Picking up hitchhikers is not something she does. Ever. But as she drives past, she gets a glimpse of his face.
She has seen someone like him before. Perhaps she has seen him before. His ancient, ravaged face recalls the other, the man she met the night of her first kill. The man who called her “Monster Slayer.”
She brakes the Jeep, and reverses along the road, bringing the vehicle to a stop beside him.
He nods to her and reaches for the door handle.
He pulls the door shut behind him and settles himself in the passenger seat, smelling of the earth, the wind, and sky.
As she shifts back to Drive and accelerates, he speaks to her harshly in what she recognizes as Diné. Navajo. The words she doesn’t understand. But his gestures are unmistakable. He is pointing back the way she came, in the opposite direction, back to the interstate.
She looks at him. And he looks at her full in the face.
She slows the Jeep and makes the turn.
Chapter 70
San Francisco - present
Roarke
He woke from a dream of the road.
Without even getting out of bed, he reached for his phone to call Singh. And then he called Snyder, both his cell phone and his landline.
Neither was answering on any line.
And that wasn’t good.
He called again en route to the Bureau. And once again in his office. Each time with the same result. Then he buzzed Epps, and paced in front of his desk, trying define his unease. There was some kind of confluence of things. Chuck’s obviously worsening condition. Singh, believing his dementia fantasies. Rachel calling out of the blue., even as he had been thinking of her. Cara, suddenly on the radar again….
He was jolted back to the present at Epps’ voice. “Chief?” The other agent stood in the doorway, frowning in at him.
Roarke shut the door behind him and got right to it. “Have you spoken with Singh today?”
The unease on Epps’ face confirmed Roarke’s suspicion. “Not since yesterday morning. We’ve texted and left messages, but—” He took a beat. “Her messages sound different. I feel like…” He said the next with obvious reluctance. “I feel like she’s somewhere else.”
All of Roarke’s worst fears came flooding in on him. He was a fool to have thought Singh would passively accept a rehabilitation assignment. He was a fool to think he knew anything at all about women.
“What?” Epps said. The raw worry in his voice scared Roarke.
He spoke reluctantly. “There’s a case I think they may be might be reinvestigating. Unofficially. There’s nothing active about it—”
“But,” Epps said grimly.
“But I think Singh may be taking it seriously.”
He filled Epps in quickly. The strange call Chuck had made a few months ago referring to a serial child killer in Montana, which turned out to be completely untrue. Roarke’s discovery that Snyder was exhibiting early signs of Alzheimer’s. And then just a day and a half ago, Singh calling Roarke, believing that he’d had actually gone to Montana with Snyder in January to consult on the case.
“I didn’t go to Montana, and neither did Chuck. There was no child killing case. He was imagining it.”
Epps’ face was intent. “You explained all of this to Tara.”
“Of course. Because of what Chuck had told her, she was thinking that this non-existent case in Montana was connected to a real case of ours from 2009. But that was before I talked to her. I told her, and she understood.”
I hope, he added in his head.
Epps stood in a live silence as he thought it over. “Have you ever worked with Agent Snyder in Montana?”
Roarke felt his body tightening, his defenses going up. A sure sign that he knew exactly what was going on.
Epps looked at him with a sudden, keen awareness.
“Singh texted you this morning?” Roarke asked.
Epps said tersely, “A little after nine.”
Roarke picked up the desk phone, punched in an extension. “This is ASAC Roarke. I need to trace some text messages. Expedite it. Special Agent Epps will give you the details.” He handed Epps the receiver.
While Epps spoke to the tech, Roarke’s mind was racing. They’d just finished an operation. All that was left for the next few days was paperwork. And suddenly he knew.
When Epps put down the phone, Roarke said, “Get your go bag. We’re going to Portland.’
Chapter 71
Highway 20, Utah — present
Cara
She has been driving for an hour now and the Diné man in her passenger seat has not spoken again. He sits like a statue, not acknowledging her.
Then as they approach a sign, he speaks harshly in his own language, indicating the turnoff to Highway 20 at Pocatello.
She looks at him.
It is another road she knows well. Follow it for one hundred miles and you will hit the West Gate of Yellowstone National Park. Not just the first national park in the nation, but the first in the world. A wilderness on top of a volcanic hot spot, with dramatic canyons, alpine rivers, thick forests, world-famous geysers and bubbling pools of hot springs. Still the most visited park in all the U.S.
She has done this particular journey before. Once in summer, when the wildflowers are spectacular and the air is like crystal. She found it too crowded with tourists for her to fully enjoy.
But she has also done it once in snow.
Her passenger repeats whatever he has said, insistent. It is clear he wants her to make the turn.
She makes it.
A sign is a sign.
Fourteen miles on 20 and then onto 89, which skirts the edge of the park and crosses into Montana. Outside the car is a world of white. Drifts of snow, white-powdered evergreens, and the black ribbon of cleared road winding through the snowy silence.
The Diné man speaks again at the turn to Gardiner, the only entrance to the park open in winter.
