by Mason Cross
I wondered if Haycox had made it this far on Saturday night. I wondered if there had been anyone waiting for him.
Green had holstered her gun and was crouching in the opposite corner, examining something on the ground. She picked it up and showed it to me. It was a button. Wordlessly, she moved it beside the one on the cuff of her uniform. It was a perfect match.
“We know he was here. So where did he go?”
The secondary path finished at the shelter and the slope was too steep to climb, so we retraced our steps back down and around the cliff, circling back to the main track. When we got to the fallen-down tree fifty yards from the intersection point, Green stopped and rummaged in her pack. She took a bottle of water out and sat down on the tree, taking a long drink. She still hadn’t broken a sweat. When we were driving up to the trail, she had mentioned she ran three or four miles before work every morning, without fail. It was clearly working for her. She offered the bottle to me and I took a drink.
“You’re changing your mind, aren’t you?”
“About what?” I asked.
“About Adeline. David Connor’s convinced you again, hasn’t he? You think there’s something there.”
I didn’t answer, because I wasn’t quite sure what the answer was myself. There was a gap in the trees that meant we could see part of Bethany in the foothills, looking tiny from a couple thousand feet up. Roland Roussel’s little house was down there somewhere, too. Something about that house had bothered me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it yet.
“Not a bad view, huh?” Green said. “It’ll be better from the top.”
“Oh great, more climbing.”
A grin broke out on her face and then vanished just as quickly, as she remembered why we were here. She got to her feet again and put the bottle back in the pack. “Let’s get a move-on.”
“This is the worst part,” I said. “The not knowing.”
She nodded. “You must do this a lot,” she said.
She thought I was talking about my job. Before I had time to think about it, I shook my head. “When I was sixteen, one of the girls from school disappeared. We didn’t find her body for months.”
She glanced over at me, her expression saying I had just answered the question she asked me the other night, about how I got into this line of work. And now I thought about it, maybe it went some way toward explaining why I couldn’t let David Connor’s problem go, either. She had opened her mouth to say something when we heard a whisper of movement in the trees.
I snapped my head around to look in the direction of the sound. Green’s gun was in her hand. We looked straight ahead and a second later there was another rustle of leaves and a sleek gray fox emerged from the bushes beneath a stand of trees. It regarded us both curiously for a second and then darted off into the woods. It had only stuck around for a moment, but long enough to get a good look at it.
I glanced at Green. “Did you see that?”
She didn’t reply, but the way she had turned pale gave me my answer. There had been a reddish smear around the animal’s muzzle.
We advanced toward the spot in the bushes from where the fox had emerged. The smell hit us first. It wasn’t too bad, still the early stages of decomposition, but it was unmistakable. A second later I heard Green’s breath catch in her throat and I saw it.
A mound of loose earth, a partially gnawed left forearm and hand protruding from the dirt. The fingernails were neatly clipped, and I could see a wristwatch on a leather strap.
Tuesday
48
Isabella Green
Isabella forced herself to go faster and harder than she could ever remember on the morning run. Last night’s dreams had been worse than the previous night. Much worse. Rain and blood and the wreck of Eric Salter’s car had featured prominently. She knew that it was working this case that had brought all of this to the surface, but it seemed like it was getting harder and harder to keep everything in the locked box.
She kept thinking about the last conversation with Blake, before McGregor and Feldman arrived at the scene.
You’re asking me to withhold information? Maybe important information?
She had done as he’d asked, though. And now she was wondering if she should remedy that, tell McGregor everything.
She ran flat out until her lungs were burning, and then slowed down a little, but forced herself to keep going at a steady pace. Eventually, she collapsed against the oak in front of her house with a stitch that felt like it would be terminal. She survived, though. An hour later, she was showered and dressed and sitting across the desk from McGregor in his office.
She felt his eyes on her as she scanned through the reports: autopsies, scene of crime, ballistics. Taken together, they told a very clear story. Same perpetrator, same weapon. It looked as though Haycox had been killed late Saturday night. Almost a full day before the two hunters. All of them had been shot in the head at close range by a .38 caliber pistol. Just like the gun—
She cut that thought off like she was hitting the snooze button on her alarm clock. Funny thing about snooze buttons, though. All they do is postpone the inevitable.
There was a TV crew setting up outside the station. McGregor was going to be on the local news in ten minutes. The two hunters had barely made the radio news bulletins. Haycox’s murder had drawn a lot more attention. She knew this crew would be the first of many. Soon, it wouldn’t just be local media, either. She remembered what it had been like in 2003. Television and print journalists from across the country had camped out for weeks, waiting patiently for the next body to show up, or the next hitchhiker to disappear.
McGregor picked up the first file on the pile and waved it at Isabella. “You able to vouch for Blake’s whereabouts between eleven p.m. Saturday and five a.m. Sunday as well?”
