Courting Murder Read online

crawled around inside his head, fixing to stomp his brain. Migraine headaches accompanied by auras were a couple of delightful things he often experienced before major storms.

  Rosswell assured him, “If it rains, I won’t drive through any standing water. I don’t want to get swept downstream.”

  Hermie pointed again to the west where cumulonimbus clouds massed. “Don’t drown.” He straightened his tie. “Turn around.”

  “There’s another saying.”

  “Another saying?”

  He offered Hermie something else to chew on. “There are no old, bold mushroom hunters.”

  There was a peace symbol where the VW logo had once been on the tongue-shaped hood of the Super Beetle Cabriolet. Rosswell touched it for luck, hopped back in, and then drove his convertible, top down, into the park. With a hard right and a drive up a hill, he pulled into Picnic Area 3. He was alone at his favorite picnic site. Attendance at the park had plummeted the last few years. First, the park was located off a gravel road, which intersected with a rarely used and paved county road. Second, water parks, swimming pools, electronic games, cable television, cell phones, the Internet, McDonald’s and whatever, had outranked sitting around in the open staring at trees, eating stale sandwiches, and drinking lukewarm sweet tea.

  The picnic area roosted on a low and isolated hill. It was surrounded by thick woods and bisected by a small stream that ran into a river. Mimosa trees sprouted their spiky pink flowers around the clearing. Rosswell caressed and smelled one of the blooms. The hill beyond the picnic area tapered down into the river, which produced a soothing sound that only running water makes. Rosswell decided he’d take a nap by the river when he took a break from snapping pictures later on. The view afforded him a horizon to horizon panorama of valleys, ridges, creeks, and other hills. It was nowhere as spectacular as the Rocky Mountains or even the Smoky Mountains, but it was home and it was beautiful.

  As Hermie had pointed out, there had been a tremendous thunder- storm last night with plenty of rain. The drenching had freshened up the place. Although it was early in the summer, the heat was already stifling and the humidity was rank. Perfect weather for mushrooms sprouting. The air smelled of vigorous growth. Rosswell was stalking the Chanterelle, a small golden mushroom that lived in the semi- darkness surrounding the park’s stands of decades old white oak trees. He knew Chanterelles were most likely to grow around the bases of such trees.

  When he ambled around a bend and approached a white oak festooned with mistletoe in its upper branches, his super-sensitive nose shifted into overdrive. The odor was familiar, but not pleasant. Definitely not sweet. It was the beginnings of the worst smell in the world, a smell he knew, thanks to Uncle Sam awarding him a free tour of the Middle East. A smell that clung to your clothes, hair, skin, and the insides of your mouth and nostrils long after you’d left its source. Stuff cottage cheese, lettuce, meat, and milk in a garbage can. Let the crud fester in a sunny room in a closed-up house during the hottest days of summer. After a week, pry off the lid and suck in a deep breath. That wouldn’t even be close to what he now smelled. The assault on Rosswell’s olfactory system blossomed into a nuclear bombardment. The migraine ballooned from a minor irritant to a full-blown head banger.

  Rosswell gagged. If he’d brought Vicks VapoRub, it would’ve melted in the heat before he could swab his nostrils to block the odor. As much as it offended his sense of smell, he drew several deep breaths to keep from puking. When that seemed on the verge of failing, he breathed through his mouth.

  Pushing himself towards the nauseating odor grew harder and harder. It commanded all his willpower to move forward. He really wanted to run like a hornet had stung his ass, but he pressed on. Something up ahead had mushroomed into a major stinkfest. All around him lay nothing but what seemed to be normal woodsy stuff, until he heard the buzzing of a million insects. Swiveling towards the sound, he watched a flurry of dark flying things rising and falling, great masses of bugs hovering over mounds of something. The swarm sang of death and decay.

  He inched closer.

  About thirty feet away, two bloated figures lay on the bank of the stream, now running full nearly to overflowing due to the previous night’s rain. Perhaps it was a double drowning. No, people didn’t drown and then crawl up on the bank. Maybe a murder-suicide. Or maybe garden variety natural deaths. No. He doubted that two people had died natural deaths while lying next to each other. There was only one explanation for what he saw. He was looking at two murdered humans.

  He scanned the area again. No one else around.

  Rosswell snatched up his cellphone. Two words: NO SERVICE.

