They were both busy, driven people. Wasn’t that a recipe for drifting apart?
They’d stalled out before they began.
Maybe.
She and Levi had discussed the way she worked and decided that today it was better for Blue to be on a leash. Her dog could otherwise catch a scent of another body, if any others were buried out here; they wanted to focus on the specific area they were suspicious about, not just shoot blindly.
The pressure of the dog pulling on the leash was comforting and familiar to her this morning. With so many other aspects of her life feeling like question marks, the relationship with her dog was a constant.
“It’s about half a mile up ahead,” Levi said.
“That’s it?”
He nodded. They walked in silence. Judah and Wren were behind them, but they weren’t talking much, either. Adriana caught them looking at Blue once or twice, which was a good thing. Judah had always been one of those officers who didn’t put a lot of stock in what her dog said. It would be good for him to watch them work.
Adriana had given Blue the scent at the parking lot, and she knew what she was looking for. Levi had asked how that worked, for a cadaver dog, and Adriana had explained that they sometimes used artificial scents when training the animals. Blue was trained to alert to both deceased bodies and live missing persons whose scents she’d been tracking, so when they were searching for cadavers, Adriana liked to give her that synthetic scent to remind her which they were looking for. Adriana watched her take in the area, with her nose, her eyes, her ears. All senses were engaged.
Blue’s demeanor changed. She perked her ears and held herself more upright, even as her face somehow got sadder. The facial expression was not a standard search-dog alert technique, but Adriana felt she knew her dog.
“She’s got it,” Adriana said and checked her GPS watch. They’d gone just about half a mile.
Right where they’d wandered about last time. She stole a glance at Levi. His expression was intent, determination in his eyes.
They were so close.
“Good girl, keep going,” Adriana said as Blue nosed the ground, still moving forward. They followed her, cutting through the low vegetation. Adriana tried to step as carefully as possible. There was no sign of anyone walking this way recently, but then again the bodies they were looking for were from several decades ago. The ground would have healed.
The families who didn’t have closure would not have.
Blue whined, low and long, and dropped to her stomach.
Bingo.
Adriana nodded. Levi stopped and they waited for Wren and Judah to catch up.
“That’s it?” Wren asked.
“Yes,” Adriana confirmed.
Wren walked toward the site, paced around where Blue was lying down, looking like she was studying the ground itself.
Wren cleared the ground as best she could and studied it again. Then she started to dig.
Adriana stood and watched as long as she could, though heaviness pressed against her as she thought of what they were doing, of what had been done and how evil people could be. She just wasn’t cut out for this kind of work, and it had never been more apparent to her.
Many of her acquaintances who were in law enforcement all seemed to handle it better than she did. But Ellie had confided in her once that she’d been in law enforcement before coming to Alaska. She hadn’t offered any more details than that, and Adriana hadn’t asked for them.
It was part of the bond of the far north, in a way. People who came here had reasons, some of which people didn’t want to talk about. But you understood, even if none of you spoke of them.
“You okay?” Levi asked. Had he really learned to read her that well over just a few days?
Adriana shook her head. “I’m going to walk a bit.”
Levi nodded. “Let me come with you.”
“No, I’m okay.”
Judah approached. “I’ll go, then.”
Levi looked at his brother.
“I know you want to see what Wren finds,” Judah reasoned. “And I also know Adriana doesn’t need to be alone. Especially not here.”
Adriana didn’t argue, just started walking across the open alpine landscape. Whichever brother followed her was fine with her because she didn’t necessarily want to be alone right now, anyway. Not so close to where a killer had already buried one victim.
What if he was watching? He already seemed to know so much about where they were, what they were doing.
Were they being followed?
She shook her head and took a deep breath of fresh air, trying to clear her mind of all the clutter from the case.
“I’m behind you, just so you don’t get startled,” Judah called.
“Thanks.” She didn’t mind that Levi hadn’t come. She didn’t want to talk right now, anyway.
No, right now she wanted to think about the world they lived in, where some person would end someone else’s life. Where hikers got lost and were found dead, with hands zip-tied.
Where her fiancé could be out for a fun snowmobile ride and never return.
Why did God let it all happen? It wasn’t like this was the first time she’d asked—she’d asked many times over the years—but the need for answers pressed heavy on her now, with this case added to her questions.
It was time for her to decide what she believed still, about God. For years she’d wrestled with the discomfort of knowing God had allowed tragedy into her life. With a deep personal knowledge that God allowed bad things to happen.
She felt more than ever like this case was drawing her toward a decision point. Did she still trust Him, or not?
And still, that resounding question she had. Unanswered. Why?
Why? Why? Why?
God didn’t answer, through either a small voice or any kind of booming thunder. Instead, there was just wind across the mountainside tundra. A marmot calling somewhere.
A beautiful, gorgeous world God had created.
