Only The Trees Know, page 18
“Overruled,” Judge Wallis said.
Ms. Johnson grinned.
Dawson sat back down with a frown. He threw his pen on his legal pad and sat back heavily in his chair.
“And Mr. Buckley,” Ms. Johnson prompted, “did you find a knife on him?”
Detective Adams nodded. “Yes, he had a knife. We concluded it wasn’t used to stab Mr. Kirkpatrick. The blade conclusively does not match the stab wounds. And the DNA results came back indicating that there was no human blood found on the knife.”
“Could Mr. Buckley have had another knife?”
“Anything is possible. However, according to Mr. Harrison’s own statement, Mr. Buckley only ever showed them a single knife.”
“Are there any other reason’s you’ve discounted Mr. Buckley as a suspect?”
“In my opinion, Mr. Buckley is too mentally unstable to sustain a protracted hunt of teenagers through the forest. He doesn’t remember things. And while he has anger issues, they’ve been focused isolated incidents, no evidence of stalking or any protracted violence.”
“Was there anything else that made you suspicious of Mr. Harrison?” Ms. Johnson asked.
“There was a lot he didn’t say to us in the interrogation room. The more we dug, the more we realized Mr. Harrison keeps lots of secrets.”
“In what way?”
“A lot of things can be traced back to Mr. Harrison. The drugs in Mr. Crandall’s system for one. As far as what we could piece together, they had quite the drug operation going. It originated from Mr. Harrison’s house. He is the connection, the link. Without him, none the others would have access to pharmaceuticals. We could pinpoint that Mr. Crandall sold them. We even have evidence that Liam and Zoe had possession of the drugs at different times.”
“How are you certain that Mr. Harrison knew the drugs were being used and sold?”
Detective Adams smiled again. “His toxicology test came up dirty. He was using.”
“Beyond the physical evidence, what else has led to your suspicion of Mr. Harrison?” Ms. Johnson redirected.
“He started doing strange things,” Detective Adams said.
“Like what?”
“He attended Miss Adler’s funeral, even though he was expressly uninvited. And then proceeded to start a domestic disturbance at the church.”
I sighed. What had happened between Kendall and me now qualified as a domestic disturbance? Detective Adams should be at my house on a Friday night.
“He also began to stalk certain areas where he knew the media would be,” Detective Adams said. “Always playing for the cameras. What grieving person would do that?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
THEN…
IN THE FOREST
Iran blind.
This shit-tastic situation kept getting worse. Parker was dead. We’d left our stuff. It was freezing, and we were lost in the woods. We’d probably die of hypothermia next.
Crashing through the forest, branches swung into my face scratching my skin. I pushed out my arms to bat them away, not letting the cuts and stings slow me down. The forest pressed in on me like a dark molasses, sucking me into its depth. Sometimes my foot would become tangled up in the brush. I twisted to avoid the darker shadows where the trees grew in to block my path.
I jumped at sounds and shadows or sometimes nothing at all. It felt as if there were murderers or animals ready to pounce waiting behind every tree. Carrying my flashlight, I gripped the barrel tighter. I hadn’t turned it on in case it gave our location away. But I wanted it at the ready. If anything were to jump in front of me I’d use it as a weapon.
My heart thumped in my chest and my lungs burned. In the darkness, my panted breath sounded like thunderclaps. We were making too much noise with our crashing through the trees. We’d attract the wrong attention if we kept this up. Any sort of animal could eat us or even lead the Grizzly Man right to us.
I knew we should stop and reevaluate. Take a better track. Figure out a better way to deal with this situation.
And still I ran.
I came up beside Liam. Both of us had passed Zoe some time back. Now we paced each other while Zoe steadily fell behind. At one point, we stopped so that she could catch up. It hurt to stand there. The pull to move was so strong that I almost turned and left her. If the Grizzly Man followed, he’d catch up with our slow pace.
