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STOP!

WHITE RIVER GUN CLUB

TRESPASSERS PROSECUTED

A quarter mile farther the trail ended at a broad, grassy clearing. Here, in the misty overcast, Gurney could see the first hint of dawn. On the far side of the clearing he could just make out the flat gray surface of a lake.

To the left of the clearing’s edge, his flashlight revealed the dark bulk of a log cabin. He knew from Torres’s map that this was the one Beckert and Turlock shared. He remembered that there were a dozen similar clearings and cabins along the edge of the lake, connected by a trail which, going in the opposite direction, led eventually to the playground at Willard Park.

“I’ll check out the inside,” said Gurney. “You take a look around the outside.”

Hardwick nodded, unsnapped the safety strap on his holster, and headed for the far side of the cabin. Gurney moved the Beretta from his ankle holster to the pocket of his windbreaker and approached the log structure. The moist air here carried the distinctive scents of pine and lake water. As he got closer he noted that the cabin was resting on a traditional concrete-block foundation, suggesting the existence of at least a crawl space beneath it.

He switched his phone from its flashlight to its compass app and proceeded per Payne’s instructions to the northeast corner of the building and from there due east to a foot-square piece of bluestone. Lifting it, he found a small plastic bag. Switching back to his flashlight, he saw that the bag contained two keys rather than just the one Payne had referred to.

He returned to the cabin. The first key he tried unlocked the door. As he was about to push it open Hardwick reappeared from the opposite side of the building.

“Find anything?” asked Gurney.

“Outhouse with a composting toilet. Small generator. Big shed with a big padlock.”

Gurney handed him the second key. “Try this.”

“Better not be full of spiders,” said Hardwick, taking the key and heading back the way he came. “I fucking hate spiders.”

Gurney pushed the cabin door open. Sweeping his flashlight back and forth, he entered cautiously and advanced slowly toward the center of a good-sized, pine-paneled room. At one end there was a stove, a sink, and a small refrigerator, no doubt run by the generator when the cabin was in use. At the other end there was a propane heater, a spartan couch, and two hard-looking armchairs set at right angles to the couch. Directly in front of him, there was a rectangular table on a rectangular rug with a rectangular pattern. Behind the table a ladder ascended to a loft.

Curious about the possibility of a crawl space, he began looking for access. He worked his way around the room, examining the floorboards. Coming back to where he started, he moved the table, folded back the rug, and ran his light over the area.

Had it not been for the gleaming brass finger hole, he might have missed it, so precisely aligned was the trapdoor with the surrounding boards. Bending over and placing his finger in the hole, he found that the door pivoted up easily on silent hinges. Shining his light down into the dark space below, he was surprised to see it was nearly as deep as a regular cellar.

He descended the plain wooden stairs. When his feet reached the concrete floor he discovered that his head just cleared the exposed floor joists above him. Everything in the beam of his flashlight appeared remarkably clean—no dust, no cobwebs, no mold. The air was dry and odorless. Against one wall there was a long worktable, and on a pegboard above it were rows of tools—saws, screwdrivers, wrenches, hammers, chisels, drill bits, rulers, clamps—each group arranged in size order from left to right.

It reminded him of the way the nuns at his grammar school used to line up the kids in the schoolyard after recess, in size order, from the shortest to the tallest, before marching them back into the building. He found the thought, like most of his childhood memories, unpleasant.

He turned his attention back to the matter at hand, noting that the only empty space on the pegboard occurred near the larger end of the row of clamps. The missing clamp triggered the memory of his conversation with Paul Aziz and the photos of the crime-scene ropes showing flattened spots consistent with the use of a clamp.

Against the opposite wall he saw a stack of two-by-four framing studs. He walked slowly around the cellar, making sure he wasn’t missing anything significant. He checked the floor, the concrete-block walls, the spaces between the joists above his head. He found nothing unusual, other than the remarkable orderliness of the place and the absence of dust.

When he came to one end of the stack of studs he noted that it was twelve studs high by twelve deep. The ends on that side were aligned perfectly with each other, no stud even a millimeter out of place. It occurred to him that such an obsessive concern for symmetry could be the basis of a clinical diagnosis.