“Never saw it coming,” Sal said.
The furnishings in the room said bachelor. Wood, heavy, browns and dark greens, well worn. Neat but not fussy. I recognized the small coffee table having made it for Jacob from an old piece of reclaimed American Chestnut a dozen years before as a gift for helping me clear a particularly stubborn patch of Shore Pine at Willow Weep.
Jacob, like me, had an affinity for unusual or hard-to-get wood and the American Chestnut tree had been all but wiped out by a blight that started in New York in 1904 and virtually downed all four billion Chestnut trees in the U.S. by the start of World War II.
Attempts at repopulating the U.S. with the tight grained hardwood haven’t succeeded even though efforts began in the 1930s. California and the Northwest are the only remaining areas where the American Chestnut still survives in any significant numbers, but even at that they’re typically single trees among forests of others.
Jacob and I had been working for a logging company east of Myrtle Point and ran across three American Chestnuts in a single afternoon. We cleared everything around them and convinced the foreman that we couldn’t fell those particular trees because of the rarity.
A few weeks later only two were standing. Seems the foreman knocked one of them down and hauled it away to make some cash on the side. When Jacob heard about it, he and I made a special visit to the foreman, left him with a broken nose and some busted fingers and the threat to chainsaw his house to the ground if he touched the last two trees.
Don’t get me wrong, I consider forests a crop to be thinned, turned into lumber and used. After all, who wants plastic toilet paper? But I have no patience for unnecessary destruction. But, hey, that’s me. And was Jacob.
A light blue Chevy Silverado pulled into the drive, county seal on the door. A small, thin man with a moustache and only a fringe of hair climbed out, opened the rear door and pulled out a battered hard-side case.
“Forensics is here,” Forte said.
Harry Bosch, unrelated to the Los Angeles detective, lugged the big case to the porch.
“Gentlemen,” he said to the three of us. “You have a client for me?”
Forte pointed through the door.
“Well, he looks dead.”
“Reason I called, Harry.”
“Just joking. Give me a few and I’ll let you know whatever I can. Did anyone touch anything?”
“Nope. What you see is what we saw,” Forte responded.
Bosch opened his case on the porch, pulled out a pair of latex gloves and a small hand-held black light. He pointed it toward the door and scanned the jam, handle and facing.
“Nothing unusual here,” he said more to himself than to us.
He switched to a super-bright flashlight, crouched down so the beam played across the carpet at a low angle and directed it between the doorway and Jacob’s feet. “Couple of shoe indentations. Tennies, I’d guess.”
I glanced just inside the doorway. On a rubber mat were two pair of boots and a pair of Velcro-strap nylon shoes. Few people in the area would walk into their homes with their shoes or boots on electing, instead, to leave them just inside the door. Too much rain, pine needles and dirt get dragged in otherwise.
“Jake isn’t wearing shoes,” I said, nodding toward the body.
“Sweat socks,” Sal responded. “Looks like the killer didn’t know the local courtesy.”
I leaned over Bosch’s case and pulled a small tape measure from his kit, slid out about a foot of the metal ruler and carefully set it next to the first shoe impression. “About a size eight or nine. Hard to tell on the carpet, but certainly not bigger than a nine.” Harry nodded agreement.
I asked Bosch to push down hard on the carpet with his gloved hand and remove it when I told him to. He did. I gave it a five count then nodded. Bosch lifted his hand. The impression remained in the nap.
“Old carpet,” Bosch and I said in virtual unison.
“Lost its resiliency,” I said.
Bosch leaned over and planted his nose into the carpet. “It’s been recently shampooed and vacuumed.” Standing up he looked at Forte, “Your guy weighs 130 to 150 pounds, wears a size nine shoe so he’s probably not carrying around a beer-barrel gut unless he’s a big-footed midget. You agree, Nick?”
“Spot on.”
“This have something to do with the guy you found in the tree?”
“Could be,” Forte answered.
“Huh. And where are the bones?”
Sal and I looked at each other. A smile spread across Forte’s face. Clearing my throat, “Well, we kinda burned them.”
“What?”
“Well, not really. We started a fire with the Madrone…”
“Jesus H, Nick. You burned them?”
“Not a lot.”
“You didn’t burn them a lot.” Bosch started to cluck. “You meat head. That sounds like something Sal would do.”
Sal sputtered, “I beg your pardon?”
Forte shook his head and walked away. I thought I heard him laughing to himself.
“No offense,” Bosch said, raising his hand in defense. “Actually, it’s the most expedient way of getting bones out of wood. Chalk one up for you guys. Can I see them?”
“Well, sure. You want to come out and pick them up or do you want us to put them in a trash bag and deliver them?”
Bosch looked to the sky. “Nick, Nick, Nick.” he sighed, “I’ll come get them. This afternoon okay?”
“Sure. The trash bag offer still stands.”
CHAPTER THREE
After Bosch picked up the bones on Tuesday, Sal and I spent the next couple of days putting our respective houses in order before Cookie and Tatiana headed out. I had a Honey Do list a mile long with a growing number of “reminders” including feeding the cats, leaving left-over pizza for Lilly the raccoon (there is no left over pizza when Cookie’s gone. Scratch that one.), changing the bed sheets at least once a week (fat chance) and throwing away any Chinese-food containers after three weeks.
Then it hit the fan on Thursday.
That’s when the Western World newspaper is published and the front page was totally devoted to “Tree Man” including Karl’s three photos as well as lengthy speculation about the link between Jake’s killer and the fact he cut down the Madrone with the encased skeleton. Some fool was quoted as saying the skeleton was a Native American and this was retribution for disturbing a hallowed grave. Chief Forte was quoted as saying it was too early to make such statements and that Sal and I were working to uncover the true nature of both the Tree Man and Jake’s murder and if they were even remotely connected. The spokesperson for the Consolidated Tribes of Siletz, of which the Coquilles are a part, explained there was no record of any of such ritual remotely resembling encasing someone in a tree.
My cell phone buzzed.
“Drago.”
“Nick, Forte. Just got the autopsy report on Jacob. Single shot to the back of the head, which we knew. A .22, it appears. From a semi-auto, not a revolver. We ran it through the data base and found a test bullet that