Gone, But Not Forgotten

by Phillip Margolin

  “Let’s not touch it. I want a lab tech to dust the room. Treat it as a crime scene, until we know better.”

  “There’s no sign of a struggle.”

  “There wasn’t any at the homes of the missing women, either.”

  Highsmith nodded. “I’ll call from the manager’s office, in case there are prints on the phone.”

  “Do you have any idea where this is?” Page asked, as he reread the notes on the pad.

  Highsmith’s brow furrowed for a moment, then he frowned.

  “As a matter of fact, I do. Remember I told you about the houses Darius bulldozed? This sounds like the address.”

  “What’s there now?”

  “A block-wide empty lot. As soon as the neighbors saw what Darius did, they went nuts. There have been protests, lawsuits. Darius went ahead with construction anyway and had three units built, but someone torched them. Construction’s been halted ever since.”

  “I don’t like this. How would anyone know where Gordon was? I’m the one who suggested the Lakeview.”

  “She could have phoned someone.”

  “No. I asked the manager. There weren’t any outgoing calls. Besides, she doesn’t know anyone in Portland. That’s why she came to my place. She assumed the person who sent her the anonymous letter would meet her at the airport, but no one showed. A clipping about me and my address were in with the note. If she knew anyone else, she would have spent the night with them.”

  “Then someone must have followed her from the airport to your place and from your place here.”

  “That’s possible.”

  “What if that person waited until she was in the room, then phoned Gordon and asked her to come to the construction site.”

  “Or came here and talked Gordon into going with him or took her by force.”

  “Gordon’s a detective,” Highsmith said. “I mean, you’d think she would have enough sense to be careful.”

  Page thought about Gordon. Her edge, the tension in her body.

  “She’s driven, Randy. Gordon told me she stayed a cop so she could track down Lake. She’s been on this case for ten years and she dreams about it. Gordon’s smart, but she might not be smart where this case is concerned.”

  The building site was larger than Page imagined. The houses Darius had destroyed were built along a bluff overlooking the Columbia River. The land included a steep wooded hill that angled down toward the water. A high, chain link fence surrounded the property. A “Darius Construction—Absolutely No Trespassing” sign was fastened to the fence. Page and Highsmith huddled under their umbrellas, the collars of their raincoats turned up around their cheeks, and studied the padlock on the gate. The moon was full, but storm clouds scudded across it with great frequency. The heavy rain made the night as dark as it would have been with no moon.

  “What do you think?” Highsmith asked.

  “Let’s walk along the fence to see if there’s another entrance. There’s no sign she came in here.”

  “These are new shoes,” Highsmith complained.

  Page started off along the periphery without answering. The ground had been stripped bare of grass during construction. Page felt the mud oozing around his shoes. He peered through the fence as he walked, occasionally shining his flashlight inside the site. Most of the land was empty and flat where the bulldozers had done their work. At one point, he saw a shack. At another, his beam highlighted broken and burned timbers that had once been the framework of a Darius town house.

  “Al, bring your light here,” Highsmith shouted. He had walked ahead and was pointing at a section of fence that had been sheared through and folded back. Page ran over. He paused just before he reached Highsmith. A gust of cold wind struck his face. Page turned away for a second and clutched his collar closer to his neck.

  “Look at this,” Page said. He was standing under an ancient oak tree pointing the flashlight beam toward the ground. Tire tracks had gouged out the mud where they were standing. The canopy formed by the leaves covered the tracks. Page and Highsmith followed them away from the fence.

  “Someone drove off the road across the field in this mud,” Page said.

  “Not necessarily tonight, though.”

  The tracks stopped at the street and disappeared. The rain would have washed away the mud from the asphalt.

  “I think the driver backed up to the fence, Al. There’s no sign that he turned around.”

  “Why back up? Why drive over to the fence at all and risk getting stuck in the mud?”

  “What’s in the back of a car?”

