Lead Investigator

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. The candle was lit by author John Falcot, who had just recently come to stay in the remote cabin. John, a successful author of eight novels, was in the midst of writing his next work of fiction, but the process was going anything but smoothly. Sitting in his New York apartment last week, his head in his hands, John knew that he could not continue wasting eight hours a day wishing away his writer’s block. He had to actually do something about it.

So, breathing deeply, he lifted his head and opened the internet browser on his laptop. He began researching places he could go to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city and really focus on his writing. A coastal Massachusetts resort had potential and a lodge in Vermont looked promising, but John ultimately decided on three weeks in a solitary cabin in the woods upstate. Knowing that he would likely not have electricity or cell service in this primitive and remote cabin, John packed only his old typewriter, several stacks of blank paper, and a few changes of clothes. He headed to the market to pick up a few non-perishable food items, and then he was off.

When John had talked to the cabin’s owner over email, he had said that he was out of town for a while and could not meet John in person to show him to the cabin. However, he was able to collect the fee online and told John where he could retrieve the key: in a small blue flowerpot on the cabin’s stoop. The owner asked John to kindly return the key to that spot at the end of his trip.

As John walked up the path to the cabin last week, crunching through mounds of yellow fallen leaves, with one paper bag of groceries, one duffel, and a typewriter case in his arms, he could feel excitement and inspiration brimming. He retrieved the key from the pot as directed, pushed open the front door with gusto, large dust particles flurrying down to the wooden floor, and breathed a sigh of relief. He stood in the middle of the cozy room, listening to the sound of nothing but the wind blowing gently through the trees outside, taking it all in. He felt hopeful.

Now, sitting at the table in the cabin a week later, watching the candlelight flicker across a half-typed page held against the typewriter’s platen and several others crumpled on the floor, John was feeling incompetent, unproductive, frustrated. The cabin’s one room felt uncomfortably small. The wind grated against the exterior and caused a draft to blow throughout. The strong scent of mildew filled John’s nostrils every time the breeze disturbed the moth-eaten curtains hanging limply in the windows. John sighed and decided to go to bed early. He pushed back from the table and flopped onto the stiff, mildew-scented mattress, hoping tomorrow night’s writing would be better.

After another week of excruciatingly similar nights passed, John was feeling both annoyed that this excursion had not improved his writing and grateful that his three-week stay was almost up. In fact, he was much more irritable than usual as the week wore on, and he seemed to grow more and more fatigued as each day passed. Being a writer was anything but glamorous, he knew that, but this experience with his current novel – or lack of one – was causing him to consider giving up the profession altogether.

Tonight, as the sun dipped below the trees, John sat down at the table, lit the candle, which was now melted down significantly, aligned the paper in the typewriter, and positioned his fingers on the keys, as he had done each night in the two weeks prior. Interestingly, though, John’s words began flowing. He wrote about a dozen pages, then felt the urge to read and reread them, fearing that they were actually subpar. However, John was pleasantly surprised to find that his work so far was decent. Not the greatest he had ever written, necessarily, but not requiring an angry crumple and throw to the ground either. After hours had passed and several dozen additional pages were written, John decided to take a break and make some tea.

John had found an old kettle and a painted mug during one of his first few days in the cabin. He had made a habit out of having tea in the evenings and was looking forward to his cup tonight. He poured some water from a plastic jug into the kettle and set it on the wood-burning stove. John used the time waiting for the water to boil to reread a few more pages of his writing.

‘Actually, not bad. Getting better as I go,’ he thought.

All of a sudden, a loud screeching sound filled the cabin, startling John and causing him to drop the pages that he had in his hands.

“Damnit,” he muttered, “now they are out of order.” He haphazardly shuffled the pages into a pile and set them on the desk before walking over to remove the kettle from the stove. He opened a chamomile tea bag, placed it in the painted mug, and added some water. He brought the steaming mug over to the desk and began organizing the pile of pages as his tea bag steeped.

