The Cutoff

By James Staff

The tragedy of the Donner Party belongs to California’s past - until a dead girl is found by the infamous lake and the horror begins again.
The body mutilated, throat cut, flesh butchered from her thigh. A savage onslaught that echoes history – 1846, an emigrant wagon train trapped by fierce snowstorms, pioneers forced to winter without food and falling to desperate measures: cannibalism and murder.
For two men, the killing will unlock their past: Lee Wall, a disgraced cop, and Pat Dollarhide, father of the dead girl. Their fate lies bound with Frank Vines, a cancer-ridden parolee with a corroding desire for revenge. The Cutoff leads all three into a showdown high on the same mountain where the westward pioneers once descended into hell, the living eating the dead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Staff
• Release date: Jul 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466174740

James Staff

I'm a sometime writer based in London. [e-mail] is the address if you want to get in contact.

Book preview

Chapter One

This one had her throat cut.

A ghost with bloodless blue skin, wearing a dirty white dress and no shoes, feet sunk into the lakeshore’s wet sand.

Lee Wall could see the black necklace going ear-to-ear as he ducked under the tape, the body sat knees-to-chest, up against a mound of glacier granite. A girl lit by the blue-red rhythm coming from two police cruisers blocking the path to the water.

Wall forced himself to walk when he wanted to run, striding into the pre-dawn wind coming hard off the Sierra. Cold air that picked up speed crossing the lake, whipping the lapels on his coat, blowing out the California summer. Remembering the advice he’d been given as a rookie, a beat cop reaching his first body: stay away from the face. Don’t make it personal, not until you’ve taken in the whole scene. Not until you’ve walked the edges, understood the detail. Out then in, body last.

Stay away from the face.

He looked.

Into open eyes. Into shock and blazing pain, contorted mouth, bared teeth. Wall guessing sixteen, blond hair tied off with a blue rubber band, fingernails painted silver, earrings with a turquoise stone. Neck cut to a hinge, blood soaking her party dress, staining the sand around her feet. He couldn’t see the knife, just a mess of footprints: the girl’s, the killer’s, his own. No pockets, no coat, no bag. Nowhere to look for ID.

Wall stepped over the exposed roots of a lodgepole pine, dropping to one knee, momentarily deaf, a dull roar slapping his eardrums. Seeing black ants trailing around the girl’s toes, crawling up one leg, two lines going under the hem of her dress. He stretched out a hand toward the strands of damp hair falling over her face, lost in her stare, fingers stopping an inch from her cheek, Wall unable to touch the dead girl.

Frank Vines had shriveled.

Shrunk.

Buying clothes at his old size, from a time when he carried some weight. From before he got sick, muscle wasting to nothing. Browsing racks in the thrift store, checking labels for the old Frank Vines’ fit, paying a buck for a shirt that hung from his shoulders, enough room around the collar to slide a fist through. The two-dollar pants came with a belt but wouldn’t buckle tight, not until he’d punched a new hole in the leather.

Vines didn’t care about clothes and the way they looked, not anymore. A lifetime ago he’d spend an hour in front of the mirror every Saturday night, admiring a pressed suit and necktie, ready to run his eye over the girls at the Veteran’s Hall. Looking for the skinny types halfway between ugly and pretty, where a man stood an even chance.

Vines was too old, too sick to be stepping out now. No woman would see past the skin hanging loose from his neck, sagging down both cheeks. No matter because Vines didn’t have that kind of energy any more, the urge lost to disease, blunted by all the drugs that went with the diagnosis.

The spasms started again, catching Vines off-guard without a handkerchief. Coughing spit and green-black bile into an open hand, pain blazing through his chest. A prison nurse had taught him breathing exercises and they helped some, stopping his panic as the mucus built, when his one good lung felt full of water.

The fit eased, leaving a fatigue drumming through muscle and bone. Vines sat in his sixty-dollar room, the only chair a hard straightback. Resting feet on a blue icebox, counting each fractured breath until his chest settled, until the pain faded to a background hum. He reached for the television remote, jabbing buttons, waiting for the set to warm up, for the on-the-hour newscast to break through the static haze. A pretty reporter faced the camera from what looked to be the lot of the museum, although it wasn’t easy to tell, not with all that breaking news shit flashing across the screen.