  Page nodded, imagining Nancy Gordon folded in the confined space of a car trunk.

  “Let’s go,” he said, heading back toward the hole in the fence. In his heart, Page knew she was down there, buried in the soft earth.

  Highsmith followed him through. As he ducked, he snagged his coat on a jagged piece of wire. By the time he freed himself, Page was well ahead, obscured by the darkness, only the wavering beam of the flashlight showing his location.

  “Do you see any tracks?” Highsmith asked when he caught up.

  “Look out!” Page cried, grabbing Highsmith by his coat. Highsmith pulled up. Page shone his light down. They were on the edge of a deep pit that had been gouged out of the earth for a foundation. Muddy walls sloped down toward the bottom, which was lost in darkness. Suddenly the moon appeared, bathing the bottom of the pit in a pale glow. The uneven surface cast shadows over rocks and mounds of dirt.

  “I’m going down,” Page said, as he went over the rim. He edged along the wall of the pit sideways, leaning into the slope and digging in with the sides of his shoes. Halfway down, he slipped to one knee and slid along the smooth mud, stopping his descent by grabbing a protruding root. The root had been severed by a bulldozer blade. The end came free of the mud, but Page slowed enough to dig in and stop his slide.

  “You okay?” Highsmith called into the wind.

  “Yeah. Randy, get down here. Someone’s been digging recently.”

  Highsmith swore, then started edging down the slope. When he reached the bottom, Page was wandering slowly over the muddy ground, studying everything that entered the beam of his flashlight. The ground looked as if it had been turned over recently. He examined it as closely as he could in the dark.

  The wind died suddenly and Page thought he heard a sound. Something slithering in the shadows just out of his line of sight. He tensed, trying to hear above the wind, peering helplessly into the darkness. When he convinced himself he was the victim of his imagination, he turned around and shone the light near the base of a steel girder. Page straightened suddenly and took a step back, catching his heel on a timber half-concealed in the mud. He stumbled and the flashlight fell, its beam fanning out over the rain-soaked earth, catching something white in the light. A rock or a paper cup. Page knelt quickly and recovered the flashlight. He walked over to the object and squatted next to it. His breath caught in his chest. Protruding from the earth was a human hand.

  The sun was just coming up when they dug the last body out of the ground. The horizon took on a scarlet tinge as two officers lifted the corpse onto a stretcher. Around them, other officers walked slowly over the muddy floor of the construction site in search of more graves, but the area had been scoured so thoroughly that no one expected to find one.

  A prowl car perched on the edge of the pit. The door on the driver’s side was open. Alan Page sat in the front seat with one foot on the ground, holding a paper cup filled with scalding, black coffee, trying not to think about Nancy Gordon and thinking of nothing else.

  Page rested his head against the back of the seat. As the darkness retreated, the river began taking on dimension. Page watched the flat black ribbon turn liquid and turbulent in the red dawn. He believed Nancy Gordon was in the pit, buried under layers of mud. He wondered if there was something he could have done to save her. He imagined Gordon’s frustration and rage when she died at the hands of the man she had sworn to stop.

>   The rain had ended shortly after the first police car arrived. Ross Barrow took charge of the crime scene, after consulting with the lab techs about the best way to handle the evidence. Floodlights shone down on the workers from the rim of the pit. Designated search areas were fenced off with yellow tape. Saw-horses had been erected as barriers against the curious. As soon as Page was certain Barrow could get along without him, he and Highsmith had grabbed a quick dinner at a local restaurant. By the time they returned, Barrow had positively identified Wendy Reiser’s body and an officer had located a second grave.

  Through the windshield, Page watched Randy Highsmith trudge toward the car. He had been in the pit observing while Page took a break.

  “That’s the last one,” Highsmith said.

  “What have we got?”

  “Four bodies and positive i.d.s on Laura Farrar, Wendy Reiser and Victoria Miller.”