Before them are commanding views of the rocky Gallatin Mountain Range. Shops straight out of the Wild West line a road right at the boundary line of the park.
She turns the Jeep in to the one gas station to fill the tank. As she pumps fuel, she gazes out at the Roosevelt Arch, the original park entrance from 1903, rising out of the middle of the plain.
She returns the nozzle to the gas pump, opens the driver’s door….
The Jeep is empty. The Diné man is gone.
She looks out at the gas station lot. There is no sign of him. She didn’t see or feel him get out of the Jeep.
Perhaps he was never there.
His reality does not concern her. He was a clear sign, and clarity is easier than ambiguity.
She looks down the long road toward the arch, standing in the middle of the snowy field like an ancient portal to another time. She starts the engine and drives for it.
Chapter 72
Kellogg, Idaho – present
Singh and Snyder
Singh leans forward in the driver’s seat, peering out the windshield. The night is growing too dark to continue on these twisting, pitch-black roads.
Out of nowhere, a giant figure looms up in the trees.
Singh brakes, startled. And realizes the figure is the monument from Agent Snyder’s story, the miner with the headlamp, lighting the way to the collapsed Sunshine Mine outside Kellogg.
She had thought Snyder was sleeping in the seat beside her, but now he looks at her.
By silent agreement between them, she makes the turnoff to the mine memorial, follows the miner’s lamp glowing through the trees in the twilight.
The agents get out of the Jeep on their opposite sides and stand looking up at the thirteen-foot tall coal miner, defiantly brandishing his rock drill skyward. In front of the statue are ninety-one miniature tombstones. Monuments to the lost miners.
Small, like child’s graves.
For Singh, it serves as a stark reminder of how many children are missing and lost each year. And why she a
nd Agent Snyder are on this mission. If this wilderness killer exists, there could be many more child victims than anyone suspects. There almost always are.
Snyder contemplates the small gravestones without comment. Singh does not know what that might mean. But she does not press him.
The hotel in Kellogg is also as Snyder described it in his narrative, a rustic lodge on a lake with icy views of the frozen water and forest.
After a brief stop at their rooms, the agents meet in the restaurant. Antique mining equipment makes up the décor. It is an apt metaphor. She and Agent Snyder are mining.
It is only after they have ordered their meal that he addresses the issue. “I know we’re waiting for a memory to shake loose. Some kind of proof.”
She does not need to ask. If it had, he would have told her.
He continues, “I remember the mine memorial. And I remember this hotel, being here with Matthew. All I can say is that I was here. And I know it was a case.”
He sounds haunted. According to Roarke, he was never here. Singh does not know what to believe.
“I know,” he says. “One of us is wrong.”
She smiles, with effort. “It has been a long day, a long drive. We will investigate the town in the morning. We are just beginning,” she assures him. But inside she is not so sure.
She looks out the tall black windows and sees the moon rising over the tops of pine trees, nearing full.
What is the truth? How can we get to it?
When Agent Snyder goes upstairs for the night, she lingers in the lobby.
And then, she pushes out through the front doors, into the night.
She must brace herself against the stinging cold. But the night is clear, and still. She walks down the front steps, and onto a landscaped path winding through the hotel grounds. The silence is intoxicating. The moon casts blue shadows on the glittering snow.
Ahead of her, the brush moves, startling her.
And she sees it.
A magnificent gray-white beast, with gleaming teeth, coal black eyes.
The wolf raises its shaggy head, and for a moment, they look at each other. Then it turns on powerful haunches and trots away.
Singh exhales, one long, slow, suspended breath.
And she thinks, There is more to this, here. Tomorrow we shall see.
Chapter 73
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming – present
Cara
Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel is the only winter lodging in Yellowstone accessible by the relative anonymity of automobile. She has stayed here before during the off season. It is a known quantity, which makes it far less of a risk. And the winter sights are unworldly: the contrast of the bubbling, cauldron-like hot pools and geysers against the ice and snowdrifts, the live, ethereal mist.
The small, cream-colored original hotel has expanded and now connects to a five-story modern hotel block, but the lobby and restaurant in the old building retain the rustic décor, the simple carved wood curves. She is pleased to find the Map Room is still there, a common room beside the lobby with one wall covered by an enormous map of the U.S., each state done in woods of different colors, like a massive jigsaw puzzle of the country. Several TV screens on another wall broadcast shots from various webcams throughout the park: Old Faithful geyser, the Minerva Terrace, a wolf den in the woods, a hollow tree housing a hibernating bear family.
Registering at the desk, she uses a German accent and keeps her speech minimal and halting. She has found this to be a reliable disguise for travel in the national parks, where German tourists abound in all weather and young German women often travel alone.
She asks for one of the hotel’s stand-alone cabins, which come with enclosed yards for more privacy, and no need to walk in the common hallways, offering far less chance of encountering other guests.
The cabin is small and functional and has no television. Another point in the hotel’s favor. She brings food supplies in from the car, but hesitates in her doorway, looking out toward the main building. Her instinct is always to remain alone in her room, far from other people. But tonight something is pulling her toward the hotel again.
