“Could the body have burned … away?” I asked Orin.
“I guess, maybe,” Orin said. “But it’s suspicious. It seems like they would have found some remains. I don’t know, Beth, sometimes our authorities aren’t all that qualified. It could just be uneducated or lazy investigating.”
“Gril?”
“Well, I guess maybe. Others who come over to help us out. It’s just the way it is—we aren’t a priority, and, again, you have to understand that some people move here for that reason. And I wasn’t here until right after, so I don’t know the details.”
I heard the insinuation in his voice, but I kept my eyes on the screen instead of letting him see them. “That’s it? That’s the only article about a fire where a child perished and another’s body wasn’t found? It seems like there should be more than that.”
“Also, Juneau’s paper doesn’t always send someone over to dig for more information, for a few reasons. It’s a different world than Juneau out here, and sometimes the weather doesn’t cooperate.” Orin’s fingers were flying over the keyboard again. “And news changes every day, always something shinier to pursue. I’m not finding any follow-up.”
“What else are you looking for?”
“Names aren’t listed in the article. I’m looking for a death notice.”
“I didn’t see obituaries in any old Petition files.”
“Bobby posted notices sometimes, but not all the time. Here. This is an official state record of death. This was probably the girl they found.”
It listed the date and read: “Two-year-old Jenny Horton. Cause of death: injuries sustained during a house fire.”
“That’s it?”
Orin shrugged. “It gives the official cause of death; that’s all it’s supposed to do.”
“Do you know the Hortons?” I asked.
Orin shook his head. “Don’t think so. They must have left before I got here, maybe shortly after the fire.”
“Can you find where they went? Where the house was located?” I said.
Orin typed and clicked. “I don’t know where they went, but their house was close to where Randy’s is. I don’t quite understand the property lines. I can figure it out in time.”
“This sounds like another possible mystery to add to our growing list,” I said. “Maybe all part of the same one, or maybe not.” I blinked. “What the hell is going on, Orin?”
He closed the laptop. “I’m heading back to the library. I’ll do some searching there and give Gril a call.”
“Wait,” I said as he set the laptop back on the desk.
“What?”
“What about Lane? The guy out in the woods, the guy who seemed to be living way off the grid?”
Orin shook his head. “I don’t know him. Maybe I’d recognize him if he’s visited the library, but I don’t know the name.”
“He knew who Gril was.”
“Okay. Lots of people know who the police chief is.”
“How does that work?” I asked. “How does someone manage to live without electricity, without anyone knowing about them? Can trapping animals and selling their pelts really make someone enough money to live on?”
“Yes, if it’s living simply,” Orin said. “I’ve met some trappers. They are a unique bunch, but honestly, they could be anyone. I’ve met some who couldn’t string together proper English and others who seemed well educated. It’s a lifestyle choice, I suppose.”
“And you never explored out that far?”
“No, I’m not much for exploring unless a computer is involved. I used to be more adventurous, but haven’t been in a long time. The mudslide opening an old logging road, though, I’ve heard of stuff like that happening. I’ll search for information about Lane, too.”
“I think there were some gravestones out by the storage shed, and inside the shed, among other things, were baby clothes,” I said. I’d forgotten those details in my first telling.
“Ugh. Maybe we’re making all of this creepy, Beth. I mean, our imaginations are forcing the connections, but they could all be separate things, easily explainable.”
“Where did those girls come from?”
“Gril will get the answer. He’s good.”
“I hope so.”
“He will.”
I nodded.
“All right. I will get back to you,” Orin said. “I really appreciate you sharing the information. I promise Gril won’t be mad, particularly if I find something to help him.”
I said, “I’ll let him know I talked to you.”
Orin sent me a quick peace sign. I closed and locked the door behind him and finally called Detective Majors. I was very glad when she picked up.
Twelve
“Beth, you okay?” she said as she answered.
“I’m sorry. Yes, I’m fine. I lost phone service and had to wait to get in a better spot to call you.”
Detective Majors knew I’d gone to Benedict, Alaska. She knew about the spotty coverage, but we hadn’t talked on the phone in a few weeks.
She was the one I had called to pick me up at the hospital and take me to the airport. She was the only one in the Lower 48 who knew where I’d gone.
“Well, I’m glad you’re all right,” she said a long moment later.
“What’s up?”
“Are you sitting down?”
“Yes.” I was.
“We have a name. A real one.”
Swiftly, my hands turned ice cold, my breaths came short. I reminded myself that, yes, I’d been out of my comfort zone yesterday, but I was back inside it, back where I belonged. I was safe.
Since the day he’d taken me, it had become hard for me to explain or understand my emotions. They weren’t right, weren’t correct, if you considered how people were supposed to feel. My feelings were over-the-top, swayed to the side, backward. But they were real. Tears suddenly flooded from my eyes.
“Who is he?” I said. The tide of emotion roiling through me hadn’t hit my voice, and the words sounded so normal under the flowing tears.