  “Were they killed like Patricia Cross?”

  “I didn’t look that closely, Al. To tell the truth, I almost lost it. Dr. Gregg is down there. She can give you the straight scoop when she comes up.”

  Page nodded. He was used to dealing with the dead, but that didn’t mean he liked looking at a corpse any more than Highsmith.

  “What about the fourth woman?” Page asked hesitantly. “Does she match my description of Nancy Gordon?”

  “It’s not a woman, Al.”

  “What!”

  “It’s an adult male, also naked, and his face and fingertips were burned away with acid. We’ll be lucky to identify him.”

  Page saw Ross Barrow slogging through the mud and got out of the car.

  “You’re not stopping, Ross?”

  “There’s nothing more down there. You can look if you want.”

  “I was sure that Gordon … It doesn’t make sense. She wrote the address.”

  “Maybe she met someone here and left with them,” Barrow suggested.

  “We didn’t find any footprints,” Highsmith reminded him. “She may not have found a way in.”

  “Did you find anything down there that’ll help us figure out who did this?”

  “Not a thing, Al. I’m guessing all four were killed elsewhere and transported here.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Some of the bodies are missing organs. We haven’t found them or any pieces of bone or excess flesh. No one could clean the area that thoroughly.”

  “Do you think we have enough to arrest Darius?” Page asked Highsmith.

  “Not without Gordon or some solid evidence from Hunter’s Point.”

  “What if we don’t find her?” Page asked anxiously.

  “In a pinch, you could swear to what she told you. We might get a warrant out of a judge with that. She’s a cop. She’d be reliable. But, I don’t know. With something like this, we shouldn’t rush.”

  “And we don’t really have a solid connection between Darius and the victims,” Barrow added. “Finding them at a site owned by Darius Construction doesn’t mean a thing. Especially when it’s deserted and anyone could have gotten in.”

  “Do we know if Darius is Lake?” Page asked Barrow.

  “Yeah. The prints match.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Highsmith said. “If we can get a match between those tire tracks and one of Darius’s cars …”

  “And if we can find Nancy Gordon,” Page said, staring into the pit. He desperately wanted Gordon to be alive, but he had been in the business of violent death and lost hopes too long to grasp at straws.

  CHAPTER 8

  One

  “Detective Lenzer, this is Alan Page from Portland, Oregon. We talked the other day.”

  “Right. I was going to call you. That file you asked for is missing. We switched to computers seven years ago, but I did a search anyway. When I couldn’t find it listed, I had a secretary go through the old files in storage. There’s no file card and no file.”

  “Did someone check it out?”

  “If they did, they didn’t follow procedure. You’re supposed to fill in a log sheet in case someone else needs the file, and there’s no log entry.”

  “Could Detective Gordon have checked it out? She had a fingerprint card with her. It probably came from the file.”

  “The file isn’t with her stuff in the office and it’s against departmental policy to take files home unless you log them out. There’s no record showing anyone logged it out. Besides, if there were six dead women it would be the highest victim count we’ve ever had here. We’re probably talking about a file that would take up an entire shelf. Maybe more. Why would she be lugging around something that big? Hell, you’d need a couple of suitcases to get it home.”

  Page thought that over. “You’re certain it’s not in storage and just misplaced?”

  “The file’s not in storage, believe me. The person who looked for it did a real thorough job and I even went down there for a while.”

  Page was silent for a moment. He decided to tell Lenzer everything.

  “Detective Lenzer, I’m pretty sure Nancy Gordon’s in danger. She may even be dead.”

  “What?”

  “I met her for the first time two nights ago and she told me about the Hunter’s Point murders. She was convinced the man who committed them is living in Portland under a different name, committing similar crimes here.

  “Gordon left my apartment a little after midnight and took a cab to a motel. Shortly after checking in, she left in a hurry. We found an address on a pad in her motel room. It’s a construction site. We searched it and discovered the bodies of three missing Portland women and an unidentified man. They were tortured to death. We have no idea where Gordon is, and I’m thinking she was right about your killer being in Portland.”