A few minutes later, the pages were back in order, and John could finally sit down to enjoy his tea. Mug in hand, John headed over to the armchair in the corner of the room, sat down, and kicked his feet up onto the foot stool. Sipping his tea slowly, he reflected on the productive day he’d had with a smile. A few moments later, he set his empty mug on the windowsill, let his head fall back against the headrest, and felt his eyes growing heavy.

John began to awaken slightly, as he began feeling a tickling sensation on his right arm. In his half-asleep state, he swatted at his arm, and the sensation subsided. However, a moment later, he began to feel the tickling all over his body, and it began to shift to a sharp, stinging feeling in many areas. John’s eyes shot open and, in the low light coming from the last nub of the candle, he found that he was covered in cockroaches. He screamed and began swatting at his arms and legs to remove them. He bolted up from the armchair and began stomping his legs and waving his arms vigorously, but the cockroaches were extremely fast and able to crawl back up his legs as soon as they hit the ground. For each cockroach he stomped on, it seemed that three more took its place. John’s heart was racing, and beads of sweat began forming on his forehead. As he tried desperately to stomp on the cockroaches, he fell back into the armchair.

Then, a loud noise, which sounded like the slam of a door, startled John, causing him to look up. When he looked back down, he gasped, as all of the cockroaches had disappeared. John sat in shock for several moments.

‘It must have been a dream,’ he thought, as beads of sweat dripped down his face and back. He took another second to consider this possibility. Was it a dream? It had seemed so real to him, and his racing heart and sweating body were definitely real. John sat as still as ice for another minute, as the candle burned down completely and went out.

“Yes, it must have been a dream,” John said to the pitch-black room. Speaking the words aloud made the possibility seem more likely, which calmed John, and he was able to direct his attention back to the slamming noise he had heard a moment earlier. This noise concerned John, as this cabin was in a remote area and the only doors in the vicinity were attached to the cabin and to his car outside. John got up to investigate. He felt his way across the room to the writing desk and fumbled through the drawer for another candle and the book of matches. Once he had the new candle lit, he wheeled around to illuminate the cabin. Nothing looked out of place, but John had an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He decided to open the front door and make sure his car was untouched as well. He took the candle, opened the creaky front door of the cabin, and walked a lap around his car, which showed no signs of disturbance. Relieved, he headed back into the cabin.

‘Weird,’ he thought, ‘that noise definitely sounded like a door slamming.’ He closed and latched the front door of the cabin behind him and was just about to return to the armchair when he noticed the only door he had not yet checked: the door to the bathroom. He headed towards the door, candle in hand. As he put his hand on the metal knob, a chill ran down his neck. The knob was ice cold, and John yanked his hand back in surprise.

Not knowing what to think, John extended his hand once more. This time, he expected the icy temperature of the knob, but what he didn’t expect was that the door wouldn’t move. John jiggled the knob left and right, forward and backward, but still the door wouldn’t budge. John felt a surge of fear course through his body, and his thoughts began to race as he tried to make sense of this strange situation.

John decided he must get into the bathroom. He began slamming all of his weight against the door, but the sturdy oak would not budge. Then, he had an idea. He took a running start from halfway across the cabin and, directing all of his force into his right shoulder, slammed into the door once more. The door flew open, and John looked down to find himself across the threshold, the door’s lock hanging from the frame. Glancing around the bathroom, nothing looked amiss.

‘Someone must have locked that door, though,’ thought John. The lock wasn’t the kind – such as an in-knob lock – that John could have pushed by mistake the last time he used the bathroom. It was a bolt-style lock, which required the user to be on the inside of the door to slide it into position.

Just then, John noticed that the shower curtain was pulled closed. He couldn’t remember whether it had always been like that or not, so he decided he had better check it. He inched forward slowly, arm outstretched, candle in hand. As soon as he was close enough, John whipped the curtain open and stumbled backward as he took in the sight before him, the candle and its holder falling to the floor.

