Her music box played Greensleeves, and I was tempted to open the lid on the miniature piano and allow her to hear me nearby. Alas, my love, you do me wrong. I had not thought of the old song in years until I lifted the lid of her music box. Such a poignant song. It made anger begin to simmer in my veins. To cast me off discourteously; And I have loved you for so long Delighting in your company. Sometimes promises were so easily forgotten. Women and roses alike needed to be reminded of their promises.
I started to lift the lid, to hum along with the tune. But it was too soon. It had been enough to leave her door unlocked so she could sense I was near. She knew. She was clever. I had known she would be. I had known she was special from the moment I saw her. She had found my gift to her even sooner than I anticipated. I would have to be cautious and tell her the story in a way that was not rushed.
It was a challenge to keep everything hidden when we were face to face; to hear that low, husky, accented voice and not wrap my hands around her throat to feel the vibrations against my palms; to see her smile so easily at everyone who crossed her path and not place a swath of tape over her mouth so that winsome curve of her lips was only for me; to witness the way she pushed her glasses up her nose. The tension I felt in her presence was excruciating and delicious all at once.
I had forgotten the anticipation. The others, the ones I found in those forgotten corners, they had not made my blood sing with the hunt. I took them because I could. Because I needed to. Because it fed a desire within me, even as it left me hollow. But the others were not the work of art that she would be. That Rose had been.
I had to remember her promise. A rose would bloom for you if only you tended it. She had been angry when she spoke to me tonight. I remembered Rose’s reluctance at first as well, and the reminder only sweetened the pain and honed that tearing hunger within.
I had time to lay everything out for her. And right now, I had time to linger mere feet from her and bask in the tension of being so close as she slept.
Thirteen
Roses fall, but the thorns remain.
-Dutch proverb
HECTOR
Evelyn sat on the hard bench in the lobby looking as if she had not slept at all last night. I rubbed my jaw. “You know this is a serious accusation.”
I could see her spine stiffen and her hackles go up. “I know,” she said, voice tight.
“The police can’t pursue anything based on this alone.” I almost laughed at the irony of being in the position to say those words. They tasted bitter in my mouth. “Do you have proof?” Her gaze dropped, and I could see tension in every line of her body. Christ, if she had proof… I leaned toward her. “Evelyn.” I heard the urgency in my own tone, and I knew she did as well when she looked up. “Do you have proof Jeff killed the woman at the campground?”
“No,” she said, and I could hear the frustration in her voice. “I don’t.” She collected her purse and stood. “Thank you for your time.”
Joan tapped on the glass, drawing my attention. She held up the phone. The automatic doors whispered shut behind Evelyn as she exited the lobby.
“You have a phone call from a Ranger Edwards,” Joan said.
“Transfer the call to my desk.” I hesitated, rapping a knuckle on the countertop. “I need you to call the records department in Atlanta and get them to fax over any case reports they have on Evelyn Hutto. Look at the scans attached to the campground case. Her witness statement is there, and her birthdate is on that.”
“I’ll get right on it,” she said.
Back in my office, I picked up the phone. “Hector.”
“Hector, it’s Edwards. You’ll want to get over here. We may have an ID on your Jane Doe.”
“I’m on my way.” I grabbed the folder for the case from my desk, whistled to Frank, and informed the dispatcher where I was heading as we strode outside to my truck. Evelyn’s visit to the police department weighed heavily on my mind, and when I reached my turnoff, I slowed and detoured from the state road. I left the truck running in front of the trailer, and I went straight to my bedroom.
I plucked the photograph from where it was tacked at the center of the web I had been trying to untangle for fifteen years. Do you have any proof? they had asked me. We can’t arrest him based on your hunch alone. He passed a polygraph. Just like you did.
There was a wealth of implications in those words. I had finally been told in no uncertain terms that if I did not stop harassing him, I would face a restraining order, charges, and dismissal. But I was as certain now as I had been then.
I needed the job, though. I needed the resources available through the department, the cover it provided me. If I were not part of the department, they would have tried to arrest me years ago. The charges would have been dismissed. They had no proof. But a badge provided a man some amount of protection.
So I watched and waited and made a promise to my girls.
I tucked the photo of Jeff Roosevelt into my pocket and headed back out to my truck.
In Gardiner, I crossed the river and passed under the arch. I flashed my badge when I reached the small cabin that served as the gateway to the north entrance of the park.
The young park ranger smiled at me. “They’re expecting you at park headquarters.”
The five miles to Mammoth was an ascent, winding up through the hills. I came around a curve and crested the ridge. The Lower Terraces gleamed like white marble in the winter sun.
The hotel was closed for renovations this season, and this time of year was quiet in the park. There were more elk lingering on the snow-softened lawn of the hotel and wandering around the grounds than humans. Frank pressed his nose to the window, a rumble emanating from his chest.
“Enough,” I warned him.
