by Lisa Gardner
“And the younger boy?”
Another shrug. “Eight or nine. Shorter brown hair. He was bundled up with a heavy sweatshirt and orange hunting vest. On the small side would be my guess, but hard to tell with all those clothes on. The man had on a nice pair of hiking boots, but the kids were just wearing tennis shoes. I remember thinking at the time it’d be a miracle if they didn’t twist an ankle. But you know, good boots are expensive and with kids growing so fast … Dunno. Up here, some kids come walking in wearing more than I make in a week’s pay, all geared up for their annual hiking weekend. Takes all kinds, I guess.”
“What did the man say when he came in?” Sal spoke up urgently. “Did he buy anything?”
Ron stopped wiping long enough to search his memory. “Bottle of water. Candy bar. Oh, and some crickets. We have ’em for the fishermen and that got him all excited, so he bought a container. Don’t think he was fishing, though, he was dressed all wrong.”
“He ask about any particular hiking trails, mention where he’d been, anything like that?”
Ron shrugged again. “Not that I remember.”
“Did anyone else see him and the boys?”
“Oh, all sorts. Fall’s busy around here. Not like at the moment.” Now he sounded almost apologetic.
“How did he pay?” Rainie asked.
Ron pursed his lips. “I’d guess cash, only ’cause it wasn’t that big a purchase.”
“Did you happen to notice his vehicle?” Kimberly’s turn.
“No, ma’am. Little too busy in the fall for car shopping.”
“Did the man interact with the boys?” Quincy asked. “Say anything to them when they entered the store?”
“Mmmmm, not much. The boys came in.” Ron paused, seemed to be picking his way through his memory. “The older one looked at the man, said, ‘The kid’s gotta pee, whatta you want me to do about it?’ then led the kid to the john. Man didn’t say anything, just looked annoyed. He’d probably told the boys to stay in the car. You know how kids are.”
“He didn’t use a name?” Quincy pressed. “The older boy called the younger boy ‘kid’?”
“Yes, sir, that’s how I remember it.”
“Seems to imply they aren’t brothers,” Quincy murmured. “The teenager’s distancing himself from the younger one. Objectifying him. Interesting.”
“Do you remember which direction they were coming from when they turned in here?” Rainie asked. “From the north or south?”
“No, ma’am.”
“And was it a particular time of day? You saw them in the morning, afternoon …?”
“Afternoon, ma’am, but only because that’s my shift.”
Rainie nodded, pursed her lips. They all three looked at Sal again.
“Anyone else you can think of who might be able to shed more light on this man and the two boys?” Sal pressed. “It’s important that we learn his name. He’s wanted for questioning regarding a very serious matter.”
Ron, however, shook his head.
“Like I said, they’re not local. We just saw ’em a lot in the fall. Maybe as late as early December. Can’t really remember now, to tell you the truth. You might want to try out T.W.O. Even the tourists gotta eat and since he never bought much here …”
“Okay, we’ll do that.” Sal fished out a card, handed it over. “If you think of anything, or see him or the boys again, give me a call. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t broadcast this conversation too widely. We want to find the man, not spook him.”
Ron had finally registered the state police shield on Sal’s card. His eyes widened a notch. He stuck the card in his front pocket, using two fingers to pat it into place.
“Is it drugs, sir? Used to be all you could get in these mountains was moonshine. Now everything’s meth, meth, meth. Ruining our county it is.”
“He’s trouble,” Sal said simply. “If you see him again, don’t say a word to him. Just get me on the phone and we’ll take care of the rest.”
They finished their lunch. Kimberly found a six-pack of pudding. Rainie armed herself with a Snickers. Quincy topped off his coffee. They hit the road.
The manager at T.W.O. didn’t recognize the drawing, or remember a man in a baseball cap with two boys. Two Wheels Only specialized in the biker set, which was not to say they didn’t have some other business, but it was smaller. He’d keep his eyes open.
