Presumed Dead

by Mason Cross

“He’s dead,” he said. His tone was flat, no relief, certainly no sorrow. He looked up at her. “What happened?”

  She looked back down at Feldman’s open eyes. He still seemed to be staring at her the way he had done a few minutes before. Death hadn’t been able to remove that look.

  “Green?”

  Blake had stood up and was holding her arm, gently pushing the barrel of Feldman’s rifle down.

  “I got him,” she said.

  Blake seemed to consider this. “I guess you did.”

  She spoke slowly. It almost felt like someone else was doing the talking for her. She told Blake that Feldman had been distracted, and they struggled for the gun, and she had shot him.

  Blake explained he had made it up to the shelter and had only gotten there in time to hear the shot that killed Feldman. He would have been here faster, but on the way up the cliff face, he had picked up some company. The two of them made their way back down to the trail, where they gave McGregor the news.

  Dentz was dead. McGregor had taken his coat off and draped it over his face.

  They followed the trail to the foot of the cliff. Adeline Connor was still on the ledge where Blake had left her. Isabella and McGregor kept her company while Blake went back down to the cars and got a length of rope. The trip took him a half hour. When he got back, the sky was dark, but the fog had thinned a little. Blake rigged up a pulley system with the thick branch of a nearby tree, and then climbed back up the cliff face to help Adeline down with the help of the rope.

  McGregor filled Isabella in on what he and Blake had found at Feldman’s house while they drove back down to Bethany. Materials from Haycox’s investigation, Wheeler’s notebook, even some files from the original Devil Mountain case.

  “Do you think …” Isabella stopped and thought about how to phrase it. “Do you think it could have been him, back then?”

  Blake shook his head. “I don’t know. We need to find out where he was back then. It’s a possibility. But I don’t know. That room, it wasn’t like a trophy room. I think he was trying to find out who it was. And for some reason, he didn’t want anyone else to be the one who did it. I think that’s why he killed Wheeler and Haycox.”

  “He moved here in ’07,” McGregor said. “I guess that doesn’t rule him out, though. We’ll know more when we take a closer look at his place.”

  Isabella didn’t say anything. McGregor and Blake fell silent, both men exhausted. She closed her eyes, focusing on the rocking of the car as it negotiated the turns on the slope back down to where the mountain road joined the north road. Without realizing it, she began humming the song again; the one from her dream. The words about going home.

  I’m not scared.

  It was a minute or two before she became conscious of Adeline staring at her. Isabella smiled back at her, wondering if she was worried about the blow to the head Feldman had given her. Adeline didn’t return the smile. It took Isabella a while to work out why the other woman’s gaze unnerved her so much. And then she had it.

  It reminded her of the way Feldman had looked at her, at the end.

  She stopped humming the tune and Adeline looked away from her. At that moment, she remembered where she had heard it first. On a dark, rainy night, coming from a car stereo.

  They reached the station and Blake helped Adeline out of the car. Isabella got out and moved to the driver’s door before McGregor could close it.

  “I’m going up to Feldman’s house. I need to—”

  McGregor shook his head. “You’ve been through enough today, Isabella. Go home. I’ve got Carl out there sealing the place up for the feds. They may already be here.” He sighed. “You know how this has to go now.”

  Isabella pretended to think about it. “Okay, you’re right. Shift’s over.”

  He looked at her, then glanced over at Blake, as though to get a second opinion.

  “You want some company?” Blake asked.

  Isabella shook her head. “I’ll see you later.”

  She wanted to lean forward and kiss him hard. Instead, she just reached out and put a hand on the side of his chest, right over the place she knew the scar was. He looked a little confused, but didn’t say anything.

  Isabella got in the driver’s seat and watched as Blake and McGregor helped the lost girl into the station. Both men glanced back at Isabella as they reached the door. Adeline didn’t look at her at all. She backed up and pulled the car out onto the road.

  Five minutes later, she pulled to a stop outside Feldman’s house. There was crime scene tape across the door, and Carl Bianchi was standing outside. Isabella got out of the car and Carl looked like he couldn’t decide how to react to seeing her.

  “Are you okay? I heard.”

  She ignored the question. “Anyone been in there yet?”

  “I’m not supposed to let anyone in.”

  Isabella started to protest, and he cut her off. “Anyone. The sheriff says we can’t touch this, especially …”

  He tailed off. He didn’t need to say the last part. Feldman’s status as “one of us” meant that the department couldn’t handle this investigation. And the person who had killed the suspect sure as hell wouldn’t be getting in there.

  Isabella looked beyond the sentry barring her way into the house and thought about what Blake had seen in there. All of the materials pilfered from the original DMK investigation. Everything Haycox had done. Wheeler’s notebook. And any conclusions Feldman had come to, after putting it all together. And she knew he had put it all together.

  “Fair enough, Carl,” she said at last. She turned and walked back toward the car.

  “I’ll see you later?” Carl called after her. Isabella didn’t answer.

