Free Give Up the Body by Louis Trimble Page A

Mulcahey’s assuring bulk alongside me and partly the feeling that the episode had resolved itself into a hunt for something definite. That the object of the search was a freshly killed man, a man I had spoken to only short hours before, I kept from thinking about. I clung close to Mulcahey and pretended we were seeking something inanimate, rather than the grisly result of a possible murder.
    It worked fine, for a time.
    “Heard about you, Addy,” Mulcahey said as we trotted along. “Still tomboying.”
    “It will make a good story, Matt,” I defended myself.
    “Tiffin says you’d do anything for a story, Addy.”
    “Sure,” I said. “I killed him; I was hard up for news.”
    Mulcahey sent a broad Irish chuckle into the night. “Seeing your name is O’Hara I won’t believe it. But Tiffin might.”
    Tiffin would love to make me miserable.
    We were going single file now. The gravel path had narrowed until tree branches could reach out and slap at us. The path stopped suddenly and a narrow deer trail dropped over the edge of the river bank. We all skidded down it, being snatched at and torn at by the ever-present brush. A spiky branch of Oregon holly took a firm grip on my trouser seat and for a moment the old panic gripped me. I gasped and grabbed Mulcahey just ahead of me. The light from his flash whipped around as my fingers caught his arm and jerked him sideways. He gave me a little tug and I parted company with the holly bush. I was glad for the supporting grip of his arm around my shoulders.
    We plowed to a stop finally on a small beach at the edge of the tumbling white water river. I sagged against Mulcahey and waited for Jocko’s next move.
    “It’s downstream,” Hilton said in his precise voice.
    “All right,” Tiffin said testily. He swung his electric lantern and revealed himself clearly for a second. He wore riding pants and leather puttees, and instead of looking efficient and natty he only showed how spindly his legs were. An impulse to laugh replaced my shaky feeling. I was grateful to him for that.
    Jocko said, “Let’s go then,” and they started downstream. Mulcahey and I brought up the rear as usual.
    That was a nightmarish hike. The bushes slapped us and scratched us and twice we had to swing wide of the river and fight our way through nasty tangles of small, second-growth firs. Once we were ankle deep in icy water. Finally I heard blessed words from Hilton:
    “About here, sheriff.”
    “Gawd,” Mulcahey panted, “And we got to go back.”
    I was past feeling squeamish at the thought of what lay ahead. I could even joke about it. I said, “Lugging a body,” cheerfully.
    But no one paid attention to me. Jocko was flashing his light across the water. “Where?” he demanded.
    “There’s a snag,” Hilton said. His voice came clearly over the dirge-like song of the river. Jocko was flashing his light and it caught white water, a slick, razor-edged black rock, drew in and held on an ugly looking dead tree. Black, leafless branches straggled into the air like the stiff, dead hair of some water witch. They rolled a little with the current, back and forth, in a horrible, steady rhythm. I hung onto Mulcahey more tightly.
    “That’s it,” Hilton said.
    We all stepped forward until the water lapped at our shoes. I felt a morbid curiosity as I strained for a view of Delhart’s body. The light rolled back from those gnarled, awful branches, back over the dead, rotting trunk to the shore. There was nothing. Those clawing branches rocked back and forth, empty talons holding nothing but the thick, black night.
    “Wrong tree.” Tiffin said impatiently.
    “No,” Hilton said. His voice was definite. There was a superior, snappish quality that Tiffin could not meet. After all, Hilton represented a millionaire’s estate, if not the man himself. That alone would command respect from Godfrey Tiffin.
    “By God,” Jocko said. He went splashing into the water, holding onto the trunk of the