The Forest Prime Evil Read online

  It was the same voice I had heard on the tape, intense and fanatical. But I didn’t need a fast-forward button. Sawyer was speaking quickly, frenziedly. “He conducted perversions called candlelight services. In them he called for the woodland sprites to appear, asked that they visit and show themselves. He offered prayers to these dryads, set out feasts of fruit and wine and ale, and encouraged all to sin.

  “His blasphemies were many. He aped the ceremonies of Druid priests, and, when the moon was full, he shed his clothes and walked around naked, and encouraged his followers to do the same. He singled out certain trees as Maypoles and perverted a child’s game, encouraging ribaldry and carnal displays. He told everyone he was the spirit of Pan and acted out that fantasy, strutting about like a satyr in rut. That was your Green Man!”

  Sawyer was convinced of what he said. But conviction is one thing, knowing what you’re saying another. I didn’t believe him, or didn’t want to believe him.

  “Things get exaggerated,” I said. “Hide-and-go-seek suddenly becomes an evil pastime of the night. Ring-around-the-rosy is imbued with sensual aspects.”

  Sawyer shook his head. He almost looked sad. “I have not overstated his perversions.”

  Part of the Green Man’s appeal was his innocence. His homilies about trees. His bare feet. Saturnalian revelries weren’t in keeping with his gentle image. Or with what I expected, or wanted.

  “Did you hear this from his enemies?” I asked.

  “I heard it from his friends,” hissed Sawyer.

  I leaned back, caught myself looking at Judas again. With friends like that . . .

  “How do you think he died?”

  Sawyer exhaled, then breathed in deeply. He took a few seconds to gain control of himself again, then quietly responded: “A widow-maker.”

  It wasn’t the answer I expected. It wasn’t the answer she expected either. Ruth Sawyer threw the door open. Her face was contorted. “That’s not how he died,” she said, her voice hysterical. “God smote him!”

  I wondered how long she had been listening. Her husband’s voice tended to carry, and mine wasn’t in the whisper league either.

  “He was a sinner, and God took his right hand, and cast his judgment. The storm that night was his breath, the thunder his anger!”

  The Reverend Sawyer went to his wife. They reversed the roles I had already come to expect of them. She was agitated and loud, and he was quiet and calm. “There, there,” he said, touching her lightly on the shoulder. “Let’s go back to the house.”

  Like a windup toy finally running down, Mrs. Sawyer stopped her railing and let herself be led away. They slowly made their way up the path, then entered the parsonage. There, she would be safe. What she called vanity others call peace and quiet. She obviously needed that.

  10

  THE ENGLISH HISTORIAN Thomas Macaulay wrote, “The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.” I suspected Reginald Sawyer of having that kind of mentality. He was suspicious of what gave pleasure to others, probably considered suffering the normal state of humanity. I didn’t know what kind of nocturnal activities, if any, the Green Man had organized, only that the Reverend Mr. Sawyer would have considered laughter and levity sins enough, and anything else an outright affront to God. Still, his accusations merited investigation. At this juncture, everything did.

  The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department had investigated the Green Man’s death and had stood by the findings of their sheriff’s coroner’s office. Under California law, coroners are supposed to determine the manner, cause, and circumstance of death. But what the forensic scientists had concluded about Shepard’s death was less than definitive. They stated that they could find nothing “substantive” which indicated foul play and that his death was “likely an act of God.” That kind of hedging is usually reserved for politicians.

  It wasn’t a politician I wanted to talk to, but a sheriff’s deputy named Rod Evans. My original plan had been to go to the Fortuna sheriff’s station and introduce myself to Evans, but, while driving through town, I reconsidered that strategy.

  Evans had found the Green Man’s body. Shepard hadn’t been seen for almost a week, but that hadn’t been cause for any alarm. Those involved with Sequoia Summer were used to his irregular appearances. Since he had no phone, and had settled almost forty miles from the Sweetwater camp, he wasn’t an everyday visitor. The Green Man lived in his goosepen in the virgin woods of River Grove. He had settled there, the story went, to watch for any signs of Trans-Mississippi encroachment.

  I had gleaned Evans’s name from the early news reports. River Grove was about five miles east of Fortuna, accessible only by a logging road. Evans’s discovery had given him his moment of fame. He hadn’t appeared in the newspapers since having surrendered the investigation to others. Cops aren’t different from anyone else. Patrol officers can’t help but resent being brushed aside by a homicide team. You wouldn’t think people would get proprietary over a body, but it happens all the time.

  Not that many corpses turn up in Humboldt County, especially celebrity corpses. I knew better than to try to get anyone from the homicide investigation to talk with me. Cops tend to get downright hostile when PI’s start asking them questions about their cases. Officially, Rod Evans hadn’t worked on the case. But I knew he would have had more than a passing interest in the investigation. I was betting that he might be pleased someone remembered his name beyond that first day of glory. Or, if not pleased, at least willing to talk.

  I parked on high ground where I saw that I had adequate cell reception, called the number I had for Evans, and he answered on the second ring. After identifying myself and my location, I stated my purpose for wanting to talk to him. I did that in less than half a minute. It took him a few seconds to digest everything I had said. Then he asked me why I hadn’t presented myself at the station.

