The Forgotten Girls

by Owen Laukkanen

  “No luck with the sleazy boss, either,” Windermere said, hooking a thumb back to the holding cell. “He’s as greasy as advertised, but he swears he watched Moody leave last night, and I just don’t think he has the brainpower to pull this off and lie about it.”

  “He would have had to dispose of Pam Moody’s truck in the blizzard and then come back for his own,” Deputy Finley said. “Would have been a tall order last night, unless he was working with a partner.”

  Windermere looked over Stevens’s shoulder, where Deputy Renner was escorting Darryl Greer from Mike Dillman’s office. She pursed her lips. “Look, we can’t just write these guys off yet. I know you’re thinking serial killer, Stevens, but we can’t let that cloud our judgment. We have to investigate Greer and Winter like they’re our prime suspects.”

  “Time’s wasting,” Stevens said. “If Pam Moody’s still alive out there, her clock is ticking.”

  “All the more reason to discount Winter and Greer as soon as possible. We can’t just go charging off into the mountains after ghosts, not without evidence.”

  “I can work on the local boys,” Dillman interjected. “Won’t be much trouble to take a look through their houses, their cars, see if anything’s out of order. Missing suitcase in Greer’s closet, bloodstains on Winter’s carpet.”

  “You’ll need backup,” Windermere said. “More eyes are always better.”

  “So come with me. Your partner can look into the serial killer angle while Renner phones around to Pam Moody’s friends.”

  “Works for me,” Stevens said. “Deputy Finley can help me out with the legwork. And if I can’t find anything concrete, we’ll jump on board with you two.”

  Windermere thought about it. Figured she saw some merit in the serial killer angle herself; it was a sexier theory, anyway. Was wondering if she and Stevens were seeing what they wanted to see, though, to avoid going home, to avoid copping to the fact that this entire case could be a waste of time, a ghost in the mountains, rumors and conjecture. Better to cover their asses in case the truth turned out to be as mundane as everyone else seemed to think.

  “I’ll call you if I need you, partner,” Windermere told Stevens. “Assuming the phones don’t cut out again. You want to take a bet on who strikes pay dirt first?”

  Stevens didn’t smile. “Only bet I want to make is that Pam Moody’s still alive,” he said. “And one of us had damn well better find her.”

  —

  Stevens and Finley took an empty desk in the detachment office while Windermere and Dillman rode out with Reg Winter. Winter had given the law permission to take a look through his place, just insisted he be there to supervise.

  “Probably got some things you don’t want to see,” he told Windermere. “And I don’t mean of the criminal variety.”

  Dillman made a face. Windermere didn’t. “I’m not worried about your stack of pornos, Mr. Winter,” she said. “You got a flesh-and-blood girl in your closet, we’re going to have a problem.”

  Stevens watched them walk out. Wondered if he was being premature, jumping into the serial killer thing right away. Figured he’d find out either way, soon enough.

  “Just heard from Sheriff Parsons up in Libby,” Finley told him. “He had the coroner put a rush through on Kelly-Anne Clairmont’s autopsy, look for signs of assault, rape, the gamut.”

  Stevens looked up. “And?”

  “And . . .” Finley coughed. “Well, the state of the body being what it was, they couldn’t run every test in the book. But they did seem to think that she’d had sex of a rough nature shortly before she died.”

  “So she’d been raped,” Stevens said.

  Finley didn’t meet his eyes. “They didn’t say that. Said since she was a prostitute and all, it was impossible to determine whether it was rape.”

  “The hell—” Stevens started to argue, but thought better of it. “What about cause of death? Don’t tell me they’re blaming that on her job, too.”

  “No,” Finley said. “It’s better news, there—in a manner of speaking. The coroner checked out what was left of Kelly-Anne’s neck and throat—and there wasn’t much of it, not enough that he could pin down an exact cause of death. But he did find that her larynx had been crushed and her hyoid bone fractured, in a way that he figured would have been tough for the wolf to accomplish. Said it looked to him like she’d been throttled, though he couldn’t swear to it.”

