“Are we going to start making out?” Harry asked.
“Look,” Cirba said, pointing to a small light flickering deep in the woods.
“Where the hell are we going?” Harry asked as they pulled off the Five Mile Road onto a dirt track.
“Don’t you recognize this? It’s the Horseshoe Road.”
They didn’t have to travel very far before Cirba pulled in behind one of a dozen cars parked on the back road. Harry started walking up the track to the footpath that led into what this morning was a crime scene.
“Not that way,” Cirba said in a loud whisper. “Let’s bushwhack.”
Harry followed the cop into the woods. The almost full moon provided almost enough light for Harry to see without braining himself on a tree branch, but without his towering companion to lead the way, Harry would have been seriously spooked being in these woods at night. As they got close to the campfire they heard the music and then saw about thirty teenagers milling around a fire and a quarter keg of beer in a galvanized tub.
At the treeline Cirba whispered, “This is the fun part. Watch.” He stepped into the clearing, reached into both of his pockets and produced a flashlight and a wallet. “POLICE,” he shouted, illuminating the badge with the light. “Everybody stay where they are.”
In a nanosecond two-thirds of the kids dropped their beers and disappeared into the forest. Cirba turned to Harry and shone the light on his face showing a huge grin.
One of the remaining teenagers who sported an orange hunting cap said: “Ow man, don’t you have anything better to do than bust up a little kegger?”
Cirba walked towards the youth and said: “Who said I was busting up your party? I just wanna talk.”
“You mean we can stay?” the kid asked.
“Are the drivers drinking?”
“No, we’re not stupid.”
“Then I got no problem. HEY,” Cirba shouted, “you in the woods. Come on back, I promise I won’t arrest you or take names or anything.”
Slowly the teenagers appeared out of the forest like elves in a fantasy movie but it wasn’t until Cirba asked if he and Harry could have a beer that the kids began to relax.
“A man was killed here this week,” Cirba said.
A kid with a backwards facing baseball cap said: “You don’t have to tell us; over there’s the guy that found him.”
Sitting alone on a log by the fire was a young man about 18. The light from the flames flickered on a face that had that vacant look Harry recognized as post-traumatic stress. If it wasn’t full blown PTSD then it was close to it. He’d seen the look before on the faces of people who had seen things too horrible to forget. Hell, he’d seen it in the mirror.
“How’s he doing?” Harry asked.
“He was freaked out by it. He was OK at first but he’s got weirder, and now he’s just holed up in his room. I convinced him to come out with us tonight but maybe it was a bad idea to bring him here.”
“You think?” Cirba said sarcastically.
“No no,” Harry said. “It wasn’t such a bad idea. Let me talk to him. What’s his name?”
The kid and cop simultaneously said: “Ryan.”
Harry walked over and pointed to a spot next to the boy. “Is this log taken?”
The boy looked up, confused, as if he hadn’t heard the question. “Huh?”
“Do you mind if I sit?” Harry asked.
“Oh, no.”
“You’re Ryan, right?”
“Yeah,” he replied like he wasn’t sure.
“I’m Harry Cull.”
Ryan looked over and saw Cirba talking to the other kids as if it was the first time he noticed. “That’s the cop I spoke to the other day. You a cop too?”
“Not really but I work with them. Can I get you a beer?”
“Na I’m OK.”
“Are you?”
Ryan didn’t answer.
“It’s all right not to be. I’ve had what happened to you happen to me.”
Ryan had his head down practically between his knees. He didn’t look up when he said: “You found a dead guy in the woods?”
“Well, not in the woods but, yes, I’ve found dead guys.”
That got the boy’s attention. “What did you do?”
“What did you do? Is more to the point.”
“I um… I told the other cop everything.”
“Yeah but now I’d like to hear what happened. Start at the beginning. What were you doing here?”
“I came to shoot. I was thinking of getting a deer license this year and… well, I’m not the best shot.”
“You had a gun with you?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind?”
“A .30-30.”
“How’d you get here?”
“I drove.”
“What car?” Harry asked to get him in the habit of naming the specifics. The more details Ryan recalled the better it would be for the investigation and for Ryan too.
“My… my mom’s Prius.”
“And you were alone?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you go anywhere before you came up here?”
“No, not with a gun in the car.”
“Sensible. So where did you park?”
“At the bottom, right in front of the footpath.”
Harry waited but Ryan wasn’t saying anything without prompting. “So then what?”
“I got out and got my gun and ammo outta the trunk and walked up to the range.”
“Did you load the gun?”
“No, sir, I walked with it pointing down and the bolt open just like Big Bill taught me.”
“Big Bill taught you to shoot?”
“Yeah, he used to take me shooting up here when I was a kid. He wasn’t supposed to, ya know? But he was always really careful about it. He was the guy that taught me my gun safety. If I ever started messing around when the guns were out – that was it – shooting was over.”
“So he was your friend?”
“He was… He was more like a big brother, ya know?” Ryan was having a hard time keeping it together. “I’m an only child. He was… he was good to me.”
“So you were walking up the path with your gun unloaded and then what?”
“He loved it here. He and the older kids used ta party up here all the time. He was the guy that told us about this place.”
Ryan was obviously trying to avoid speaking of what happened next. Harry let him go on.
“Sometimes