TAKEOUT a Scary Larry novel Take One Jared Lessig reached the hilltop and reached back to help Judy up the steep, narrow trail's last few feet. This was Quarry Hill Park's highest point, a large plateau densely covered with poplars and dotted with the crumbling ruins of century-old stone buildings. At the turn of the century, this area was the site of a large limestone quarry; during World War II, ammunition bunkers were built into the hillsides. None of the original structures still stood, although concrete foundations and portions of limestone-block walls could be found everywhere in the underbrush. During the 1970s, the quarry was turned into a park and nature preserve. Miles of hiking trails wound throughout the wooded hills, many of them remote, narrow, and rarely visited. To 17- year-old Jared and his girlfriend Judy, these represented an almost limitless number of undisturbed make-out sites. They proceeded down the path, Judy carrying a gym bag containing an old blanket and a change of clothes. They came to a fork in the trail and chose the left. At times, they walked within inches of a sharp 200-foot drop to the quarry bed below. Although she couldn't see it through the trees, Judy knew that at the bottom was a surface of solid rock, punctuated on the way down by sharp rock outcrops and trees small enough to snap off and impale a person. She was very glad that Jared was an experienced hiker and would lead them around any truly dangerous spots. Heights scared Jared shitless. He tried to keep his eyes on the trail and not look toward the dropoff, all the while praying that Judy didn't recognize that he had never hiked anything wilder than the relatively flat and sanitized Chester Woods during Boy Scout campouts. "Jared, what's that?" Judy's voice was well behind him. He turned and saw that she had stopped and was pointing to something within the trees. To their right was another dropoff, not as steep, but just as dangerous. Set within the ground near the top was the remains of a long, narrow building's cellar, made of ragged slabs of stacked limestone. It looked to run about ten feet wide and 200 feet long, although one end had been obliterated by a fallen tree. They walked out onto the slouched remains of a bisecting wall and climbed down into the ruin. "That looks like the perfect spot," Jared said, indicating where the most intact end had collected a huge drift of dead leaves. "Help me spread out the leaves, and we'll put our blanket on them." Judy waded knee-deep into the leaves and began scooping with both hands. They were damp down inside, and she could smell the rot. Her fingers glanced something like a twig; she wondered if a large branch lay underneath that they would have to move. Then her hand caught another object, and something soft and lumpy tumbled out of the leaves and landed on her foot. Ew, gross, Judy thought. A dead bird. No way was she going to lay her naked butt here, even on top of a blanket. Then she realized that the thing with dark flesh and bird-leg protrusions was no bird. It was a human hand. ***** Detective First Class Gene Manzarik pulled into Quarry Hill's west parking lot, across from a playground an a pair of tennis courts. He saw that Benny Tyler, the coroner, was already here. Several patrol officers stood at the park entrance, making sure nobody but police got in--or out. One of the officers approached him as he entered the picnic area. Manzarik recognized him as Tony Applequist, an aquaintence from years on the force. "Hey, Tony, how's it goin'? You got a body to show me?" "Howdy, Gene. I can take you up to where it's at." Applequist started along a dirt path entering the woods. "I guess if they called you, it's not some poor schmuck who fell and hit his head on a rock." "No, Tony, it doesn't sound like it is." Manzarik stopped and caught his breath as the trail began a sharp incline. "Jesus. Isn't there an easier way there?" Applequist, younger and in good shape from regular street patrol--something Manzarik hadn't done in years--was moving up the trail like it was flat ground. "There is no easy way there." They walked for what seemed to Manzarik half an hour, though it was probably no more than ten minutes. Sometimes the trail became flat and wide, other times they were forced to use tree roots as stairsteps. More than once, Manzarik spotted large, sharp-clawed footprints that were either dog or coyote. He hoped dog. "Hey, Tony. There aren't any wolves out here, are there?" "I don't know. I've never been this far into the hills before. I suppose you could ask one of the park people." "No thanks. I'd rather not know." Finally they arrived at an old stone cellar set into the hillside. Familiar