soaking into the sawdust. “I’ll assume the autopsy will confirm the cause of death, but I’m looking for something here that sends a clear message about the murderer. Hundreds of work-boot waffle prints in the soft forest soil and tire tracks of two large vehicles, one of which is still here. White plaster remnants tell me the shoe-and tire-print team was diligent, but this is a very challenging crime scene. It’s been raining for two days. Under such circumstances evidence just melts into the forest floor.”
He glanced high into the tree canopy overhead. Drizzle from the gray sky put a shiny glint on the foliage of a hundred trees filling the interior of Puget Creek Canyon from its soggy, fern-choked bottom to the salmonberry bramble-blanketed ridge tops on either side. “Large drops of water,” he murmured, “falling from the tips of cedar boughs and bigleaf maple leaves a hundred feet above, splashing down with sufficient force to meld the mud and blood and plaster into murky goo. Rainforest swallows clues whole, even in the middle of Seattle.” He picked up one of the many small branches trimmed from the trunk and left lying on the mossy, sawdust-covered ground. Eyeing its cut end carefully down his long nose, he remarked, “Sliced off neatly with one clean blow of a finely sharpened ax. An ax wielded, I would say, by a skilled woodsman.” He tossed the branch back among its fellows and turned to Squalco.
“So, tell me Franky, how did you get involved in what seems a run-of-the-mill bludgeoning?”
Franky flinched at McKean’s clinical minimization of the crime. Like me, however, he had learned to accept McKean’s cool, professorial detachment from matters people with normal emotions take with a dose of adrenaline. Franky shrugged his shoulders under the wet raincoat. “Yesterday morning I came down to see what all the chainsaw noise was the night before.”
“Your house is where?”
“Up there.” Franky pointed a thick finger to a place on the edge of the canyon where the roofs and windows of several houses were just visible through the intervening bigleaf maple trunks. “The blue house. Down here, this is all city greenbelt and Puget Park. The cops was already makin” them plaster casts when I came down the raccoon path. When they seen me pokin” around they had some questions. Asked me, did I know Henry George and I told “em I did. Told me he was down at the precinct, arrested for killing this Olafsen guy. Said they found Henry right here at the scene.” He tucked his gray braids inside his raincoat hood and drew the drawstrings tighter as if the cold drizzle bothered him more than it had a moment before. “But no way Henry George killed anybody. I thought if somebody could find out who the real murderer was, you could, Peyton.”
The police cruiser doors slammed shut and the car pulled out, followed by the tow truck drawing the pickup behind it. McKean pushed his damp Stetson farther back on his head. “Maybe it will help if you explain everything you know about why George was here.”
Franky sat down on the stump, protected from the wet by the rain clothes he’d worn on the day I had first seen him in his dinghy pulling Chinook salmon out of the Duwamish River. “You see,” he began, “I come here with Henry to pray for a good catch, sometimes.”
“Why pray here?” McKean questioned. “We must be two hundred yards from the river.”
“This cedar grove is very special to Duwamish people. My great-grandfathers used to cut trees here for dugout canoes. You could just slide ‘em downhill along Puget Creek and then carve your canoe by the river bank.’
McKean scrutinized the grove carefully. “Forgive my skepticism, Franky, but none of these trees are more than one-hundred-fifty years old, judging by their girth.”
“Their what?”
“The width of their trunks,” McKean explained, “can be used as a crude measure of their ages. Now, we may be standing on the perimeter
He glanced high into the tree canopy overhead. Drizzle from the gray sky put a shiny glint on the foliage of a hundred trees filling the interior of Puget Creek Canyon from its soggy, fern-choked bottom to the salmonberry bramble-blanketed ridge tops on either side. “Large drops of water,” he murmured, “falling from the tips of cedar boughs and bigleaf maple leaves a hundred feet above, splashing down with sufficient force to meld the mud and blood and plaster into murky goo. Rainforest swallows clues whole, even in the middle of Seattle.” He picked up one of the many small branches trimmed from the trunk and left lying on the mossy, sawdust-covered ground. Eyeing its cut end carefully down his long nose, he remarked, “Sliced off neatly with one clean blow of a finely sharpened ax. An ax wielded, I would say, by a skilled woodsman.” He tossed the branch back among its fellows and turned to Squalco.
“So, tell me Franky, how did you get involved in what seems a run-of-the-mill bludgeoning?”
Franky flinched at McKean’s clinical minimization of the crime. Like me, however, he had learned to accept McKean’s cool, professorial detachment from matters people with normal emotions take with a dose of adrenaline. Franky shrugged his shoulders under the wet raincoat. “Yesterday morning I came down to see what all the chainsaw noise was the night before.”
“Your house is where?”
“Up there.” Franky pointed a thick finger to a place on the edge of the canyon where the roofs and windows of several houses were just visible through the intervening bigleaf maple trunks. “The blue house. Down here, this is all city greenbelt and Puget Park. The cops was already makin” them plaster casts when I came down the raccoon path. When they seen me pokin” around they had some questions. Asked me, did I know Henry George and I told “em I did. Told me he was down at the precinct, arrested for killing this Olafsen guy. Said they found Henry right here at the scene.” He tucked his gray braids inside his raincoat hood and drew the drawstrings tighter as if the cold drizzle bothered him more than it had a moment before. “But no way Henry George killed anybody. I thought if somebody could find out who the real murderer was, you could, Peyton.”
The police cruiser doors slammed shut and the car pulled out, followed by the tow truck drawing the pickup behind it. McKean pushed his damp Stetson farther back on his head. “Maybe it will help if you explain everything you know about why George was here.”
Franky sat down on the stump, protected from the wet by the rain clothes he’d worn on the day I had first seen him in his dinghy pulling Chinook salmon out of the Duwamish River. “You see,” he began, “I come here with Henry to pray for a good catch, sometimes.”
“Why pray here?” McKean questioned. “We must be two hundred yards from the river.”
“This cedar grove is very special to Duwamish people. My great-grandfathers used to cut trees here for dugout canoes. You could just slide ‘em downhill along Puget Creek and then carve your canoe by the river bank.’
McKean scrutinized the grove carefully. “Forgive my skepticism, Franky, but none of these trees are more than one-hundred-fifty years old, judging by their girth.”
“Their what?”
“The width of their trunks,” McKean explained, “can be used as a crude measure of their ages. Now, we may be standing on the perimeter
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