When Liam said, “We need to wait for Zoe,” the second time, I almost didn’t stop.
Then he reached out, and his touch alone made me slow. “Seriously, Josiah. We can’t lose her.”
I wanted to ask why not. Zoe was dead weight. When shit hit the fan, she was not to be relied on. If we had any hope of survival we needed to cut her loose. Now would be the perfect time to ditch her.
Instead of arguing, I kept my mouth shut. I couldn’t really talk anyway. My breath had gone and my throat was dry. I spit a few times on the ground, needing to puke and feeling dizzy.
Liam panted, leaning forward to rest his hands on his knees. “We have to find help. There has to be someone camping around here.”
I hadn’t seen a single other person in over a day so I didn’t put much stock in that suggestion.
“You think that’s a good idea?” I didn’t trust anyone. Even less now given what we’d been through. I could see us running into someone’s campsite, freaking out and telling them about Parker being dead and the dude in our camp with a knife. We were liable to get shot.
Besides, what help could they really give? There was no way to call out. We’d have to wait until morning and hike out anyway. I’d much rather do that alone.
“We’d be in a bigger group,” Liam said.
“So we can all get killed together?”
Zoe screamed, cutting off whatever Liam was about to say.
The sound froze us. We stared at each other, both of us straightening.
Then we heard her yell, “Help me.” It came from some distance back and I realized she was farther behind than I thought.
We both immediately turned and started running, backtracking a few yards.
Zoe lay on the ground leaning forward and grasping her leg. Her body was almost doubled over. She still cried (because she hadn’t stopped) causing me to wonder at the reason for her tears. If she was injured or simply couldn’t run anymore.
We closed in on her, flanking her sides.
Liam lowered himself into a crouch next to her. Nervous energy poured off him. He didn’t reach forward to touch her, keeping his hands twisted together between his knees. “What happened?”
“I tripped,” she said. “Don’t know—it hurts.”
“Shake it off,” he encouraged, still not making a move to touch her. “We need to go. Put more distance between us and that maniac.”
Their interaction puzzled me. His lack of any intimacy was starkly different from the entire trip up to now. I’d be ecstatic if I wasn’t so over both of them. They deserved each other. I was done caring.
Zoe continued to cry. Making no move to stand.
“Come on,” Liam insisted. Stress leaked from him in his voice and movements. “I don’t want to get murdered today.”
“I can’t move my leg.” Zoe said. The pain in her words struck me as truth. It felt honest and raw. Something I’d never associated with her.
“Hold on a sec,” I said to Liam, concerned now. I crouched on the opposite side of her, near the leg she was babying and turned my flashlight on. Then I said to Liam, “Give me some extra light.”
There was a moment of nothing, and then, “I lost my flashlight,” Liam said with surprise. He shuffled, his boots scraping against the forest floor as he presumably looked around.
“What do you mean you lost it?” The flashlight was the only thing we had, how could he possibly lose it? All he had to do was hold onto it while he ran.
Liam made a helpless sound of distress. “I don’t know. We were running and… I don’t know what happened to it.”
How did I get stuck in the woods with a bunch of idiots? They’d get me killed. Furious didn’t begin to cover how I was feeling. I handed my flashlight to Liam. “Shine the light on her leg while I look at it.”
His hand shook as he took it from me. The beam spun wild around the forest before it steadied on Zoe. I quickly accessed what I could see of her before I focused on her leg. One thing was clear: she’d lost her flashlight too.
Liam backed up, giving us more room. I suspected it was more his attempt to not see the extent of her injury. He’d always been a bit squeamish.
Zoe’s leg was pulled tight to her body and she held her arm around it protectively. She rocked back and forth, moaning with pain.
“Can I see it?” I asked.
She continued to lean over the leg, whimpering. Not letting me get close.
I was persistent, though, forcing her to lean back. Eventually she gave me enough space to get my hands on the hem of her pant leg. Zoe wore skinny jeans that molded to her body. There wasn’t a lot of give in the material. It proved impossible to raise the cuff in order to see how the leg looked.