yellow crime-scene ribbon enclosed the structure and chattered in the wind. A cluster of uniformed and plain-clothes officers hung around the scene. Only a few were actually in the pit. Manzarik ducked under the ribbon and cautiously stepped into the pit. He spotted Tyler at the far end. The old guy was taking notes into a microcasette recorder while a young guy with a camera took photos. He could smell the corpse already. "Afternoon, Benny. What've you got for me?" Tyler stepped aside so Manzarik could get a good look. "Female; white; 20-25, we think. Pretty badly decomposed." "Yeah. No shit." Tyler gave him a sideways look. He was from the old school which didn't think that swearing on the job was professional. Manzarik made a mental note to watch himself. "I'm guessing she's been here about two months, though I'll have to get her onto the table before I can give you anything more accurate. Cause of death is also tenative, but I can unofficially say that it was probably this." He pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and pointed it at a piece of nylon twine embedded in what little flesh remained on the woman's neck. "Yep. That'd do it. Was there any ID on her? A purse or wallet?" "I don't know, I don't look for those things. Ask one of them. They were the first officers on the scene." Manzarik thanked him and left. Tyler was being his usual crotchety self. He seemed to get along with the dead better than the living. [more here. no id on woman. kids interviewed; scared, sent home. park sealed off] ---------------- Take Two Applequist could still see sunlight on the tall stacks of the power plant long after sunset's shadows had descended in the quarry hills. He and Jan Delant were somewhere on the south side of the park. The power plant smokestacks sprouted above the treeline, but Applequist still had no idea where they were. The crude, hand-drawn maps that the park people had given them were worthless. According to the map, they should have been walking parallel to the main paved path that circled the park, but the trail he and Delant were on ran perpendicular to that, and Applequist hadn't seen pavement for an hour. He and officer Delant were supposed to follow the map and patrol the trails to make sure the park was empty of visitors who may have entered before the girl's body was found. So far they had found nothing larger than squirrels, although they occasionally heard things off in the trees that sounded much bigger. Applequist remembered Manzarik's question about wolves and pushed the thought out of his head. The fact is they were lost, and pretty soon they would need their flashlights to see the trail. They pushed ahead, looking for more landmarks, but found only more trees. Suddenly the woods seemed much darker. "Hey, Delant, what time is it?" "Six o'clock." "Sure is dark all of a sudden." "Clouds moving in. I can smell rain in the air. We should probably head back to the nature center." "If we knew where it was." "Well, what's it say on the map?" "The map is worthless. It says we're on a paved bike path right now." "Great. Well, we know we're heading north, and that the nature center is east, so we should look for something branching off to the right." They kept going. The terrain leveled off from mossy hillside to flat and dry, still leading north. Something crunched the dead leaves off among the trees. "Hey, Delant, do you know if there are any wolves around here?" "I don't think so." "That's good." Then the trees disappeared and the ground became solid rock. They found themselves standing at the top of a series of rock shelves leading down fifty feet to a large, flat valley spotted with dead trees. Delant trained her flashlight on the valley floor. Large, stagnant pools of weed-choked water reflected back. Somewhere a tree frog sang. "This is the old quarry floor," she said. "It goes east. Should bring us close to the nature center." "No way around?" "We can't trust any of the trails to not deviate. We have to cross it if we don't want to spend the night out here." "Ladies first." As they carefully descended the rock shelves, they felt the first sprinkles of rain. By the time they reached the bottom, it had become a full-fledged rainstorm. Both of their windbreakers, supposedly waterproof, were quickly soaked through. They began the long walk across the middle of the quarry. The ground was mostly hard clay, spotted here and there with dead trees and clumps of prairie grass. Pools of water thick with weeds and scum were everywhere. In fact, most of the quarry floor was flooded. Applequist suddenly had a bad thought. "Delant, I think we should get out of here." "What's wrong?" "Because this hole is filling with