Adriana stopped trying to wrestle with these big questions. Right now she bent down and scratched her dog behind the ears.
“You doing okay, sweetie?” she asked her.
Blue looked up, big brown eyes kind. Concerned.
“Yeah, I’m okay if you are,” Adriana whispered. “It’s just not my favorite way to spend a day. But three more and we are done.”
She walked back toward the site of the body and found that they’d unearthed a large object wrapped in trash bags. Exactly the right size to be a body. Adriana looked away.
“Judah, if you’ll stay here while Wren finishes up, Adriana and I will move on.”
“You’re going to look at the three other places?”
Levi nodded.
This was the body closest to Raven Pass. There was one more a bit farther away, then one closer to Girdwood, which was only about a fifteen-minute drive, maybe twenty. The farthest away was near the town of Hope.
That meant they’d have to spend the entire day together, in order to make all those drives.
And surely they wouldn’t excavate each body? It was fall and so the sunshine was no longer endless. Days had their nights now, natural stopping points for work. “We won’t be able to unbury all of them today, right?” she asked, hoping the answer was no. This had felt enough like an eerie backward burial to her, and she couldn’t handle the weight of any more of them today.
“No. We’ll mark them with GPS coordinates so I can come back when you aren’t with us.”
Apparently he’d read all her struggles on her face. And while Adriana didn’t like feeling like the weak link, it was okay. She nodded. “Thanks.”
They hiked back in silence and wasted no time getting to the second location.
Blue found the next body within an hour of starting their hike, though this ti
me it had taken her a little longer to pinpoint the exact location. It was about fifteen feet, Levi had said aloud earlier, from where they’d found a body during this most recent investigation. The last one had been twenty feet away, so it appeared the exact distance between the two bodies wasn’t part of an MO, but the fact that there were two indicated a pattern.
She’d learned more fascinating facts about serial killers, their inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies, during the last week than she’d ever wanted to know.
“Want to go to Hope or Girdwood first?”
North or south. May as well get the easy one out of the way so they could devote the rest of the day to the one that would be more of a challenge.
“Girdwood, then Hope,” she suggested.
He nodded his agreement, and they climbed back in the car with Blue and started the drive.
* * *
They had quick success with the body just off the popular Winner Creek Trail in Girdwood. He remembered being there when this crime scene had been worked a few years ago, for the body they’d found then. They’d been on high alert as it had been berry season at the time and grizzly bears were thick in these woods. Now it was late enough in the year that bears should be thinking about bedding down, but he still didn’t let his guard down, not until they’d entered the GPS coordinates and made it back to the car.
Only the body in Hope was left. As far as Levi could tell, Blue was doing better today. Her general body language still seemed good and she was wagging her tail, chewing the caribou antler Adriana had given her for a treat after they’d loaded back up in the car.
She’d told him in one of their earlier conversations that while working animals were usually given a treat after making their find, many cadaver dogs wouldn’t take the treat in the presence of a body. They could tell just by the smell that something was wrong, and it made them feel disconcerted. Off.
Adriana seemed to feel the same as the dog. She was the main reason he was in a hurry to get this done. While he’d enjoyed the time spent with her, he’d watched her over the last few days and this case was adding shadows underneath her eyes that he didn’t like to see there. Not because they hurt her beauty at all—they didn’t. She was gorgeous no matter what. But because they were a reflection of how she felt inside and he didn’t want that tiredness or hopelessness for her.
“Are you going to be okay for one more?” he asked as he turned left onto the Seward Highway from Girdwood. This road would take them back past the turnoff for Raven Pass and then onward to the Kenai Peninsula and Hope. He’d only been to the town of Hope once, years ago one July, when Jim had talked him into going fishing there. He’d had some fun, but the fishing was better down near Soldotna, at least in Levi’s opinion. The longer drive was worth it to him.
“I can handle one more.” She said the words like she was hoping she believed them.
“Thank you for doing this.”
“Well, we need to finish.” She allowed a small smile.
“I meant all of it. You didn’t have to help at all, but frankly I’d have been lost without you. And not just because if I’d had to find that first burial site near the lake without you, I’d probably still be looking. Nothing I know of substitutes for a search dog in cases like that. I owe you, really.”
She shook her head. “You don’t. I wanted to help.”
The air between them was thick and Levi wasn’t sure what had happened between last night and now, at least between them.
Eighteen or so hours ago they’d been kissing in her pantry, hardly any space between them. Now she was quiet, her answers short.
And he was no expert at relationships, but it still felt to him like something was wrong.
“While we’re driving,” he began, keeping his eyes on the road, “we should talk.”
“About?”
“We kissed last night.” Remarkably, he got the words out without tripping over them, though when he thought back to that kiss, his mind felt like a muddle of all good things and it was hard to focus. It was a wonder he’d been able to talk even semi-articulately about it.