The reporter saying, This from two law enforcement sources, that a body has been discovered, essentially two hundred feet from where I’m standing now, by the shoreline of this mountain lake. Unconfirmed reports say a body of a teenage girl, coming to us right now as we wait for a briefing from the county sheriff.

Vines nodded, saying, Yeah, yeah, uh-huh. Trailing off when he heard his own voice, feeling a fool for talking out loud in an empty room.

The man wore jogging pants and running shoes, sat in the backseat of a cruiser, feet out on the parking lot. Head in hands, telling the investigator how he’d started from the campsite inside the park, taking a route through the pines before finishing up along the lakeshore. How he’d come across the body at around five-forty, running back to his truck, dialing 911 from his cell. Two county deputies had brought him back to the lake at six-ten.

Lee Wall saw no blood on the man’s clothes, had no reason to believe he wasn’t hearing the truth. Everything about the guy was right, from the sweat-stained T to the dirt on his shoes. To the way he stuttered, saying, That po-poor girl. Jesus Christ, that po-poor girl.

Wall heard himself saying, Yeah, it’s okay. Relax, just relax. It’s okay, when the guy’s vacation was ruined and no meaningless puff from a cop would get it back.

Kinney and Voss turned circles around their cruiser, heads down between jacket collars, never looking in the girl’s direction, never catching Wall’s eye. The two deputies bitching about missing their morning coffee then going quiet, the girl’s death-stare on their minds. Both young guys new to law enforcement – they’d seen nothing like this.

Wall had years on the street, tours working vice then homicide in Sacramento. The primary on street knifings, writing up scenes of suicide with blunt kitchen blades, standing where boyfriend gutted girlfriend. Rolling drug casualties, fingertip-probing for entries and exits, taking crime scene photographs of street prostitutes beaten beyond identification. Scenes repeated day-to-day, the blood and ripe stink fading to a white noise.

But the barefoot girl by the lake stood out. She was the real thing, his first since he’d quit the city, four years without that hard kick of adrenaline. The girl had value, a break from meth-lab busts, time-out from domestics and petty burglary. A freak show that would pick up extra manpower, overtime, the press and their cameras.

Wall was ready for it.

Couldn’t wait for it to start.

He turned hearing the car door slam shut, watching Wes Brister walking through the blowing dust and sand, the medical examiner swatting away circling yellow jackets. Brister had been with the county forever, his retirement only weeks away, struggling to get down in front of the girl on arthritic knees. Getting steady then going to work, pressing fingers around the girl’s ankles, watching the skin blanch.

Wall looked on, thankful the old man had taken the call. Brister was okay, keeping the volume out of his voice when others would be all fucks and shits, playing it for laughs. Too much bad language at the scene embarrassed Wall.

Fatal wound to the neck, lacerated carotid artery, Brister said. No blood to the brain, lights out in seconds, dead within the minute. Let’s say the killer stood behind her, the way to do it quick.

The examiner did what Wall couldn’t, brushing hair away from the girl’s face.

She made a fight of it, Brister said. Bruises around the eye, skin under nails.

The sun was up but had no heat to it, hidden behind the flat cloud sinking over the Sierra. Wall shivered, moving to a cop’s two-step, a shuffle driven by nerves and the icy cold. Ten yards along the shore, an empty bag rode on the lake’s small waves. Wall moved toward the water, stooping low, fishing out the limp plastic with a pen, laying it out on a rock. Recognizing the mountain logo over blue background, a bag of party ice.

Brister was talking. Be a lot of blood, no way to avoid that. Killer’s got to be painted.

Wall watched the examiner lifting the hem of the girl’s dress, folding it back over her knees. Seeing the older man blink before taking a long drag on an invisible cigarette, bad news because Brister was a veteran, a war-horse.

Wall stepped over and looked in, snapping his head away. Jesus fucking shit. Forgetting his own rules, knowing he’d have to take a second look because he still wasn’t sure exactly what he’d seen, what the mess meant.

