It does … until you work it through. If you’ve just seen two of your companions brutally murdered and the third stabbed in the stomach, you are not going to flee and build yourself a nice campsite while you recuperate.
Even if your brain was somehow addled enough for you to merrily construct a new camp a kilometer from the murder site, where would the tent come from? The tinfoil-wrapped meals? The matches? The rope? The attackers took their supplies. That’s presumably why they attacked.
I crouch in front of Storm. “Can you find his trail again?” I repeat “trail” with the appropriate gestures, but she is unsure. I understand now what bothered her earlier. The sequence of events. Trails have an age, based on strength, and she’s had enough training and experience to know that the trail between this campsite and the murder scene seemed older than others. She’d been backtracking along a trail. That means this is the earlier site.
She snuffles around and indicates the entrance trail to this site by walking down it a bit and then pointing. He came from that direction, Mom, and I can follow it if you’d like, but I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for.
No, it is not.
I do a thorough examination of this campsite as I tell Dalton my thoughts. He doesn’t have a solution to this particular mystery. There’s nothing left here but signs of habitation. No marks in the dirt or the vegetation to suggest a struggle. A campsite used and cleared as they moved on.
We return to the crime scene, and I resume my investigation. Here we do find those signs of violence, and not just in the bodies left behind. There’s blood in the dirt, more spattered on the tent and the campfire rocks. Scuffle marks in the soft ground. Footprints, too. I take pictures of them—I have a digital camera, and there’s a screen in Rockton for me to enlarge them on, a reasonable use of our limited solar power.
I have the one hiking boot. That’s it—Sophie came to us barefoot. I match this boot to some of the prints. I also see ones with a similar tread but smaller. I measure what remains of the dead woman’s foot and roughly size it at a seven or eight. I’d sized Sophie’s earlier, so I could locate her prints, and she’d been an eight. Two women with similar shoe sizes and likely similar footwear. The boot I’m holding matches Dalton’s size ten. In other words, average for a man.
Two men and two women, wearing the same brand of hiking boots, all with average-size feet. Useless.
What’s more important, though, is that I don’t see any significantly different treads. I do, however, spot prints from footwear without treads. Different treaded boots would mean other hikers or miners or trappers. Some settlers also traded for modern boots, and everyone in Rockton has them. These, however, are the soft-soled outlines of the homemade footwear worn by most settlers … and all hostiles.
As I’ve already noted, the supplies are gone. That’s not surprising. It doesn’t matter if they were attacked by settlers or hostiles or fellow hikers—their gear wouldn’t be left behind. There is only the tent, which appears to have been slashed in the attack. It’s nylon and lightweight, perfect for camping, but too flimsy for settlers or hostiles.
The tent …
Something about the tent …
I contemplate it for a moment before turning back to the bodies. My gaze goes straight to that lone hiking boot with the foot inside.
An image flashes. Dalton and Kenny and me in a clearing, not unlike this. Surrounded by hostiles. The leader telling Dalton to undress. For a moment, I thought it was about humiliating our leader. Then I realized the truth. They were going to kill him, and they didn’t want his clothing ruined.
I shiver at the memory. Dalton steps behind me, fingers going to my elbow.
“Okay?” he murmurs.
I turn and hug him—a fierce, quick hug. He kisses the top of my head as I pull away, and I pause a second before regaining my composure.
“I’m trying to determine whether they took the clothing,” I say. “The packs, yes, and there’d be clothing in them, but what they were wearing…”
“Ah.” One arm goes around me in a quick embrace as he understands that sudden hug. “May I speculate?”
“Please.”
“What we encountered last spring was a hunting party in what Maryanne described as a ‘down’ phase.”
“Lucid,” I say. “Thinking clearly enough not to want to ruin our clothing.”
“Yep. In the ‘up?
?? phase—the manic one—they wouldn’t have thought of that, she’d said. It’d be a frenzied killing.”
“Which this could be, except they did take all the hikers’ pack goods. What happened to us was a clear-thinking ambush. They tracked and cornered us. Which should be the same here. They saw the camp and orchestrated an attack, like they did on Maryanne’s group. When they attacked Maryanne’s group, it was at night, and they didn’t order them to undress first. The goods weren’t as important as the captives. Except I’m not sure they took a captive here and…”
I exhale and rub my temples.
“Yeah,” Dalton says. “It’s not quite adding up.”
“Maybe it is. We only have one boot. Both bodies are wearing shirts, which were damaged, like the tent. Both are wearing only underwear. No jackets for either of them. The lack of jackets could suggest either those were taken or it was a daytime attack and they’d discarded their warm outerwear. But the lack of pants … I’m going to speculate that this happened at night. That’s what Sophie said.”
“The killers caught them asleep, wearing T-shirts and underwear. Someone manages to pull on a boot, and afterward, when the killers are gathering the goods, they don’t realize there’s a missing boot.”