Free Turn to Stone by Brian Freeman

covered in blood,” Mike said.
    The camper belonged to Tom Bruin. When Stride went inside, he saw photographs of the late medical examiner taped to the windows, including one with his baby girl, Mya, obviously taken after the man’s illness had grown terminal. The fleshy, jolly doctor he’d seen in the pictures on the mantle at Anna’s house was emaciated in this photograph, but his eyes shone with love for the child in his arms.
    The paneled interior was narrow, but every square foot was used efficiently. The kitchen and eating areas were immediately next to the door on his left and included a stove, sink, and a square acrylic table attached to the camper wall. On his right, two built-in sofas faced each other, and an elevated twin bed provided guest sleeping quarters, including a curtain that could be closed for privacy. Most of the surfaces were freshly cleaned. He smelled ammonia and saw empty bottles of Lysol in the sink. Everything here was clean. Too clean.
    Sanitized.
    With gloved hands, he checked the refrigerator, which was stocked with a six-pack of Leinie and a half-eaten brick of moldy cheddar. Inside the storage cabinets, he found clothes and hunting gear, along with evidence of mice and dozens of dead flies. He saw a toolbox and flipped up the lid. The smell from the tools wasn’t dingy metal, but bleach.
    He continued down a corridor that was barely wide enough for an adult to squeeze through. The master bedroom on the far end of the camper was plush, with mirrored closets and soft lighting. The large bed itself had been stripped to the metal frame. The pillows, blankets, sheets, and mattress were all gone. On the wall behind the bed, he saw a discoloration in the wood in a distinctive shape. A cross had been hung there, but someone had removed it.
    Stride crouched near the bed casters. He saw frayed white threads buried in the shag carpet, and he knew what they were. Fragments of rope. Someone had been tied to the bed. He began to suspect what Percy had removed from the camper in the large garbage bag. Evidence.
    Evidence of a crime that had been committed here.
    He left the camper. Mike Black hadn’t moved. Darkness had begun to close around the boy. Stride gestured at the forest.
    “Which way?” he asked. “Where did Percy come from?”
    Mike pointed to Stride’s right.
    It wasn’t hard to see the path he needed to follow. The trees were as dense as matchsticks in a box, but someone had forced a rough trail, breaking off branches and trampling the saplings. Virgin snow clung to the ground, but where it hadn’t pushed through the crown of trees, the ground was wet and muddy and littered with dead leaves. Intermittently, he could see heel marks denting the earth. Percy’s boots.
    Stride forced his way deeper into the forest. Sharp twigs bit at his face. He followed Percy’s trail from two weeks earlier and could almost hear the man breathing heavily and smell his sweat. The path was haphazard and desperate. He saw threads of torn fabric where branches had grabbed the cop’s clothes. Some of the tree bark held stains of dried blood.
    He didn’t know how far he’d gone. A hundred yards. Maybe more. It was far enough into the impenetrable woods that no one ever came here, not hikers, not hunters. He stood on land that only one human being had probably ever trod upon in decades. Percy Andrews. Stride could imagine the man thinking: This was far enough. This was safe. No one would ever find this place.
    Where the ragged progress through the forest stopped, Stride discovered the body.
    It had been simply dropped there on its back. The ground, still frozen, couldn’t be dug up for a grave. Animals hadn’t found it yet. Snow had leached from the brush, but most of the corpse was visible. Naked. Cold and hard as stone.
    Stride checked the face first, and it was the face he’d expected to find, although he had no idea why. Despite the open mouth, the wild eyes, the twisted agony in his expression, he