  Stevens felt a burst of adrenaline, validation. “Just like Ashlyn Southernwood in Boundary County.”

  “Just like Boundary County,” Finley said.

  “So we can call it a homicide,” Stevens said. “And we can call it a pattern. What about the car? Did his team run the prints?”

  “Ran ’em. Got the phone book, most of them smudged or otherwise unidentifiable. No prints on the steering wheel, though. Sheriff Parsons thinks Clairmont drove with her gloves on.”

  “She wasn’t wearing gloves when the warden found her.”

  “No, but that wolf scattered clothing all over the place, so . . .” Finley shrugged. “Parsons and the boys didn’t find any blood in the car, anyway. No bodily fluids. Nothing that pointed to the killer.”

  “Maybe not,” Stevens said. “But we know he’s out there. And I’ll be damn surprised if he didn’t take Pam Moody, too.”

  “Well, let’s see about that.” Finley looked around the small detachment. “What are we doing to track this girl down?”

  Stevens gave her a slight smile. “Chasing ghosts,” he said. “I need a topographical map of the area and a direct line to the Northwestern Railroad dispatcher. Let’s see what kind of half-cocked theory we can cook up.”

  44

  Just moving had been torture. Crawling was worse. Pam Moody had no way to tell time, but she imagined she was lucky if she’d covered ten feet in the span of an hour.

  She’d made it to the base of the rock wall, the slope that climbed steeply to the lip of the ravine. She’d left a trail behind her, a slug’s path through the snow, dragging her lower body as she pulled herself forward with her hands, her legs screaming every time they struck something, some bones definitely broken.

  At least you’re not paralyzed, you wuss. Keep it moving.

  The snow where she’d lain was a horror show. She must have landed hard when she’d fallen, and bled, because patches of ground were stained with her blood. Pam had forced herself not to consider the implications. Focused on the black rock rising up from the snow and pulled herself toward it. Now she was at the base of the wall, and she rested, exhausted, her hands numb from digging through the snow.

  You might lose your fingers, even if you do make it out of this.

  But the thought was so absurd that Pam had to laugh. She was marooned at the bottom of a six-story Rocky Mountain ravine in January. Every inch she moved felt like a set of large, jagged teeth were tearing her in half. She would never make it out of this canyon, much less to safety. Her fingers were the least of her problems.

  She rested at the bottom of the wall. Warmed her hands inside her torn clothing, searching her body for a place that didn’t hurt. It wasn’t much warmer inside her coat than out, but maybe she could save a thumb, at least.

  Pam cleared the cold and the hurt away. Made herself focus on the man, the hate in his eyes, the way he’d laughed as he’d held her puffer out of her reach. Slowly, she pulled herself up the slope of the wall, wincing as the rocks cut into the flesh of her palms. She shook the pain off. She’d been hurt worse. And it wasn’t like there was anyone to hear her cry.

  45

  We had six trains through Hungry Horse last night,” the Northwestern dispatcher told Stevens over the phone. “Four eastbound and two westbound.”

  Stevens wrote this down in his notebook. “How many stopped in town?”

  “At the siding? Let’s see.” The dispatcher hummed to her
self. “One of the eastbounds and both westbounds. The eastbound didn’t stop for long; it was a hotshot, containers to Chicago.”

  “And the westbounds?”

  “Coal trains. Headed for the coast.”

  Stevens wrote this down, too. “Remote-controlled engines?”

  “Yessir, on both of them. We can pack on more tonnage if we cut them into the middle of the train.”

  “Sure.” Stevens drummed his pen on the desktop, thinking. Windermere had called the Northwestern Railroad from Eureka that morning, as soon as word of Pam Moody’s disappearance had reached them. The railroad had checked all trains running through Hungry Horse. They hadn’t found any riders.

  “What time did those westbounds come through?” he asked the dispatcher.

  More humming. “Um,” she replied, “the first one was around midnight, the next at four in the morning. Stopped for about an hour, both of them.”

  Stevens underlined the second train in his notebook. Underlined it again, for good measure. “That’s our train,” he said. “If our rider’s involved in this thing, he left on one of those engines.”