  “Jesus. I like Nancy. She’s a little intense, but she’s a very good cop.”

  “The key to this case could be in the Hunter’s Point files. She may have brought them home. I would suggest searching her house.”

  “I’ll do anything I can to help.”

  Page told Lenzer to call him anytime, gave him his home number, then hung up. Lenzer had characterized Gordon as intense and Page had to agree. She was also dedicated. Ten years on the trail and still burning with that fire. Page had been like that once, but the years were getting to him. Tina’s affair and the divorce had sucked him dry emotionally, but he had been losing ground even before her infidelity took over his life. Fighting for the office of district attorney had been great. Every day was exciting. Then he woke up one morning with the responsibilities of the job and the fear that he might not be able to fulfill them. He had mastered those fears through hard work, and he had mastered the job, but the thrill was gone. The days were all getting to be the same, and he was starting to think about what he would be doing ten years down the road.

  The intercom buzzed and Page hit the com button.

  “There’s a man on line three with information about one of the women who was killed at the construction site,” his secretary said. “I think you should talk to him.”

  “Okay. What’s his name?”

  “Ramon Gutierrez. He’s the clerk at the Hacienda Motel in Vancouver, Washington.”

  Page hit the button for line three and talked to Ramon Gutierrez for five minutes. When he was done, he called Ross Barrow, then headed down the hall to Randy Highsmith’s office. Fifteen minutes later, Barrow picked up Highsmith and Page on the corner and they headed for Vancouver.

  Two

  “Can I watch TV?” Kathy asked.

  “Did you have enough pizza?”

  “I’m stuffed.”

  Betsy felt guilty about dinner, but she had put in an exhausting day in court and didn’t have the energy to cook.

  “Is Daddy going to come home tonight?” Kathy asked, looking up at Betsy expectantly.

  “No,” Betsy answered, hoping Kathy would not ask her anymore about Rick. She had explained the separation to Kathy a number of times, but Kathy would not accept the fact that Rick was
most probably never going to live with them again.

  Kathy looked worried. “Why won’t Daddy stay with us?”

  Betsy picked up Kathy and carried her to the living room couch.

  “Who’s your best friend?”

  “Melanie.”

  “Remember the fight you two had, last week?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, Daddy and I had an argument too. It’s a serious one. Just like the one you had with your best friend.”

  Kathy looked confused. Betsy held Kathy on her lap and kissed the top of her head.

  “Melanie and me made up. Are you and Daddy going to make up?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know right now. Meanwhile, Daddy is living someplace else.”

  “Is Daddy mad at you because he had to pick me up at day care?”

  “What made you ask that?”

  “He was awful mad the other day and I heard you arguing about me.”

  “No, honey,” Betsy said, hugging Kathy tight to her. “This doesn’t have anything to do with you. It’s just us. We’re mad at each other.”

  “Why?” Kathy asked. Her jaw was quivering.

  “Don’t cry, honey.”

  “I want Daddy,” she said, sobbing into Betsy’s shoulder. “I don’t want him to go away.”

  “He won’t go away. He’ll always be your daddy, Kathy. He loves you.”

  Suddenly Kathy pushed away from Betsy and wriggled off her lap.

  “It’s your fault for working,” she yelled.

  Betsy was shocked. “Who told you that?”

  “Daddy. You should stay home with me like Melanie’s mom.”

  “Daddy works,” Betsy said, trying to stay calm. “He works more than I do.”

  “Men are supposed to work. You’re supposed to take care of me.”

  Betsy wished Rick was here so she could smash him with her fists.

  “Who stayed home with you when you had the flu?” Betsy asked.

  Kathy thought for a moment. “You, Mommy,” she answered, looking up at Betsy.

  “And when you hurt your knee at school, who came to take you home?”