pickup pulled over after seeing Zach waving his hands for him to stop. Piper had put her T-shirt back on just before the man got to them, and now had her hand cupped over her mouth and nose.

The man reached across the seat and rolled his window down on the passenger side.

“Howdy!” He leaned way across the seat and yelled out the window. “Need a ride?”

Piper and Zach both recognized the man at the same time.

“Lester, thank goodness you came along. Remember us from the other day at your antique shop? I’m Piper, and this is Zach.” Piper leaned into the truck that smelled old, dirty, and oily, a pleasant reprieve from the smell outside.

“Well, I’ll be darned. I sure do. What you two doing way down Difficult Road?”

Zach opened the truck door. “Could you give Piper a ride up to Teesh’s cabin, Lester? She can fill you in on what’s going on. She needs to get back to Bar None and call the sheriff’s office.”

Lester gave the two a questioning look. “The ghosts on a rampage or something?” Lester tried to make a joke, but Zach could see concern on his face. “Hop in, young lady. I just happen to be heading to Teesh’s anyway. You can tell me what all the hullabaloo is about on the way.”

****

When Piper told Lester what she and Zach had discovered, Lester acted stunned.

“Ain’t been no murders around these parts in decades. I can’t even remember the last one. Must be some of them Hell’s Angels or something, some outside no-gooder! Dang it! No telling who’ll show up now.” Lester gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I guess I’ll have to tell Teesh, but I shore do hate to. She’ll be real uneasy knowing there’s been a murder just down the road, especially knowing it’s gonna bring in a bunch of outsiders—news media and all that.” Lester shook his head. “They’ll be bugging her for information and history, something she only likes to share with friends like your mother and your aunt and you two.”

“Maybe she’ll come stay with us at Bar None until the sheriff’s department can come up with some answers.” Piper looked at Lester.

“Ain’t likely. Teesh is not afraid of much, and she’d never leave her cabin. Besides, she’s a pretty good shot with that old Colt .45 of hers. At least, she used to be.”

A few minutes later, Lester pulled up in front of Teesh’s cabin. Piper got out and headed for the Jeep. “I need to get to Bar None and call the sheriff on the satellite phone. I’ll let you be the bearer of bad news to Teesh.”

****

Piper waited with Zach. When the sheriff and his team got to the site, Zach walked with them to show them where the grave had been and then returned to Piper.

“There’s nothing else for us to do, Piper. The sheriff said he’d let us know what he finds out. We might as well head back to Bar None and take about a two-hour shower. I don’t know about you, but I’m burning these clothes I’ve got on.”

“I promise this will all wash out, with enough bleach shot into the laundry. Besides, I didn’t bring another pair of running shoes. As far as washing out memories—especially that smell? Not likely. I think we’ll have that forever.” Piper sighed.

Piper and Zach bypassed all questions and headed for the showers. Zach did not take the time to go to Belle’s quarters but hit the communal showers with Piper. They took their toothbrushes into their shower stalls and scrubbed their teeth while showering as if the pungent smell had sunk into their taste buds. Piper thought her mouth would be raw after the scrubbing she gave it. She also put shampoo up her nostrils, to alleviate the smell that seemed to linger, and then suffered a sneezing attack.

“Thank goodness for coconut-scented shampoo. You want to use it, Zach?”

“Can I come in and get it?” Zach laughed.

“Uh, no! Not with my mom downstairs, thank you very much!” Piper put the lid on tight and handed the shampoo over top of the shower stall to Zach.

“Oh, yeah! Much better. This is one time I don’t mind smelling like a woman. It’s got to beat the generic, near-nothing smell of my travel shampoo.”

Zach finished first and wrapped himself in one of the huge luxury towels provided by the hotel. He waited for Piper and handed her a towel after she shut the shower off. Before she could finish wrapping herself in the towel, Zach joined her in the dressing area of the stall. Taking both towels and placing them on the wooden seat, he grabbed her to him, kissing and caressing her, lingering on his favorite parts.

“I just need one more thing to erase the unpleasantness of this afternoon.”

Piper smiled and returned Zach’s embrace.

A few minutes later, the two left the showers, each covered in towels and smiles.