The rain was coming down in sheets now. They splashed their way through the muddy parking lot before piling into Sal’s car. With the bustling metropolis of Suches exhausted, they had no choice but to turn back toward Dahlonega.
They drove in silence, windshield wipers on high, car buffeted by the wind.
Kimberly kept her eyes on the woods. At the towering trees, the nearly impenetrable underbrush. She wondered where Ginny Jones was right now, if the girl had holed up someplace safe and warm, where she could feel the new life growing inside her. Or if even now she was racing panicked down a back alley, danger looming behind her.
“Wait!” Kimberly cried.
Sal hit the brakes too hard. The car careened dangerously close to the center line.
“What the hell—” Sal started.
“Back up, back up. That was a logging road. Let’s take it.”
Sal had the car at a complete stop now. He looked at her as if she were nuts. “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s pouring out.”
“I know, I know. Just a quick detour. What else do we have going on?”
“Something better than getting stuck in the mud.”
“He drove these roads, Sal. If he drove these roads, we can damn well give them a try. Come on, we won’t go too far.”
“We’re in Suches,” Sal muttered. “Apparently, that’s far enough.”
He gave her another look, but when Rainie or Quincy didn’t raise any protest, he put the car in gear, backed up along the empty ribbon of road, and hung a sharp right.
The Forestry Service road started out paved, which surprised Kimberly. She had been expecting something more rustic. She was also caught off guard by the number of residential homes, perched on various hillsides, peering out from thick groves of mountain laurel. But a mile down, the pavement turned to gravel and the forest seemed to win the war against civilization. They looped around, slowly descending into a gully, the rain creating a thick, muddy stream that raced alongside them.
They came to a turnabout. Kimberly had Sal stop. And then, before he could react, she’d popped open her door and stepped into the deluge. She was vaguely aware of him protesting. Of other car doors opening. Of Rainie and Quincy joining her in the madness.
She didn’t look at them. Didn’t say a word. She didn’t need to. They lived in the same world she did, where monsters were real, and good people got hurt, and you could spend your days feeling overwhelmed, or you could do your best to do something about it. It seemed for as long as she could remember, she and her father had hunted the specter of death. It was probably some of the only moments either one of them truly felt alive.
And then she thought, vague again, in the back of her mind where it couldn’t hurt her as much, that Mac should be here. It had always been her, Mac, Rainie, and Quincy. She missed Mac.
“He’s wrong,” she whispered softly, looking around at the soaring bare-branched trees above, the dense grove of green underbrush below.
“Who?” Sal demanded. He stood in front of her, rain pouring down his nose, plastering his dark hair to his face. He looked intent, angry in a way that should have scared her, except she understood that kind of rage, how it felt when you were trying so hard, only to realize that your best wouldn’t get the job done.
“Ron. Dinchara and the boys are local. They have to be. Ron said it himself: They don’t buy much, so they must already be well supplied.”
“Kimberly, it’s wet, it’s cold, I’m soaked to the goddamn bone. Whatever voodoo you’re pretending to do, stop yanking my chain.”
“It’s a matter of logistic
s,” she stated firmly, studying the thin vein of gravel road, the tall, skeletal trees, the thick clumps of underbrush that surrounded them. The rain had molded her hair to her skull, was rapidly soaking her shirt. She didn’t care. The rain didn’t matter. The mud didn’t matter. It was all about the woods.
“Killing someone is easy,” she supplied. “Disposing of the body, however, is hard. Ninety-five percent of the time, that’s where killers mess up. Now, we’re chasing a guy who has done this not once, but possibly a dozen times. What does that mean? He’s very good at logistics.”
She had made it to the edge of the woods, where ferns grew high enough to brush her leg mid thigh. She ticked off on her finger: “One, where to dispose of the bodies?”
“The woods,” Sal filled in, less angry now, more curious.
“Okay, so two, how to transport the bodies?”
