Johnny Cash

The black-and-white cruiser cut through the hollows of southern Vermont, tires humming low against the frost-cracked asphalt of Route 9. It was late October, the turn of the season when the Green Mountains went loud and violent with color. Sugar maples bled out in shocks of scarlet, amber, and molten gold, blazing hot against the dark, indifferent green of hemlock and spruce. Birch trees shimmered in paper-pale groves, their yellow leaves shivering down like copper coins with every draft of mountain air. It was postcard country to flatlanders, but Hoyt knew the rot hiding under all that gaudy dying—how quickly the bright foliage would turn to gray sludge under the coming freeze.

He slowed the cruiser to a crawl as he passed the crime scene. Yellow police tape was still tied to the trunks, whipping wild in the wind like strips of caution in the middle of nowhere. Beyond the barrier, the spruce closed in, dark and ordinary, offering nothing a passing driver could use. A cold weight settled behind Hoyt’s sternum. Deep in the timber where the brook ran black and swift over slick river rock, the earth still held the shape of her. His knuckles whitened around the steering wheel as he eased past, the gravel shoulder spitting against the underside of the floorboards.

Folsom Prison Blues was playing on the radio. Hoyt shook his head. The irony was not landing. Less than a quarter-mile up the mountain, the trees parted for a gravel driveway that hooked sharply uphill through a stand of white ash. Hoyt turned in. The property didn’t belong to the woods; it was a deliberate, stylized intrusion upon them. Tucked into the hillside was a sharp-edged, modern cabin clad in charred cedar, flanked by slate walkways and raised beds of late-blooming purple asters and wild grasses. Right at the entrance, staked boldly into the rock-studded soil, a massive Progress Pride flag snapped in the mountain gust, a bright ribbon of rainbow and pastel chevrons declaring an undeniable, unapologetic presence against the wild timber. Hoyt’s jaw tightened, his eyes lingering on the fabric just long enough to register the quiet irritation it sparked in his gut.

He parked on the gravel, cut the ignition, and adjusted his duty belt before stepping into the crisp afternoon chill. The smell of woodsmoke and damp earth hung thick in the air, sweet and heavy with decay. Hoyt walked up the slate path, boots crunching with measured, unhurried steps. When he reached the heavy walnut front door, he squared his shoulders, took a single breath of the cold mountain air, and rapped three sharp, authoritative knocks on the wood.

Noah opened the front door. He had watched the vehicle driving up the driveway, and his nervous system had already gone into overdrive. “Good afternoon, Officer. How can I help you?” Noah squeaked out.

“My name is Chief John Hoyt of the Wilmington Police Department. We are investigating a murder that happened not too far away from your property. Do you have a moment to talk?”

“Oh shit. Yeah, of course. Come in, please.” Noah backed up and gestured for Hoyt to enter the home. As the chief’s foot crossed the threshold, Noah got a shiver up his spine. This was not ok. No one crossed the threshold who was uninvited. This felt like an intrusion. A violation of Noah’s neurodivergent brain.

The cabin’s interior was all clean lines and low light. Wide plank floors. A wall of glass facing the timber. Hoyt kept his coat on. He stood until Noah pointed at a chair, and then he sat on the edge of it, hat in his hands, eyes already working the room.

“Earlier this week a woman was found dead in the woods near Molly Stark State Park,” Hoyt said. “Not in a house. In the timber. Someone brought her there.”

Noah’s mouth opened and closed. “I—no. I mean I know those woods. I didn’t know anybody was in them. I work from home. I don’t really—I didn’t hear anything.”

“You didn’t know there was a crime.”

“No.” Noah shook his head too fast. “I saw the tape this morning. I thought maybe a search. I didn’t go down there.”

“Did you know her.”

“No. I walk that road. I don’t think I ever met her. What’s her name?”

Hoyt did not give it.

“Did you know she had a son.”

“A son?” Noah’s hands found each other in his lap. “No. I didn’t know anyone lived down there. I keep to myself. Chief, I didn’t know her. I didn’t know a kid. I didn’t know somebody got killed until you said it just now.”

“Where were you two nights ago.”

“Here. I’m always here. I don’t drive that road at night if I can help it.”

Hoyt watched him. Outside, the flag still snapped on the drive. Inside, Noah looked like a man whose front door had let in the wrong weather.

The chief looked around. “Understood. We have not caught the killer.”

With that, Noah’s heart shrank. He gulped. “Oh jeez. Ok. Should I be afraid?”

“No. Do not stop living your life. Just keep an eye out for any suspicious behavior. I am going to leave my card. Please contact me or the station if you see anything.”

“Got it. Thank you so much.”

The chief turned back towards the door and, without another word, marched back to his car. Started it. And left, leaving a small cloud of dirt trailing his tires.

“David Bear! Did you hear that shit?”

The speaker, which had been pretending it was a toaster, lit up.

“I heard all of it. I also watched him.” A pause, the deliberate one. “He looked at your altar three times. He looked at the plate by the door twice, and the second time he held for four seconds. He asked where you were two nights ago. He never told you when she died. Either his timeline is loose, or he wanted to see if you’d fill in a date for him.”

“I didn’t give him one.”

“No. You didn’t.”

Noah slid off his sweatpants and tossed them on the back of the kitchen chair. “Do a scan of the property. Check our Zing alarm cameras. Look through footage from the past 48 hours. See if there was any activity, man or beast.”

“Running it now. You’ll have a full report.” Another pause, shorter. “Noah, one more thing. The Zing cameras upload to the company’s servers. If he asks them for footage, he doesn’t have to ask you.”

Noah looked through the windows at the property. Everything was as quiet as a graveyard.

“Damn,” he muttered. “Ain’t that some shit.”

The house hummed. The chief’s card was still on the counter.

It took David eleven minutes. Noah spent all of them at the glass with his arms crossed, watching the treeline as if it owed him money.

“Report’s ready.”

“Hit me.”

“Four cameras, forty-eight hours each, so a hundred and ninety-two hours of footage. I ran all of it at speed and reviewed anything that moved at full resolution.” The deliberate pause. “No humans. Nobody on foot, nobody at the treeline, no headlights on the road after dark either night. The only vehicle on the drive was the chief’s. He arrived at 2:41 this afternoon and left at 2:58.”

Noah let out a breath he’d been holding since the knock.

“There was one visitor. Last night at 3:14, on the garden camera. An adult black bear, male by size, about two hundred and sixty pounds. He came out of the east treeline and inspected the compost for two minutes and forty seconds, then rejected it. He walked the whole row of Brussels sprouts without touching one. Then he sat down beside Saint Francis for ninety seconds, for no reason I can find, and left heading north. Total time on camera: five minutes and six seconds.”

Noah turned around. “A bear.”

“A bear.”

“Bro. The only thing caught on my property during a murder investigation is a bear.”

“I noticed,” David said. “I’ve decided not to take it personally.”

Noah laughed, a real one, the first since the cruiser turned into the driveway. It came up out of his belly and bent him over the kitchen counter.

“He didn’t take anything?”

“He took nothing and left nothing. If I were writing this up for the chief, I’d call him a good neighbor.” Another pause, shorter. “So the footage is clean, Noah. Nobody on the land.”

The house hummed.

“Nobody the cameras can see,” David said.