In the bathtub, in several inches of bloody water, lay a young woman, nude, with dozens of vicious stab wounds covering her body and face. Some of the wounds were superficial; others were so deep you could see exposed bone. Beads of sweat began to form on John’s forehead, and he began gasping for air as he tried to determine his next move. Should he attempt to remove her from the bathtub? Attempt to revive her? Should he call the authorities? Would they think he had something to do with this horrific crime?

Hands shaking, John scooped up the candle and its holder, stumbled from the bathroom, and began to search the cabin for his car keys, sweat dripping down his face, neck, and back as he went. He knew he needed to go for help. However, after rummaging through the desk, his bag, and the bedside table and still coming up empty, he decided to run instead. John bolted out the front door, pausing just outside the cabin to consider which direction to go. He looked to his left toward the road and thought back to his drive up to the cabin all those weeks ago. He remembered that he had turned onto a gravel road before driving the last 30 miles to the cabin and that, once he had turned onto that road, he had not passed another car. He then turned to his right and darted into the woods.

The forest was pitch-black, with only occasional slivers of moonlight shining down through the trees. John was running as fast as he could, dodging branches and jumping over fallen trees. After running at top speed for several minutes, John stopped, hands on his knees, gasping for air. As he stood there, he heard something rustle in the bushes behind him. A second later, he heard the rustling again, this time even closer. He whipped around just in time to see a giant wolf leaping towards him, teeth bared, saliva overflowing from the corners of its mouth.

John dove to the ground, out of the path of the predator, before starting to run again. He could hear the wolf following him, snapping and growling. After a few minutes, the snapping and growling and sound of snapping twigs grew louder. John quickly glanced over his shoulder, finding that he was now being chased by half a dozen wolves. His legs were burning as he pushed himself to go faster, faster, faster.

All of a sudden, John found himself flying over the edge of a cliff and tumbling down into a ravine. He spun head over feet over head over feet. As he fell, he could feel his bones – ribs, clavicles, radiuses – smashing into rocks and tree stumps, shattering on impact.

Finally, John stopped spinning and came to a stop at the bottom of the ravine. He stared up at the top of the cliff he had just fallen over, expecting to see the pack of wolves there, watching his descent. There was nothing there, though. John felt his blood pooling under him from his various injuries. It felt warm and strangely calming. John’s eyes became heavy, and he drifted off into unconsciousness.

* * *

“Go for Santiago,” Detective Andrea Santiago said into the phone pressed to her ear.

“Hi Detective Santiago, this is Doctor Melinda Burke, the Medical Examiner for DuPont County. We just received the toxicology report on the John Doe that hunter found in the woods and—” she began.

“Oh, not a John Doe anymore,” Detective Santiago interrupted, “Turns out he was some big-name author: John Falcot. He got scammed by some local into paying all this money to stay and work in an abandoned cabin located about ten miles from his body. We found all of his stuff there. Still have no idea how he ended up at the bottom of a ravine, though.”

“Well, not sure if this will help with that, but the report showed that he had extremely high levels of lead in his system, which can cause all sorts of side effects, ranging from irritability and fatigue to intense hallucinations,” Doctor Burke reported.

“Hmmm” said Detective Santiago, turning an evidence bag containing a painted mug in her hands, “I wonder.”

“Well, just wanted to keep you in the loop as lead investigator on the case,” Doctor Burke replied.

“Thanks, I appreciate that. You have a good rest of your day, now. Bye,” Detective Santiago said before pulling her phone from her ear and pressing ‘End.’

She opened her ‘Contacts’ app and scrolled down, selecting the number for Lisa, the head of the forensic team, before pressing her phone back to her ear.

“Hello?” Lisa said.

“This is Detective Santiago, lead investigator on the John Falcot case. Listen, we need to get another forensic team out to that abandoned cabin?” she said.

“What for?” Lisa asked.

Detective Santiago took a breath and said, “To test for lead.”