She looked up from the report she was reading. Haycox’s autopsy. She didn’t need to say anything, the look she gave him said it all. He didn’t even have the flimsy justification of Blake having a tussle with the victim this time around. If he really wanted to pull him in again, he was going to need something a lot better than that. Besides, Isabella had a feeling another suspect had displaced Blake on McGregor’s list.
He dropped his eyes from hers and raised a hand. It was as close to an apology as she was going to get. “All right, I know. But this all started when Blake showed up.”
“It didn’t start with Blake,” she corrected him. “What about Wheeler?”
“How is that related to this?”
Isabella considered whether to tell McGregor about what else Blake had uncovered in Atlanta, and decided against. She didn’t have to. Based on what they had here, a green-as-grass rookie would draw the connection with the Devil Mountain killings, and she knew the only reason McGregor wasn’t admitting to it was because he actively did not want to.
“Because it’s an unexplained gunshot homicide, perpetrator still at large. Just like Friedrickson and Leonard. Just like Haycox. And they all visited Bethany right before they died. I think you’re right, Sheriff. This is happening now for a reason. But it wasn’t Blake who started it, it was David Connor seeing his si—” She stopped as McGregor looked up at her sharply, and qualified the statement. “Thinking he saw his sister.”
McGregor thought it over. “Say you have a point. What does that mean? Why does that son-of-a-bitch’s delusion mean people are getting killed all of a sudden?”
Just then, the phone on McGregor’s desk rang. He kept eye contact with Isabella as he picked it up and answered. And then he forgot all about her.
“What? Well I suggest you goddam well find out where.” A pause. “I’ll be there in ten.”
He slammed the phone down and sighed heavily.
“That idiot Dentz went into the woods to take a piss. He didn’t see any change when he came back. A half hour later he gets a little worried
he hasn’t seen any movement at all in Connor’s house. He knocked on the door and there was no answer. Connor’s pickup is gone from the garage.”
“He’ll be back,” she said. “Besides, he knows you’re watching him. Even if …”
“What?” he asked when she didn’t finish.
“I don’t think Connor did this, Sheriff. This is someone else.”
“Someone else. Great.”
He sat down and took a drink from his mug of coffee, grimacing when he realized it was cold.
“What are you going to say to them?” she asked, looking out at the shiny television van parked outside.
“Well, all we can do is tell people to be safe. We’re looking for this guy, and we just have to hope we’re there next time he goes hunting.”
“All we can do?” she repeated, before she could stop herself.
He stared at her, as though daring her to challenge him. She stared right back at him. McGregor had intimidated the shit out of her when she was younger. First as an authority figure, then as a boss. But that had been a long time ago. In for a penny, in for a pound, she decided. She would have to bring this up sooner or later, or hope that Feldman did.
“Kind of dancing around the elephant in the room here, aren’t we?”
“I don’t follow.”
“Come on. Head shots. .38 caliber rounds. The woods. A connection to David Connor’s dead sister.”
“It’s not that,” he said flatly. “That’s history.”
“What about the possessions of the victims? Left out by the bodies.”
He seemed to stiffen. “What do you know about that?”
“I know it’s what you held back from the press, Sheriff. People know wallets and jewelry were untouched on the intact victims, that robbery wasn’t a motive. But they didn’t know they were carefully placed like that at some of the scenes.”
“Good point. And how could you know that, for that matter? You weren’t with us back then.”
“Haycox told me. You knew he was into this case big time, right? It’s why he asked for this posting. He knew a lot of things about the case fifteen years ago, and unfortunately, we can’t ask him any questions about it.”
McGregor said nothing.
“The killer’s gone, Sheriff, I know that. This is somebody new. But it’s not a coincidence, not at all. I think we need to talk to the FBI.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I don’t see why—”
“We’re not having this conversation. That was then, this is now, and we handle this ourselves. Only way it can be.”
“Sheriff, at the very least this is a serial we’re talking about now. Three dead here, and maybe whoever’s responsible killed Wheeler too. We should be talking to them.”
“Technically you’re wrong, Deputy Green. Three dead in two incidents doesn’t mean the FBI gets to waltz in here. And I intend to catch this bastard before he bags any more.”
“I just think we should explore our options.”
“And I will decide how and when we do that. Is that clear?”
She didn’t reply. On one level, she understood his reluctance. He had been at the center of one of these circuses before, and she hadn’t. She was a cop, though, and she knew exactly why cops didn’t like calling in the feds.
But on the other hand, she knew they needed help. No matter how much the sheriff didn’t want there to be a connection to what happened before – no matter how much she didn’t want it – she knew there had to be one. Whoever was killing people wasn’t the Devil Mountain Killer, but he seemed to be a fan. There would be more bodies to come, of that she was certain.
“You’ve had a rough couple of days, Isabella,” McGregor said after a few moments. The use of her first name suggested he was trying to sound concerned, but his tone suggested anything but.
“I told you I was fine.”
