Skullbelly Read online

  Smiling, Jeffers nodded and brought his own glass to his lips. Then he bobbed his chin at the man’s sketchpad. “Are you an artist?”

  “Recreational only,” the man said, returning Jeffers’s smile with one of his own. He was maybe Jeffers’s age, though in admittedly better shape. He held up the sketchpad so Jeffers could appraise the drawing—sailboats moored along a coast that very much resembled the one behind The Happy Brier motor lodge, Jeffers thought.

  “Very good.”

  “It’s right there,” the man said, pointing down the coast to where sailboats stood against the backdrop of night.

  “Ah.” Jeffers laughed. “Good, good. I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Thank you. I’m Del Finney.”

  “John Jeffers.”

  “In real life, I sell products to hardware stores. Coastal Green is part of my territory. A bit of a haul for me, but it’s beautiful out here and makes for good drawing, so I don’t mind coming in every now and again.”

  “It is pretty. I’m just passing through, myself.”

  “Where from?”

  “Seattle.”

  “I’m from Eureka. What brings you out this way? You in sales, too?”

  Jeffers ran one thumb along the rim of his rocks glass. “A few teenagers went missing out here back in June. I’m out here trying to find out what happened.”

  “Are you FBI?” The man seemed impressed.

  Jeffers laughed. “No. I was hired by the families.”

  “I don’t recall hearing it on the news. Usually those are big stories.”

  “Usually they are,” Jeffers agreed.

  Del Finney shook his head and looked back out over the water. “Kids today,” he marveled. “I grew up in northern California. My dad raised us to have a healthy respect for the land. I can’t even fathom wandering off in the woods.” He laughed, and it held a cheerful quality. Jeffers saw that the man’s teeth were nice and white and even. “I didn’t even leave my front yard until I was thirteen.”

  Jeffers, who’d been a rebellious child even before he lost his first baby tooth, only smiled and nodded.

  Finney turned to a clean sheet of paper and started a new sketch as he talked. “These woods here are particularly dangerous. They run all the way down to Clearlake, right past where I grew up. I got to know them a little bit better as I got older. When we were kids, our old man used to scare us away from them, tell us stories about ghosts and wendigos and devils and trees that would come alive and grab you. You know—things to keep us safe by overriding our curiosity about the forests.”

  Jeffers nodded, leaning back in his chair.

  “My father’s favorite tale was the one about Skullbelly,” said Finney. “You ever hear that one?”

  “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

  “They say it looks sort of like a man, if you don’t look too closely at it, only bigger than a man. It’s hairless, too, and with skin like rubber. It’s got large claws on its hands and a dagger-like spike on each foot, which it uses to pierce the thick trunks of the redwoods so it can climb. Legend says it lives among the redwoods and eats bad children who don’t listen to their parents. That sort of thing. Some fairytale to scare kids, keep them out of the forest.”

  “Why was it called Skullbelly?”

  “Because it had this large, bulbous belly, and when it would eat a lot of children and get real fat, the skin of its belly would pull so taut that it would become transparent and you could see the partially-digested bodies of the children in there, sizzlin’ in its stomach acids.”

  Jeffers coughed into one fist. “Your father used to tell you that?”

  Finney laughed. “An interesting soul, was dear old Dad!”

  “Bet you never went off wandering through the woods, though, huh?”

  Finney winked. “Bingo.”

  Jeffers took another sip of his drink then got up. “Good meeting you, friend, but it’s cold out here. Gonna head inside.”

  “Here you go,” said Finney, tearing out a sheet of paper from his sketchpad and handing it to Jeffers as he walked past Finney’s table.

  Jeffers looked at the drawing, which was of a spindly, humanoid creature with long claws on its hands and feet, a cranium shaped like the head of a hammer, and a protruding abdomen inside which Finney had scribbled the likenesses of a number of tiny skulls.

  “Dear old Dad,” Jeffers said, folding the drawing up and sticking it inside the pocket of his sports coat.

