Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(2)
The bodies of the Huston family had been discovered approximately twenty minutes earlier. Claire’s mother and father had driven up from nearby Oniontown, just as they did every Sunday through the fall and early winter, “to watch the Steelers beat themselves,” as Ed O’Patchen liked to say that season. The O’Patchens went up the walk and onto the covered porch as they always had, Ed lugging two six-packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Rosemary cradling her Crock-Pot of cheese and sausage dip. As always, they walked inside without knocking. Rosemary went searching for the silent family upstairs while Ed tried to figure out how to work the remote on the new wide-screen Sony.
The Browns scored while DeMarco was taking the call. He saw no more of the game.
Later that day, DeMarco and three other troopers began interviewing the Hustons’ neighbors up and down Mayfield Road. Not a single resident along the tree-lined street had anything negative to say about the family, and none were aware of any financial or other marital problems between Thomas and Claire. All were stunned, most were grief-stricken.
Two residents, however, a homemaker and an elderly man, reported that they had seen a man who might or might not have been Thomas Huston walking through the neighborhood in the weak light of false dawn. “Kind of shuffling along,” the homemaker said. “Looking confused,” said the elderly man.
Both witnesses had been standing close to their own homes while keeping an eye on their dogs as they sniffed through dewy yards and saw the man from the rear as he was walking away from them. The woman hadn’t yet put in her contact lenses and saw the man as “Just a shape, you know? Just the shape of a man.” The elderly gentleman, who saw the man at a nearer distance, reported that the man who might have been Huston stopped twice, paused with his head down, and once turned fully around to look back down the street. The elderly gentleman asked from two houses away, “You lost?” But the man in question did not respond, and eventually he continued moving away again.
Four women traveling north on Interstate 79 at around eight thirty Sunday morning, on their way to breakfast at Bob Evans and then a day of shopping at the Millcreek Mall, telephoned 911 at around ten that morning to report passing a man as he leaned over the low concrete bridge abutment where the highway spans a spindly extension of Lake Wilhelm. He was staring into the dark water, they said. They agreed with the other witnesses as to what Huston was wearing: khaki trousers, a dark blue knit shirt, brown belt, and brown loafers or moccasins. They could not agree as to whether the man looked as if he were about to jump into the water or if perhaps he were watching something as it fell and disappeared beneath the surface. Only one woman claimed to have seen the object in his hand before it disappeared into the lake. “It was shiny,” she said. “Like a knife. But a big knife.” They would have called sooner but had come up from New Castle and weren’t aware of the tragedy until a salesclerk mentioned it to one of them.
In the chill of the following morning, just two days before Halloween, a gray mist hung over the lake, clinging to the water like a spirit reluctant to tear itself free from the memory of flesh. DeMarco stood next to the same bridge abutment where Huston had paused the day before. Two dozen men and women from the criminal investigation units of Troops D and E huddled close on either side—primarily troopers from the two county stations affected by the apparent homicide in Mercer County and consequent search for the primary suspect in Crawford County. All wore blaze-orange plastic vests over black jackets. Four of the troopers knelt beside their search dogs, keeping the leashes snug for now. The dogs, all of mixed breed, were certified in tracking, search and rescue, and cadaver identification.
DeMarco’s eyes stung from the morning’s cold. A thin pool of dampness lay in his left lower lid, blurring his vision. The left eye was DeMarco’s weak eye, the one he had injured long ago. It watered up at the slightest provocation these days—from a gust of wind, a blast of air-conditioning, an invisible speck of dust—and no matter how often he blinked, he could not whisk away that tiny pool of dampness that warped a corner of the world behind a rain-streaked window. Sometimes the eye would water for no reason at all, most frequently in the stillness of a new morning when he sat in his dark house with the television on, a glass of tepid Jack in his hand. Now, there on the low bridge, his eyes felt heavy from a lack of sleep. But that was nothing new either; his eyes always felt heavy.
Along the entire length of the bridge, and for some distance on either side—a total of two hundred yards or so—the right lane of the two northbound lanes of Interstate 79 had been blocked off to traffic with orange cones and yellow flashing lights. The passing lane, however, was still open, so DeMarco’s voice as he spoke to the troopers frequently rose to a shout to carry above the rumbling approach and passage of a vehicle.
“If he managed to get ahold of a tarp or a blanket of some kind,” DeMarco said, “he can last out there for two weeks or so. He might still be carrying the murder weapon with him. You should assume that he is. And according to the lab, it’s no piddling little switchblade. Think machete, Bowie knife, maybe even a decorative sword of some kind. Where he might be headed or what might be going through that brain of his is anybody’s guess, so do not attempt to apprehend. You are here to assist in the tracking of a suspect in a multiple homicide. Tracking is the full extent of your job. Any other action you engage in had best be warranted.”
An eighteen-wheeler roared over the bridge now; the vibration rattled up through DeMarco’s boots and into his knees. “Under no circumstances should you lose visual contact with the trooper nearest you. You see anything, and I mean anything, you radio it in to me. You see tracks, you call me. You find a recent campfire, you call me. You see Huston, you back off immediately and call me. Do not approach. The order to close in and apprehend will come from me and me alone. Also, be aware that there are field officers from the Game Commission stationed all around the perimeter of these woods to keep the public out, but that doesn’t mean one or two of them won’t slip past and come sneaking up on us. Therefore, you will exercise all due restraint.”