Chapter 3

Timepiece: 3.

Wendy's High School experience lasted four days. That freshman Wendy never came back from the chaperoned shopping Saturday. Instead, a bright shiny 18 year old redhead showed up with her confused boyfriend. Same alley ... nearly identical time ... same rapist searching for the last witness to his heinous crimes. When the sun came up on Sunday four newly minted 14 year old high school girls were dead ... slaughtered in an unkind and bloody manner. The two mothers who were in charge were never found. The fifth girl ... Wendy was missing, too.

Some months later, a detailed sketch of the man was printed on the front page of the Lansing Home Journal.

Have you seen this man?
Sketch by the one who got away.

the caption read.

And yes ... people from all walks of life had seen the man. He was the Lansing Police Department Detective in charge of the seven years long investigation into the rape and dismemberment of 16 teen age girls in the state of Michigan. No wonder there had been no developments.

The afternoon of the printing of that front-page picture, the Police Department rang out with the sound of a single shot. Our sterling defender of the laws of the City of Lansing, State of Michigan, United States of America, had swallowed a .357 magnum bullet delivered by his blued Smith and Wesson Model 19 revolver ... and no matter how the department tried to spin it ... the story was front page Monday news. His home in the country was rife with his 'collection' of missing fingers.

During the interim, Wendy and David visited the Austin summer home.

"I know this place," said David.

"You do?" Wendy asked, quite relieved.

"Yes," he said, "Take a little walk with me."

So they went ... Green to Bridge to Lowell to Plymouth to the foot of Old Baldy...

Old Baldy is STEEEP.

"Around or over?" David asked.

"Oh, over for sure," Wendy said with the exuberance of youth.

And so ... they climbed the six hundred feet that was Old Baldy to see the eight hundred feet of Firetop a quarter mile to the north. The steel skeleton and plank platform of the Forest Service fire lookout tower rose starkly on the skyline of Firetop.

"In Detroit, there was a tower that was manned twenty-four hours a day. There was a bronze signal cannon that fired only when the ships of the English were sighted," David said. "What I want to see is the valley between," he pointed down, into the trees and the shade.

And so, they went down ... into the first growth pines and the needle cushioned floor of the valley.

As they wandered, seemingly aimlessly David said, "Yes," over and over ... until they came to the huge pile of fallen trees with the hidden shack near the mouth of the approach to the grassy hunting area.

"She lived here," he said.

"She?"

"The redheaded miracle who stole my deer."

"You've been here before?" Wendy asked.

"Yes ... walk over to the flat rock by that old stump and crouch down."

She did.

"Push that fern aside slowly and stare out at me," David said.

The green eyes nearly matched the fern.

"You have been here before," David said.

"In my dreams, I was a forest nymph and lived here. A knight in leather came here once every fall. I watched him as he slowly and nearly soundlessly walked across the valley floor. He had a rifle that spat smoke and fire and killed a button buck ... just around the corner in the grassy meadow. I built this shack when I was eleven and spent weekends camping here ... daddy helped. Educational expense, daddy said.

"I was looking for my knight ... but he was only in my dreams."

"I was searching for my dream and had to find her in another world."

"Yup, a world of a higher plane."

"Hey!"