  She drove back toward town. The events of the past few hours replayed in her head like a movie. She knew she could deal with them, put them in the locked box with all the other unwanted memories, but she chose not to. She kept coming back to the look on Feldman’s face after she pulled the trigger. Shock and disbelief, giving way to something like understanding before the light winked out of his eyes.

  When she got to the crossroads at Main Street, she slowed down and stopped. A right turn would take her to the sheriff’s office, where Adeline would be reuniting with her brother for the first time in fifteen years. Straight ahead would take her out of town and past the house where David Connor had lived above his dead father for a decade and a half, until his secret had been unearthed.

  She took a look around Bethany’s Main Street. There were knots of people here and there talking. Some of them pulled a double take when they saw her in the car: looked away, then tried to pretend not to stare. There were two women nearby. Through the open window, she heard a snippet of conversation.

  “I heard it was her. She was the one who got him.”

  Isabella sat there for a couple of minutes with the engine running, knowing her time wasn’t infinite. Bethany. A nice town.

  She turned to look to her right, along the road to the sheriff’s office. Then she looked straight ahead, at the road that would take her to Connor’s place. Then she put the car into gear and turned left.

  79

  Carter Blake

  David Connor looked up as McGregor opened the cell door. He was sitting in the middle of the bench bolted to the back wall. He didn’t say anything, just looked at me expectantly.

  And then I stepped into the cell and Connor saw who was behind me. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open.

  Adeline waited for McGregor to go in first, and then stepped nervously into the cell. She looked at David.

  “I’m sorry.”

  David stood up. I saw McGregor tense as he took three paces across the cell floor. He stopped and stared at Adeline. Then he put his arms around her and drew her in for a tight embrace. Adeline gasped, and then her own arms wrapped around her brother. />
  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’m so sorry.”

  80

  Isabella Green

  Isabella stopped at the wide spot on the corner before the Mercer place. The house loomed out of the fog. It was full dark now, and the lights were on inside. Waylon Mercer’s truck was in the driveway. She could see Swifty the dog sniffing around at the tires.

  She took her phone out and called Blake, not knowing exactly what she would say if he answered. It was likely he would be busy right now, with Adeline and David. It went to voicemail, which was good. She left her message, and then got out of the car.

  Sally Mercer opened the door. She had a fresh bruise, around her left eye this time. When she saw Isabella, she shook her head.

  “I didn’t call you.”

  “Your husband home, Sally?”

  “I didn’t call you,” she said, raising her voice. Waylon Mercer appeared in the hall behind her. “I didn’t call her!” she yelled again, turning to face her husband. His face was full of contempt. As though he wanted to get this formality out of the way so he could come back and talk to his wife about the importance of keeping family secrets. But Isabella was done with secrets.

  “Get out of here,” Mercer said. “You heard her. You have no reason to be here.”

  Isabella stepped across the threshold.

  “Are you deaf? Get the fuck out of my house if you don’t have a warrant.”

  “I don’t need a warrant.”

  Mercer grabbed Sally by her upper arm and tugged her roughly behind him. “Kitchen,” he ordered.

  Sally did as she was told. Maybe that was for the best.

  “Well, how about we see what my lawyer has to say about that, Deputy?”

  “How about we don’t?”

  Isabella took her gun from its holster, and pointed it between Mercer’s eyes. He had just enough time to smirk before she pulled the trigger, twice.

  81

  Carter Blake

  After a while, we had to leave David Connor in his cell. McGregor had taken a call from the deputy at Feldman’s place to say that the advance contingent of the FBI had arrived and started going through the materials in his office. Adeline sipped a plastic cup of water in the main office while I spoke to Sheriff McGregor about her brother. He believed there was a better than even chance that the evidence found at Feldman’s house would exonerate Connor of the murders committed in the past week, though he would still stand trial for his father’s death.

  For my part, I was slowly putting everything together. Feldman had developed a fixation on the Devil Mountain killings. For some reason, he didn’t want anyone else looking into it. He had been rattled when David Connor made noises about the case, and somehow that had led to the deaths of six men, not counting Feldman himself.

  But why? What had made him do it? His actions were those of a man obsessed: with the case or with something else. Something, or someone. With a shiver, I remembered the pictures of Isabella.

  And there was something else niggling at me. Green had told me Feldman had been distracted by Adeline’s scream, and that she had taken the chance to jump him and get the gun. In the heat of the moment, I hadn’t questioned her account. It was only when I had time to think things over that I realized that left a time gap. Adeline had screamed when she fell from halfway down the cliff. I hadn’t heard the shot that killed Feldman until I had reached the top. The time passing between the two events couldn’t have been under three minutes.

  So what? It didn’t dispel Green’s version of events. But it suggested she had left something out. What had happened in those three minutes between the scream and the shot?

  McGregor’s phone rang as he was reaching for it to call Connor’s lawyer. I heard him exchanging updates and guessed he was talking to one of his men. He had a funny look on his face when he hung up.

  “Everything okay?”

  “I need to go up there. They’ve uh … they found something. They want me to take a look.”

