Singh is certain Cara seeks the wilderness. She has seen her, if only briefly, that night
in the desert. She will never be able to banish the image of Cara in the palm grove, in the desert wind, under the moon.
If Cara is able to see the very worst of people, then how else can she possibly survive, other than finding places where the number of human encounters she has is reduced to the absolute minimum?
This woman, this avatar, belongs in these uninhabited spaces. Surrounded by such haunting beauty.
So once again a national park has surfaced in this convolution of a case. And though it does not mean anything coherent on the surface, Singh finally realizes what she must do.
In the morning she drives to Agent Snyder’s house.
She finds him in the study, seated at his wide desk, already at work at data entry. She stands across the desk from him. “Agent Snyder, I believe you.”
Agent Snyder looks up at her through dazed eyes. But it is not the haze of disease, just simple confusion. She crosses to his side of the desk, pulls up a chair across from him, very close, and takes both his hands. “The night before last, when you mistook me for ASAC Roarke, you spoke of the Wolf.’”
He looks at her sharply. “What did I say?”
She takes a breath. “You said, ‘He is out there. We didn’t get him.’ And I believe you. Your details may not be exact, but there is something you are sure of. You have done this too long not to know when there is grave threat.”
His eyes light with determination—and hope.
“We are going to work this all out together, you and I. We will go to Montana. We will proceed as if it is all true. We will separate facts from confusion. If we do not, we will never know. And if there is any chance, any at all, that the lives of children are at stake, it is the only possible thing to do.”
She feels his hands tighten on hers. “Yes. Yes. Thank you, Agent Singh.”
PART FIVE
Chapter 66
San Francisco – present
Roarke
Roarke and Epps hovered in the upstairs corridor, running through silent preparations for entry. The weapons check. The slow breaths in to still pounding hearts. Establishing the eye contact that will keep an invisible thread of communication between them. A mutual nod of readiness.
Then they rounded the corner, striding through the hall with grim purpose, service weapons heavy on their hips, unbuckled and at the ready.
It was the third raid Roarke had taken part in in the last few months. One at a concrete plant being used as a meth lab and prison for a shipment of trafficking victims.
One at a residential brothel operating out of a storage facility. Fatalities at both, after an entire career of none.
And this now this one. Going down not in a stinking back alley or a filthy prison of a brothel, but in a clean, well-lit, well-maintained office in one of San Francisco’s most prominent high-rises. There was no breaking the front doors open with a battering ram. The agents walked through the doors like businessmen, into the offices of Backdoor, the website where pimps posted photos and contact information for the women and teenagers they trafficked.
Roarke and Epps approached inner offices with warrants out and handcuffs extended, and the looks on the faces of the men behind the desks were the same as on any street hustler. Rage. Indignation. And that haunted flicker that maybe, just maybe, this time they were the ones who were well and truly fucked.
While Roarke and Epps recited Miranda warnings and cuffed their quarry, a team of Bureau accountants was already pouring in behind them, seizing records, confiscating computers.
It wasn’t quite the adrenaline high of a street pursuit or shootout. But it was every bit as satisfying to perp-walk the suspects past the gathered clusters of their white-collar neighbors and peers, out through the front doors onto the street, and load them into the backs of the SFPD patrol cars that would take them in for booking.
Roarke and Epps shut the squad car doors on their collars and stood on the sidewalk with other onlookers, several of whom were shooting video with their phones as the black and whites drove away.
Roarke breathed in deep as Epps said, “Damn. That felt good.”
Roarke had to agree. Taking down pimps in a back alley was one kind of triumph. Taking down privileged men who thought that the color of their skin protected their atrocities was a whole other kind of rush.
The high continued back at the Bureau, as Roarke and Epps did their victory lap around the office. And then Roarke headed for home on BART.
He sat back in his seat, watching the blur of tunnel through the train window, still pleasantly buzzed from the takedown. He had to admit he missed hunting. He missed the face-to-face.
But he knew the administration was the most important. He’d been aware of the festering sewer that was Backdoor was since his first case as an agent, working on the Street Hunter killings. The owners had spent years making millions of dollars on the sale of teenage girls, laundering the profits.
He knew his emphasis had to be on shutting down the source, changing the mindset in law enforcement that still led to the arrests of the women and girls instead of the men pimping them and using them. Changing the mindset of the customers who told themselves and anyone who would listen that they were doing nothing wrong.
And there was a grim pleasure in holding the line. In saying, Not on my turf. There might be a sexual predator in the White House, two on the Supreme Court, but that shit won’t fly in California. Not while I’m still breathing.
He got off at 24th/Mission to walk the last blocks, and he was already thinking ahead. Planning.
They’d just arrested half a dozen of the founders of one of the most profitable online “escort” ad websites. Next up was a targeted series of street busts, coordinated with the San Francisco and Oakland police departments. Arresting the pimps and funneling the teenage girls into MISSSEY and the Belvedere House to get the trauma counseling and life skills training they needed and deserved.
