by J K Ellem
"As you said Clare, just sit tight. It's just you up there with no back-up until the storm passes. Go home and get some rest. If we can, we’ll be up first thing in the morning if the roads reopen then."
Clare nodded and hung up.
* * *
It had taken over an hour and three cups of coffee, but the caffeine jolt finally kicked in and Clare felt buzzing and restless. She was annoyed that she didn’t know her own town and what was going on right under her nose.
She always felt Lacy was a peaceful, idyllic town when she first arrived, a change from the mayhem and soaring crime rates in the major cities that she had encountered. Now she felt violated. Beneath the surface things were going on in her town that she had no idea of. There was a sadistic killer, or killers, moving amongst the townsfolk, hiding in the shadows and she desperately wanted to find them. Even though Denver PD was leading the investigation, it was still her turf and she wanted to find the perpetrators first. It was her town and her duty.
She had made a call to Molly’s cell phone, but it switched straight to voicemail. So Clare left a brief message asking her if she could drop by the sheriff's office tomorrow morning to make a statement.
It was nearly ten o’clock and Clare was about to call it a day. She went around the office making sure everything was turned off. Tomorrow was going to be a long day, but they were making progress.
She came back to her desk and slumped down in her chair, thinking about the words Ben had said to her before he left, about being careful. She closed down all the applications then sat staring at the sheriff's department logo as it rotated on her screen, her mind ticking over, trying to assemble in her head all the information she had gathered so far. She wasn’t convinced by Shaw that it was just one person, a so-called lone wolf, whom they were looking for.
The town now felt strange to her, like she didn’t know the place, the people, what was happening. She should have been more curious, unaccepting, questioning. Instead she allowed herself to fall into the role of town peacemaker, advocate, taking a back seat while other things, criminal things, went on in her town that she didn’t notice because in her mind Lacy, “was not that kinda place.”
She didn’t even know what they did up at the church that Carl Jessup ran. It came as a complete shock to her when she saw how the place had expanded so much. She was out of touch with her own town.
She clicked her mouse and logged back into the police database. There was something niggling at the back of her mind, something that had unsettled her and she needed to satisfy her gut feeling.
She typed in a name and initiated a national database search. While the search was processing she got up and went downstairs, still chiding herself for being so complacent. She wasn’t going to sit on her ass waiting for Reynolds and his team to swoop in and take over. This was her town. These were her people who looked to her for leadership and authority, and she was going to deliver on that.
A few minutes later she came back carrying the Colt M4 assault rifle and placed it on her desk together with a duffel bag. Inside were four spare magazines and three boxes of ammunition for her handgun, an extra hundred and fifty rounds in total. In the trunk of her SUV she had other equipment and a tactical body armour vest.
Maybe it's what Ben had said to her about there being a killer on the mountain, someone cold and ruthless. Was it the same person who had murdered the woman in Memphis two years ago? Had they travelled all that way and were now on Echo Mountain? Whoever it was, she intended to deal with it herself.
* * *
She looked at the computer. The search had finished. She sat back down and started reading, scrolling down the screen.
Clare’s initial surge of curiosity soon faded into disappointment. There was nothing remarkable here. A few minor traffic offences, several old parking violations, unpaid fines.
Halfway down the screen everything changed.
Clare sat bolt upright and felt her gut tighten.
There was an incident report from 1977 from the Lake County Sheriff’s Office in Northern California. Clare double-clicked on the hyperlink and the full report opened up. It was a digitised copy of the original typewritten report that had been made when typewriters existed. The pages were yellowed and discoloured. But the block lettering of the typewriter keys were distinct and clear, made with determined, two-fingered keystrokes with obvious care and attention to the facts.
“Sexual imposition and assault of a minor.”
It took her a few minutes to read through the report and when she finished, Clare sat back looking at the photo included in the report.
It was a younger version of the person. The face looked leaner, the features much younger, the hair a little thicker, but she instantly recognised them. It was the eyes that intrigued Clare. There was something evil lurking behind them as she stared at the mug shot, the deadpan expression on the person’s face, a height chart behind them, placard in their hands.
As they said, the eyes were the windows to a person’s soul.
“Bastard.”
34
“So where do you think this person is hiding?” Emily asked. She had an impossibly thin laptop made from beautifully machined aluminium, balanced on her lap as she sat on the floor in the living room. Shaw sat beside her, a cup of freshly brewed coffee in his hands that Emily had made. It was going to be a long night and Shaw needed a hit of caffeine to get him through.
“Can you pull up a map of the town first,” Shaw said.
Tapping on the keyboard, Emily brought up Lacy on Google Maps. It showed the main Interstate from Denver snaking its way west then hitting a large patch of green. The highway to Echo Mountain branched off then came in on the right of the screen on the eastern side of Lacy.
“There,” Shaw said pointing at the backlit screen. “Can you zoom in there?”
Emily pushed her finger across the trackpad, then pinched and rotated. The map on the screen zoomed in to the church where Alfred Beckett said he saw the person. There was limited detail and Shaw had to guess where the church was positioned on the virtual map amongst a scatter of white lines against a backdrop of gray and green.