“Based on the DNA we found on the blanket, his name is Travis Walker.”
“Travis Walker?” I sniffed and wiped a hand over my cheeks just as both my hands started to shake. No! I silently commanded them.
“I know, it’s so common. Does the name sound familiar?”
“No, not at all. How do you know? What happened?” I curled my shaking, icy fingers into a fist. Travis Walker sounded so harmless. Maybe Detective Majors was wrong. Maybe there had been a mistake.
“The blanket,” she repeated. “The pink blanket we found. It had all kinds of trace evidence on it. Not just from you and him, but others, too. We’ve been testing all the DNA, and it’s taken this long to figure out that one person on that blanket is Travis Walker, a fifty-six-year-old man who is registered as living in St. Louis, Missouri, and drives an old brown van.”
“Travis Walker,” I said his name aloud again, but this time the shaking hit my voice.
“Beth?”
“I’m okay. How can you be so sure? What about the other DNA?”
“It was the only male DNA we found.” She cleared her throat. “There were five different DNA panels on the blanket. Yours, two women we were able to identify, his, and one other woman. Unless your kidnapper was actually a female, we’re pretty sure it was Travis Walker.”
I heard the question in her voice. She wondered if I had made a mistake and my kidnapper had, indeed, been female. I’d already led everyone down one false path, but I was sure I had this right.
“No, my kidnapper was definitely male.”
“I believe you.”
“But what if my kidnapper didn’t leave trace DNA on the blanket?”
“We’re confident.”
“What about the other women?”
She was silent. I thought we’d lost the connection.
“Detective Majors?” I said.
“Beth, the two women we identified are deceased.”
“Jesus. Did he kill them?”
Detective Majors sighed. “We’re not sure, but we’re investigating.”
“Goddamn. What about the woman you haven’t identified? How will you try to figure it out?”
“We’re at a dead end … that sounds bad. Sorry. We’re at a standstill until something shows up in the system. We’re investigating.”
I had suspected my unsub—Travis—would have killed me at some point, but as I’d remembered bits and pieces of his years of stalking and then the kidnapping, I’d speculated that he’d wanted to keep me around for a while, keep me as his. My stomach churned; my limbs still shook.
“What else do you know about Travis?” I asked.
“He’s been in some trouble all his life, which isn’t surprising.” She paused again. I could hear her steeling herself. A new wave of dread came over me. There was more. “Beth, he was born in Milton, Missouri.”
“My Milton?” The town I was born and raised in?
“Yes, but we think he left when he was just a kid, long before you were born. We are working on figuring out all the places he’s lived; we don’t have all that information yet.”
“But … shit, Detective, he knows who I am, then. He knows I’m Beth.”
“Not necessarily,” she said, unconvincingly.
I’d assumed that my kidnapper had thought I was Elizabeth Fairchild, thriller author from Missouri—no specific town had ever been noted publicly. Elizabeth Fairchild was the name on all my books. My mother had suggested I use a pen name because she knew I would not only be famous, but that I would be writing things that delved into the darker sides of life. I hadn’t even noticed my writing was that dark until Mom and my agent had told me it was. Mill had said that my father’s disappearance had set my writing destiny on its path and there would be no denying it. She’d said that’s the one thing my father and his disappearing act could take credit for—the darkness I’d internalized and brought to my books, to my readers.
“Of course he knows who I am,” I said. “It’s not a coincidence that he was born there. Shit, he knows everything. He knows who my grandfather was, he knows who my mother is. She’s not safe!”
“Beth,” Detective Majors said. “I need to you breathe. Come on, take some deep breaths.”
I hadn’t realized, but my breathing had become ragged. “I’m not sure I can.”
“Come on, take a minute. You’re fine. No one is going to find you. No one.”
I nodded.
“Beth, you there?”
A second later, I was in the van again, looking over at my captor—Travis—and that silver feather earring.
Those blue eyes. How did someone so evil have such pretty blue eyes? I still couldn’t quite see the rest of his face.
“You think you’re such a smart thing, don’t you?” he said.
I looked away from him.
“Huh?” he said as he shoved on my shoulder, propelling my other shoulder into the passenger-side door.
I cringed, but I wasn’t going to tell him he’d hurt me. I wasn’t going to talk to him ever again.
“You know me, don’tcha? Remember me?”
I didn’t know him. After he kidnapped me, I started to have flashbacks of him stalking me for a couple of years, but I didn’t know him before that.
“Come on, you should remember me.” As he drove down the road, he leaned over and said in my ear, “Think about it, you just might know me.”
“Beth!”
I blinked back to the present moment. “He said I might know him.” I choked out the words.
“Calm down. What do you mean?”
“I just remembered that he taunted me. Detective Majors, I think Travis knew me, he knows who I am.”
“Okay, so what if he does? You are far, far away. See, you did the right thing by running. You got away. You are safe. Now, enough. You were doing better. You can’t let this information get the best of you. Shape up, right this minute. Do you hear me? Beth, do you hear me?”
