Snow Creek(14)

Her effort at concealment had been effective. She squinted her eye to make sure she was headed right to it. A deer had passed through the area leaving tiny chiseled hoofprints in the now-drying mud.

Nothing else.

No one else.

She stripped off her clothes, put them inside the plastic bag. She spread out the tarp and stood naked over her tools. She halted her breathing and listened with all the concentration she could gather.

No one was there.

Just birds.

Only squirrels.

And the dead man.

Pulling off the cover of branches and ferns over the body, she gave it a careful look. She hadn’t made time for that when she’d made the discovery and considered the implications of what might happen if someone found it. It was badly burned, but she could tell it was a man. His shoulders were broad, and hips narrow. Not a woman. Her eyes traveled downward for further confirmation. She found it. A nob of charcoaled flesh indicated what was left of his penis. He wasn’t very tall, as men go. Maybe five foot eight. His clothes had melted onto his skin or had been completely incinerated. In a few places he wasn’t burned as badly. He was white. It appeared that he wore glasses because lines seared around his eyes bore the distinct traces of frames. Regina made a note to look for them when she was finished.

She put the respirator on and bent over the body, hacksaw in hand.

I’m doing this for me and Amy. I didn’t kill him. I’m only doing what I know I must do to protect us. This is ugly, but it isn’t wrong when so much is at stake.

Regina started with the head because all of her years butchering animals on the farm had taught her that was the most difficult area to work—physically and emotionally. It took some doing, but she managed to sever the head just where the neck met the shoulders. She knew that blood cooked in the fire oozed rather than splattered.

Thank you, God.

She put the head on the tarp, face down. No need to look at the face. Even though she didn’t know him, it felt invasive. Too personal.

Regina took air in through her mouth. The hands were easily snipped off at the wrists with the bolt cutters. She deposited them on the tarp with the head. She took in a another gulp of air and listened. Nothing.

I can do this!

She tried the cutters on the arm bones, but the dead man was too large for the blades. She reverted to the hacksaw. Up and down. Up and down. The blade wasn’t as sharp as it needed to be for efficient cutting, yet it worked. In time, Regina butchered the increasingly fetid body into manageable pieces. By the end of it, her hands and arms were covered in blood and body fluids. Some spatter even freckled her face. That was fine, she thought. She could wash away everything in the outdoor shower. Her clothing would never betray what she did and how.

Amy didn’t need to know how far Regina would go for love.

Neither did the Jefferson County Sheriff.



It took her two trips to bring the body parts to the firepit, a location that had been the center of activity when she and Amy still had visitors. S’mores. Puffs of marijuana. Long, drunken stories about people they loved and hated.

Regina used some fat rendered from a goat she’d slaughtered to help ignite the pieces of what remained of the nameless dead man. She piled on the wood and set the fire. She knew it would take a long time, probably all night. When they first moved there one of their friends hit a doe and someone came up with the bright idea of cremating the animal’s remains. The worst idea ever. It sent up a stream of acrid smoke and the fire hissed as the animal’s fat was consumed. A person’s pre-burned body couldn’t be that bad. Or could it? When the night was over the deer was gone. Even some of the bones had burned. Gone. That’s just what she needed. She knew that no one would pay any attention to the pyre. Once she’d burned a mattress sending a tornado of black smoke into the sky. No one said a word. No one complained of the smell either. In Snow Creek, she mused, burning a body was a private, do-not-disturb affair. Like a lot of things out there. She watched the blaze take off and then hurried inside to tell Amy that she was finally getting to some of that trash that had piled up in the barn.

“How’d it go? Did you bury the body?”

“Yes. I did.”

“In the woods?”

“Yes, baby, in the woods.”

Regina felt Amy’s lips against hers. So warm and lovely. So perfect.

“You get some rest. I’m going to watch the fire.”

“I love you.”

“I love you forever and a day.”

Their love, they both knew, was everlasting.





Eight





Not a single cloud marred the blue of the sky the morning Dante York and his off-and-on girlfriend, Maddie Cohen, took off from Port Hadlock to scope out the wilds above Snow Creek. Dante had become obsessed with cryptozoology. He was sure that he could be the first person to get an irrefutable photograph of a Sasquatch. Maddie was pretty interested in the idea too, although felt that the new fascination was taking up too much time out of their romantic life.

Everything they did lately centered around Sasquatch.

A logger had reported seeing tracks there in the late eighties. Sam Otis had even been photographed and featured in the Port Townsend Leader.

PT Man Says He Found Bigfoot Tracks





Last Friday was like any other day for Sam Otis, 36, of Port Townsend, with one big exception.