She locks her door, and walks across crunching snow to the main entrance. Across a field of white under darkening skies. Across a field of white, plumes of steam rise from the hot springs.
Inside the restaurant she finds a quiet booth and orders soup and bread and salad.
Two older men are in the next booth, talking in gravelly voices, spinning tales. She eavesdrops as she eats, at first catching only parts of the conversation.
“… started up again.”
“… here last June… Glacier, in October.”
The men’s voices are hushed, portentous. “Ever notice…. in clusters? ….turn up miles away from where they disappeared from.”
“Dozens a year,” his friend agrees.
Their intensity is arresting. She focuses her attention to hear more.
The man furthest from her is the one driving the conversation. His voice drops to a hush. “So this internet guy…. got a map…. tunnel system underground. Connects the parks. Shows how the clusters of disappeared folks are related to this underground tunnel system…”
Cara sits back in her seat. She has heard such conspiracy talk before. There is a sickness building in remote parts of the country. She can hear it in the hysteria of talk radio, in small-town conversations like these. People buying into twisted interpretations of biblical obscurities, layering in medieval superstitions.
She is no stranger to mysticism, but her peculiar belief system stops well short of supervolcanoes, contrails and Illuminati. Or people kidnapped from National Parks by aliens using underground tunnel systems.
She tries to block out their talk, but something penetrates her consciousness.
“… two kids, last couple months.”
The mention of missing children puts her on alert. And then one of the men pronounces the name of the town.
“Fam’ly drove through Snake River before the kid disappeared.”
Suddenly she is chilled to the bone.
She knows that town.
She goes back to her cabin, and stands outside in the frozen dark, under the almost-full moon. The clouds of mist are like something out of a dream.
To hear that name, in this place. Again.
This is what the Diné man has led her to. It could not be more clear.
A low howl reverberates through the dark. Then a group howl, as the wolf pack joins in.
Just as all those years ago.
Chapter 74
Kellogg, Montana – present
Singh and Snyder
At breakfast, Singh chooses a table away from other patrons, with a view of the snowy landscape outside the wide hotel restaurant windows. Quietly she relates her plan for the morning. “Officially, Aaron Light is only missing. But you described a hunting cabin nearby in great detail, where you say Aaron was taken and killed.”
The look on Agent Snyder’s face is anxious, doubtful. But she holds down her own apprehension and continues. “So we are looking for anything that points us in the direction of the cabin you remember visiting.”
They check out of the hotel, load their bags into the trunk and begin their drive through the town. There is not much to the town center. Aside from the central golf course and golf club, there are bars, auto body shops, several storefront ministries.
Then Singh feels Snyder sit up straighter in his seat. He stares out at a glass-fronted business called USA Power Sports. Large cardboard signs advertise snowmobile brands: Shoshone Honda Yamaha, Arctic Cat. Sales, Service, Parts. Ski and snowshoe rentals.
“That’s the shop,” he says.
“What shop?”
“I told you,” he answers impatiently. “Where we rented snowshoes.”
Singh holds back her dismay. He had not mentioned such a shop in his story, nor renting equipment. She prompts him gently. “You told me you and ASAC Roarke snowshoed out to the
hunting cabin in the forest. You did not mention a shop.”
“Hunting cabin?” he repeats, uneasily.
Singh is suddenly afraid she is losing him again. She pulls the SUV to a parking space at the curb. “We will go inside.”
Bells jangle on the door as they enter.
The man behind the counter is mountain-dressed, rugged, but with a beer gut, and strangely bulbous eyes. He looks up immediately at their entrance.
“What can I do for you folks?”
His voice is pleasant enough, but his eyes crawl over Singh in a way she recognizes too well. A toxic combination of sexual interest and racist contempt.
Agent Snyder notices. She feels him stiffen beside her. He puts a protective hand to her back, but speaks to the man in an amiable tone. “Do you have ski boots back there in a size twelve, men’s?”
“Rent or buy?”
“Buy.”
“I’ll check.”
As the counter man disappears through the stockroom door, Snyder tells her, very low, “We have to go. Now. Quickly. Quickly.”
He almost pulls her along in his haste to get outside, and will not speak until they are in the car and driving away from the shop. Only then does he explain.
“We weren’t here to rent snowshoes. We said that. But we came to the shop to talk to a salesman. That salesman.” His eyes are bright, focused. “It was a real case.”
Singh’s heart sinks. Her call to the Bureau had made it clear Agent Snyder was never assigned to a child killer case, or any case at all, in Kellogg.
She does her utmost to break the news gently. “Agent Snyder. I checked with the Bureau after my phone conversation with ASAC Roarke. There is no record of any assignment to Kellogg.”
Agent Snyder looks at her, undaunted. “It wasn’t a Bureau case. It was ATF. A favor for a friend. And the year was 2011.”
Chapter 75
Portland – present
Roarke and Epps
Shadow Moon Page 24