Roarke felt a pang at the thought of Belvedere. His mind went to Rachel Elliott. He should have been working with her on this operation.
He wouldn’t be on this path if not for her.
And Cara.
His phone buzzed in his coat pocket. Adrenaline shot through his already overloaded system. There were too many things the call could be, and almost none of them good.
The number was blocked. He clicked on without speaking, waiting for the caller to speak first. After a moment, they did.
“Hello.”
The voice was agonizingly familiar. A voice he thought he might never hear again. Rachel Elliott. Of course. Of course she would call now, today.
“Hello,” he answered, and found himself unable to speak further.
“I saw what you did this afternoon,” she said. “You and Epps. Thanks for taking those scum down. But that’s not why I’m calling. I got a package from a mutual friend of ours.”
A mutual friend.
Cara.
A package?
“An electronic package,” Rachel continued. “It’s millions, Matt. I mean… millions.”
She went silent, letting him work out what she meant. Money. An electronic transfer. A donation to Belvedere House?
As unlikely as it seemed, he could see it. Cara must have learned something about investing, to grow her inheritance into the kind of money it sounded like Rachel was talking about.
“It’s not hard to guess what she wants done with it—” Rachel started.
“Don’t—”
“I won’t tell you,” she finished for him. “But I thought you should know because…” her voice became careful. “Giving away your money, your possessions… it’s something people do—”
When they’re planning to end it all, a voice in his own head finished with her. His throat was suddenly dry.
“Yes. I see.”
“So. That’s about it.” Her voice was a sigh.
“Rache
l,” he said.
She waited.
He wanted to say that she could come home. That whatever she was complicit to, she would almost certainly never be prosecuted for it. That he wanted her here, in the way that she wanted him to say that.
But none of that would be true. They were tied together. He could never deny that. But not in the way she wanted.
“Take care of yourself,” he said. And heard the silence as she disconnected.
And immediately his mind was full of Cara.
She’s alive.
He is flooded with exhilaration. And fear. Not for what she will do, but for what he might do.
He can hear her voice in the desert wind.
“Come.”
Chapter 67
Death Valley, California – two days ago
Cara
She lies on her back in the sand, looking up into infinity. The vast blue-black bowl of sky blazes with a trillion stars. The desert wind is dry and gentle, matching her breath. Fine particles of sand brush her bare skin.
She should have left the state after that bloody night, a month ago in the Salton Sea. But the closest route, and the only realistic road, would have been I-10. Closest, and most obvious to anyone tracking her.
Instead she fell back, instinctively, on her lesson from the Encounter in the Grand Canyon, a dozen years ago. The only thing she knows to do in these moments is to seek Beauty. She followed the signs out of the Salton Sea and onto a complicated series of roads headed north through the center of the state. Then veered toward one of the wilderness places she is most comfortable with.
Death Valley National Park. Hundreds of microcosmic wildernesses all in one vast desert preserve: volcanic craters and blazing white salt flats and rainbow-colored canyons and sand dunes worthy of the Sahara.
She has stayed several weeks in this endless, alien landscape. After the refuge of Canyon de Chelly, returning to the world as it has become, and doing battle so soon after that, had been a profound shock.
But her old enemy is dead.
Overpowering Ortiz had been easy, thanks to the unexpected assistance of Roarke’s teammate, Agent Singh. Faced with the two of them, the detective had had no chance.
She does not believe his online followers will come after her. Not now that they have seen the live online stream of Ortiz lying on the platform in the derelict hotel that he intended to use to broadcast his homemade torture porn.
Lying on the platform, fileted like a fish. His own equipment used against him.
She shuts the door on that horror, and turns her mind to other thoughts.
She does not want to leave this beauty and venture into the winter cold of other states. But she has indulged herself for too long. She must move, she must always move. Staying still is an invitation for It or anyone else to find her.
So for this last night, she lies with the one memory of that night she wants to keep. The feel of the wind on her skin, the sound of it rustling through dry fronds in the palm grove. And of Roarke standing in the sand under the desert moon, calling to her.
“I feel you. I always feel you.”
The next day she drives.
She crosses the state line to pick up State Route 374 in Nevada. Through the ghost town of Rhyolite, with its sand-swept ruins of buildings, barely recognizable as a school, a train station, a bank.
She stops to explore the stone foundations of the buildings, and lingers at the skeletal bank. It pulls into focus a thought that has been growing in her mind.
From Rhyolite she picks up the 95 to Las Vegas.
She takes the precaution of switching vehicles. Many of the vacation houses in this corridor keep all-terrain vehicles on the property, languishing in garages. She finds a Jeep Wrangler with black tinted glass, rugged enough for winter travel, and with a ski rack on the roof. She lifts some plates from a different car, also tucked away in a vacation home, and installs them on the Jeep. And helps herself to two sets of skis, always useful as a cover story.
