by Diane Capri
He tossed back the covers. The morning air hit him like a blow and stole his breath away. Man, it was cold in here.
He wrinkled his nose as he slipped into his pants and the blood, sweat, lake water, tears, and fears enveloped him, imbued with yesterday’s nightmare. But he slid his arms into his sweater and jammed his feet into his boots. He patted his pockets and found his wallet and his phone where they should have been. He would buy new clothes in Tahoe. Until then, these would suffice.
Josh had been to Tahoe before. There were shops and restaurants and a good hospital there. The commercial airport was in Reno, thirty-five miles away. He could fly Skip’s wife to Reno. As much as he dreaded facing Debbie, Skip would feel a thousand times better if she was here.
Dan was still snoring. Josh left him for a few more minutes. He’d check on Skip and confirm that the weather had cleared and get them all out of here.
He slipped out of the bedroom and pulled the door closed behind him. He walked quietly down the hallway to Skip’s room. He opened the door.
Instantly, he sensed something was wrong.
His body began to thrum as if he’d been plugged into a high-voltage electrical tower.
Skip was alone. Mark and the others had promised to take shifts sitting with him all night, but no one was there.
Josh walked over to the bed and touched Skip’s face. His skin was as cold as the room. Why had no one turned the heat on?
He placed three fingers on the side of Skip’s neck to check his pulse. He felt nothing. He pushed harder against Skip’s carotid artery. Nothing. He checked the other side. Still no pulse.
He bent down to put his ear close to Skip’s face. He felt no breath emerge from Skip’s nose or mouth. Instinctively, he pinched Skip’s nose and opened his mouth to start CPR. He began the count. He put both hands flat on Skip’s heart and pushed.
A deep part of his mind supplied the truth, but he ignored it.
He continued CPR for several minutes. Sweat formed on his brow. His arms fatigued. His breathing labored. He felt tears streaming from his eyes and still he kept going.
He began to accept that his efforts were failing. He continued to try for a long time before he gave up. He felt exhausted in spirit. He clamped his jaw, hard, to stop the screams that rose from his chest. He balled his fists instead of throwing something as hard as possible.
How could this happen? Skip was one of the best men on earth. He was young. He had a pregnant wife. A kid. He had the heart of a lion and yet he was kind and gentle. Josh didn’t know how he would live with himself now.
Finally, he simply stood over his friend’s body and sobbed until he’d used up all of his tears and then he stood a bit longer to let the truth sink deeper into his heart.
He’d killed Skip, his best friend since he was eighteen years old.
After a while, he went into the bathroom and pulled a long strand of toilet paper to blow his nose. He splashed cold water on his face and tried to get himself under control.
He squared his shoulders and took a few deep breaths to steady himself. Now what?
Kevin would know what to do. He was a doctor.
Josh left Skip’s room and opened the next bedroom door. Kevin’s bed was empty. He moved to the other rooms. Ruben’s and Mark’s beds were empty, too.
Josh hesitated, thinking about whether to wake Dan or keep looking for the others. He heard noises outside and was reminded of his nightmare. Was it possible that he’d actually heard a woman screaming? Had the others heard her as well? Is that where they were now?
Josh ran toward the front door and onto the porch. The wind and sleet had stopped during the night, as the weatherman had predicted. But the cold front had left a thin layer of frost covering the ground.
He paused to listen. Noises. Coming from the west side of the house. Definitely.
He dashed down the stairs and his boots crunched across the frost as he ran toward the noise.
He entered the woods where it was so dark he could barely see. He hadn’t thought to grab a flashlight. He slowed his pace.
His feet slipped on the icy ground. Branches slapped his face and neck. He pushed them aside and slowed further. The last thing he needed was to fall and break something.
The air was so still. He continued to hear noises in the distance and navigated carefully toward them.
He rounded a bend and saw the faint light of a campfire ahead. Mark Wilcox was on the far side of the campfire. He was bent at the waist. He held a shovel in his hands.
