Page 27 of Silent Bones (High Peaks Murder, Mystery and Crime Thrillers #7)

T he road narrowed the deeper Noah drove.

Asphalt gave way to gravel, then to pitted dirt scabbed with runoff scars.

Trees pressed in from both sides, their limbs arched overhead like they were holding their breath.

His tires crackled over frost-hardened ruts as he rounded a bend and found the cabin.

It was low, dark pine, half-swallowed in shade.

A thin coil of smoke drifted from the chimney.

D. Thurston.

The ranger’s name had stuck with him since last night. A set of initials on a forgotten permit. A quiet thread buried in a stack of old reports. He wasn’t here to make accusations. Just to see what the past might still remember.

He parked behind an aging green pickup. A weathered deer rack was zip-tied to the grille. The air smelled of cold sap, woodsmoke, and old rust. Before he could knock, the screen door creaked open. A man in his mid-fifties stepped out like he’d been expecting company.

“Detective,” he said. Not unkindly. “Didn’t think it’d take this long.”

Noah blinked. “You know me?”

Dale gave a dry smile and nodded to the lights on the Bronco. “Who doesn’t?”

He was taller than Noah expected. Wiry frame, trimmed gray beard, weatherworn eyes. His shirt was canvas, tucked into a leather belt polished by habit. Behind him, a stove glowed orange through a glass panel.

Noah nodded toward the porch. “You’ve got a peaceful place.”

“I like it,” Dale said. “Come on in.”

Inside, the warmth wrapped around Noah like a weighted blanket. Boots lined the wall, a cast-iron kettle hissed softly, and a black-furred dog thumped its tail once before going back to sleep.

“I just boiled the kettle. You want tea?” Dale asked. “Coffee?”

“Tea’s good.”

Dale moved like a man who’d learned long ago not to rush. He poured from a chipped enamel pot into two mismatched mugs and handed one over. “I thought you were McKenzie.”

“You know him?”

Dale gave a noncommittal grunt. “Met him a few times.”

“You’re no longer with the DEC,” Noah said, easing into the reason he’d come.

“Retired last fall.”

“Early retirement, right?”

“Depends who’s asking.”

“Any reason?”

“Office politics.”

Noah gave a nod. He was familiar with it. They stood quietly for a moment, steam rising between them. Noah glanced around at the cabin. Everything in its place. Sparse but curated.

“I’ve been going through some reports,” he said. “Trying to understand the patterns of backcountry use in the Wallface region. You know — camping areas, DEC history, just making sure we haven’t missed anything relevant to the current case. What can you tell me?”

Dale gave a faint nod. “It’s rough terrain. Beautiful but dangerous. Wallface always draws trouble. But it doesn’t give answers. Let’s just say it’s had its fair share of lost hikers and deaths.”

“Do you remember August last year?”

“Vaguely.”

“There was no ticket filed. I mean for the group of teens camping above the legal elevation line?” He paused. “The were teens there in August, right?”

Dale looked at him. “Not every warning gets written down. Sometimes people listen better when it doesn’t come with a fine.”

Noah studied him. “So you gave them a warning?”

“I said what needed saying.”

Noah let that sit. Then asked, “Ever seen things go a little too far out there? People push the land too hard?”

Dale’s jaw worked for a second. “People think nature’s passive. Pretty. Nothing more than a view. But the land’s got a memory and rules. You tip the scale, it tips back.”

“What do you mean?”

Dale shook his head and smiled. “It’s a saying.”

There it was again, that edge. Not guilt. Something older. Worn smooth from handling. Noah glanced up. On the wall behind Dale, a series of topographic maps had been tacked in a line. A red thread crossed two peaks. One trail was marked faintly in pencil: WLFCE-407.

“You still track trails?” Noah asked.

“Old habit. A hobby really.”

“The teens that were recently murdered,” he said. “Do you remember them from last year?”

“Sorry, I don’t follow the news,” Dale said.

Noah took out some photos and showed him.

“Hmmm. Not seen them before. Besides, every teen looks the same. We had a lot of them partying out there.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there were a lot of teens who took liberties.”

“In August?”

“I couldn’t say. My memory isn’t what it used to be.”

The dog let out a low chuff from the floor. Dale reached down, fingers brushing its fur.

“You catalog bones?” Noah asked, motioning to the shelf of labeled skulls. Coyote. Bear cub. Bobcat. Even a raccoon with a fractured jaw.

“Some things you bury,” Dale said, “so no one trips over them. Others… you keep out for all to see. So no one forgets.”

Noah stared back at him and studied him. “Do you know if the DEC ever covered up an incident?”

“You’d have to speak to them.”

“I’m asking you.”