  “You want to stop it again?” The dispatcher sounded skeptical. “My boss said we can’t just keep stopping trains without any proof—”

  “Don’t sweat it,” Stevens told her. “He’s long gone anyhow. Can you get me a list of where else that train stopped last night and this morning?”

  “I could, but it might take a little time.”

  “That’s no problem.” Stevens read off the sheriff’s detachment’s phone number. “Call me back, would you please?”

  He ended the call. Turned to where Kerry Finley was leaning over a topographical map of the region, spread out on Deputy Renner’s desk. Finley looked up as Stevens hung up the phone. “So what are we looking for?”

  Stevens joined her at the desk. “Hiding places,” he said, studying the map. “Anywhere the ghost rider could have dumped Pamela Moody.”

  There were two roads heading north out of Hungry Horse, across the Flathead River and the Northwestern main line. They were forestry roads, twisting and winding up into the mountains, rough gravel at the best of times—and in January, unplowed snow.

  One of the roads crossed the tracks near the Northwestern passing siding, where the coal train would have been sitting at four o’clock that morning. The second crossed the tracks just before the tracks crossed the river; there was only the main line and the long, narrow bridge.

  “We’ll start with this one,” Stevens told Finley, pointing at the road nearest to the passing track. “Easier to hop a train when it’s standing still, right?”

  —

  They took Finley’s SUV across the Flathead River. The bridge was low, and the river was mostly snow and ice, but in the middle, where the current was strongest, the water hadn’t frozen over. It ran deadly black, cold just to look at it, and Stevens felt a chill as Finley piloted the truck toward the north shore.

  If Pam Moody wound up in that river, she’s a Popsicle. No chance she’d survive. And that current could take her body anywhere.

  No sense worrying about that now. For all Stevens knew, Windermere had stumbled onto Pam Moody, alive and in chains in Reg Winter’s basement. He checked his phone: one bar, and flickering. If they went any farther, he’d be out of contact again.

  The road bisected the Northwestern main line at the west end of the siding. There was a path to the switch and an equipment locker, and then the road branched off and split away from the tracks, climbing into the mountains from two different directions, curving up the undulating terrain before disappearing around curves of thick stands of fir trees. Finley stopped the truck. “Which way?” she asked.

  Stevens scanned the two roads. The snow had fallen thick here, and apparently uniformly; he couldn’t see any telltale tire tracks in either direction.

  “He can’t have gone far,” Stevens told Finley. “He had to dump Moody’s truck and then hike back to the siding—”

  “In a hell of a blizzard,” Finley said.

  “Exactly. He wouldn’t need to do a big expedition. Just get deep enough that it’ll look like she got herself stuck. That truck’s going to be close, if it’s out here.”

  “It’d better be.” Finley gestured out the window, gestured up, where the sun was already closing in on the tops of the western mountains, a lonely bright patch against the lifeless gray sky. “We’re losing light already. Night comes on quick this time of year.”

  “I don’t want to be out here at night,” Stevens said, pulling open the passenger door and stepping down into the snow. “But I sure as hell don’t want to go to bed without knowing, either. Let’s split up.”

  —

  So they split. Finley took the west road, Stevens the east, slogging up the grade, searching the snow for any sign of human life. It was cold in the forest, bitterly cold; he’d grabbed a spare winter coat from the Hungry Horse detachment, bundled it tight around himself. The Hungry Horse deputies couldn’t do anything about Stevens’s boots, though; his socks were soaked through, his toes numb, before he’d made it thirty feet from the truck.

  It was quiet in the forest, too, nearly silent. Stevens breathed hard as he plowed ahead, every breath sounding like an avalanche in the stillness. He scanned the trees, the road ahead, searching for the gleam of metal, the glint of light reflected against glass, that would signal he’d found what he was looking for.

  But Stevens didn’t see anything. And when he’d walked five minutes or so, the sun setting at his back, he stopped to catch his breath and turned around and couldn’t see the SUV anymore, couldn’t see Finley, could see only forest and snow and the gray sky above, the shadows growing long all around him.