He stared back at her, like he was evaluating her somehow. “Just let me know if you need any more time, that’s all I’m saying. A talk with someone, even.”
“I’m fine.”
He paused, waiting for her to say something else. When she didn’t, he continued. “So we’re clear on everything. We find this guy ourselves. And we can start by finding out where the hell David Connor has gotten to.”
“Clear,” Isabella said.
She turned and walked out to the car. She was crystal clear on exactly what the sheriff had meant with that little expression of concern, which was actually a threat. The help they needed wouldn’t be coming from the FBI, at least not until McGregor’s hand was forced. But that didn’t mean there was no help at all.
She got in the car, turned the key in the ignition and turned out into the road. When she reached Jimmy’s, she pulled into the lot and left the engine running. She scrolled through recent calls on her phone, hitting redial when she found the one she was looking for.
Carter Blake’s voice answered, saying her name.
“You have time to talk?”
49
Carter Blake
Green’s Crown Vic pulled up outside the cabin just as Sheriff McGregor finished talking to the reporter on TV, tersely explaining that it was an ongoing investigation and he couldn’t comment in detail on that, and certainly wasn’t going to comment on any wild speculation about links to historic cases. I wasn’t giving it my full attention. I was looking at an email on my phone.
Thank you for getting in touch with Honorific. We’d like to help you return the bracelet to its owner, but I’ve checked and we don’t appear to have a Jane Graham on our payroll. Could you have heard the name wrong?
The email I had sent them had been intended to provide a means of establishing contact, or tell me that “Jane Graham” had lied about where she worked. Now I had my answer. I wondered if the address on her license was just as fake. Had she spotted me following her? Spun the whole story on the spot?
I put the phone down on the coffee table and let Green in. We went out on the back deck of the cabin and Green filled me in on her morning so far. To no one’s surprise, preliminary indications suggested the same person was responsible for all three murders. I was pleasantly surprised to hear I wouldn’t be spending more time in the cells unless anything changed. More worrying, David Connor had slipped his surveillance. Green told me her instinct was they needed to talk to the FBI. I concurred. So why wasn’t it happening?
She bit her bottom lip and shook her head. “McGregor. He’s got a bug up his ass about keeping this in-house. He says we don’t need any outside help. I think he’s wrong.”
“So go over his head.”
“No can do.”
“Why not?”
There was a flash of irritation in her eyes. “Because I say so. He’s still the sheriff. We do it his way until I can convince him otherwise.”
“Or until the next couple of dead bodies convinces him otherwise,” I said.
She glared at me again and then looked out at the lake. I knew that that wasn’t disagreement.
“Did you tell them about the shelter?” I asked.
She shook her head without looking back at me. Seemed like she wasn’t proud of it.
“That’s good,” I said. “I don’t think we can trust anyone.”
She turned to me. “What do you mean by that?”
I thought she knew exactly what I meant. Our discovery last night conclusively ruled Haycox out of being the killer. That didn’t mean I was ready to rule out everyone wearing the uniform. I weighed it up. I had to trust somebody. It might as well be the one person I knew couldn’t have killed the two hunters on Sunday night.
“I think we should be very careful about who we talk to,” I said slowly.
Her eyes narrowed, waiting for me to continue.
“Somebody tried to break in here on Sunday night, while we were having di
nner. The night the hunters were killed.”
“What makes you think that?”
I told her about the pencil lead and the broken vase. She came back with the same rational explanations I had considered the other night. I batted them away the same ways. I had talked to Joe Benson and he said he had heard breaking glass. There was no one around when he came out to investigate.
“The thing is,” I concluded, “that was only a little worrying Sunday night. It was a lot worrying when McGregor and Feldman showed up at my door Monday morning looking for a murderer.”
“You think somebody wanted to frame you for the killings?”
I nodded. “And we can’t rule out that someone being a cop. That’s why I think we need to play some cards close to our chests. If Connor’s hiding out there, I think we need to be the ones to find him.”
Her lips were pursed together. I could tell she didn’t want to hear this, but she couldn’t dismiss it out of hand, either.
“So are we going to check out the shelter or not?”
“It’s an idea,” I said. “But it’ll take us a while to get up there. What if he headed out of town, as in really out of town?”
“Beauty of only having one road in and one road out,” she said. “McGregor has men on the exits of the north and south roads, and Connor’s vehicle is pretty damn conspicuous.”
All of a sudden, I had a good idea of where he might have gone. Green saw it in my expression.
“What is it?”
We left the cabin and got in the car. I told her about the other night as she drove back toward the south road. How I had tailed Connor to the old house out in the woods. She looked confused. “The old Marion House?”
“Big old gothic place?” I asked. “Looks like a set on a slasher movie? It’s just off the road, about a mile or two from here.”
“I haven’t been out there since … for a long time. Every small town has somewhere the teenagers go to drink, that was where we went in Bethany. I went to a couple of parties, Connor did too.”