Today's Reading
Mercy was struck by the disarray. Paper was everywhere. What looked like hundreds of sheets of printer paper littered the pine floor and the surfaces of every piece of furniture in the place.
Except the futon.
There, a man lay sprawled on the blue flannel duvet, his chest cleaved by the blunt, fat blade of a splitting maul. Blood splattered the dead man's beard and his camo fleece hoodie. Thankfully, Elvis must have scared off any critters who'd caught the scent of the corpse.
The smell nearly felled Mercy. She turned and ran for the door, stumbling to the porch and grasping the log railing and gulping the fresh air of the Green Mountains. As a soldier, she was used to the metallic smell of blood, but as her pregnancy had progressed, she'd grown so increasingly sensitive to strong odors that she'd steered clear of fast-food restaurants and perfume counters and candle shops.
And now crime scenes.
She wished she'd put that odor blocker her brother the doctor had given her in Elvis's pack, but she knew she hadn't. She breathed in the earthy scent of the damp forest one last time and went back inside, where the shepherd sat in his sphinx position at the foot of the futon, waiting for her.
She did not know the victim. He was in his midforties, wiry and fit in that outdoorsy sort of way. His dark brown hair was unkempt, as was his reddish beard, but his clothes were relatively new and clean, apart from the blood. And his expensive hiking boots looked right out of the box.
Mercy examined the pine floor once more and found a dark red stain on the sheepskin rug across from the futon, not far from the writing table. It could have been the victim's blood, or Homer's blood, or someone else's. Something white and red about a foot away at the edge of the shaggy rug caught her attention. Moving closer, she realized that it was the white alabaster bust of Aristotle that usually graced the writing table. The red was blood.
She wondered where Homer was. The one-room cabin offered few hiding places. No closets; open shelving housed his books and clothes and sundries. There was a root cellar, which she would check on her way out. But right now, there was no reason to think he was here. She found it hard to believe that the courtly recluse had killed anyone, even if his axe was buried in this stranger's chest.
She pulled out her cell and snapped photos of every angle of the body and the room. The papers seemed to be strewn pages of a manuscript Mercy did not even know Homer was writing. He did have an old vintage typewriter—the green one with the aqua keys—that he claimed to use to write letters he mailed when he went to town. She found an upside-down wine crate and its wooden lid amongst the papers; perhaps that was where he kept his work hidden from her during their games.
The Scrabble board itself was undisturbed. Set up for their game, with two empty racks waiting for the players to pick their letter tiles, which were neatly turned over, blank side up. One short word appeared in the middle of the board. Mercy leaned over to read the word: 'xenos.'
One of Homer's favorite words.
"Come on, Elvis, we need to find him. And Argos." There was nothing they could do for the dead man, but maybe they could help their Scrabble-playing friend. Either way, she needed to notify the authorities, and that meant a trek up to the ridge to Homer's cell tower.
She retrieved the duct tape from the dog pack. The shepherd led the way out of the cabin, and she shut the heavy door behind her. That's when she noticed the bloody handprint on the right front edge of the door above the handle. She took a picture of that on her phone, closed the front door, and then ran a couple of lines of tape across the frame.
Mercy left the porch and went around to the side of the house to the bulkhead. She pulled open the metal doors, revealing the stairs to the cellar. Clicking on her cell flashlight, she descended the stairs. The cellar itself was a relatively small space lined with shelves holding large jars of flour, rice, and other staples, canned goods, and bell jars filled with tomatoes and peaches and other fruits and vegetables. Bins of potatoes and onions and apples were stacked smartly in one corner. No Homer. No Argos.
She tramped back up the steps and banged the cellar doors shut. She checked the latrine and found nothing; the outbuildings sheltered Homer's tools and snowmobile, but his four-wheeler was missing. Either he was on the run or he was on his way up to the ridge to call 911 or both.
"Let's go." She looked at Elvis and said the magic word. "Search."
She traipsed along behind the shepherd as he guided her back past the cabin and to the north, where a well-groomed trail rutted with ATV tracks ran up a steep rise. She also spotted animal tracks in the mud. Deer and moose and even bear had all been through here; there were other tracks too trampled or unfamiliar for her to identify the animals that had left them. Not surprising, as this was a busy time of year in the woods, when all manner of wildlife was hungry, whether they'd slept through the cold winter months or not.
Mercy was getting tired, and her belly was getting heavy. She shifted the bellyband and felt the baby kick, hard. "Hang in there, kid, we've got a situation here."
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