  He galloped back to his car and drove the convertible out of the site, stopping to pull a big log across the road. That should forestall any more accidental discoveries of the grisly scene. People don’t move logs off roads. It involved manual labor.

  Back at the front gate, Hermie said, “Done already, Judge? That was quick.” The faint odor of alcohol had grown stronger.

  Two bars popped up on Rosswell’s phone. “Hermie, don’t let anyone else into the park.” Speed dial rushed the call. A slug or two of Jack Daniel’s sounded good to Rosswell. He pondered for a millisecond about asking Hermie if he had any booze to spare and share. No, that would get the rumor mill pumping full steam. In addition, he’d been sober for five years, three weeks, and two days. Since he hadn’t worn his watch, he wasn’t sure of the number of hours. Rosswell checked the time on his phone. Add fourteen hours and thirty-seven minutes to the time of sobriety.

  On the other end, the phone rang. No answer and no voicemail. It simply kept ringing.

  “How come I can’t let anyone in?” Hermie shined his badge with a shirt cuff. “The park’s open and I have to let people in.” He’d undoubtedly heard rumors about the judge who did and said strange things. Especially after Rosswell had a snootful. “I can’t tell people they’re barred from the park. The taxpayers expect their park to be open.”

  “That’s a court order. No one comes in this park. And you stop and detain anyone who tries to leave. That’s a court order, too.”

  “Court order? Stop and detain?”

  “Something bad’s happened.”

  Rosswell’s call ended. He pressed redial.

  Hermie’s eyes brightened. Apparently, the thought that he might stop and detain someone under a court order from a judge put visions of a headline-worthy arrest in his brain. “Stop and detain. I got it. Stop and detain.”

  Rosswell could tell that Hermie liked the sound of the phrase. The ranger straightened his spine, jutted his chin and belly forward, pulled his shoulders back, and dropped his hands to his side. He saluted Rosswell, whose gut rumbled a warning that Hermie couldn’t be trusted to guard a crime scene.

  “Frizz,” Rosswell said when he eventually got an answer, “I’m here with Hermie Hillsman at the front gate out at Foggy Top. There’re two bodies in Picnic Area 3.”

  Hermie belched and stiffened even more, whipping his head left and right to inspect the area around him. The news sobered him. His frown made Rosswell glad the ranger didn’t have a gun, else he may have shot an innocent picnicker on sight if the picnicker didn’t want to be stopped and detained.

  “Bodies?” Sheriff Charles “Frizz” Dodson yelled into the phone at his end of the conversation. “Rosswell, don’t you touch a damned thing. I’ll be right there.”

  Frizz seemed particularly cranky. He hung up before Rosswell could tell him goodbye. That was no way to talk to a judge. And what the hell did he think Rosswell would touch? His cellphone felt hot, as if Frizz’s blast had heated up its innards.

  Hermie said, “There are two bodies up there?”

  “Correct.”

  “Are they fresh?”

  Rosswell sniffed but at this distance couldn’t smell anything nasty. “Not very.”

  “How long have they been dead?”

  “Hermie,” Rosswell said, ignoring his question, “do you have video surveillance he
re?” He waved his hand around, pointing to various locations in the gazebo.

  “You mean like a movie camera?”

  The heat made sweat pour down Rosswell’s face and neck. “Yeah, like a movie camera.” His patience evaporated as the sweat increased. The thickening clouds in the sky had no effect on the high temperature, but they made his head hurt. The migraine made Rosswell long for clear blue skies.

  Hermie shined his badge with his shirtsleeve again while he surveyed the park for people. “The state barely has enough money to keep this place open, much less put up movie camera surveillance.” After turning a complete circle, he said, “I’ll keep my eyes peeled.”

  “When was the last time you saw anyone come in here?”

  “Today?” Rosswell’s estimation of Hermie’s intelligence lowered by the second.

  “Hermie, any time. Today. Yesterday. Whenever.”

  “Must’ve been yesterday sometime. Or maybe the day before. No cars.”

  Hermie could’ve been passed out and missed a parade. The killer could’ve driven right past him and he’d have never noticed.

  Hermie said, “I saw a couple of people in a canoe, paddling down Cloudy River.”

  He referred to the quarter-mile-wide river, now running high with last night’s rain. Cloudy River lived up to its name during most of the year, running muddy and murky.

  “Did you see anyone drive up to Picnic Area 3? Or any