I left my truck near the Visitor Center and crossed the old fort grounds. In the years following Yellowstone’s establishment as the first national park, the Army sent men from Fort Custer to protect the land. The old structures built at the turn of the century with stone quarried from the Gardner River still stood.
Edwards met me as I entered the rectangular three-story building that now served as park headquarters. “We had a group come in today reporting their friend missing.” He led me upstairs. “The friend matches the description of the Jane Doe.”
The five women in the room were young, college-aged. They were all wide-eyed, concern etched into their pretty features. Four of the five women’s faces brightened when Frank trotted into the room at my heels. He made his rounds greeting them as I took a seat down the table from the women.
One woman’s gaze went back and forth between Edwards and me as soon as I entered the room. The concern on her face morphed into grief and shock. She knew exactly why I was here.
“Ladies, my name is Hector.” I met each of their gazes, but I ended with the woman who already knew. “I’m with the police in Raven’s Gap. I understand you’ve come in to report your friend missing.”
“Her name is Sarah Clemens,” the young woman said.
I drew my notebook and reading glasses from my pocket. “What can you tell me about Sarah?”
“She’s a—”
The young woman who already knew cut in. “She’s Caucasian, around five-foot-six-inches tall, roughly one hundred forty pounds. She was last seen on Sunday morning wearing a blue coat and a backpack.” She sounded like a seasoned officer. She seemed to read the thought on my face, because she lifted a shoulder and said, “My dad’s a cop. Something bad has happened to Sarah, hasn’t it?”
“What brought you to the area?” I asked.
She searched my face for a long moment before answering. “We’re college students from Bozeman, and we decided to come down before the new semester starts. We rented a house in Gardiner for a couple of days while we explored the Mammoth area, and then on Sunday we took the snowcoach down to Old Faithful and stayed there until yesterday. Sarah stayed behind.”
“Why is that?”<
br />
“She wanted to explore some more trails in this section of the park Sunday. She was planning on meeting us at the Snow Lodge on Monday.”
“Why did you wait until today to report her missing?”
“Sarah…she does her own thing. We thought she must have decided to stay here, but when we arrived back yesterday afternoon, she was just gone. All of her stuff was still at the house. We searched all over Gardiner and Mammoth for her last night. I knew something was wrong.” Her throat worked as she swallowed. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
The others sucked in a breath, clearly not having seen where this was leading.
“There were reports on Sunday of an incident at the campground in Raven’s Gap. It looked like a young woman had been kidnapped while cross-country skiing.” The other girls began to cry, but the one who had known just watched me steadily. “On Monday, a body was found.” I rested a hand on the file folder I had placed on the table before me. “I have a photograph, but—”
“Let me see,” the young woman said.
I slid it across the table to her. The coroner had sent it to me yesterday. It showed the woman from the cabin from the shoulders up on a cold metal slab.
She may have known what happened to her friend as soon as I entered the room, but nothing fully prepared someone to see the dead, gray face of a friend or loved one. Her entire body flinched. Her eyes welled with tears, and her hand came up to cover her mouth.
One of her friends leaned forward and said, “Is it her?”
She slapped a hand over the photo before the other woman could catch a glimpse of the grim sight. She slid it back across the table to me and nodded. “That’s Sarah.”
There was nothing that sounded quite so haunting as the grief and shock of losing someone to senseless violence. I had only heard the sound four times in the last thirty years. The parents of a son who committed suicide. The sister of a woman whose husband beat her to death in a drunken rage over a burnt meatloaf. The daughter of a man who had died as a result of a hit and run. And Ed and Betty when I had shown up on their doorstep to break the news that my wife and daughter, their daughter and granddaughter, were gone. Vanished without a trace. It was a sound I would never grow used to.
The five young women huddled together with their arms wrapped around one another in their shared grief. Frank leaned against their legs, offering his support.
The one who had done most of the talking pulled away first and turned to me. “We were in Raven’s Gap Saturday night. We had dinner at a restaurant in town. Maggie’s Diner. I think that was the name of it. It got great Yelp reviews.”
I pulled the photograph from my pocket and extended it to her. “Have you ever seen this man before?”
Her brow wrinkled as she studied the photo. “No, I don’t think so.” She passed it to her friends. “Is he the person who did that to Sarah?”
“We don’t know yet.” I tucked the photo back into my pocket when they had finished passing it around and confirming they could not recall seeing Jeff Roosevelt. “Do you have contact information for Sarah’s parents?”
“Her brother goes to the same college. I have his number. I’ll text him.”
Once I had received the contact information, I called Frank to my side and exited the room. Edwards followed me, sighing heavily. “This isn’t my first death notification,” the younger man admitted, “but it is my first homicide.”
“I hope it’s your last as well.”
Jeff Roosevelt had moved to town a month before Winona and Emma went missing. I had not suspected him at first. Winona had no enemies. Those in town loved her. She was the darling of Raven’s Gap. Suspicion had immediately fallen on me, but my own suspicion was directed toward tourists in the area.