“Let me change to satellite.” She clicked the small square on the bottom left of the screen. The map was replaced with grid patterns over a dark background. Slowly, square sections filled in with the top-down satellite view of Lacy. There were tiny orange circles, some with a knife and fork in the middle, others with a cup and saucer, designating the location of restaurants and coffee places. Shaw could see where Annabel’s was as well as McKenzies. Tiny blue circles with either handbag or shopping cart lined the main street of downtown.
“What are we looking for?” Emily asked.
“The church with a graveyard behind it.”
“That’s west of the town.” Emily pushed her finger across the trackpad and the entire town shifted sideways. She pinched her fingers and the church came into view together with the graveyard. Behind it was a huge stretch of dimpled green.
“Where’s your house?” Shaw asked.
“It’s here.” Emily zoomed out, but kept the church on the left of the screen and pointed to the opposite edge. “That’s here. There’s my street and that tiny white rectangle is my roof.”
Shaw looked at the distance between the graveyard and Emily’s house. The forest curved in a long band that stretched between the two. It narrowed like a tail as it spread west towards town. Emily’s house was located near the tail and the main body of the forest surrounded the eastern side of Lacy. There, the dimpled green went off the edges of the screen, thousands of acres of it.
“He’s using the forest to move around as cover,” Shaw said. “From the back of the church to the tail of the forest behind this house would be around three miles, maybe four.”
“That’s a fair hike, in the snow, at night, freezing outside.”
“Not for him it’s not. He’s used to it. He knows the terrain.” Shaw traced a mental line between the two po
ints. The forest formed a rough horseshoe shape, fatter in the west, thinner in the east. Al Beckett’s house high up on the ridge overlooking the town was roughly in the middle, on the southern edge of the forest, in the centre of the concave shape. “That’s where the person came from. It was perfect. They had unlimited cover and the forest ran all the way up to the edge of Beckett’s property.”
“But we still don’t know where they are, where they hide. It could be anywhere in there,” Emily said.
“But they have to be close to town, not hundreds of miles away. They have no car or transport. They are on foot. If it was me I’d camp within five miles maximum from the edge of town.”
“Where then?”
Shaw took a moment. Beckett said he would see the person through his telescope come in near the graveyard at the back of the church. They had to be hiding somewhere in the forest back there.
“We need a better map, something more detailed, something older that has on it walking and hiking trails,” Emily suggested.
“They won’t follow any marked trails, they want to stay hidden. It’s too risky if someone like a hiker or hunter sees them. No, they’ll move cross-country. They won’t risk pitching a tent or a shelter. Maybe a cave or something long since abandoned. That’s where they’re holed up.”
“I don’t have a map like you’re suggesting, something that will show natural landmarks or maybe abandoned places.”
Shaw smiled. The answer was right in front of him. He pointed at the screen, where the ridge overlooked the town. “I know someone who does, and they probably know where to look as well. By the way, where’s your cat?”
The question was a shock to Emily. She had totally forgotten about Sammy, her mind more concerned about who had been in her home.
“I haven’t seen him.” She felt suddenly sick. He would normally be in by now or scratching at the backdoor, especially with this bad weather.
They spent the next ten minutes searching the house looking for Sammy. Emily checked all his favourite sleeping spots, like in her closetamongst her sweaters, on her chair in her home office, or on top of an old box of books she had stored on a high shelf in her wardrobe.
He was nowhere to be found.
“What about the garage?” Shaw asked. “Does he sleep in there?”
“Sometimes, if it gets too cold and I don’t let him in.”
Locking the door behind them, they made their way to the garage. The frigid wind tore at their jackets and ice stung their faces. They reached the door and pulled it open. A gush of snow followed them inside and Shaw closed the door behind them. He found a light switch and flipped it on.
Nothing.
Shaw pulled her tight to him. “Give me your gun.”
In the darkness Emily slid it out of the holster and held it, butt-first towards him. Shaw took the gun and in the darkness, racked the slide and pointed it in front of him.
Shadows hugged the edges of the small space, muted light from the dull windows painted everything in a ghostly outline. The crouching dark mass of her car occupied the middle of the floor. Other shapes loomed around. Something hummed in the corner on the other side. Shaw wished he had his torch with him, but it was upstairs in his room.
They moved together through the darkness. Something hit his knee. The edge of a bench. He worked his way around the dark shape of the car, the gun sweeping back and forth. Shaw recognised the humming sound as a compressor coming from the corner. The square shape came into focus. It looked like a small chest freezer.
He could feel Emily behind him, her hand on her back, following him forward.
Shaw reached out, his hand touched the lid of the chest freezer, its surface smooth and cold.
He paused, feeling Emily push up behind him, her body tensing.
He felt a wave of dread in the pit of his stomach.
He lifted the lid. A cold blast of air and a wedge of light hit his face.
He looked inside, a swirl of cold vapour shifted inside the insulated walls and he saw a clump of matted fur, coated in ice crystals at the bottom.
They had found Sammy.