She makes several stops for supplies. Traveling in cold climates in winter requires its own emergency gear. It is why she does it so infrequently. There is too much chance of something going wrong. She purchases snowshoes, Arctic gear, a powerful portable car heater to keep in the back of the Jeep.
And she makes one more stop. To a branch of her main bank. To do something she has been contemplating in the desert.
A near-death experience focuses the mind. She has never before been so certain of what she needs to do. The money has served its purpose. It has a new purpose now, and it is in good hands. Unburdening is a relief.
And now she drives.
I-15 is one of her favorite south-north routes, cutting through Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Montana, with easy access to some of the greatest national parks in the country. Bryce, with its otherworldly rock spires. Nearby Zion, with its majestic domes. Then up through Wyoming, into Montana and all the way up to Glacier National Park, the “Crown of the North.” In the winter there are far fewer visitors to these stupendous sites. She begins to look forward to the adventure.
What she does not wonder about is what she will do next. She will be led, as she always is. The signs will be clear.
Chapter 68
Portland - present
Singh and Snyder
And so they are off.
They have traded Singh’s rental SUV for an ATV with a ski rack installed, two pairs of skis locked into it. Just tourists on their way to the magnificent Northern slopes. It will be their cover story as they retrace this “imaginary” case Snyder has talked about, to investigate if there really is a child killer hunting in the national parks of Montana.
They have packed the car with winter gear, food, a portable heater. While Singh arranges the trunk, Snyder brings other items out. Two Glocks. A shotgun.
Singh’s distaste must be evident on her face, because he looks at her wryly and apologizes. “We can’t forget what we’re going in to. No matter where we go, we will be out-gunned by people looking for any opportunity to use their weapons. We can’t minimize that threat.”
She nods, resigned, and watches as he stashes the weapons securely in a lock box in the back. She has a brief, uncomfortable moment of wondering if she should be worried.
But she has resolved to trust him. And that is what she intends to do.
They settle themselves into the vehicle, Singh at the wheel, Snyder in the navigator’s seat. Their first destination is seven hours away. Kellogg, Idaho, where Snyder told her that he summoned Roarke in January. Where, in his story, the agents snowshoed out to a desolate hunting cabin, and Snyder told Roarke a tale of a young boy, abducted, assaulted, tortured, murdered; his savaged body left in the woods.
It now seems likely that Agent Snyder superimposed the details of the Portland victim, Young John Doe’s murder, onto his mind’s imaginings of what might have happened to Aaron Light, the five-year old missing from Glacier National Park.
And yet Singh is compelled to follow Snyder’s story, to see what might be true in it. True is not the word she means. The better word is real.
Because there is truth throughout the story. It is the real that must be determined.
There is a troublingly illicit taint to the journey. She cannot tell Roarke of their plans, therefore she has not told Damien. He would object, and so strenuously and rationally that she would have difficulty arguing with him. It is not lost on her that she and Agent Snyder are headed into two of the whitest states in the entire US, in the middle of a virulent white supremacist wave. Ordinary activities, ordinary travel, have become perilous for persons of her skin color. She will proceed with all wariness.
But as she drives I-84 through Mount Hood National Forest, the meditative trance of the road begins to relax and lull her. It is hard to imagine viciousness in so pristine a wilderness. She notices details in appreciative silence: the glimmer of sun through primeval trees. The glint of river beside the road. She understands the pleasure Cara must ta
ke in the driving. The empowerment, and the peace. On the road it is easier to see this troubled nation in all its natural wonder and potential.
Snyder has been silent, also contemplating the scenery outside his window. He suddenly turns to her, and his face looks twenty years younger.
“I can’t tell you how good it feels to be on the road again. It reminds me of the early days with Matthew… so much of those years together was driving.”
“It reminds me of—” She stops, because she is about to say something that is not strictly true.
“What?” he asks.
“Cara,” she admits.
Certainly Cara will have driven this exact road they are now on. In fact she may have taken it after her short stay in Portland, in 2009. Singh is almost positive that Cara did not go “back” to San Francisco, as she had told the musician Jamie Kennedy. Whatever she told him would have been the exact opposite of what she actually did.
“Ah. Yes,” Agent Snyder says. “The road is Cara’s domain. Its own universe, with its own rules. Something a bit magical.”
It has been in Singh’s mind. It is not unthinkable that they should find her.
“We shall see,” Snyder says. And Singh has the feeling that he has heard her thought exactly.
Chapter 69
Utah - present
Cara
Outside her Jeep, flat desert turns to carved sandstone formations, and the paler colors turn to vivid pinks and reds.
She has been driving six hours through Nevada, now is entering Utah. She has decided on Bryce Canyon as her first stop, and has just made the turnoff at the UT-20 exit when she sees him.
A man in the road ahead. A dark figure who casts a shadow so long it can only be a dream… or destiny.
He does not extend his hand for a lift, but there can be no other reason that he stands there in the middle of nowhere, so still and waiting.
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