Chapter 74

As soon as he did, Rawle stopped being a volunteer search and rescue tech and switched to full reporter mode.
Kyle Verryn bumped into the parking lot, driving his ancient black Volvo station wagon.
The car would likely not make it up the abandoned road, where the crime scene was being processed.
The fire road leading off Corkum & Burns road was said to be badly eroded and rutted by 40 years of hard South Mountain rain and overgrowth.
Rawle knew he had to get to where the bodies were, somehow. To see it for himself.
They got ready to start walking.
Cst. Keith came and blocked their path in the parking lot.
“It’s a long way up, boys. Plus, they’ve got the main road blocked off up there. You won’t get anywheres near the crime scene.”
“We have to get up there, Matt, for Christ sake!” Rawle hissed.
“I know,” Cst. Keith whispered. “Shut up.”
He quietly shunted them aside and led them around the back of Big Orange.
Terry Killacky’s black F-150 pickup truck was parked there, with a black utility trailer on the back, carrying Valley Search and Rescue’s 8x8, off-road vehicle, an Argo Conquest, nicknamed the ‘Ballgrinder.’
The word ‘Ballgrinder’ was stencilled on one side of the blue plastic chassis in black electrical tape.
Cst. Keith looked side-to-side to make sure no one was watching, then lowered the ramp of the utility trailer. The Ballgrinder’s keys were sitting in the ignition.
Rawle jumped up onto the trailer and climbed into the front bench-seat. The Argo was shaped like a tiny Jeep, with two bench seats and a storage space in back.
Verryn climbed into the second seat.
Cst. Keith drew a quick map in a snow layer on the front hood, explaining how to get to the crime scene. “Take a GPS device just in case. It’s about a hundred metres Southwesterly from the west edge of the farmer’s field. I can’t come with you. But I’ll hopefully see you there.” He walked away, talking on his radio.
Rawle studied the map quickly. He would have to enter the woods, cross some cottage properties, climb through steep forest terrain and zip through a farmer’s field. He would also have travel out of eyesight from Corkum & Burns Road, because it would be full of cops heading to the crime scene.
“Hold on,” Rawle said, gunning the engine and dropping back off the trailer, down the ramp. His actions were shielded on one side by Big Orange and by the forst on the other.
He worked the twin steering levers up and down, turning a perfect 180, just like a tank, then he gunned it into the bush.
The Ballgrinder didn’t move as fast as a normal ATV, but chewed over any terrain Rawle could throw at it, and it was amphibious if had to cross any streams or frozen ponds. They pounded through pure forest on eight squat, mushy tires the size of basketballs.
Rawle pushed it hard, shielding his face from branches with the sleeve of his left arm, propelling up a long, slow incline, and tracing down a rocky creek bed, crunching over logs, boulders, snowbanks.
He somewhat followed the road below, keeping an eye out for cops.
When they arrived at the edge of the farmer’s field, he turned around and told Verryn to duck down and cover himself with an army-green sleeping bag that was lashed to the back. Verryn was wearing a red coat, and would otherwise stand out horribly in the snowy field.
Rawle’s Helly Hansen coat was navy blue and resembled the long black coats worn by the RCMP officers in the area. He hoped that as he drove through the field, any nearby cops would take him for a fellow police officer.
He kept his eyes front and drove the grumbling Ballgrinder, as fast as it would go, straight across the field, for what seemed like an eternity, then finally plunged into the safety of the forest again on the other side.
A few minutes later, he could see where the fire road ran through the bush. A few seconds after that, the lights of a police ATV and RCMP Jimmy became visible in the forest.
He killed the Argo’s engine.
The reporters left the Ballgrinder sitting slanted in a shallow rut and continued on foot toward the crime scene, creeping slowly through the bush toward a circus of police lights and activity.
They came toward the scene from the left side, creeping up a perpendicular path to the fire road. Verryn moved with the dark green sleeping bag still cloaked over his body, for camouflage.
When they arrived at the scene, they could see a couple senior officers from Wolfville, standing around what Rawle immediately recognized as Jack Lee’s tan-and-white GMC truck.