  “Was that Green calling?”

  “No. Carl said she went out there, though. He turned her away.”

  McGregor kept his usual poker face, but there was a crack in his voice at the end of his sentence that gave him away. He cleared his throat. “Maybe she changed her mind.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “You go, I’ll head over to her place and check on her.”

  McGregor gave me a thankful nod. “Give me a call when you know.”

  I drove up the hill to Green’s mother’s house, keeping my eyes peeled for a sheriff’s department car or Green’s Chevy. When I got to the house, the lights were on but there was no Chevy parked outside. Mrs. Cregg opened the door as I got out of the car. She greeted me and told me Kathleen Green was in her bedroom.

  “Is Isabella with her?”

  “No, she called a half hour ago, though.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She just wanted to check I was here tonight. Then she asked to speak to her mom. I just gave the phone to Kathleen and …” she paused. “Is Isabella all right? She just didn’t sound like herself.”

  “Have you been watching TV? Listening to the radio?”

  She shook her head. “Kathleen’s watching Columbo.”

  A voice echoed from inside. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Isabella’s friend,” Mrs. Cregg called out. “Mr. Blake.”

  “Send him in.”

  Mrs. Cregg led me through the house to the small bedroom at the back. Kathleen Green was propped up on some pillows in the small single bed. The television was on, with the sound on mute. Peter Falk was conversing with Ricardo Montalban in silence. Kathleen looked smaller than she had a few nights before. Older, too. As I entered, she looked up. There was faint recognition in her eyes, and her features creased as she tried to recall who I was. I put my hand out and introduced myself again before she could feel awkward.

  “I’m looking for Isabella. I need to talk to her about something. Mrs. Cregg said she spoke to you over the phone earlier?”

  She seemed to think about it. “I don’t know. I think so? Or perhaps not. Sometimes I get confused.”

  “We all do, sometimes. I’m sorry to have bothered you. I’ll keep looking.”

  She smiled. I turned to go and stopped midstride as she spoke again.

  “We worry about her, sometimes, Kurt. I told you that before, didn’t I?”

  I turned around. I didn’t correct her, just waited for her to continue.

  “Arlo always tells me not to be so silly, and I suppose you will too.”

  Arlo. Green’s father, the last victim of the original Devil Mountain Killer. My hand curled around the car key in my pocket. I knew time was of the essence. Green had disappeared, and I needed to get back on the road and look for her. All of a sudden, that look on her face before she drove off seemed like something more than the after-effects of the shock of almost being killed, and having to kill a man. I needed to find her. But something stopped me from walking away.

  “Not at all. Why do you worry?”

  She sat down on her chair and looked into the distance. “After what happened at our old house. Arlo told me all she needed was a change of scenery. And he was right, for a while. She seemed like a different girl at first. And then she got older and things changed.”

  I felt a cold sweat on the back of my neck. Mrs. Green kept talking. She didn’t look at me. It was as though she was talking to herself. Her voice was stronger, clearer. Her eyes seem to have taken on a new focus.

  “When the killings started, I didn’t want to think— well, I mean, what kind of mother would think that? She went out at nights sometimes, and when she did … That night when she came home in the rain I knew she had done something. She begged for my forgiveness. Maybe I shouldn’t have done what I did, but I couldn’t lose them both. We buried the gun un
der the tree, and we burned her raincoat and her clothes. Nobody ever came to ask us about anything. We never spoke of it again. She got better. I really believe that. You believe it, don’t you? That I did the right thing?”

  For the first time, she looked up at me. I heard a siren in the distance.

  “I lost my husband that night. I couldn’t lose my daughter too.”

  I ran back out to the car. A blue-and-white Bethany patrol car flashed by on the road outside as I got in. I started the engine and pulled out onto the road, following the car. It followed the main road for a mile before turning up toward the loop around the eastern edge of town. I followed until it pulled off the road in front of a wide house with a porch. There was a woman sitting on the porch steps, staring into space, absently stroking the fur of a slim black dog. Two deputies got out, guns drawn and approached the woman.

  They wouldn’t need the guns. The killer was already miles away. Now that the roadblocks were down, she would know exactly how to put the maximum distance between herself and Bethany without being stopped.

  I looked down at my phone. One missed call, Green’s number. The voicemail icon was lit up.

  82

  Isabella Green

  Friday October 31st, 2003

  It’s coming down hard now, the raindrops hitting the hood of my raincoat so hard that it almost hurts. I could stand under the trees for a little more shelter, but I don’t. In a way, the rain helps. Just like the cold air I’m breathing in through my nose, out through my mouth.

  I go out almost every night, now. I don’t even think about it anymore. Sometimes I just walk through town, other times I head out in the woods, or on the mountain. My dad made me take the gun when I started going out on my own, for protection. Most nights I don’t see anyone. Sometimes when I see people, I hide until they’ve gone. And sometimes …

  I think about the fight before I left the house. I think they know. They’re not ready to come right out and ask me yet, though. Maybe they’re not even ready to admit it to themselves.