The marsh did not confine them . . . and, like any sacred ground, kept their secrets deep.
—Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing
THE MAN-SIZE TRACKS led right up to the shores of the formerly swollen creek. Those prints vanished in the shallow water, then reappeared on the muddy island. I could see footprints leading all the way up to the teardrop-shaped mobile home.
“Norma,” I called as I stumbled into the murky water. “Norma, are you there?”
Fortunately, my hiking boots were just high enough to keep my feet dry. Again, Seymour stuck close, his own well-worn galoshes veterans at protecting the mailman from snow, rain, sleet, and gloom of night.
As soon as I reached the dirt-splattered trailer I knew it was deserted. A folding lounge chair lay on its side, half-embedded in the drying mud. Beside it the soggy remains of a campfire. The mobile home’s tires had sunk into the mire all the way to the hubcaps. That mud had since hardened around them like concrete.
Breathless and cursing his soaking-wet feet, Brainert finally caught up to us.
“It looks like Norma used the service road to roll her trailer back here,” Seymour speculated.
“Why didn’t that chain blocking the road stop her? It stopped us,” Brainert replied.
“I’ll bet Norma unscrewed the bolts holding the chain to the poles,” Seymour offered. “That’s what the work crews do when they have to use this road. Norma has the know-how, for sure, and the tools, too, in that white van of hers.”
“But why did she leave the trailer behind when she fled to Millstone?” Brainert asked. “Was she planning to come back for it later? What if someone found it? We just did.”
“And someone else did, too,” I said, gesturing toward the strange footprints.
“My point exactly,” Brainert declared.
“I don’t think she meant to leave her trailer behind,” I said. “In fact, I believe that when Norma sideswiped your car, she was coming here to retrieve her trailer. We only assumed Norma was heading to Dottie Willard’s place. I think we were wrong in that assumption.”
“I’ll bet the storm caught up with her,” Seymour added with a snap of his fingers. “She parked her camper too close to the water. When the storm broke, the creek rose so quickly it surrounded the trailer and she could not pull it out.”
“The mailman is correct, for once,” Brainert conceded. “The waters have already receded. By tomorrow this island will be reunited with the shoreline again.”
The huge footprints I’d followed circled the trailer once and multiplied around the sole door on the side. Seymour and I exchanged glances before he reached for the doorknob.
Amazingly, the trailer was unlocked.
I braced myself for a sight similar to the one on poor, dead Dorothy Willard’s sunporch. But we found no one (living or dead) inside.
The weak sunlight, peeking through the overcast sky, illuminated a tiny combination sitting room, work area, and bedroom. A thin futon set in a wooden frame occupied one corner. A vintage standard typewriter sat on a DIY hinged shelf beside a thick wad of paper bundled by rubber bands.
I spied several Coleman lanterns, all heavily used, along with a portable propane hotplate. Canned foods lined a shelf; pots and pans hung from the ceiling; cube containers held everything from silverware and tea bags to tools and typewriter ribbons.
And there were books. Many, many books, lined up neatly on DIY shelves mounted on all four walls. Each shelf came complete with a metal locking rod to hold the books in place while the trailer was on the move.
Inside the cramped space, I smelled kerosene from the lanterns, and old charcoal from an iron hibachi tucked under the raised futon. Those fumes, along with the stale air, were quickly dispelled by the fresh, cool breeze pouring through the open door.
“I don’t think anyone has lived here for a while,” I said.
Seymour agreed. “But look at this. The lock has been broken.” He pointed to knife marks on the doorjamb. “I think someone was here before us, and they got inside the trailer by jimmying the lock.”
Brainert frowned. “Were they trying to rob the place?”
“They could have been looking for something of value,” I said, “maybe even the jewels. But if Norma actually took them, I doubt she would have left them here.”
“Maybe she had no choice,” Seymour offered. “Maybe she couldn’t even get close to the trailer with all that floodwater.”
As I pulled back, I bumped my elbow on a small shelf bolted to the wall just inside the door. It had been used as a cutting board, and that pitted surface held a thermal cup, a paring knife, and an envelope with a letter folded on top of it. This letter had not been mailed, as the front of the envelope was blank.
Seymour saw the letter, too. “Allow me,” he insisted. “I am a professional mail handler.”
Though the envelope was blank, the letter inside was addressed to Norma. Seymour displayed the handwritten note before he read it aloud:
Norma,
If you don’t already know, it was I who recorded your talks at the church and put them on social media.
You know who I am, though you never acknowledged me in any of the meetings, so you know why I posted your talks.
Something had to be done. This injustice has gone on too long. I am certain those involved will see the recordings and if they do, and if they act, then maybe The Truth will be revealed at long last, and damn the consequences.
The letter was signed “Louis Kritzer.”
“Hey, I recognize that name,” Seymour cried. “Louis Kritzer is on my mail route. He lives in an apartment on Broad Street.”
“Have you ever spoken with him?” I asked. “What does he look like? Maybe I’ve seen him in the bookstore.”
Seymour shrugged. “I don’t think I ever saw or talked to him. But who can forget a name like Kritzer?”
Brainert spoke up. “On Broad Street, you say? That’s not a very nice neighborhood. Not at all.”
But Seymour, lost in thought, wasn’t listening. “I wonder how Kritzer delivered this obviously private letter to Norma without actually addressing it?” he mused. “I doubt he came all the way out here to slip it under the door.”
“That letter is not so private as you think,” Brainert said. “Look closely at the envelope.”
Seymour did, and I gasped at what he found: A swipe of brown mud made by a dirty hand laid a swath across the virgin white velum.
“Bigfoot obviously read that letter,” Brainert concluded. “Unless, of course, it was Sasquatch, Mothman, or Godzilla.”
“Ouch. Good one,” Seymour conceded.
But I wasn’t laughing, and neither was Jack.
If Mr. Muddy Boots read that letter, he might be planning to visit this Kritzer fellow.
Yes, Jack. Or the visit is over and so is Louis Kritzer, because I’m pretty sure the last person Bigfoot visited ended up dead.