The examiner’s voice was a whisper. Section of flesh missing from the thigh. Square, cut against the muscle, about an inch deep into the fat. Clean, done with a butcher’s skill. Looks like our man took himself a steak. Skinned it, too.

Wall set his feet apart, steady against a sudden rush of ice-flecked wind. Getting his breath, looking over the black water.

Donner Lake.

Hearing echoes, recalling stories from schoolbooks. A nineteenth century wagon train heading for old California, trapped high in the mountains by a freak chain of snow storms. Families forced to camp out the long winter months without food, the living eating the dead, boiling brains, roasting limbs. The survivors becoming notorious, branded cowards and worse, one lynched by history as a black-hearted killer. A monument built so their suffering and endurance would never be forgotten, a quarter-mile back from where he stood now, hidden behind the crowding pines.

The freak who’d cut the girl knew his history, Wall was sure of that.

Chapter Two

Wayne Pope woke with a headache kicking behind one eye, mouth reefer-dry, neck stiff from spending all night in the recliner. He’d turned up at Heidi’s sometime past midnight, fizzing with energy, drunk and horny, only to be kicked to the curb, Heidi pissed because she’d been working a late shift, needing her sleep. He’d drunk more beer, smoking the last of the dope, getting his head switched off, nodding out in front of the television.

It was still early, before nine, the KTVN weekend anchor reading the news. Heidi was out of bed and dressed, ready for work in a suede skirt, black boots, the red bandana holding up her curls, something about hygiene because she was in and out of a kitchen all day.

Pope watched her walk over from the kitchenette, switching off the TV, dropping yesterday’s Gazette into his lap, the newspaper folded over at the classifieds, openings highlighted with a yellow pen: forklift operator, anything in a warehouse, line cook. The same routine week on week, Heidi making her point over and again.

Pope didn’t need a job, not with his brother sure to come through the way he always did. One good score and Pope would be down to Circuit City, his eye on those flat-panel TVs you hung from the wall. After that, the essentials: beer, meth, dope. Maybe some new sounds, something to keep his collection growing, keep it fresh.

The chemicals alone ought to make him solid with Heidi, plugged into the Reno supply the way he was, sources all over town. But where to buy was never the issue – getting the money together, that’s when the fighting started. Pope needed his brother’s quick cash to sink these day-to-day arguments, something big enough to keep their heads up for weeks. Something to get Heidi back on the same page because lately the girl had been spending too much time out of the house, working extra shifts at the cafe, doing God-knew what else. They still got high and fucked, but the downtime in between had become a war zone, Heidi in a foul mood when she was straight, nagging him to take a job, make some honest money. The girl finding ways to needle him, always turning his television off, always rotating the dial down on the stereo. And Pope did hate to be without entertainment. Never mind what show, he just wanted something on.

He’d fucked up last night, getting stoned and staying over, violating his parole. His PO, some Mex bulldog named Gilardo, was taking it to the white man, on Pope’s ass since he’d walked from Ironwood. For Pope, the clock ran out at eight in the evening, when he’d better be at his brother’s place or risk being picked up in a sweep and sent back inside. Dennis let him sleep in the guestroom where there was enough space for a bed and closet. Pope kept all his electronics here at Heidi’s, the 42-inch Sony in the living room, an over-sized monster taking up a whole corner. The small portable in her kitchen, his old Magnavox in the bedroom, still working but giving off a green cast. If he bought a new screen for the wall – turning the room into a fucking movie house – he could bump the Magnavox, get back to enjoying the television from the bed.

Heidi walked past with a bag, the keys to her Saturn. Pope grabbed, pulling her in, meaning to give her a kiss, show he wasn’t mad about the newspaper thing. Heidi fought him off, saying something like, Asshole.

Heidi had a temper and a dirty mouth.

Twisting in his chair, Pope got a handful of butt before she was out of reach, marching for the door. He gave her the finger, turning back to the TV, scrambling for the remote that had slid behind a cushion. Getting a picture up on the Sony, the morning news still going, a show he’d normally flip away. Today he stayed with it, something catching his eye.

Something about a dead girl in the mountains.