Josh stopped. He controlled his rapid breathing. He allowed his eyes to adjust to the campfire light.
Now he could see that Mark was digging. He counted seven holes, each with a small pile of dirt next to it.
The scene made no sense. Why was Mark Wilcox digging holes in the darkness? Where were the others?
Near the campfire, not far from where Josh stood, was a red-and-white plastic cooler, the standard fifty-two-quart size. The kind Josh and his friends used to hold beer cans for tailgating during college football season.
The lid was open. Josh stood on his toes to peer over the rim.
He saw ice inside.
And something else.
The weak campfire’s glow provided insufficient illumination. What was in that cooler?
The scene was surreal. Alarming. Josh blinked to refocus his eyes and turned his head slowly to examine everything he could see in the dim light.
Which was when he first noticed the other items.
A knife on the ground between the campfire and the cooler. Larger than a machete. More like a sword. He’d seen something like it in news reports. Swords like that were used in ritual killings in some parts of the world.
The blade was covered in something dark and gooey.
Two small piles snugged close to each of the holes Mark had dug. One pile was the dirt from the hole. But the second pile was something else.
Josh’s grief-stricken mind finally grasped what he was seeing. Horrific images. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head as if to erase them from his corneas.
Surely what he saw here was nothing more than another nightmare. He was lying in the bed next to Dan’s, back in their room. That’s what this was.
He opened his eyes. The scene had not changed.
Beside each hole was a pile of fleshy stumps. Body parts. He could make out a forearm. A foot at the end of a short calf. A small woman’s hand with fuchsia-pink polished fingernails.
Hacked expertly from a torso by that blade on the ground.
The blade splashed with dark, gooey blood.
His eyes widened and his mouth opened in horror. He slapped a palm across his lips to avoid crying out.
He raised up on his toes and peered into the cooler again. Now that his eyes had adjusted, he could see the severed head, face down inside the cooler. Long brown hair, starkly distinguishable from the ice upon which it rested.
His knees buckled. He fell to the ground and pushed himself upright. He backed away from the scene as quietly as he could, jaws clamped to keep the horror from spilling into the night.
He didn’t know what was going on here, but it looked like Mark had killed this woman with a sword and dismembered her body. He seemed to be burying the parts. But that was insane.
Was he hallucinating? Had Kevin given him some kind of pills in that brandy that were making him see crazy things? Sleeping pills could do that. He knew a guy in college who sleepwalked right out of a third-story window because he thought it was a doorway. Sleeping pills made him do it.
That had to be what was going on here. Kevin had given him something like a sleeping pill. He’d wake up and everything would be normal again. Because any other explanation was too bizarre to contemplate.
As soon as he had put enough distance between himself and Mark, Josh turned and ran back to the house.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Red Maple Lake, California
Wednesday
An hour after s
unrise, Flint had settled the bill at the resort. Neville drove them down to the lake in the Polaris. They’d stowed the gear and climbed aboard. Drake fired up the Cessna and executed a perfect takeoff.
“Fly around the perimeter of the lake one last time,” Flint said. “I want to get some video and a better look at the area.”
From the air, even in bright daylight, the trees were too dense to see through. The shoreline ebbed and flowed around the water. According to the maps Flint had found online back in Houston, everything about the alpine lake was smaller than Tahoe. Red Maple Lake was 4.4 miles long and 2.4 miles wide, with fourteen miles of unimproved shoreline and a surface area of 38.2 square miles. Maximum depth was reported at 329 feet. Plenty of space for Hallman’s trio to get into serious trouble.
The earliest recorded snowfall on the lake was September 13, which meant cold temperatures could invade the nine-thousand-to-eleven-thousand-foot peaks much earlier.
“Hallman probably followed the shoreline after the crash, heading toward the resort. Probably got in trouble in those woods,” Drake said when they reached the crash site. “Going the other direction would have been easier and faster, but counterintuitive.”
