Page 4 of Silent Bones (High Peaks Murder, Mystery and Crime Thrillers #7)

Next day.

T he air smelled like cold water and pine needles, the kind of dawn sharpness that bit straight through Callie Thorne’s jacket as she stepped onto the wooden dock.

The surface creaked under her boots, dew slick on the weathered boards.

Across the dark stretch of Middle Saranac Lake, mist clung low to the surface, and curled in soft tendrils through the surrounding forest.

Beside her, Detective Angus McKenzie gave a low, grumbling sigh as he adjusted his coat and squinted into the haze.

“Never ceases to amaze me what idiots people are. Remind me again why anyone in their right mind goes camping someplace you need a bloody boat to escape from?” he muttered, thick Scottish accent curling around the words.

Callie suppressed a faint smile, more reflex than amusement. “Because it’s beautiful. Remote. Quiet.” She let the last word hang. Quiet wasn’t always a good thing.

Jake Richmond was waiting for them. He stood near the bow of the DEC patrol boat, his frame square, his expression set.

A senior ranger with twenty years in these woods, Jake had the look of a man molded by the landscape.

His skin was lined from sun and wind, shoulders broad from years of hauling gear, eyes sharp under the brim of his cap.

Callie had been dating him for the better part of six months.

Somehow, they’d managed to navigate the relationship and their careers. A mutual understanding.

He met their approach with a short nod. “Morning.” His voice was rough-edged, low.

Callie dipped her head in greeting. McKenzie, on the other hand, stared at the boat with the resigned air of a man boarding a vessel he didn’t trust.

“Morning, laddie,” McKenzie muttered. “Do we get to know if this thing’s up to code, or are we running on duct tape and local prayers?”

Jake barely flicked a glance his way. “She’s made this run more times than I can count. She’ll hold unless you’ve gained a few extra pounds.”

McKenzie gave him the bird.

Callie climbed aboard without hesitation, settling onto the narrow bench along the side. McKenzie followed, mumbling something under his breath about seasickness and insurance policies. Jake untied the lines and started the engine, the low rumble splitting the morning hush.

Water sprayed as they pulled away from the launch, the shoreline slipping backward, trees fading into the mist.

Callie folded her arms across her chest, eyes fixed on the dark mirror of the water. Somewhere far off, a loon called; a thin, haunting sound that spiraled across the lake and vanished into the cold. She felt her breath fog the air in front of her.

No one spoke for a few minutes. The engine hummed, the boat’s prow cutting clean lines through the mist.

Jake finally broke the silence. “The couple that found them was Eleanor and Robert Mitchell.”

“Geesh. I know them,” Callie said softly. “Eleanor taught at the high school.”

“Yeah, good people,” Jake said. “Apparently they’ve been walking trails around this area every morning for years.”

“Long way to come for a walk.”

“They’ve been racking up miles every day. Never once seen anything like this before. Dog led them in.”

McKenzie exhaled hard. “Poor bastards.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth, his knee bouncing restlessly. “Out for a nice morning with the dog, and they walk into a horror show.”

Jake’s hands flexed slightly on the wheel. Callie caught the movement. Something tight under the surface.

“Jake,” she said carefully, “you okay?”

His jaw twitched. “Yeah.” A beat. “Just thinking.”

Callie didn’t push. But she knew what was under there, last week’s search grid.

A missing hiker case. Jake had wanted to widen the perimeter early; Callie had overruled him based on the available witness reports.

They’d found the woman two days later, barely alive, just outside Jake’s proposed area.

It had been quiet between them since.

The job wore on them all in different ways. Frequent interaction was beginning to take its toll. She was beginning to think that mixing pleasure and business wasn’t ideal.

The mist thinned as they neared the far eastern shore, where the wilderness deepened into dense, unbroken forest. A thin finger of beach jutted into the lake, barely marked on most maps, Campsite 64.

Jake throttled down as they approached, voice dropping lower. “That’s the spot.”

From the water, Callie could already see the flicker of yellow police tape strung between the trees, the silhouettes of uniformed figures moving through the clearing.

A patrol boat bobbed nearby, its lights casting faint, shifting patterns on the surface.

The metallic click of forensic cameras drifted faintly across the water.

McKenzie straightened, his earlier humor draining away. “Ah, hell. You’d think by now I would get used to this. Nope.”

Jake brought the boat in slow.

As they pulled alongside the rough landing, little more than a rocky outcrop marked with a worn DEC post, the smell hit Callie like a slap. It was piney, damp, full of the clean cold of the lake, and under it all, a sharp, unmistakable tang of blood.