  “Figured I’d make it easier on you,” I said. “I have about ten minutes’ worth of questions. I know how things work, though. Those ten minutes could cost you ten hours of grief. Thought I’d save you the hassle.”

  It’s hard to hang up on someone, or tell them to go to hell, when they’ve just shown themselves to be considerate. I pushed on with that accommodating theme.

  “Everything will be off the record,” I said. “It’s just that you’re the one who found the body. That makes you the one person I would really like to talk with.”

  Where did I learn to ooze and schmooze like that? I wondered. Sometimes investigating is about as straightforward as selling used cars.

  “Okay,” he said. Then, in a lower voice: “You know where the airport is?”

  I didn’t even know Fortuna had an airport. “Yes,” I said.

  “I’ll meet you there in about half an hour.”

  The Rohnerville Airport was on the south end of town. There wasn’t much going on there. A number of idle planes belonging to the California Department of Forestry sat on the edge of the runway. It was that time of year, after another long, hot summer, and California in its umpteenth year of drought. The combustible forest, and human sparks aplenty.

  A black-and-white came into view, cruised by me, and gradually looped back. I didn’t flag him down, just nodded. The deputy didn’t respond. It reminded me of how sharks usually approach divers. They like to glide by, seemingly uninterested on their first run, then, with each pass, they move closer and closer. The black-and-white passed me a second time. And I nodded once more. Cops don’t believe in turning their heads when looking at something. I’m not sure whether it’s taught at the academy, but they rival lizards in their mastery of peripheral gazing. And they do it with dark sunglasses, no less.

  I was humming the theme song to Jaws on the third pass. This time Evans stopped and slowly rolled down his window. “Winter?”

  Discontinuing my humming, I nodded for the third time, then approached the car. Evans left the engine running. I produced my ID befo
re he asked. He took his time looking at my credentials. Didn’t even take off his aviator’s sunglasses. Something else cops learn.

  Evans was about thirty. He looked like a high school football star a dozen years later. Some of his brawn was going south. He had slicked back, dark hair and a jaw like Fearless Fosdick’s. His hands were huge, not the kind you’d want to get on the bad side of. He wore the largest wedding ring I had ever seen. On a smaller hand it might have served for brass knuckles.

  I got back my ID and a declaration of independence as well. “Don’t usually go in for this James Bond stuff,” he said.

  “Like I said . . . ”

  “I know what you said. Who are you working for?”

  “Sequoia Summer.”

  “And they hired you to investigate the death of Christopher Shepard?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Lot of people already done that.”

  “I know.”

  “And you think you can do better?’

  “I’m being paid to try.”

  Evans didn’t say anything. But he finally did turn off his engine. I took that as my turn to ask the questions.

  “How was it that you discovered his body?” I asked.

  “Just patrolling,” he said. “Can’t say I was looking for him, even though everyone knew he was camped up there in River Grove. Trans-Miss owns the road; hell, they own the whole area, unless the courts decide different. They were the ones who come to us an asked us to patrol regular and arrest anyone driving on that stretch.”

  “Why didn’t they just ask you to arrest the Green Man?”

  “Probably didn’t want the publicity. Probably figured he would get tired of his Boy Scout trip.”

  “If the road was closed, how’d he get back and forth to Sweetwater?”

  “Road wasn’t closed. People were just subject to arrest. But I understand he usually walked into Fortuna and got a ride from there.”

  I found that hard to believe. “Just to get to town he had to walk, what, five miles?”

  “ ’Bout that. They said he was one for walking.”

  “And you found his body where?”

  “Just off the logging road. In plain sight.”

  “Which was about a half mile from his goosepen?”

  “About.”

  It wasn’t adding up for me. “Why was he walking around so far away from his tree so late, especially on a stormy night?”

  Evans didn’t immediately respond. He looked at his large fingers, picked a little at his thumb, then teased me along. “There’s more to it than that, even,” he said.

  “Such as?”

  Evans thumped his ring on the steering wheel several times. “We’ve been holding back on the press with this poker hand, so this better not come back to me.”

  “It won’t.”

  He deliberated a moment. “The man was buck naked when he died.”

  I didn’t say anything. But the Reverend Mr. Sawyer’s words came back to me, how Shepard had walked about naked in the woods, strutting like a satyr in rut.

  “Course we learned that wasn’t too unusual,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Supposedly your Green Man didn’t much like to wear clothes in the woods. Didn’t much like to wear clothes at all.”

  “What else didn’t you tell the press?”

  “The condition of his body. Lots of critters in the woods. They had themselves a feast, and in so doing they impacted the forensics.”

  “In what way?”

  “Made the body, and the widow-maker, hard to read. They chewed the hell out of that branch. Guess they were attracted to the blood.”

  These days we’re used to having science provide all the answers with the evidence of fibers or dirt samples. Revenge of the mice.

  “No other bruises on his body? No sign of any other trauma?”

  There was the slightest hesitation. “No.”