“Can you straighten it?” I asked.
She shook her head. Her teeth pressed into her lip.
I ran my hand over her leg. Not pressing hard, but with enough pressure to see if I could recognize anything unusual or out of place. I couldn’t feel anything, so I pushed a little harder.
Zoe screamed.
“Shh,” I hissed. My heart jumped in my chest as the jolt of adrenaline made me shaky.
Liam made a distressed sound. He said to me, “You’re going to have to cut her jeans.”
I nodded and took my knife from my pocket, flicking it open. There wasn’t much material to work with. I needed to slide the edge of the blade under the hem and I might nick her. “Hold still, the blade’s sharp. I don’t want to cut you.”
Her eyes went wide and she nodded and licked her lips nervously. The crying had stopped, at least. Probably from shock or seeing my knife. Could be either. Not that I cared as long as she stopped squirming.
I turned the knife up so the fabric ran across the blade, splitting the material. The thick fold of the hem took a bit of a jerk to get through. And the jean material needed rough handling to slice. Enough that she whimpered when I jolted her leg.
As much as she attempted to hold herself still, her leg shook. It made it difficult to hold the knife steady.
I took my time, using my other hand to help stabilize her leg. I didn’t want to slip, because who knew what problem that would start with Liam if I sliced her leg open. Once I’d managed to open the pant leg to about midcalf, I closed the knife and put it away. I then pulled the sides of the fabric, ripping it open to the knee. The knife had nicked her skin a little around her calf. It seeped blood but didn’t look too bad.
Her leg looked like crap otherwise. There was an obvious break. The bones were angled in a stacked position so that one sat on top of the other. They hadn’t protruded out of her skin, but they formed a large hump. The area surrounding the break was already a deep purple.
I felt the bottom of the calf to see if both bones had broken, or if it was only the top one.
Zoe whimpered when my fingers touched. I barely put any pressure on her now that I could see the damage. Even so, I couldn’t tell if the other bone was broken too.
“Shit,” Liam stood up taking the light with him. He began to pace in a tight little area next to us running his free hand through his hair, all while cussing and kicking dirt.
“Liam, get it together,” I said. “We need to focus and that’s not helping.”
“What are we going to do?” Liam’s voice sounded desperate and a little hysterical.
Zoe started to cry again. It was as if Liam’s breakdown gave her permission to lose it.
I sighed, focused on Liam instead of Zoe because she was ridiculous at that point and he’d taken the light with him. “For starters, we need to bind it with something.”
The decisiveness in my tone seemed to snap him out of his panic long enough for him to be useful. He stopped pacing and began to hunt for a couple of sturdy branches. Once he found two that would work, he tore his undershirt into strips, putting back on his overshirt and jacket when he was done. We used the strips and branches to brace her leg. It wasn’t like we could reset it and she obviously couldn’t walk on it. Hopefully it would stabilize her enough for the time being.
It took a while to get settled for the night. We weren’t going to move farther into the woods. Not in the dark, not knowing where we were going and with Zoe not able to walk.
I didn’t want to say it out loud, but at this point we were screwed. There was a Grizzly Man with a knife after us. We had nothing—no food, shelter, water, or a cell phone—and one flashlight between the three of us.
Chapter Thirty
NOW…
“Mr. Buckley,” Dawson began, “now that we’ve introduced your military service record, and know you’re a veteran and a little bit about who you are, I want to take some time to ask you a few questions regarding another record.”
William Buckley, AKA the Grizzly Man, didn’t look the same as he’d been that cold, dark night so long ago. There were similarities: he hadn’t cut his hair or trimmed his beard, so they were even wilder now. The differences were significant enough as to make him appear to be a different person than I remembered. First, he was clean. Without the dirt and layers of mud-covered clothes it made him appear human. He slouched in the witness chair wearing an orange jumpsuit.