Far too much blood for a regular crime scene.

She stepped onto the shore, boots crunching softly on pebbles. Dawn light slanted through the trees in pale gold lines, slicing the mist into pieces, and in the hollow under the pines, the campsite sprawled like a battlefield.

Two tents lay in collapsed heaps, their nylon walls slashed open. Coolers overturned, sleeping bags shredded, clothes scattered wide across the ground. A camp stove on its side, its canister dented. Folding chairs splintered. Blood streaked the dirt in long, rust-dark smears.

And nearby, the sharp angles of bodies.

McKenzie let out a soft, rough exhale, one hand rising to cover his mouth.

Callie felt her heartbeat slow, heavy in her chest. She’d seen multiple crime scenes since her days as a deputy but nothing like this.

“Damn,” she murmured.

Jake said nothing.

He just stood there, the lake at his back, his face pale under his cap, eyes locked on the wreckage ahead.

Callie pulled in a breath and squared her shoulders as they stepped forward, into the scene.

Callie stepped carefully between the yellow markers, her boots sinking slightly into the soft earth.

The ground was a mess, pine needles churned into mud, blood soaking into dirt, the faint glint of scattered belongings catching the early light.

A backpack lay unzipped, its contents spilled: a deck of cards, a water bottle, a pack of cigarettes crushed flat.

The cooler sat on its side nearby, its lid cracked, the scattered ice half-melted.

She moved slowly, cataloging it all: two tents, slashed and collapsed.

Sleeping bags, their seams ripped open, white stuffing scattered like animal fluff.

A cooking pot upside down near the firepit, its bottom blackened from old soot.

One body near the firepit in underwear. Bits of food; a smashed marshmallow bag, a box of crackers burst open, crumbled like dry leaves.

Blood. Smears, puddles, spatters. Long, chaotic streaks dragged across the dirt, arcing up tree trunks, splattered across the torn fabric of the tents.

Nothing about it looked accidental.

She felt McKenzie come up beside her, his usual chatter gone. He blew out a slow breath, eyes flicking over the destruction. “Bloody hell,” he murmured, voice rougher than usual. “It’s a massacre.”

Callie didn’t answer. She kept her eyes moving, her pen poised, her stomach knotting tighter with every step.

Among the trees, a faint thump of music drifted through the clearing.

She turned toward it. Ozzy Westborough crouched by one of the bodies on the far side of the clearing down by the water, earbuds tucked under his shaggy dark hair, faint strains of Lynyrd Skynyrd buzzing just loud enough to catch the edge of the solo.

The county coroner worked away, gloved hands moving over a body. He didn’t look up as they approached.

“Ozzy,” Callie called. She had to say his name again, louder to get his attention.

He lifted one hand in greeting, then tugged a bud free. “Oh, hey. Morning, Thorne.” His voice was low, even. “Got here ten minutes ago. Glad I didn’t have a greasy breakfast. Didn’t want to start the day like this.”

McKenzie crouched down a little beside him, eyes narrowing. “What are we looking at?”

Ozzy’s mouth tightened at the corners. He gestured at the young man sprawled on his side, pale hair matted dark with blood.

“Four dead teenagers, one missing. Blunt force trauma. Crushed ribs. Dislocated shoulder. Multiple lacerations. Really deep, wide. And here” — he pointed gently at the man’s arm — “the tearing’s odd. Broad, jagged.”

Callie felt her stomach flip. “Animal attack?”

Ozzy exhaled, slow. “Could be. Won’t know for sure until we get them on the table. But it’s…” He shook his head faintly. “It’s strange.”

She straightened, pushing a breath through tight lungs, scanning the scene again with an edge.

Jake appeared at her elbow; arms crossed. “Tracks don’t line up,” he said quietly. “They’re big. Heavy. Bigger than any black bear I’ve seen. But the claw marks… Jesus. The gouges on those trees are… deep.”

Callie turned. “So, a rogue animal?”

Jake rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “Maybe. We’ve had black bears come too close to camps before. You know, hunger, sickness. But this?” His mouth tightened. “Never seen this.”

McKenzie let out a low whistle. “This is going to go over well with campers.”

Callie shot him a look, but the corner of his mouth barely moved, a faint, automatic defense. He wasn’t joking, not really. Just bracing himself.

She felt Jake shift beside her, like a pulled thread.

“Jake?” she asked softly, noticing him staring.

He didn’t meet her eyes. “We should’ve gone wider last week,” he muttered, fingers tightening briefly on the clipboard in his hands.

