ride to Bandon Dunes took barely 10 minutes under a perfectly cloudless blue sky. The blacktop two-lane shoulders its way through a forest of shore pine and Douglas fir along with the South Oregon Coast’s requisite brambles of blackberry bushes, ferns and huckleberry shrubs. Not to mention the bane of the area, gorse, a spikey, oily plant that refuses to die even when blasted with the harshest of defoliants and weed killers but will turn acres into a blazing inferno at the drop of a paper match.
The golf resort’s guard shack – a small glass building – was more for show than security and, as usual, was unmanned. We slid past the guest cottages nestled in the woods and made the swing toward the newest of the Dune’s courses, yet unnamed but sure to join the others which had been ranked among the top 10 in the country by a variety of golfing magazines and professionals.
The crowd of cop cars and an assortment of pickups were scattered like jacks along both sides of the road. Being August, nearly three months of dry weather meant most were washed and waxed, the colors looking like someone dumped a handful of Skittles on a green placemat.
Uniformed cops and plaid-shirted onlookers stood around a felled tree. As Sal and I approached, Chief Forte broke away. After 26 years on LAPD, he took the Chief’s job in Bandon. Sandy hair going gray and a medium build, Forte is fit, tough and thick necked. He looks like a cop.
“Gentlemen, this is as odd as it gets.”
We followed him across a strip of fairway-to-be to the center of the onlookers. Most of the faces I recognized, some grunted greetings, others simply nodded.
As we walked, Forte explained, “The course designer wanted a bit more rough along the east edge of hole 12 so that meant removing about a dozen trees.” He nodded toward the far side of the fairway. “He called in a tree service and they started removing some of a stand when one of the guys found this.”
A large Madrone lay on its side, the remaining stump roughly three feet high. In the middle of the stump were skeletal remains of what looked like foot bones, pale white and lacking any apparent flesh or remnants of clothing. Chainsaw marks sliced across the bones a few inches above the ankles.
In the tree now prone, what appeared to be the stub ends of two shinbones.
“That’s a guy in a tree alright,” I said to Forte who was standing quietly nearby, hands on his hips. “Any guess how old the tree is?”
“The arborist is on his way.”
“Jeffries?”
“Yeah.”
“Good man.” I walked the length of the fallen Madrone. From the cut to roughly seven feet up, the tree had an unusual bulge then returned to a narrower trunk.
“Odd growth pattern,” I said to Sal.
He nodded, “As if the tree grew around the body. Looks like an elongated onion, sort of.” To Forte, “Are you sure it’s really bone and not some sort of practical joke?”
“One way to find out,” he said, waving over one of the plaid shirted men standing nearby lugging a chainsaw. “Want to cut off a three foot chunk for me, Jacob?”
“No problemo,” he said nodding a greeting in my direction and hoisting the chainsaw in his right hand, giving a tug on the starter rope with his left. The raucous burrr of the two-stroke engine hit high C and Jacob tipped the chain into the Madrone. 20 seconds later, a three foot section lay on the ground. Two deputies lifted it on end. Jacob hit the kill switch on his chainsaw.
The men crowded around Sal, Forte and me to get a clear look at the section of trunk.
“Looks like a rib cage to me,” Forte said, leaning over the log. Using a pencil as a pointer, “Rib, spine. Whoever it was, he was standing upright when he was, uh, treed.”
A reporter from Western World newspaper who had been hovering around the perimeter of the group stepped close to the tree and snapped three quick photos.
Forte pointed at him and ordered “Enough, Karl.”
“This is too good to pass up, Chief.”
“Until we figure out who this is and notify any kin, let’s keep those pictures locked up.”
The reporter grinned. “Not gonna happen, Chief. Let’s face it, this guy’s been dead a long time if that tree grew up around him. Have a statement for me?”
“Yeah. The Bandon Police Department has enlisted the services of Nick Drago and Sal Rand to assist in determining…”
“You did?” I interrupted.
“Does ‘enlist’ entail payment?” Sal asked.
“Question 1, yes. Question 2, no,” Forte continued, “…in determining the identity of the victim and how he or she became encased in a Madrone.”
“Good enough for now,” Karl said.
A dually Ford pickup nosed down the road its diesel rattling as it pulled onto the grass, Warren Jeffries Tree Service painted on the doors. A tall thin man climbed from the cab and ambled toward us, head down, hands in pockets.
“Hey Chief,” he said, finally looking up. “Nick, Sal. Howyadoin. Whatchagotgoin?” He looked at the Madrone. “Too bad you cut it down. Don’t see many 100-plus year old Madrones around here.”
“That old?” I asked.
“Easy. Grows fast, needs perfect climate and weather and drainage to stay alive.”
He walked along the length of the tree.
“Probably wouldn’t have lasted another 100, though, with the golf course nearby. Change in environment almost always kills ‘em off.”
He poked at the trunk with a pocket knife, peeling away flaps of the shedding bark, revealing a clear, smooth wood face.
“Yeah, pretty healthy. Odd configuration, though.” He ran a hand along the trunk. “Limbs were twisted when the tree was young. Left a cage of sorts. Never seen that before.” He continued prodding the Madrone. “See here? You can just make out the different limbs. Most of the gaps have filled in after all this time, but no doubt, it was woven into a vertical cradle when the tree was just a pup.”
Focused on the tree, he suddenly realized there were bones inside the trunk. “Holy macaroni. There’s a body in there, Chief.”
“Reason I called, Warren.”
“Jumpin’ Jesus. That’s really odd.”
“Ya think?”
“Can you give me a better guess on the age of the tree?” I asked.
Nodding, Jeffries crouched down and stared at the stump, picking at the wood with his knife.
“Field guess, 120 to 125 years old. No more, not less.”
He stood, closed the knife and slipped it back into his jeans’ pocket. “Could give you a better estimate if I had a slice of the stump without the feet, though.”