“Agreed. Can you see where that driveway up to the Wilcox place intersects with the path?”
“Not from this distance. But we know it’s there and we figure Hallman’s group was wandering around in the dark.” Drake cast a meaningful glance toward Flint. “They could have ended up anywhere.”
Flint nodded. “Let’s take another look at that highway that runs along the mountainside before we head back to Reno.”
Drake banked the Cessna and flew out of the basin, almost straight up from the lake until the ribbon of pavement came into view. The two-lane curved around the mountains and traveled into the valleys. Traffic was nonexistent.
Flint saw two old farm trucks and one SUV along the eleven-mile stretch correlating with the distance between the Wilcox place and Red Maple Lake Resort.
One of the farm trucks turned off the road onto a long drive that led to an isolated ranch. He pointed the place out to Drake. “Can you land there?”
“Not in this boat.” Drake shook his head. “But we can come back with the Pilatus.”
“Next time.” Flint grimaced. “We don’t have time today.”
The Cessna’s flight path followed the road a while longer. Flint saw a small group of homes slightly north of the Wilcox place but no further signs of civilization for another twenty miles in any direction.
Drake turned the Cessna and headed north to the Reno airstrip where they’d left the Pilatus. He landed the Cessna and tied it to the dock. Flint pulled out his laptop and tossed the rest of his gear into the back of the Pilatus. While Drake readied the jet, Flint walked to a quiet corner and fired up the satellite phone. He dialed the private number.
“It’s been a while,” his contact said, simply stating the fact without judgment. “How can I help you?”
“I need to get into Huntsville Unit. To meet with a death row inmate.” Flint cleared his throat. “It’s important.”
“When do you want to go inside?”
“He’s scheduled to be executed tomorrow.” He knew the request was a problem. Visiting a death row inmate wasn’t a simple matter. There were protocols in place. He’d have called the governor for intervention, but he detested the man and the feeling was mutual.
After a long pause, his contact said, “I’ll do what I can.”
“I’ll owe you one,” Flint replied.
The man laughed. “I’ll add it to your bill.”
Flint grinned and disconnected the call. He carried the laptop inside the terminal building and found a place to sit. Using the encrypted hotspot, he connected to his secure server and sent an email in reply to the “time sensitive” one he’d received yesterday. “Acquire all available data on attached subject. One hour.”
Her response pinged back immediately. “Acquired. Check server.”
He nodded. She’d continued working overnight, assuming he’d request the data when he had the chance.
He found the secure file, downloaded it, and replied, “Received. Anything more?”
“Still checking.”
He closed the laptop and bought coffee before he returned to the jet. He climbed aboard, handed one cup to Drake, and settled into one of the more comfortable back seats to read the files. He was absorbed by the materials long before takeoff.
The flight plan projected almost seven hours of travel time from the private airstrip near Reno to another private airstrip near Huntsville. The files were thin. He’d fully absorb everything in less than half the travel time.
He started with the most recent files.
James Preston was set for execution by lethal injection for the murder of June Pentwater tomorrow in the Texas State Prison at Huntsville.
Preston had been set to die five times before and received last-minute reprieves each time. Last week, his lawyers had filed requests for additional DNA testing using current, more accurate techniques and a stay of execution until the results were returned.
Another last-minute reprieve could keep Preston alive until Flint completed the Hallman hunt, but Flint wouldn’t risk what was likely to be his last chance to judge the man for himself.
Texas death row inmates are not allowed to have contact visits with anyone at any time, including prior to execution. Prisoners were sometimes allowed to use visiting cages outside death row and to talk to visitors via telephone from within the cage. It wasn’t an ideal interview scenario, but Flint would take whatever he could get.
Preston’s case had been argued by various anti-death-penalty groups over the years. Flint watched the video interviews his contact located before and after each loss. Preston was always composed. He seemed to know that his case was hopeless, even if his lawyers refused to accept the obvious.