“We already talked about that,” she replied.

“But….”

Callie’s throat closed. “Jake, this isn’t that.”

His jaw worked. “Isn’t it? This also occurred in my backyard.”

“And it’s par for the course.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be on that course.”

She frowned. “What are you saying?”

He said nothing.

For a second, they just stood there, two people who had been through too many cases, too many arguments, too many moments like this. She wanted to say something else, something softer, but her voice caught and stayed caught.

McKenzie’s radio crackled softly in the background. Somewhere beyond the trees, someone called orders, the scene pulsing forward around them, cameras flashing, boots shifting, voices low and tense.

It wouldn’t be long before the media got wind of this and the rumors would spread.

Callie drew a slow breath, her hands tightening around her notepad. “You sure you’re up for handling this case?” she said, more to herself than anyone else.

Jake gave a small, tired nod. “Yeah.”

For a moment, the three of them just stood there, in the middle of the ruin.

Callie gave a nod then began to walk the scene, taking it in.

Her boot caught on something near the treeline.

She crouched, brushing back damp pine needles and thin roots.

She snapped on a pair of latex gloves. Her fingers closed around a cold, familiar shape that was thin, rectangular, half-sunk in mud.

A phone.

Bright blue case, its back stickered with a peeling band logo. The screen was cracked, spiderwebbed across the glass, dirt worked into the fractures. She showed it to Jake as it had a photo of a couple on the front.

“That’s Stephen Strudwell,” Jake said.

“Which one is he?” she asked, glancing over at the bodies.

“He’s not among them. He’s missing but we confirmed that he was among the group based on the registration for the campsite.”

She turned the phone gently in her hand, the weight of it heavier than it should’ve been.

“McKenzie,” she called softly.

He stepped over, crouching beside her with a grunt, his brow creasing when he saw it. “Ah, shit.” His eyes narrowed at the phone. “Where was that?”

Callie gestured to the dirt. “Right here, near the brush.”

McKenzie exhaled.

Callie’s gaze lifted, tracking forward.

A faint trail led away from the camp, almost invisible unless you were looking for it. Low brush flattened. Young saplings bent and cracked at odd angles. Bark scraped from trunks in jagged lines.

It wasn’t the random chaos of a panicked animal tearing through the woods, but nether was it clean or mechanical either.

Just… heavy. Fast. Violent.

Her stomach knotted.

Jake stepped past her, crouching by one of the snapped trees. His hand ran along the bark, fingers brushing the break. “Big,” he murmured. “Really big. Black bear, maybe, but bigger than usual. Moose could do this, but…” His voice trailed off, tight.

Callie looked at him. “But?”

He straightened, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “Moose don’t come into camps. Bears do, but not like this. And grizzlies…” He gave a faint, strained laugh. “Not up here. Not unless one took a wrong damn turn.”

McKenzie blew out a slow breath.

Jake gave a dry shake of his head. “We get calls every year. Big tracks in the mud, a trash can knocked over, a shape someone thinks they saw in the mist.” He looked back at the trail. “But this…” His jaw tightened. “I don’t know.”

The wind shifted, carrying the damp scent of blood.

Callie felt it in her chest, that low, crawling unease that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with instinct.

She closed her hand carefully around Stephen’s phone.

Behind them, Ozzy Westborough rose from where he’d been crouched, peeling his gloves off finger by finger. His earbuds dangled silent now, the faint ghost of rock gone.

He walked over, stopping a few feet away. His face was pale, the lines around his mouth drawn tight. Callie met his eyes. “What’s your gut tell you, Ozzy?”

Ozzy exhaled, a slow, careful breath. “Massive trauma. Blunt force. Deep lacerations. Could be a bear. A sick bear. Could be…” He stopped short of making any other assumptions. “Again, we won’t know until I get the bodies back to the M.E.”

Callie gave a small nod, feeling pressure behind her eyes.

McKenzie rubbed a hand over his mouth. “You want me to check if Noah has been assigned?”

She nodded. “Yeah. And see if SAR can spin up some drones. For all we know, Stephen might have run into the wilderness and got lost.”

He gave a tight salute, turning away, the radio already coming up to his shoulder.

Jake shifted beside her; gaze still fixed on the trail. His shoulders were tense, his hands fisted loosely at his sides.

Callie glanced at him. He didn’t look at her.

They stood at the trailhead in silence: detective, ranger, coroner, deputy, all staring into the woods where the path disappeared around a bend. Stephen Strudwell was somewhere in that maze of trees. Alive, they hoped. But hoping wasn't finding him.