  “Nothing?”

  Again, the pause. “Nothing official. But the way he was laid out in the woods made it look like he was some kind of sacrifice. They tell me his insides were pulled out by birds and things, but I just don’t know.”

  “Are you saying his death looked ceremonial?”

  “I’m saying it looked weird.”

  “Did forensics pick up on that?”

  “No. They said he died from the impact and penetration of the branch into his skull.”

  “Could someone plunging a branch into his head have caused that penetration?”

  “The lab boys don’t think so.”

  “What do they think?”

  “That time and gravity caused a branch to drop off natural, and come to rest after falling a coupla hundred feet in the Green Man’s skull.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I think I don’t want to answer that question.”

  Sometimes I know when to shut up and let the silence ask its own questions. Eventually, Evans did want to answer.

  “It was spooky when I found him,” he said. “There he was, sort of propped up. Looked like a scarecrow. Scared the hell out of me, I can tell you that. Like I said, he looked like he was a warning, or a sacrifice. His eyes had been pecked out. His flesh was bloated and stripped. He smelled. Ain’t no dignity in death.”

  “What about the widow-maker itself? No hairs or particles of skin?”

  “It was out there almost a week in the open,” said Evans. “There was that rainstorm, and enough birds and animals visiting to make the area read like a goddamn zoo. Add to that a widow-maker split and chewed up, and old man redwood being a tough read in the first place, and you have a very unhappy forensics crew.”

  “Did you stay around for the walk-through?”

  He nodded.

  “Did they do it by the book?”

  Evans didn’t spare me his scowl. “We got police procedures out here too, Winter. The photographer did his thing, then the physical evidence man went over everything. Lots of tracks, all animal. Most of the area had been washed out from the storm. Rained all night, you know. There were rivulets and gullies. Didn’t please the hell out of anyone.”

  A plane circled the field, approached for the landing. Both of us watched it.

  “Any foul-play theories?” I asked.

  “Lots of them. They all had their hour. Malaysian hawk was maybe good for an hour and a half.”

  “Malaysian hawk?”

  “Some of them pot growers have gotten real good at protecting their crops. With all his traipsing about, someone figured Shepard might have walked into the wrong field, found a Malaysian hawk, and then got his body brought back to River Grove.”

  “I take it a Malaysian hawk is a booby trap,” I said.

  “You got it,” he said. “Trip stick and swinging branch. Swoops down from above. Swing low, sweet chariot time.”

  “But you say that theory didn’t pan out?”

  “No,” he said. “No rope fiber on the widow-maker. And everyone figured the branch was too light anyway. To make a Malaysian hawk that means business, you got to use at least a thousand-pound log. That widow-maker only weighed a couple of pounds.”

  “Have you seen any of those Malaysian hawks firsthand?”

  “Just one. Mean-looking bastard. Around here if you stumble on a pot field, you back out careful and then get the proper reinforcements. We got what we call our mine field experts. They know how to look for the pit traps, and spike traps, and snares. Not to mention the all-time favorite: the wire-triggered shotguns.”

  In the tradition of this country, I thought. But now it wasn’t hillbillies guarding their moonshine from revenuers. It was pot farmers standing like Ma and Pa Kettle with their Uzis.

  “Since murder was never ruled out,” I asked, “were any suspects interrogated?”

  The deputy shook his head. “Not that some EverGreen committee didn’t supply us with a list of their murder candidates,” he said. “But their number-one suspect was Bull Dozier, the CEO of
Trans-Miss. There were plenty of people who disliked your Green Man. But there wasn’t anything to show that anyone disliked him enough to kill him.”

  I pulled out the wanted poster. “What about this?”

  Evans didn’t look very interested. “That was a joke. Some mill hands made those up. Buster bluster time.”

  I put away the poster. “Did Shepard have a girlfriend?”

  “Not that I heard.”

  “Did you hear any talk of cults? Secret societies?”

  Evans shook his head, gave me a look of interest. “That a possibility?”

  I shrugged. “It’s just a story for now.”

  The sound from the plane grew louder. It was committed to land. We watched it touch down on the runway, bounce once, then settle on a straight path.

  “What’s the back-room talk?” I asked.

  “Almost to a man the investigators think he died of natural causes, if you can call a widow-maker a natural cause. If he had been murdered, why didn’t someone just hide his body? We’re talking about thousands of acres of woods up there, nothing human for miles around. Wouldn’t take a genius to find a burial spot that would never be found. And I do mean never.”

  “Still doesn’t make sense,” I said.

  “What doesn’t?”

  “Where he died.”

  Evans gave a little laugh. “Most people were more concerned with how he died.”

  “Near a road late at night,” I said, “about half a mile from where he was living.”

  “Near a logging road. Not the same thing. You’d have to see the area.”

  “I’d like to,” I said. “Would you consider taking me there?”

  Evans didn’t say anything. He finally took off his aviator’s dark glasses, rubbed them absently, then looked at me. He had brown, bearlike eyes that were small for his large head. They were soulful eyes, but at the same time distrusting. Within them was the promise that they could be dangerous. Very dangerous.