  Inside, the place was mildly populated now, and there were some families seated at booths for dinner. Must be the big place in town, he thought, going straight to the bar. When the bartender noticed his empty glass on the counter, he quickly refilled it. Single malt Macallan. It was like sucking on the teat of God.

  When he happened to glance up at the Rolling Rock clock above the bar and saw that it was already eight thirty, he felt an ember of anger spark to life in the center of his chest. Stupidly, he’d taken Lyndon on her word that she would meet him. Had that just been her way of getting him off the phone? Of avoiding him?

  “Mr. Jeffers?”

  He turned to find himself staring at an attractive woman in her late thirties in jeans and a hooded Oregon State University sweatshirt. Her hair was streaked blonde and brown and pulled back in a ponytail. She wore no makeup but she didn’t need any: she had the clear and unblemished features of a young child.

  She held her hand out to him. “I’m Lisa Lyndon.”

  “John Jeffers,” he said, shaking her hand.

  “A.k.a. George Jetson, right?” she said, sitting on the stool beside him. Her tone was dry.

  Jeffers laughed embarrassedly. “Yeah, well, I apologize for that.”

  “Ma’am?” the bartender said, sliding over to her.

  “Just a Diet Coke.”

  “Have a drink,” Jeffers urged.

  She gave the bartender a humorless smile. “Diet Coke, please.” Then she turned to Jeffers. “So who exactly has hired you, Mr. Jeffers?”

  “The four families of the kids involved in what happened here back in June. They felt your department wasn’t giving them enough answers. I’d like to know what’s up with all the stonewalling myself.”

  The bartender set the glass of Diet Coke down in front of Lyndon. She picked the paper hood off the straw, rolled it into a ball, and set it down on the bar. There was a lemon wedge on the rim of the glass, which she knocked into the soda.

  “The families have asked for all documentation that wasn’t proprietary pertaining to this investigation,” Lyndon said. She spoke as though she had just memorized this speech out in the parking lot. For all Jeffers knew, maybe she had. “We provided that documentation. The same documentation was provided to the Harpers when their attorney made the same request sometime later. I’ve spent more time photocopying reports than actually investigating the case.”

  “Can I ask where that investigation is now?”

  “It’s ongoing.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means it’s going on.”

  Jeffers rubbed at his forehead and raised an eyebrow.

  “It means,” she continued, “that it will remain open until evidence turns up that will allow us to close it. In whatever fashion that may be.”

  “Evidence has to be sought out. In my experience, it rarely just ‘turns up.’ ”

  “And what is your experience?”

  “Been a P.I. for twelve years, a beat cop for five before that.”

  The right corner of Lyndon’s mouth curled upward. “You’re…what? Fifty-five? Fifty-six?”

  “Hey. Fifty-two, thank you.”

  “That’s seventeen years of work. What are we missing?”

  “I bummed around a bit, too,” he said, not wanting to go into it. Silently, he cursed Lyndon for how easily she’d gotten him off course. “Anyway, that doesn’t matter. What matters is what happened to those kids, and I don’t think anyone around here has the first clue. Is Tommy Downing a suspect?�
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  “That’s what it is,” she said. “You’re working for the Downings.”

  “I told you, I’m working for all four families.”

  She nodded at the drink in his hand. “Are they picking up your bar tab, too?”

  “So you’ve got nothing,” he countered. “You’re here just to derail me further by making observational comments against my character. I could’ve stayed married if I’d wanted to deal with that.”

  Lyndon folded her hands on the bar. Jeffers noted that she wore no rings. “Okay. Let’s start over. Here’s the situation, Mr. Jeffers. Those kids went up into the forest and were gone for three days. They knew nothing about camping and were not prepared to go out there, as evidenced by their purchases at Redwood Outfitters where, incidentally, I know you’ve already paid a visit.”