  The stillness was eerie. This was not a friendly place, not now, with the light fading and the temperature dropping. This was a place that didn’t need help to kill you. But the rider was out here, somewhere in these mountains. And that made it eerier still.

  Stevens drew his service pistol from its holster, gripped it through his gloves. Knew he was being silly, knew the rider was long gone, if he’d been here at all. Knew any other predator in these woods would require significantly more stopping power than his .40 Smith & Wesson could provide.

  The pistol made him feel better, though, so he kept it drawn as he pushed ahead, searching the darkness in between the trees, watching the shadows grow longer. He wasn’t scared, exactly; Stevens was a rational man, an experienced outdoorsman and a competent cop, and he wasn’t going to freak out over a walk in the woods.

  All the same, Stevens felt a definite surge of relief when Finley’s voice broke the stillness, hollering out from behind him, down the western road somewhere, calling Stevens to come take a look at what she’d found.

  46

  It would be dark again soon. It would be dark again, and then it would get colder, and then Pam Moody knew she really would die, whether she was on board with the idea or not.

  She’d barely made it twenty feet up the ravine wall, and she’d been wriggling and pulling herself across the rocks for what felt like hours. Her palms bled from fresh wounds, bright red on white snow. Her whole body screamed as she dragged it up the makeshift path. She’d given up crawling; the pain in her legs was too much. She just tried not to scrape them against the rocks as she pulled herself along with her hands.

  Her hands had gone numb again. She knew she had to stop, warm them up; she could use a break. But she could see a little more above the ravine walls now, see the bright spot in the low clouds that must have been the sun, alarmingly close to the ravine’s western wall. Night would come quickly. She didn’t have much time left.

  It was foolish, what she was putting herself through. What was she hoping to achieve? Why couldn’t she just rest, get comfortable while she waited? Even if she made the top of the ravine, then what?

  Then nothi
ng. It would get dark, and she would still be far away from anything, anybody. She would still die out here, alone and freezing cold. Maybe someone would find her body eventually; that was a plus. Maybe she would die easier after she’d exhausted herself.

  Still. This was torture. Why keep going?

  Because of the man, that’s why. Because of the man and his smirk and his hateful words. And because Reg was probably down at the saloon right now, telling everyone how Pam Moody was a slut and she’d probably skipped town, and Darryl was probably propping up the end of the bar, commiserating, and even if he knew she’d been dragged away and lay dying, he would probably tell her it was partially her fault, that she’d flirted too much with the guy when she brought him his beer, smiled at him a little too long, gave him the wrong idea. He’d think she’d deserved it when someone finally did find her body. He would crack open a beer and sit back and tell whoever would listen how his girl had gotten her own damn fool self killed, and it was nobody’s fault but her own.

  Or maybe he would be sympathetic. Maybe he was tearing his hair out right now, going crazy looking for her.

  Or maybe he was right.

  Maybe Darryl was right and she’d led the man on. He’d chosen her, hadn’t he? She must have done something. Maybe her skirt was too short and he liked her legs so much that he just had to put his hands on them. Maybe she’d done something dumb unconsciously, like lick her lips, and it had given the man a huge raging hard-on and he couldn’t think straight again until he’d had her. Maybe she really had been flirting with him. Maybe she really did deserve this.

  Pam pulled herself over to the side of her little path. Tilted her head to the sky, eyes closed, caught her breath. Decided she might just stay here, like this, until night fell. It was as good a place to give up as any.

  Then she opened her eyes and she knew, immediately, that she had to keep moving.

  —

  The ravine must have been a riverbed during the spring thaw and into the summer. It snaked down from in between the mountains, a V shape, narrow at the bottom and open at the top. Pam could see up the ravine, north, more snow and rock, and then trees and jagged cliff faces. To the south, the ravine descended, winding around boulders and more stands of conifers until it dipped out of sight. Eventually, it would reach the Flathead River, she expected, though she couldn’t see the river from here. What mattered was the ravine ran north–south. Pam was climbing up the east wall. And skirting the west wall, coming up from the south, Pam could see something moving, half-hidden by the rocks.