“His truck, SUV. Plenty of room in the back.”
“Until you get here,” Kimberly countered, gesturing to the green and brown mudbath around them. “Then what?”
Sal nodded, seeming to get into the spirit of things, even as his gray suit turned black and the rain ran in rivulets down his neck. “It’s late at night, or an early hour of the morning—a time where he can reduce the risk of being seen. He needs a remote area, so he picks a Forestry Service road, drives for a ways. Then he pulls over, gets the body out of the back of his vehicle … dumps it down a ravine?”
“Forestry Service ranger would spot it,” Quincy spoke up immediately. He stood off to the side, where he could hear everything while still having the space to formulate his own thoughts. He was good at this game; one of the best. “From the road, you would see trampled bushes, even broken branches. A ranger would get curious about deer, bear, bobcat, whatever, and investigate. One or two times, maybe the UNSUB could get away with it. But a dozen times later … Someone would spot the disturbance and find the body. Especially given the amount of traffic on the roads and in the woods during peak seasons.”
“So he carries it away from the road,” Sal stated.
“Body’s heavy,” Kimberly supplied. “A grown woman is a good hundred-plus pounds of deadweight. Even in a fireman’s hold, that’s tough.”
“He walks downhill?” Sal guessed.
Again Quincy shook his head. “Anything disposed of below can be seen from above, especially in the winter when the leaves are off the trees. This is a popular destination for hunting, hiking, camping, fishing. That’s lots of people trampling through these woods, even in supposedly remote locations. Safest choice is high ground. Above the trails, where others don’t tread.”
Sal looked at the three of them. “I don’t get it.”
“He has help,” Kimberly said softly. “The older boy would be my guess. Whether he’s involved in the killing or not, I’m not sure. We didn’t hear anyone else on the tape. But at the very least, the teenager helps dispose of the bodies. One man walking alone on the trails late at night is suspicious. A father and son on the other hand …”
“They’re out camping,” Sal filled in.
“Explains the large pack they’re carrying, or perhaps pulling on a trundle behind them.”
“Shit,” Sal said tiredly and put his hand over his eyes.
“It would take them hours,” Rainie spoke up, peering into the woods with a keen look on her face. “They’d need tools—rope, burlap, shovel, pick. Then food, water, first-aid kit, compass, the basics. Kimberly’s right; to do what they need to do, Dinchara’s well stocked. Meaning if he’s not buying locally, he has a place all set up.”
“The younger boy,” Kimberly murmured.
“Exactly,” Rainie said, following her train of thought. “The waitress at the Smith House hadn’t seen him, which implies he’s left behind. Maybe he’s too young yet, would slow them down. So they leave the younger boy someplace, then Dinchara and the older boy head off to complete their nightly chores.”
“He’s gotta have a home nearby. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Maybe the girls are even alive when they’re brought up here. Imagine one of those little cabins we drove by, all alone in the woods. Even if a girl screamed all night, or happened to get away, who would hear her, where would she go? A cabin solves so many problems.”
“We can check tax records,” Sal spoke up. “Anyone who purchased homes around Dahlonega or Suches in the past five years. Cross-reference those names with the receipts from the Smith House for Columbus Day weekend.”
“And chase employment,” Quincy prodded. “If they’re up here enough, Dinchara’s going to need money. At least in my day, fifty percent of a single prostitute’s earnings wasn’t that much. So he either has a string of girls you haven’t learned about yet, or another source of income. Given what we know about him, he would make an excellent wilderness guide or—”
They all got it at the same time, “Forestry Service employee!”
“Would give him all the knowledge and access he needs of the back roads of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Even a built-in excuse if he ever did get caught. Not to mention he’d know when others were due to conduct surveys in areas where he’d disposed of bodies, allowing him to either move the corpse or perhaps redirect the survey.”
“Ah crap, I am never going hiking again,” Sal said tiredly.
“We should visit the fish hatchery tomorrow,” Kimberly said.