35
The drive up to the ridge was slow going. Emily sat in the passenger seat, her face grim and determined. Shaw kept his eyes on the road, coaxing the Bronco along. The road was slick and treacherous with ice, fat snowflakes slapped into the windshield, the old wiper blades thrashed back and forth struggling with the onslaught. Wind buffeted the sides of the car and it was pitch black outside except for the headlights that bobbed up and down against a wall of white. Shaw kept the engine revs high, he didn’t want to get bogged in the snow.
“I can’t get a signal.” Emily held her cell phone, the screen bathing her face in white, her thumbs taping away. She had tried calling Clare before they left the house. The first call kicked straight to voice mail and Emily left a message telling Clare that she and Shaw were heading up the ridge to Al Beckett’s place, and if she could call them back. Shaw had tried raising Clare on the two-way radio but to no avail. He just got static. Now Emily had no signal on her cell phone.
“It must be the storm,” she said. “The entire network must be down.”
“Keep trying,” Shaw replied, not convinced. It was unlike Clare, especially when he told her to be careful.
The steering wheel bobbed and spun in his hands, the big tires chewing through the snow and ice. A few times he could feel rear tires slide, losing traction, the tail of the SUV slewing out. He spun the wheel and gunned the engine to compensate. The engine roared and the tires bit again, and the Bronco straightened. Shaw leaned forward and quickly rubbed the windshield with his hand, creating a temporary gap in the fogged glass. There were no lights, no moon, nothing. Just a blizzard of white and a dirt road that was next to impossible to see.
“It’s no use, still no signal.” She pocketed the cell phone.
Shaw nodded. They were flying blind. The storm had closed in on Lacy, isolating it, cutting off all communication. He didn’t know where Clare was.
At Emily’s house Shaw had taken a shovel from the garage and carried Sammy past the back of the house, to the base of the hill, and dug a hole in the snow and earth then buried him. When he returned to the house he found Emily in the kitchen. She has been busy while Shaw was outside.
She had changed into heavy-duty snow gear with a thick scarf and woollen hat. On the kitchen bench were four red cardboard boxes, Federal American Eagle 9mm ammunition, 147-grain, a heavy round, better stopping power. Next to them sat Emily’s Glock 19, her back-up handgun, the larger Glock 17, two powerful LED flashlights and spare magazines, two for each gun. She didn’t look up when Shaw entered the kitchen. Shiny brass bullets clicked into the magazines, one on top of each other as she worked quietly, methodically with a cold look on her face. She slid her gun into her holster and packed the rest of the equipment into her range bag.
She wasn’t scared or worried. When she finished, she told him blankly that she wanted to find the stalker as much as he did. She told Shaw that when she did, she was going to kill him.
Shaw’s fight with the steering wheel lessened as the road flattened and the Bronco climbed over the top of the ridge. Shaw felt relieved and relaxed slightly. The trip back down would be worse.
Ahead he could just make out the shape of Beckett’s house, a few lights on in the windows. He swung the wheel and aimed for it, not caring if he came off the road or not. Silhouettes of the old machinery slid past the headlights then vanished. The landscape had changed completely compared to when Shaw was up here just a few hours ago.
The Bronco churned its way towards the house and Shaw pulled up as close as he could to the front steps.
“Let’s go.”
Emily nodded and pulled her hood over her head.
Immediately their feet sunk into the thick snow, and a flurry of ice enveloped them, stinging their face, lips and eyes. The air was numbingly cold, meat-locker cold. Maybe it was the altitude up on the ridge, open and exposed to t
he storm’s onslaught. They battled their way up the stairs to under the shelter of the veranda roof.
Alfred Beckett met them at the front door with his shotgun in his hand. He recognised Shaw, but not the person with him until they came inside and Emily unwound the thick scarf and took off her beanie, revealing her face.
He beckoned them to the fire to get warm then went to the kitchen. He returned carrying a tray with two steaming mugs of coffee, black and strong, no milk or cream. Shaw didn’t care. At this point he would drink radiator fluid if it was lukewarm.
They sat next to the fireplace while Beckett resumed his seat in the rocking chair after throwing on a few more logs.
“I know you,” he said, looking at Emily. “You’re the schoolteacher. You live in the house at the end of the street, near the forest.”
On the drive up Shaw had already filled Emily in on Al Beckett. She knew what he did to pass the lonely hours up here. She glanced around and spotted the telescope perched on its tripod in front of the window.
Shaw cut in before Emily could reply. “We need your help, Al. We’re looking for someone you know.” He looked at Emily. “This is Emily Bell.”
The rocking chair moved back and forth. “I know,” Al smiled at Emily. “And I know someone has been following you. I’ve seen them. Told Ben here. Please don’t think any less of me, what I do. I need to pass the time.”
“Mr Beckett, I don’t care for your reasons, honestly, I don’t,” Emily said, her face soft and understanding.
Shaw was impressed and a little concerned as he looked at her. She was a chameleon, able to shift moods, hide emotions and swap masks from a diminutive innocent schoolteacher one minute to a cold, determined woman carrying a handgun the next.
“I’m actually glad you’re up here keeping an eye on the town. I don’t think you do anything malicious.” She leant forward and smiled. “What’s your business is your business. But we need to find this person, Mr Beckett, the person you have seen, the person who has been watching my house. I want to find them.”