I blinked some more. The tears had stopped, and my body wasn’t shaking as much. “I think I just had to remember. Maybe … maybe I just needed to remember.”
Detective Majors sighed. “Oh, Beth, I don’t know what you need, but you need something. You still need help.”
I nodded again.
“Beth?”
“I hear you. I’m through whatever that was. I will get help.” I didn’t promise her as much, but I would try to figure something out—try harder to figure something out.
“Good. Look, I’m sorry to drop these bombs on you, but the media, and frankly your mom, is bound to get ahold of this stuff, and the last thing I want is for you to hear about it from someone other than me.”
“I appreciate that.”
Detective Majors sighed again. “Listen, there’s more, and I can’t hang up this phone without you having everything from me first. Are you ready?”
“Yes.” I was.
“We also have a current address, outside St. Louis, but from all indications Walker hasn’t been at his apartment for months. No one has called in spotting his van since the calls shortly after you left. But, as you know, he got away that time when he was spotted near Geneva Spooner’s house in Weyford. Your mother didn’t help, but that’s for another day. We think he’s dumped the van at this point, so we’re working other angles.”
“Outside St. Louis? Where?”
“Chesterfield.”
“What other angles?”
“Looking for and talking to people from his life before all this. We’ll find him, Beth. He’s spent his life screwing up, and he’ll do it again. People like him can’t help themselves. We will catch him.”
“My mom needs to know,” I said. “Just in case he really does know who I am, who we are, my mom needs to know. She needs to be aware.”
“I will tell her, but again, I wanted you to know first.”
“Thanks … Detective Majors, do you have a picture?”
Detective Majors was silent for a long few seconds. “Yes, Beth, I do. It’s a booking photo from about five years ago, when he was picked up and then shortly thereafter released for armed robbery. He’s been in and out of the system for a lot of things.”
“Send it to me?”
“Only if you really think I should.”
“I think you should.”
“I’m going to send it to you now. Okay?”
“Yes. Okay. I’m at my computer.”
I heard a few keystrokes before she said, “Sent. Give it a look when you’re ready.”
“I’m ready now.” I hoped that was true. She probably did, too.
Her message took only seconds to reach my inbox. When it was there, I held the cursor over the attachment.
“Hang on, Beth. Maybe you want someone there with you. Can you call over the police chief?” Detective Majors said.
Cool-as-a-cucumber Detective Majors was rattled. Most of the time she hid it well, but I’d just heard it in her voice.
“Gril’s probably pretty busy, but I’m okay. I really am.”
“Gril. I like that you’re calling him by his first name. You’re making friends.”
“I guess I am.”
“That’s great news,” she said. I heard the forced optimism. “All right. I’m right here, and remember, it’s just a picture.”
It was more than that, but I appreciated her assurance.
I clicked.
And it opened immediately, flashed and filled the screen.
There he was. Travis Walker. I didn’t recognize him—at first. He seemed so very common looking, with no distinguishing features. No feather earrings.
“It’s not in this picture, but I remembered a silver feather earring in his left ear,” I said into the phone.
“Good to know,” Detective Majors said. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine. He looks so normal.” His eyes were blue, but they weren’t as vivid as they’d been in my mind when I’d seen them a fe
w moments ago. His face was round, but not because he was overweight. That was just its shape. His nose did nothing special and his mouth made a straight line. He had a full head of hair but in this picture it was cut short. He looked emotionless, except for those eyes. Irritation, probably at being booked for a crime, showed in a purposeful squint.
“I think I remember longer hair, but I can’t be sure,” I said. “Maybe some gray at the temples, but I’m not sure about that, either.”
“Okay, that’s good. Does he look familiar?”
“The more I look at the picture, the more I think he does. But … I can’t be sure, and I’m not bothered. At all. I feel … detached from this picture.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“I think I’ll be okay.” But I knew this conversation had set me back some. I would have to work on getting to where I’d been before I saw it, and then getting even better than that. “Detective Majors, now I know who to look for. I mean, I’ve been wondering if he’s here, watching me, thinking, ‘Is he that guy, someone clearly from out of town, who just came out of the restaurant?’ Now I’ll be able to know for sure. This is actually a very good thing, Detective. I’m happy to have this.”
“Good.”
I closed my eyes, just to see what my mind might do. Yes, that picture was there now, yet it wasn’t terrifying. But though it didn’t immediately conjure other memories, it did promise there were probably more to come. I opened my eyes.
“Good work, Detective,” I said.
“Well, thank you, Beth, but now we have to find him, and frankly, we have to find him before your mother does.”
“She’s distracted. She might have a line on my father. She will probably talk to you about it.”
“She called, wants to talk to me. I’ll see if I can help.”
“Oh, Detective Majors, she’s asked many police officers and detectives to help her. Some have tried, others she’s managed to offend before they’re even done saying hello. My mother thinks she knows how to do all police work better than anyone else.”
Cold Wind Page 8