“Yeah, got that.”
“Get some property records from the town, find out who we can meet from the Chattahoochee National Forest.”
“Yep, yep, yep.”
Rainie was still walking around the muddy turnoff point. “You know what I find surprising?” she asked now.
They all turned toward her.
“It’s February. The leaves are off the trees and you still can’t see more than three feet ahead. I mean, look at these mountain laurels—they’re the size of small homes. Then there’s the grasses, the downed logs, the copses of white pine. In any other woods, you’d be able to peer through the trees for twenty, thirty yards. But not here. Hell, I grew up in the woods and even I’m creeped out.”
“On that note,” Sal muttered, yanking at his rain-soaked collar, “can we please get back in the car?”
“Okay,” Kimberly agreed, “but next stop is Wal-Mart. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re all soaked to the bone. What are we supposed to wear tomorrow to the fish hatchery?”
“We’re spending another night?” Sal grumbled.
“You got anyplace better to be?”
They went to Wal-Mart.
THIRTY-THREE
“To compensate for their weaknesses, spiders have evolved an array of weapons, tactics, and freakish mutations that bring to mind a tiny band of supervillains.”
FROM “SPIDER WOMAN,”
BY BURKHARD BILGER, New Yorker,
MARCH 5, 2007
Mac called her shortly after dinner. Kimberly had just returned to her room at the Smith House, thinking for once that elastic waistbands were the best invention of the modern world. She had devoured nearly an entire fried chicken, a pound of okra, and two servings of cheesecake and yet her pants felt expansive, even roomy, as Baby McCormack engaged in her nightly game of kick Mommy’s spleen.
Rainie and Quincy had already retired for the night, but Kimberly was keyed up, agitated in the way that came right before a case blew open and she could finally see the answer that had been waiting for her all along. Her hotel room was good-sized, tucked under the eaves of the old building to form a long L, perfect for restless pacing. She went from the king-size bed to the desk to the bed and back again, her hands rubbing the sides of her swollen belly, her thoughts churning over and over. If Sandy Springs was Dinchara’s hunting grounds, then Dahlonega was his lair. Any day now, they would search the right records, interview the right person, and the last piece of the puzzle would click into place. They would find Ginny Jones, the missing girls, Dinchara himself. They would—
Cell phone rang, displaying Mac’s number. Immedi
ately, she stopped pacing, her stomach cramping nervously. That pissed her off enough to swipe up the phone and declare loudly, “Kimberly.”
Static, three clicks, an echoey buzz. “It’s … me.”
“Hi, honey,” she said with more force than was necessary.
“Where … are you?”
“Dahlonega still. Have a few last visits to make first thing in the morning.”
“… weather?”
“Raining cats and dogs. You?”
“… gotta go out … special assignment … back … tomorrow morning.”
“What’s that? Reception sucks. Can you try a different spot?”
She thought she heard crunching feet. More sounds in the background, like men shouting orders. Then she put it together. The late hours, his special assignment. Mac and the narcotics squad were about to deploy, most likely to raid a suspected drug house or meth lab. And he was calling now because that’s what spouses did right before donning their flak vests and heading out. They made that last call home, buttoning up their personal life. Just in case.
The baby fluttered against the palm of her hand, and Kimberly sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Where?” she whispered.
“Can’t … talk. Later … in the morning.”
“Is SWAT coming?”
“Full … deployment.”
“Mac …” She should say something. Anything. But for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what. And all at once, she was aware of the distance that still loomed between them. The unanswered questions, the unbroken silences.
She wished she were home. It didn’t seem right to do this over the phone. They should be in their house, where she could hold him tight enough that he could feel the baby kick. Where he could whisper in her ear that he loved her and she could feel the tickle of his breath upon her skin as she spread her fingers over the beating of his heart. Life can change in an instant. A loved one could walk out the door and never come home again. She knew these things. She visited the tombstones twice a year to make sure she never forgot.