“We did.” She matched his tone with her own unflinching one, which he appreciated. That was one of the things he loved about Adriana, her confidence.
He...what?
Levi swallowed hard. “We, uh...” And now any focus he’d had was gone. Love? Love? Sure, he’d been planning this conversation, hoping to ask her to date, but now...
The calm he’d felt was gone, evaporated like morning dew. In its place was a feeling of being tossed about, akin to the waves he was watching in Turnagain Arm right now as they drove down the highway. The water was a churning steely gray.
That was what his mind felt like when it thought for too long about the word love. Love hadn’t been good to him, not so far. Friends, he could do. Kissing he could do, at least with Adriana. They’d proved that.
But he’d wanted to date her. To what purpose?
Did he not remember he’d tried this relationship road before and failed?
“Was there something you wanted to talk to me about, Levi?”
Suddenly, something slammed into the back of him, sending his car jerking toward the center line.
Adriana screamed and grabbed her dog, who had slammed into Levi’s shoulder in the initial impact.
“Hang on!” Levi corrected himself toward the right, got them back in their lane quickly enough to avoid the large moving van that had been coming toward them in the other lane.
“What was that?” Her voice trembled, betraying her fear in its unsteadiness, and Levi had nothing with which to reassure her.
This serial killer usually killed his victims up close, forensic evidence said. But Levi had felt relatively calm when he’d been shot at because from the beginning, it had somehow felt like a warning to him. Then the bomb had happened and it had confirmed his suspicions.
Their lives had only been in a semblance of danger.
Now, the real thing began. Because the killer was almost within arm’s reach. And for the many victims who had come before, that point was exactly when they’d died.
Levi wasn’t going to let that happen, not to Adriana. At least not without a fight.
He glanced over at her.
He wouldn’t let anything happen to her dog, either. She’d never forgive him if he did. And she didn’t deserve to lose anyone else she cared about.
The car slammed into him again.
Levi jerked the wheel left, into a parking lot near Portage, trying to lose the car, but it followed. He floored it back onto the highway.
“What are you doing?” Adriana’s voice, coming from between clenched teeth, demanded an answer.
“Trying to keep us alive.”
“And you think getting involved in some kind of high-speed chase is the best way to accomplish that?” she asked, her eyes on the side-view mirror. He knew that because he’d looked over at her before.
The car was getting closer.
There was little other traffic today, but he was still worried there would be some kind of casualties if he didn’t get off the road soon.
Clearly their would-be killer wasn’t giving up easily.
“Get your phone out and call 911,” he told her, trying to keep his voice as calm as he could.
Adriana did what he asked, and he was proud of her for the way she relayed the information like the trained professional she was.
That was the thing about her he didn’t think she realized. She might not like the darkness. But she sure could withstand it better than almost anyone he’d ever met. She buckled down, found some kind of strength inside, maybe from God, and made it through.
Yeah, no matter how scared it made him, he loved her.
And he might have missed the chance to tell her. You didn’t get a second chance to say some things.
He
hoped he got a second chance for that conversation that he’d handled badly.
Because if he lived, he was going to ask Adriana if she’d be willing to date a guy who wasn’t very good at relationships, since there was a very good possibility that guy was head over heels for her.
FIFTEEN
Adriana watched the speedometer creep over eighty, so she gripped the door handle of the car tighter. Eighty might not be fast on some roads, but on the notoriously dangerous Seward Highway, with sheer cliffs on one side and ocean on the other, it was terrifying.
“We’ve got to figure something out,” Adriana said as they advanced on a Winnebago camper and Levi passed it, cutting it close. The SUV chasing them followed and advanced on them again.
They were going to be hit again, while going... She glanced at the dashboard again.
Ninety miles per hour wouldn’t go well. This wasn’t working. It was too much of a risk, and besides, staying on the road would endanger the other drivers.
Did they have other options? she asked herself as she dug her fingers into Blue’s fur, trying not to grip too tightly, and fought to maintain some semblance of composure.
They could pull over, but with as few cars as were on the road today, there wouldn’t be many witnesses. They could be killed in plain sight and still it was possible that no one might see.
They could keep going, but it might cause a wreck, hurting innocent people, one that she and Levi couldn’t survive.
“We could go back to Raven Pass?” she offered, but it was still another few miles up the road.
“That’s my plan.”
Adriana kept looking in the side-view mirror. Then she looked up at the road. One or two more miles to Raven Pass.
Levi eased off the gas. Put his right turn signal on.
And made the turn off the main highway.
The SUV kept going straight.
His hands free, Levi called the police department and reported the incident.
Adriana’s heart raced in her chest, maybe worse now. She was usually okay during an immediate crisis that required her focus, she’d learned.
Now, though, now that there was a break in the danger, she felt like she was going to be sick.
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