His trusted wheels, brutally crashed into a ditch along the edge of the stump-encrusted path.
The entire area was being taped off with yellow police line. Rawle knew the scene would be preserved and guarded closely from outside civilian intrusion. The county medical examiner would be en route and the scene had to be catalogued and videotaped by a forensic identification officer.
The reporters hunched behind a snowbank at the treeline, trying to stay out of sight. If they were seen, they’d be sent away.
Rawle could see more activity centred around a pile of mashed-up light red snow about 20 metres from the truck. The snow looked a big pile of strawberry slush.
Cops dressed head-to-toe in white coveralls, forensic officers, were blocking his view of the slush pile. Suddenly, one of them moved to one side. The bodies came into view, jutting awkwardly out of a ditch, like dirty mannekins.
Bodies.
He adjusted his eyes and focused as hard as he could on the coral red snow.
There was so much blood. It looked like someone slaughtered a cow there.
A dark feeling came over his shoulders and crushed his heart like a pair of hands. It’s so real, he thought. A strange, insect-like vibration sound began to thrum loudly in Rawle’s eardrum, like some sort of evil spirit caught inside his head.
What the fuck? Oh, I’m having a stroke, Rawle thought, rubbing at his ear, but the vibrating stopped.
An RCMP Member, standing off to one side of the bodies, was in the process of unfolding an orange plastic tarp to cover them over with.
He turned suddenly and looked Rawle right in the eyes. “Hey, no pictures!” he yelled, trying to hold up the folded blanket as a shield. But it was too late.
Verryn was kneeling in the snowbank, snapping pictures with his digital camera.
The officer put down hi starp and stalked angrily toward the treeline. “Gimme that camera!” he yelled.
Rawle and Verryn stood up, sheepishly. “You two are are in deep shit!”
Rawle and Verryn began to talk, both at once: “We’re reporters-reporters for the Gazette-. Jack’s our boss. Those people are our-my friends-friends!”
“-Hold it right where you are, and shut up!” the cop barked, pointing a stern finger at Rawle’s chest. “What’s your name?”
“My name? Why?” Rawle protested, weakly. “What do you need my name for?”
Some other cops were walking over to the confrontation now. Cst. Keith, to Rawle’s great relief, was one of them.
“Just a minute, Kerry. It’s okay,” Cst. Keith said. “I know these guys.”
He took the other cop aside and spoke with him in private. Somehow, he seemed to settle the matter. Verryn held onto his camera, but agreed to stop taking pictures of the bodies.
The reporters were even allowed to remain at the scene, as long as they stood behind the line of crime scene tape.
Even from the other side of the tape, Rawle could not believe what he was witnessing. He had seen dead bodies before, but nothing like this.
His friends looked like stupid caricatures of their former selves. Like someone had sculpted them unflatteringly out of raw, skinned shark cartileage.
It made him sick.
The nervous feeling in his stomach changed into loose nausea. He threw up quickly into his hands.
“Oh Shit… Don’t look.”
Jack and Tee were buried up to their waists in the red slush snow. Their heads looked flat and misshapen, just like the dog.
Like someone had beaten their heads flat, and the skin on their faces bloated up a little and then it all froze that way. They looked like monsters. Like zombies. The deformity of their faces was disturbing to look at, but Rawle could not turn away.
There was a horrifying pull, especially from Tamara’s face. He felt compelled to study her, in detail, to somehow make sense of what he was seeing. To put the puzzle of her mis-shapen face back together again.
Her left cheek was completely smashed. The eyeball ran down her cheek like a soft-boiled egg.
He closed his eyes and tried to stifle a flutter in his stomach.
He had to process the scene. He had to detach himself somehow.
He looked away and tried to think about something else.
There were two big rocks sitting on the side of the ditch.
Rawle wondered why the rocks were there like that. They looked totally out of place. They reminded him of tombstones, as if the killer had erected tombstones for Jack and Tee.
Killer, Rawle repeated. There was a murderer, at least. Someone responsible. Thank God for that. This was no murder-suicide.
He kicked snow over his lumpy vomit on the ground, like a dog burying its diarrhea, to cover up the smell of weakness.