  He wondered if it had been Lyndon who’d been following him. That eeriness of feeling invisible eyes at his back while walking up the street…

  “Three days later, the Downing boy is found wandering around town, half his clothes missing, wounds to the chest and abdomen, blood soaking through his clothes.”

  “Whose blood?” Jeffers asked. “Just his?”

  “No. Forensic reports identified Harper’s blood, too.”

  “That wasn’t in the paperwork I saw.”

  “It’s only been three months, Jeffers. We had to send the samples to Portland, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, as you know, the kid won’t speak, he’s out of it. Traumatized. If he hadn’t had his wallet on him, we wouldn’t have known who the hell he was.” She turned the glass of soda around on the bar but didn’t drink any. “Later, the Jeep was discovered along Summit Pass, by an old logging road that’s been condemned for years.”

  “I didn’t realize you could condemn a road,” he said, being serious.

  She ignored him anyway. “We conducted a foot search of the area that lasted a week. Also, some Fish and Wildlife guys were doing flyovers for us.”

  “Who was involved in the foot search?”

  “Everyone on our department, plus some folks from Brookings. The Department of the Interior had some law enforcement in the area so they helped out for a few days, too. It was on the national news, you know, at one point.”

  “I saw it.”

  “Some of the families also came out.”

  “Yes. They said they were greeted by two officers and a couple of bloodhounds. One of them smelled of booze.” Jeffers cleared his throat. “One of the officers, I mean. Not one of the bloodhounds.”

  “By the time they showed up we were pretty much only doing the flyovers.”

  “How come?”

  “Because we’ve got a limited staff. Rescue missions take priority. But after a few weeks, it goes from a rescue operation to a recovery operation, which means it slips down a notch on the priority scale. It sounds heartless and cruel, and we don’t admit that sort of stuff to the media, as I’m sure you know, but that’s the straight truth of it. Sure, the department plays politics and makes it sound like they’re in it for the long haul in front of the cameras, but we’ve got other issues to deal with. So do the other departments who assist us. Do you know how many people get lost in the woods out here?”

  Jeffers rubbed at his chin. “Those flyovers never came across anything? Not even a campsite?”

  “No. It’s tough to do proper flyovers out here. The redwoods are so high the planes can’t get low enough to the ground. And then there’s the ground fog that just makes things all the more difficult.”

  Jeffers finished his drink and set it on the bar. “So what do you think happened to those kids?”

  “My personal opinion?”

  “Yes.”

  “Quite literally anything could have happened to them, Mr. Jeffers. The road is blocked off from hikers, campers, and vehicles for a reason. It’s dangerous up there. Log flumes falling apart—”

  “I’ve heard about the flumes.”

  “—and old mines that haven’t been filled in properly. There are caves and hollows and ravines and rocky outcroppings and pretty much whatever else you can imagine. Those kids could have climbed into someplace they shouldn’t have, or fallen off something and broke their necks. Or something could have just as easily fallen on them.” She lowered her voice. “There’s animals, Mr. Jeffers. Things with claws and teeth.”

  “So what do you plan to do from here?”

  “I plan to wait and see what happens when the Downing boy starts talking again.”

  “And what if he never talks again?”

  She lifted her palms off the bar to express that she really had no clue beyond that. What more do you expect me to say? her look asked him.

  “I want to go up there and see what I can find.”

  “I’d strongly advise against that,” she said.

  “I’m very good at being careful.”

  “Careful or not, it’s trespassing. It’s illegal.”

  “Even with a police escort?”

  Lyndon drummed her dull fingernails on the bar. Then she pulled a few dollars from her pocket and tossed them next to her untouched Diet Coke. “It’s late,” she said. “I need to get home and let my dog out.”

  “You didn’t even touch your soda. It’s probably cold by now.”

  This time, his levity penetrated her stony façade, although just barely; she surrendered a slight smile and her eyes appeared to twinkle.

  “What in the name of God are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere, Detective?” he said as she stood up from the barstool.

  “It’s my home,” she told him, and left.