Until I saw the stills from the CCTV footage. At the supermarket, the post office, the bank, the laundromat. I had poured over the photographs from every place in Raven’s Gap and Gardiner Winona frequented with any regularity. CCTV footage was rarely kept for any significant length of time. Most of what I had did not predate their disappearance by more than two weeks.
I did not notice him at first. I was too caught by Winona’s pensive, slight smile or her far-off gaze in the photos. When I first met her, her smile could have lit an arena. When I approached her in the bar after watching her barrel race, she had been surrounded by men. She had smiled at them all, but she had caught my gaze and beamed.
Studying the photos, I saw the tightness of her smile, the tension around her eyes, and I wondered when she had stopped beaming. And when I had stopped noticing the dimming of that smile.
Then I had realized what I was looking at, what I was seeing in every single photograph. The same figure in the background of almost every still. Jeff Roosevelt.
He was filling up his Land Rover at the gas station as I entered Raven’s Gap. I braked too quickly on the winter roads and turned in. As I pulled up to the pump beside where he was parked, he crossed in front of me to enter the gas station.
I kept an eye on him as I paid at the pump and inserted the nozzle to top off my own tank. When he disappeared from sight between the shelves, I crossed the pavement and peered into his vehicle. His windows were darkly tinted, and I had to cup my hands around my eyes and press my face against the glass to see within.
“I thought they were keeping you on a tighter leash these days.”
I straightened slowly and turned to face him. The man Susan hired at the bookstore asked me today if I would like to visit his rose garden, Winona had told me. At the time, I thought she had been attempting to make me jealous, and I brushed her off before she said anything more. Looking back, I thought I could remember the pinched tension in her face. Now I wondered if she had been trying to tell me he made her uncomfortable, if she might have been afraid of him. Now I wondered how long he had been following her and what he had done with my wife and daughter.
He stood a few feet from me with that pompous prick smile on his face.
“There are no leashes during a murder investigation,” I said.
“I heard about the body found in the campground.” He looked right into my eyes. “Women can never be too careful these days, can they?”
“You would know all about that.”
He sighed. “I thought this might resurrect your John Wayne tendencies. This isn’t the Wild West any longer, Hector. I won’t hesitate to slap a restraining order on you if you start harassing me again.”
A metallic thud clipped the air, signaling the pump had stopped running. “You have a complaint to make, come by the station anytime,” I said as I crossed back to my vehicle. “You know where we’re located.”
Frank was standing in my seat when I opened the driver’s side door, staring at Jeff with his lips curled back in a soundless snarl. “One day,” I assured him softly.
I now knew what had made the tracks on the old service road beside the campground. I should have recognized them sooner. Until this season with their new fleet of snowcoaches, Yellowstone had used devices to convert their fifteen passenger vans into winter vehicles. They replaced the tires with a track system to allow the vehicles to drive through snow. Four similar tracks had been in the cargo space of Jeff’s vehicle.
When I returned to the police department, Joan glanced up from the computer as I entered. “I left Atlanta’s response about Evelyn Hutto on your desk.”
I expected a page or two. A traffic ticket or the like. But I found a thick folder on my desk with a stack of printouts within. I scanned through the reports. The bulk of them were largely the same complaint filed over and over again throughout the course of 2013. The last report was different, dated from the following year. It took me several long minutes to get through the case notes, and a handwritten scrawl across the bottom of the front page caught my attention: JDLR.
I rubbed my jaw and rested my hand on the stack of papers. An idea was beginning to take shape in my mind.
I snagged the phone
on my desk and dialed the number of an office in Colorado.
“It’s Hector,” I said when he answered on the third ring.
“Is my Ma okay?” the gruff voice at the other end of the line asked.
“Maggie’s fine.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “I need to ask a favor of you.”
“Name it,” he said immediately.
When I first met William Silva, he had been five years old. His father was Brazilian, his mother African American, and it had not been easy for him growing up in a small town where he was the only black kid. He was raised by strong, hard-working parents until his father had dropped dead of a heart attack at the age of forty-three. Then he had become a strong, hard-working son who helped his mother at the diner every day before and after school. He had only joined the military after he asked me to promise to look after his mother. He had been a good kid, but he was an even better man.
“I want you to look in for someone for me, a woman who just moved to town.” I gave him all the information I knew on Evelyn. “See what you can turn up about a man by the name of Chad Kilgore, too. He was a security guard at the museum where Evelyn worked in Atlanta.”
“Is there more of a connection between them that I should look for?”
“He stalked her for a year,” I said.
William let out a low whistle. “That’s a connection alright.”
I told him about the last report from 2014. “The officer marked it as JDLR.”
“I’ll see what I can find.”
If anyone could find answers, it was William. He was retired Special Forces. He had done a short stint in the FBI before deciding he preferred shades of gray to black and white. The man had a sixth sense for finding people. It was why he had opened an office in Denver with a sign on the door that read FUGITIVE RECOVERY AGENT. The only time he had let me down was when I asked him to help me find my girls.
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