The news camera panned back, showing an army of city and state police, the highway patrol lined up and ready to go. Ready for the hunt, the same way they’d come for him thirty-five years ago. Vines could feel the bile rising just thinking about it, mucus catching in his throat, another fit coming to tear his chest apart.

1967 and he’d been running, away from the body on the road, the dead patrolman. Running though twisted pines and granite outcrops, his hands a mess of tiny cuts, bloodied by knife-sharp pine needles, rocks with a hard crystal edge. Running until his lungs contorted with pain and he had no choice but to hide from the coming day under the Southern Pacific railroad sheds, long wood and iron structures built to keep the winter snow off the tracks. Shaking in the mountain chill, kept awake by the chainsaw cries of mountain birds calling for dawn. Hearing voices and crawling away from the pursuit, going over a steep spine of rock only to come face-to-face with a line of black sunglasses. A cop army, gun barrels twitching with that one-of-us, one-of-you charge of retribution. They would have shot him dead, no doubt, only he was thrown to the ground by a lawman coming from behind, the trigger-minded posse forced to back down, afraid of killing one of their own.

In Folsom, they had it written it up in black and white: general population, high security. Meaning he’d gunned down the patrolman in cold blood. And he’d been quick to brag about it during those first hard years, looking for an edge, a way to get respect – currency in any state lockup. Not many could equal what he’d supposedly done and Vines wore his status the way you would a badge.

He’d experimented for a time, a little fine-tuning here and there, addition and subtraction. The final version going like this: that he’d made it over the mountain pass before hearing the siren, before pulling over. That he’d slipped a .38 under his thigh, waiting until the highway patrol was alongside his window, winding it down when the officer rapped on the glass. Vines polite, wearing a smile – a good citizen caught riding the power of a Chrysler Newport, the V8 big block a temptation no man could resist.

Bragging how he’d brought the gun up slow, hesitating for a half-second, watching the shock swell over the lawman’s face. Shooting until the man was on his back, the gun empty. Showing no mercy because you’d get none if the situation was flipped around – if the patrolman had been smart enough to know he’d come up on one of California’s most wanted. Running because the dead lawman had a partner, gun drawn, firing at the Newport, blowing out a tire.

There is power in repetition and Vines told this lie over and over, coming to believe he could have pulled the trigger, that electric blood ran hard through his veins. That you could shoot a man dead and feel nothing but pride.

Inside Folsom, Vines had walked with a killer’s strut.

Eugene Brothers wasn’t getting out of the car. Not with it being sub-zero outside, not when he had the heater on high and the radio low. Brothers slid a few inches in his seat, looking toward the lake, losing focus, his horn-rims slipping to the end of his nose.

A figure waved. His partner, Lee. Maybe a hundred feet from the car, legs hidden by the slope as it fell away to the lake. Not a greeting, more a come-here motion. Brothers stretched, nudging the dial on the radio, bringing up soft percussion, a woman singing about hitchhikers and white lines on the freeway. Brothers didn’t care about the music they made anymore, deaf to the noise blazing from the room his twin daughters shared. It had been fifteen years since he’d boxed up his vinyl, stacking history at the back of the garage. But the old tunes still stuck in his memory, this one by that horse-faced hippie Joni Mitchell.

Brothers had his eyes closed when Wall slapped on the window.

Better come see this, Wall’s voice muffled behind glass.

Brothers wouldn’t even look at his partner.

Come on, Gene...

On any normal day, Brothers would take his lead from the younger man, Lee Wall with all the drive, the passion, the initiative. Taking it too far sometimes, going up through the gears in a blur, excitement to impatience to a tight rage that was evident more than it ought to be. Brothers was going the other way, slowing down. Over fifty and feeling it in a stiffening hip, in episodes of gout, in fatigue that made everyday an effort. He had no more patience for exercise and diet, indifferent to the over-the-belt gut he’d been quick to despise on others only a few years ago. Eugene Brothers had fallen into an easy habit: living off his partner’s energy instead of his own.

But today would be different. There was debt, a new order. Lee Wall owed him his badge, plain as that. Because of Brothers’ sworn statement to the sheriff. Not that he’d lied exactly, only choosing his words with care, creating a black and white impression out of shades of gray.