water." Ahead, in Delant's flashlight beam, the pools on either side of the path were gradually closing together. She turned the light to the walls. Small waterfalls were cascading down the rocks, draining off of the hills. "Shit. Let's move." They jogged through the deepening water. At the far end of the quarry, they came to a huge delapitated kiln. It was still dry inside. "Should we duck into here?" Applequist asked. Delant shook her head. "We'd be trapped if the water got high. But it's built against the side of the quarry. We can use it to climb out of here." "Ladies first." "Y'know, Tony, sometimes you're just too fucking chivalrous." Applequist boosted Delant onto the kiln's roof. Then she reached down and pulled him up. The wall still loomed forty feet above them. Rivulets of water poured down the slick rock. "I don't know if we can make that," Applequist said. "Wuss." Delant began to scale the rock, finding crevices and footholds that were invisible to Applequist. He followed slowly, trying to find the places Delant had used. The rocks were slippery, and very quickly his arms began to scream with exhaustion. He simply concentrated on moving another inch upward. Over and over, one more inch. Then Delants hand was wrapped hard around his wrist, and she pulled him over the top. She grinned at him. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" Applequist lay in the mud, panting. "How the hell do you move like that?" "Four-story rapelling wall at a sports center up in the Cities. You climb up, then rapell down. I'll take you sometime, we'll put some meat on your bones." "Thanks, but I don't intend on ever doing that again." "Wuss." She stood and looked off into the distance. "This looks like another trail. We have to be fairly close. This way." This trail was even worse than the others. Only a little over a foot wide, it soon descended to the middle of the hillside. A hundred feet of steep woods above them, another hundred below. A drumming sound came from below them: rain on a metal roof. Applequist grew hopeful. "Is that the nature center?" Delant pointed downward. "No, only an abandoned shack with a tin roof." Then the rock her left foot stood on shifted, and Delant lost her balance. She tried to catch herself, but slipped in the mud and tumbled over the side with a shriek. Applequist lunged to catch her, but missed. Her scream cut off abruptly as she crashed through the shack's roof in an explosion of corrugated tin sheets. "Delant! Jan, are you ok?" Inside, Delant fought off unconsciousness. Shook her head to stay awake, felt it throb in pain as she did so. It was pitch black in the shack. Her flashlight was out. She hoped it was nearby. She faintly head Applequist call to her. "I'm okay, I think," she called back. "Don't know if anything's broken yet." She got her feet beneath her and tried to stand. Legs and back not broken, but both damn sore. She put her left hand on the wall and tried to pull herself upright, but pain shot up her arm and she collapsed the other way, landing against some sacks. "My left arm is broken," she called up. "I don't know if I can get back up the hill." "I'm going to call for help." Applequist depressed his radio call button. "Officer down. Medical emergency. Requesting assistance." Static. Shit. This quarry was blocking him. "I'm coming down to you. Don't move." He gingerly started down the slope, grabbing tree branches and easing down a step at a time. Delant felt around in the darkness with her good hand. Some old tools, a bench, wire. Ah, flashlight. She clicked on the light and was instantly on her feet with a choked sound. There in the tight beam was not a pile of sacks, but a woman's corpse. Delant saw white nylon cord buried in the flesh of her neck. A gleam of saliva still shone at the corner of her mouth, and the dead eyes were still wide and wet with fear. This body was very fresh. So fresh that Delant wondered-- She swung the flashlight around and almost had time to make a sound as she saw the very live face coming toward her. ***** Applequist reached the shack. It was old; tarpaper and tin. Looked like it had been a toolshed once upon a time. "Delant, I'm at the shed. How ya doing?" No reply. "Jan, are you okay?" Only the sound of rain on tin. Applequist went around and found the door. He was surprised to find it unlocked. He swung the door open and shone his flashlight in. "Oh, my god." A woman he didn't recognize slumped dead in the corner. And in the middle of the floor lay Delant, blood still bubbling from the gash across her throat. If Applequist had not put his free hand on his gunholster, he might have been able to deflect the pickaxe that swung at him from the darkness.