Photos of a young James Preston and Marilyn Baker were side by side in the file. That he might be looking at his mother and his mother’s killer was an eerie feeling. Flint wasn’t sure what he thought of the situation or how he felt about it. There were too many unknowns. He’d examine his feelings later.
Over the years, Preston had repeatedly denied killing Marilyn Baker. Of course, he denied killing June Pentwater, too. Both denials could be true, but the Pentwater jury had found otherwise. He was only charged and convicted of killing Pentwater, not Baker.
Flint’s contact pinged his secure server. The message said he’d made three phone calls and got lucky on the last one. Flint would be allowed to talk to James Preston using the visiting cage and telephone receiver for not more than thirty minutes later today.
Flint glanced at the time posted on his computer screen. He’d arrive early, with an hour to spare.
He closed his eyes and visualized the scene as he’d experienced it before. Preston would be in a visitation cage, holding the phone handset. Flint would be seated at a table outside the cage. He’d be able to see Preston and hear his voice.
He didn’t know exactly what he expected to learn. Maybe he would get a feeling of some kind from this guy. Maybe he would simply know whether Preston killed Marilyn Baker. Sometimes, his gut check worked that way. More often, it did not.
What he needed was Marilyn’s DNA. The evidence collected during her murder should be somewhere. Using newer techniques, DNA could be analyzed now. Maybe.
A better plan would be direct DNA testing from a fresh sample that hadn’t been contaminated. Her body had been buried in a Mount Warren cemetery. He could get the body exhumed for fresh samples.
Yes, it could be done. But, as Scarlett had said, simply because he could make it so didn’t mean he should. If Baker was his mother, she was dead. Her killer would be dead tomorrow night. There was nowhere else for his personal heir hunt to go, even if he wanted it to. Which he wasn’t at all sure that he did.
He drained his coffee and lowered the lid to his laptop. He leaned back in the seat and closed his
eyes for a nap. Old habit he’d learned from his time with Uncle Sam. Sleep when you can.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Huntsville, Texas
Wednesday
He was alone when he pulled the rental into the Texas State Prison at Huntsville. He’d left Drake with the Pilatus to avoid answering a lot of questions. He cleared the security gate, thanks to his contact’s credentials, and parked where he was told. He cleared several other security checkpoints in the same way before being led to the visiting cage where he would meet James Preston for the first time.
He didn’t know what he expected to find. He only knew he’d face his mother’s killer one-on-one before the man was executed. Assuming Marilyn Baker had been his mother. And assuming Preston had killed her. Both assumptions seemed justified based on currently known facts.
After Flint walked into the visitor’s room and took his place opposite the cage, a buzzer sounded and the door leading from the interior corridor to the cage opened automatically. James Preston was already seated.
He was dressed in a white one-piece prison jumpsuit. The jumpsuit tied at the top of the V-neck. He wore a white T-shirt underneath.
The most recent photos Flint had seen were snapped at least five years before, but Preston looked the same. Paunchy. Round, bloated face. Pouch-size bags under his eyes. He hadn’t shaved in a while. He was sixty-four years old now and looked ninety-four. Long gone was the appealing young priest who might have caught Marilyn Baker’s eye long ago.
Preston settled heavily into the chair and picked up the telephone receiver. He waited for Flint to speak.
Flint had prepared no remarks or introductions. He picked up his receiver and held it to his ear. For a moment, they simply looked at each other across the chasm from free to caged.
He felt nothing. No twinge of familiarity. No spark of anger. If Preston was connected to him in any way, no vibe of any kind jolted his awareness.
He cocked his head. By the time Marilyn Baker was murdered, he was a toddler already entrusted to foster care by a woman who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, raise him. She had attended the church where Father Preston was a visiting priest, and she’d offered him her heartfelt confession. He had known her. He could have known she was pregnant. He could have met her child. Shouldn’t Flint have felt some twinge of something?