  10

  Sometime around three in the morning, Jeffers awoke in his motel room to what sounded like heavy feet crunching across the pebbles outside his window. He blinked his eyes and held his breath, listening to the sound. It approached from the southern side of the motor lodge, slow and deliberate, heading toward his room. Just when the footsteps sounded like they were outside his door, they stopped. Jeffers’s heart seized. Was it Lee Colson? No—those footsteps were much too heavy for someone of Colson’s meager frame.

  Flipping off the bedclothes, Jeffers slid out of bed and, in the darkness, fumbled his Glock from his bag. He chambered a round then, in his boxer shorts and tank top, went to the door. The chain was in the runner and the bolt was latched. He undid both locks while trying to discern shadows from shadows out in the parking lot through the slender part in the paisley curtains. His eyesight wasn’t what it used to be.

  He opened the door, frigid air accosting him. He took two lumbering steps out into the moonlight in his bare feet, the pebbly ground rough and icy. The gun out in front of him, he stared down the length of the building expecting to see someone standing there staring back at him. A shape, even. But he saw no one.

  The wind picked up, moaning through the hollows of the great redwoods across the road. A mist as thick as a quilt roiled down the tree-studded hillside and spilled out into the roadway. Jeffers thought of old John Carpenter movies and shuddered.

  A noise directly above him—a scrabbling noise.

  He staggered out from beneath the eaves and looked up at the sloping black roof of the lodge, heavy with foliage and dripping with moonlight. Holding his breath again, he listened for the noise to repeat, but it never did. Or if it had, it was quashed by the moan of the wind and the lapping waters of the sound against the bulkhead.

  You’re out here losing your mind, jumping at shadows. Cut it out.

  Shivering, Jeffers went back inside to bed.

  11

  In the morning, he could find no evidence outside his room of his late-night visitor. The pebbly ground looked undisturbed and he could find nothing wrong with the roof of the lodge. However, upon crossing into the parking lot, he identified what looked like deep divots in the packed earth. There were a number of them scattered about, each divot large enough for him to stick three fingers down into it. Crouching there and surveying th
e dirt in the early morning, the mist coming in now off the sound and retreating back across the road and up in to the trees, Jeffers wondered if he was being set up. The idea struck him out of nowhere, and even the sheer absurdity of it did not take away from its fundamental believability.

  Was it true?

  Was he dealing with a cadre of backwoods xenophobes who were trying to Scooby-Doo him out of their quiet little town?

  Nice touch, he thought, recalling the crunching footsteps outside his window last night. Who was it, anyway? Detective Lyndon, who had probably followed me around town all day yesterday? Perhaps the elusive Chief Horton, tired of fishing and finding more enjoyment in tormenting the out-of-towner? Or maybe that crazy old man from the police station, the one who swore he’d hang a bunch of vandals by their peckers for vandalizing his Bronco? What was his name? Ah! Mr. Needles!

  “Mr. Needles, indeed,” Jeffers said, returning to his room for a shower.

  12

  With the map of Coastal Green opened up on the Vic’s passenger seat and a Tadd Dameron–John Coltrane combo in the tape deck, Jeffers headed out to find Summit Pass.

  The Pass itself wasn’t too difficult to locate, though he did have to backtrack at least once, having initially overshot it in his haste. It was a narrow, winding dirt passage that began on the outskirts of town and wended quickly up into the foothills of the redwood forest. As he continued along the Pass, the trees grew thicker and taller and the ground fog became soupier. At one point, the roadway narrowed so that the Vic could hardly keep both sets of tires out of the ferns. The Vic’s undercarriage complained about every bump, groove, or rut in the road.

  Upon seeing the root of a tree cresting like a sea serpent out of the center of the muddy road, Jeffers slammed on the brakes. His tape cassettes clattered down into the foot wells of the car. Leaning past the steering wheel to consult the road ahead, he saw more errant roots, some as thick as telephone cables, arching out of the dirt. The road, it seemed, was becoming overgrown from beneath.

  Undergrown…