“Yes, it does—though again there’s still no good reason for it. At least, not that we know of yet.” She turned and glared into the woods.
“You know he’s long gone,” Simon stated at her side. “Otherwise we would have found him.”
“I’m not so sure about that. Yes, I think he is gone, but still it makes me wonder.” And, with that, she started to slowly walk back down the pathway.
“Wonder what?” Simon called out.
“If he has a way to hide in here somewhere.” She worked her way up toward the same spot where she had bolted to find this guy. As she studied the area, she walked over to a tree that had branches low enough to climb.
She looked up and swore. “What do you want to bet that he went up there, when the couple came through here? And they didn’t see him due to the heavy foliage. The entire middle and top of this tree has enough greenery to hide a man.”
“And that would probably be a good guess,” Simon agreed, as he swung up onto the bottom branch. “I’ll let you know if he’s here now in a minute though.”
She didn’t have a chance to say anything, and Simon was already well on his way scampering up the tree. She swore. “Simon, you shouldn’t even be involved in any of this.”
“I’m involved already, so let’s not argue about that now, okay?”
She had to agree it was too late for arguing, because, dammit, he was already well and truly up into the tree. He called down a few moments later. “It’s empty.”
“Of course. Now get down here, for God’s sake.”
He came back down, but he had something in his hand.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know, but it was caught on a branch,” he noted. “So I think somebody just ruined his shirt.”
“If it’s even the same person,” she replied.
He gave her a fierce look. “How many people do you think are climbing around in these trees?”
She frowned. “No, you’re right,” she admitted grudgingly. “I don’t imagine there are too many. But still, we can’t completely rule it out.” She grabbed the piece of material. “I’ll send this to forensics.”
“Do you think there’d be anything on it?”
She shrugged. “If he’s been out running, it could have skin or sweat. But again we still wouldn’t have any DNA to match this to. So we’d have to place him on this pathway at some point in time in the last God-only-knows how long. Even if it rained in here,” she noted, “there’s no guarantee that he couldn’t have been here. There are all kinds of reasons for sitting up there. I mean, I’d imagine the view up there is pretty incredible, isn’t it?”
He nodded slowly. “Actually, it is. Anybody who’s a bird-watcher or any number of photography buffs or even landscape artists and the like could have gone up there, thinking that everything was better from up there.”
She nodded slowly. “And you know what? That view could also be how he found these runners in the first place.”
He looked at her in surprise.
“Well, unless you’re actually here to target runners, how else would you see them?”
He looked at her, and his face lit up. “I get it. You’re wondering whether or not he was a bird-watcher.”
“Well I don’t know too many bird-watchers who would climb up a tree like that.”
“So maybe he’s just a photographer, looking for sunsets and sunrises. Because that’s a perfect place for it, you know?”
She frowned at his comment. “That could be quite true. He also may have come at an earlier hour and had waited longer. Then, suddenly seeing the runners, maybe he started taking pictures of that too.”
“I wonder if at some point it could have just been their behavior that set him off, if maybe they were disrespectful to the wildlife around here or something. Maybe they were disrespectful to each other, and maybe he thought there was a natural order, and they weren’t following it.” Simon raised both hands in frustration. “I don’t know, but the two women, maybe he saw something more than what was there.”
“What do you mean? Thinking that they were lesbians, maybe?”
“I don’t know about that. Maybe they were swearing at each other in a way that pissed him off. Maybe he has this idea of how women should act.”