“I’m not at liberty to say. And even if I was, would anyone believe it?”

He had a point.

There was a lot that happened in High Peaks that got brushed under the rug. Noah could tell this wasn’t going far. He finished his tea, then set the mug on a coaster cut from a pine round. “I appreciate your time.”

Dale followed him out to the porch. The air had shifted again. Colder now. “Looks like a storm’s coming,” Dale said. “You feel it in the woods.”

Noah paused. Then nodded once, stepping off the porch and returned to his vehicle.

He didn’t look back, but an unsettling feeling followed him the whole way down the road, like something still watched from between the trees.

He didn’t turn on the radio. The forest was enough, branches scraping faintly in the wind, the drumming echo of his own thoughts louder than anything the speakers could offer.

The woods thickened on either side as he drove. Shadows ran long across the path, and the sunlight through the canopy strobed the windshield like Morse code. He kept one hand on the wheel, the other resting loosely on his thigh. Calm on the outside. But inside, something had uncoiled.

Something about the report from 2024 didn’t sit right. Filed under terrain access violations. Redacted names. A faint strike-through on one of the follow-up lines. The last sign-off: D. Thurston. Retired. Nothing jumped out at first glance, but now? Now it was all shouting.

He tapped his phone to life on the passenger seat, hit McKenzie’s number.

The line picked up quick. “You still alive?”

“Yeah.” Noah’s voice was low. “I just left his place.”

“How’d it go?”

Noah kept his eyes on the road. “Like drinking tea with a loaded gun on the table.”

“Ah… so nothing useful?”

“Not really. He talked in riddles.”

He could hear McKenzie shift on the other end, the faint squeak of his chair. “You think he knows more but is keeping silent for the sake of the DEC? Maybe he’s been threatened.”

“I think he knows what I’m asking, even when I’m not asking.”

“He didn’t give you anything?”

Noah watched a hawk arc over the treetops. “No. He didn’t deflect. He redirected. Every answer was a mirror.”

He’d met his share of retired rangers who talked like shamans, half backwoods, half prophecy. Sometimes the forest just did that to a man.

“Well, add it to the list of leads that go nowhere,” McKenzie said.

“Though, I did make some progress today. Did you know that two of the parents from the group are a part of High Peaks Board of Trustees? Yeah. I imagine if their kids were involved in an incident, that it wouldn’t look good for them.

It certainly explains why Bill Calder pulled Avery from the group. ”

“It might also explain a cover-up. Have you checked in with Avery to see if she’s been approached or spooked by anyone?”

“Callie did. Everything seems fine.”

“All right. We’ll talk later.”

Noah ended the call and drove in silence.

The further he got from the home, the tighter his chest felt.

Dale hadn’t lied. But he’d left just enough out, like a man recounting a storm and forgetting to mention the bodies it left behind.

The whole conversation replayed like a puzzle he couldn’t quite see all at once.

Dale’s talk about balance, the backcountry tipping back, how nature settles what people disturb.

The talk about nature correcting itself, “letting things settle,” “not interfering”—what did he really mean? There were layers in those words.

He had met dozens of old rangers over the years, guys who smoked too much, cursed too loud, and told stories with more venom than wisdom. But Dale? Dale was clean-edged. Like a knife that had been sharpened often but never drawn.

Noah drove past a downed tree where moss had overtaken the bark completely. Noah considered it. The shape was still there, a memory of the log, but it had softened, blurred into the forest around it. A hiker would have to really look to know anything had fallen.

Noah muttered to himself. “Nature doesn’t bury the past. It grows over it.”

He flicked open his phone, opened the camera roll. Scrolled to the photo he’d taken of the topo map in Dale’s cabin.

There it was: “WLFCE-407” barely visible in pencil, tucked near the slope line on the southern edge of Wallface. Not a DEC designation. Not an official trail.

He zoomed in further, trying to make out the contour pattern around the mark. It matched the zone where casualties had been logged in a late-season incident, the one just before Dale’s retirement. An area that had triggered a small landslide. An incident with no formal follow-up.

The sky darkened as he neared the edge of town. High Peaks’ lights flickered in the distance, smeared gold across the water. He turned off the main road, then followed it as it snaked through the woods and pulled up in front of his cabin by the water.

He sat there for a moment, engine ticking as it cooled, then leaned across and grabbed the notebook from the glove compartment.

He flipped to a blank page, uncapped his pen, and wrote without thinking.

FORMER RANGER DALE THURSTON, RETIRED

INCIDENT 407-F

“NATURE CORRECTS ITSELF”

NO CONFESSION, NO GUILT, NO ACCUSATION

Noah exhaled, but he didn’t relax.