Brothers thumbed a button on the door, the window sliding down, stuttering against ice crystals nested in the corners of the glass. Get in the car.

Get in the car? That’s it? Wall sounding like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Yeah, get in the fucking car, Lee.

She’s a kid, Gene. A school kid. Cut up bad.

Anderson and Garrett can take it.

Knifework you won’t believe, real twisted shit. You got to see it.

Jesus, Lee. You’re suspended, you forget? Brothers tapped a finger against his forehead, hard enough for Wall to hear the knocking.

Wall’s temper was lit. Sixteen would be my guess. Yeah, sixteen. Same as Jeanie and Marie. Maybe she knew your girls; maybe they went to the same school. Maybe you should get off your ass, take a look.

Brothers didn’t say a word, didn’t move. Wouldn’t blink.

Wall leant forward, slamming both hands on the car, taking heavy breaths Brothers could see blooming in the too-cold air.

Three weeks since Grass Valley and Wall was still bullied by the mania that follows a firefight. Standing stick-thin under a black coat, a grinding tension to his jaw, raw eyes punched deep into sockets. Still wearing his hair combed straight back, longer than any cop’s ought to be, a direct confrontation to the standard look: a buzz-cut or shaved to baldness. Brothers had his wife take up the clippers every weekend, following the schedule set down by his academy sergeant a lifetime ago.

Sixty seconds and Wall’s blood lost its fire, the investigator pinching his nose, blowing.

Brothers nodded towards the shoreline. Who we got back there?

Kinney and Voss.

Yeah? How they take it when you showed up?

Me? I’m invisible.

That a surprise?

Three weeks before, in an alley behind a paint and hardware store, Wall and Brothers had come on a pickup, both quick to recognize the spread of 49ers decals across the tailgate. Russ Tobin was behind the wheel, an ex-county deputy who’d let his hair grow long, wearing his old badge as a belt buckle. Tobin had switched sides, moving crystal into the mountains, a go-between from the superlabs in the Sacramento Valley.

Wall was out of the car first, knocking on the Dodge’s passenger-side window. Brothers statement was clear, containing no ambiguity: he’d seen Tobin bend forward, reaching under his seat. Had seen Wall draw his gun and start firing, the Glock 27 blowing out the truck’s window, Tobin curled into the brace position, as if that could save him from a magazine of hollow points.

Wall said, "What, you think I should give a shit? You want me to grieve?"

I’m saying Tobin had six-years in. All the uniforms were tight, went hunting together, barbecued. See it as a fraternity. You cancelled the wrong guy if you’re about making friends.

Wall straightened up, hands in pockets.

How come you got here so quick? Brothers said. You’re ninety minutes away.

I was in town.

Where? Brothers knew where: the Fireside Motel, Wall’s car in the lot most nights this week, some waitress in there with him.

Just riding around. Wall said.

In the middle of the night? Listening to the goddamn scanner? Jesus, Lee, you couldn’t let it go for three weeks? Unbelievable. Brothers turned the ignition, stamping on the gas. Get in so we can buy breakfast, start this day over. Get his partner away from the scene before the sheriff or the captain showed, before things were said and Wall ended up going toe-to-toe, talking himself out of a job.

Wall walked around the car, opening the door, slumping into the seat. The Chevy rocked itself level.

‘I’m back Monday," Wall said.

Yeah, well it ain’t Monday. Brothers stepped off the brake, pulling forward.

Heidi Bonee made it as far as the front door but didn’t reach for the lock. Turning, watching her man slumped in the recliner, last night’s beer and dope fogging the room. You only had to look at Wayne and see prison: a two-time felon at forty, ugly blue-black tattoos staining both arms. Six-foot and more, dirty blond hair worn long down his back, nine months out and the prison yard muscle going to fat, a middle-aged spread pulling down his chest. But still with the size to do it both ways: attract and intimidate.

She re-crossed the chaos of the living room, stepping over empty CD cases, beer cans, pizza boxes. Behind the recliner she started running fingers through Wayne's hair, skirting around the crown and the growing bald spot, the skin red and flaking because he never would wear a hat in the sun.

Wayne looked up, showing her that fixed smile, a grin disconnected from emotion. She felt guilty then, for