Dawson began to outline Buckley’s rap sheet. “You’re currently being detained on an aggravated assault charge, is that correct?”
“Shouldn’t be here,” Buckley said. His statement was followed by an indecipherable ramble. He didn’t look directly at Dawson, nor did he look to the jury, or even seem to notice the people in the audience. He was not there, wandering in his mind.
He had ranted in the forest, but there he’d been full of rage. Now his words were quiet and unfocused. I figured he’d been dosed with antipsychotic meds, or something along those lines. I knew firsthand how well they could dull the brain and make a person appear almost calm.
“Is that a yes?” Dawson pressed.
Buckley shouted. “I shouldn’t be here. This is unconstitutional.” The last part was yelled so loud that several jurors jumped in their seats.
“Your Honor, move to strike the answer as unresponsive,” Dawson said.
“Sustained.” The judge leaned toward the witness stand. “Mr. Buckley, please refrain from yelling and keep your answers related to the questions asked.”
Dawson had outlined his plan to call Buckley as the first defense witness. He had said that the best defense relied on providing the jury with a reasonable suspect. To introduce Buckley as he had been then, a hostile and crazy man in the forest, would show that our lives had been in danger. Even if the police couldn’t find any physical evidence linking him to Parker, Zoe, or Liam. Ultimately it would set the tone that the defense had a significantly different theory of what had happened. Then we could proceed to disprove the prosecution’s negative theory.
Now I wondered if calling Buckley as a defense witness would work against me. Who’d believe that this lunatic was coherent enough to chase us through the woods? He was still crazy, but more of a Santa Claus crazy versus a madman crazy. If I hadn’t been there myself, I wouldn’t have believed he could be that other incarnation.
“You were arrested for entering a campsite and stealing food, as well as for an altercation with the campsite’s occupants when they caught you in the act. Is that correct?”
Buckley paused, he looked at Dawson and blinked. In a monotone he answered, “Yes.”
“Had you ever been arrested prior to that incident?”
“Yes.” He’d looked away from Dawson, finding something interesting in the back of the room. Or maybe he stared at the wall. I wasn’t going to turn around and look.
“Can you tell us about that?”
“No, it doesn’t matter.” Buckley switched out of that monotone into a weird sort of yelling-speak. His voice got louder with every word. “This whole set up is a fraud.”
Dawson paused, then continued as if the response was normal. “Isn’t it a fact that you’ve been arrested five times for different acts of violence, ranging from damaging property to assault?”
“Didn’t do anything,” Buckley said, agitated. The chains that shackled his hands to his waist jangled.
“You were arrested and placed in a psychiatric hold, is that correct?” Dawson held up what I assumed was his rap sheet.
Buckley twitched once, twice, then settled down. “Yes.”
“Are you estranged from your family?”
Buckley’s focus darted around the room.
“Mr. Buckley? Do you have contact with your family?” Dawson pressed.
Buckley’s gaze snapped back to Dawson. “No.”
“Why is that?”
“They want me dead.” Spittle flew from his mouth.
“Have you been prescribed medication?” Dawson asked.
Buckley’s gaze lost focus and then blinked back. He calmed, slipping into that strange half-trance. “Yes.”
“When you are not held by the State, do you take the medication prescribed to you?”
Buckley made a face as if he couldn’t understand the question.
“Mr. Buckley,” Dawson asked with a stern push to his voice. “Answer the question, please.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Buckley’s temperament slipped again. “Because I don’t need to be controlled by Big Pharma. They control us all. You all are mindless robots, created to serve.”
“Right,” Dawson agreed, then cleared his throat. “Let’s talk about what you remember of your time living in the woods.” He pointed at me. “You said you remember Mr. Harrison?”
“Yes.”
“You approached him? Spoke to him?”
“Yes.” Buckley’s eyes appeared clear now. He looked straight at me. For the first time in the courtroom his focus was pinned.
