Mountaintop Murder

Chapter 2

The parking area for the trail head for Poke-O-Moonshine was located on Route Nine just south of Keeseville. There was a building to the right of the entrance that never really saw any use anymore. It was a remnant from when people used to camp there and had provided the caretakers a weather-proof place to live. The building was still kept up and it appeared as though the brown paint was fresh.

The entrance into the parking area was blocked by a state police car, the sun bringing out the deep blue color. There were only three vehicles in the parking area when the lead detective arrived, two belonged to the filed techs and the other most likely to a hiker.

Sarah Barney had been with the New York State Police for sixteen years. She had graduated with a criminology degree from SUNY Canton and been hired right out of college. She was short for a trooper at only five feet five inches but made up for what she was lacking in stature with a superior intellect. She kept her black hair short, in a sort of bob cut and her deep brown eyes missed nothing.

Sarah had been given the rank of lead detective in the Plattsburgh area five years ago. There was not a lot of murder, thankfully, but she had solved every case that she had investigated, with a ninety-eight percent conviction rate. As luck would have it, Sarah was a member of the forty-sixers, having just received her badge last month. Sarah lived in the hamlet of Keeseville, just over seven miles away from the trail head to Poke-O, so she hiked it at least once a year.

Her partner was a junior detective named Brian Sloan. Brian was not a hiker, he was more of a video gamer, as was typical with a lot of men these days, even in the police force. Sarah gave out a belly laugh when he showed up at the trailhead wearing his usual suit and tie. Brian was also quite tall, at just over six feet seven inches. He kept his brown hair cut in a military style and his face was always clean shaven. He had eyes that were the color of the sky as the sun was setting.

"Brian, it's Saturday," she said. "And, we have to hike up a mountain. Why the hell are you in that suit?"

Brian looked around at the pair of paramedics and the two forensic techs that were there, as well as at Sarah. They were all wearing shorts and some kind of athletic shirt. He also noticed that they had packs, where they were probably carrying their forensic tools and the clothes that they would need to wear to protect the crime scene. He shook his head at his own short sightedness and looked at his feet, further realizing that he was woefully under prepared for the hike. The fact that he was wearing wing tipped shoes further drove that thought home.

One of the techs said something that he could not quite hear, and he looked at Sarah in askance.

"He said that there is no way you will be able to keep up," she said. "In fact, he is quite right. I want you to head back to the barracks and start the paperwork."

Brian started to protest, but Sarah did not wait to hear whatever he wanted to say. She knew that the hike would be especially arduous this time because her and her team needed to get to the summit before anything else got to the body and site. Her best time for reaching the summit was in just over an hour, she hoped to make it in forty minutes today.

As she made it to the first set of natural stairs, Sarah felt a smile spread across her face. It was a beautiful day out and she was getting paid to do an activity that she loved. The temperature was hovering around eighty and the humidity was high as was typical, but under the protection of the canopy, the air felt cooler. The crunch of last year's leaves under her feet and the rustle of the leaves on the trees presented her with her favorite soundtrack and before long, Sarah had left the techs in her wake.

Thirty-five minutes after she began her hike, Sarah found herself at the point in the trail where the old ranger house had been. Many years ago, exactly when differs depending upon who you asked, there had been a cabin where the forest fire ranger had stayed. This made more sense than having to make the hike in daily. In an epic turn on irony, the house burnt to the ground, leaving only the foundation and chimney, which still stand to this day.

Most people, not just the highly observant, can tell when they are being watched. To someone like Sarah, with her heightened powers of observation and what seemed to others to be a sixth sense, she instantly knew if someone glanced in her direction. As she walked past the lean-to that was on the trail before the remnants of the cabin, she felt the familiar tingle at the nape of her neck that alerted her she was not alone.

Sarah stopped and her right hand reflexively went to her hip, finding her sidearm. All of her senses started to analyze the information that they were collecting. There was a slight scent of wildflowers mixed in with the damp smell of decaying leaves in the air. From some distance behind her, she could hear the voices of the techs and the light crunch of leaves beneath their feet. Her eyes scanned the myriad tree trunks that surrounded her, but she could not make out the shape of anyone watching her. A puzzled look crossed her face and she wondered if perhaps she was just a bit on edge today. Still, she lingered, unsure about how to proceed.

Sarah wished, and not for the first time, that Brian was not such an idiot and had dressed properly for the hike. She would have found the entire situation a lot less stressful if her partner was here to watch her back. She knew that the techs had caught up to her before one of them spoke.

"Something wrong Lieutenant?" asked John Tibbits.

John was a career tech, having been with the department twenty years. He was now pushing forty and still in great shape. John competed in mountain bike racing in the area, which helped him maintain a lean, muscular body. He did not look the part of a police forensic technician though. He was five feet, seven inches tall and his blonde hair was almost touching the ground. He had stopped getting it cut years ago in order to protest a new policy that the department had passed and never got it cut again. Besides the long hair, his general appearance was unkempt, his clothes were always wrinkled or stained. He was always proficient at his job though, so the department tended to look the other way.

The second tech was Charlie Franks. She was twenty-two and had just moved to Plattsburgh from Jackson, Mississippi three months ago. Her parents were white and black which gave her skin the color of coffee with cream. She had a few other genetic anomalies that made her unique to look at, which combined with her southern drawl made all the men she worked with vie for her attention. She was a natural blonde, which ran counter to her skin tone and she also had heterochromia, a genetic mutation that caused her to have two different colored eyes. Her right eye was a blue so pale it was almost white, and her left eye was a vibrant green.

"Yeah," Sarah replied, "you two are slow. Try to keep up, huh?"

With the two techs now directly behind her, Sarah pushed on to reach the summit. As she got closer to the remnants of the cabin, her skin began to crawl in earnest. It was a sensation that she hated and soon she was covered in goosebumps. Her eyes repeatedly scanned every inch of the stone foundation and chimney, yet there was nothing that seemed out of sorts. Still, she could not shake the feeling that there was a set of eyes watching her every move.