“I took him in there,” he said, “once I’d cut his throat. I laid him down, gentle, and I let him die in the pantry.”
He told the story like it made him a hero. Windermere didn’t mind. She was banking on the serial killer’s natural pride for his work, his pathological need to tell someone what he’d done. In Hurley’s case, especially, she knew the man would find pleasure in explaining his genius to a woman. She let Hurley maneuver her, pretended to be impressed.
“He never saw you coming,” she said.
“Never.” Hurley gave a grunt of satisfaction. “He was probably still half-asleep when I cut him. Mind couldn’t make sense of what was going on.”
Through the kitchen windows, Windermere could see the backyard, see Mounties on snowmobiles, a collection of police trucks and cruisers. Knew the tactical squads must be just about here; let herself start to plan how she’d extricate herself from Hurley when the men with the big guns started breaking down doors. Wasn’t worried. She could keep Hurley talking, get him drunk on his innate sense of superiority. Figured he might let the tactical guys cuff him, just so long as he could keep bragging.
But then Hurley stiffened behind her, and all of Windermere’s plans went to shit.
“There,” he said. “What the fuck was that, now?”
“What was what?” Windermere replied. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“Upstairs.” Hurley was already turning her, his hand on her shoulders, rough, keeping her close. “I heard movement. Voices.”
He shoved her out of the kitchen. Back into the living room, toward the stairs. “Come on,” he said. “Sounds like the ladies need a reminder who’s boss.”
122
Boots on hardwood again. Fast this time. Hurley’s angry voice, getting louder. Stevens didn’t have to hear much to know they’d blown the mission.
The Mounties had freed Shae Fontaine and her mother, brought them to the top of the stairs. The women came along quickly, their eyes wide. Shae Fontaine was rigid with fear, terrified almost to the point of shock.
They’d boosted Shae up to Stevens, and he’d taken her, pulled her into the attic, nice and easy, whispered something that was supposed to reassure her, but from the looks of it, failed miserably. Stevens made sure she was settled, put his finger to his lips, turned back to the hole, and reached down for Mona Fontaine.
They’d boosted Mona up, too, and she’d gone rigid when Stevens took hold of her arms, stared up at him like all the fight was gone, like all she had left was to go stone-still and let the madness wash over her. Stevens hauled her up, deadweight, set her down beside her daughter, and then the Mounties were coming up.
They got the first Mountie, the female, Buckley, up with no issues. It was Pelletier who’d started the problems. He’d shaken off Stevens’s assistance, tried to pull himself through the hole on his own, made it more than halfway—and then he kicked his legs back involuntary. Hit the wall loud enough to make a thud, loud enough for Hurley to hear.
And then Pelletier was up and in the attic, yes, but Hurley was coming. Stevens could hear him, and he was bringing Carla Windermere with him.
They had seconds, maximum, before Hurley reached the stairs. Stevens reached for the trapdoor and slid it back into position, sealing the attic just as Hurley pushed Windermere around the corner, their footsteps audible through the attic floor.
Stevens listened to them climb. Could see them in his head, knew Hurley would have Windermere close at hand, wouldn’t trust her anywhere else. Knew, too, that Hurley would take Windermere to the master bedroom, find the women gone. Knew things would get very bad very fast after that.
“Get the women out of here,” he whispered to Pelletier and Buckley. “Let the tactical guys know what we’re dealing with. Tell them Hurley’s upstairs and still has one hostage.”
The Mounties gave him grim nods and nudged the Fontaine women toward the attic window. Left Stevens wondering if the tactical teams would have anyone left to save by the time the message was delivered.
123
The trapdoor to the attic was sealed. Windermere tried not to stare at it as Leland Hurley pushed her up the stairs ahead of him. Tried not to fixate on it, give away the game. But the trapdoor was closed. She wondered what that meant.
Where were the hostages? Where was the rescue party? As Windermere reached the top of the stairs, she stole a glance down the hall toward the master bedroom and couldn’t see anyone there, either. For a moment, she dared to imagine that the whole crew had come and gone—hostages, Mounties, the works. Then she realized that if they’d left her here, she was alone in the house with a madman. And Windermere figured her chances of escaping up here, with Hurley already on alert, were suddenly much lower.
Hurley was muttering behind her. Variations on a theme, the same All women are animals crap he’d been spouting since she’d arrived, and probably much longer. Heck, Windermere figured the guy had probably been spitting that Poor me, I’m an entitled baby bullshit since he was a teenager, figured maybe that had something to do with the fact that he couldn’t ever get laid.
Maybe it’s not the women, bro, she thought. Maybe it’s you.
But Windermere had things to worry about other than why some maniac had never found true love. Namely, the fact that the maniac in question was pushing her at a rapid clip down the hallway toward Mona Fontaine’s master bedroom, and Windermere really didn’t want to find out what was waiting in there. So she stalled, as much as she could, but Hurley wasn’t having it.
“Move it,” he told her, prodding her with the pistol as she dawdled ahead of him. “Or I’ll cut you down right here and trample your body on my way to kill those girls.”
Always the charmer, Windermere thought. Gee, Leland, why don’t we go out?
—
Stevens heard Hurley and Windermere reach the top of the stairs. Heard their footsteps suddenly muffle as they reached carpet. Heard Hurley mutter something at Windermere as they walked down the hall. Couldn’t make out the words, but that didn’t matter.
He pulled the trapdoor up from its mount again. Slid it aside and peered down into the hallway. Caught sight of Hurley’s backside; he’d just reached the telephone table. Could just make out Windermere ahead of him. Hurley wasn’t holding on to her, just shoving her forward with the barrel of the pistol. That was a positive. That gave Windermere some room to maneuver.
Okay.
Corporals Pelletier and Buckley had Shae and Mona Fontaine out of the house and on their way to safety. Meant job one was accomplished, but it left Stevens alone up here, at least until the tactical teams showed up.
Stevens couldn’t afford to wait for help. As soon as Hurley discovered the women were gone, the game was over—and Windermere was probably dead.
No time to waste. Stevens pushed the trapdoor completely open. Searched the attic for something handy, came back with someone’s half-deflated basketball. It would do.
He took the ball, held it over the hole in the attic floor. Sent up a prayer that Hurley’s trigger finger wasn’t faster than Windermere’s reflexes. Then he dropped the ball through the hole.
The ball hit the carpet with a whump. And for a moment, the whole farmhouse went still.
124
Hurley heard the noise behind him, thought it was the law coming up the stairs at long last. Turned back, frustration mounting, just about sick of this whole fucking game, ready to put holes in whoever was dumb enough to be the first one to show his face.
But there was nobody coming for him. No footsteps, no voices, no Mounties with guns drawn. There was only a basketball, half-deflated, rolling to a stop on the carpet.
Hurley frowned. “What the—”
And then the bitch FBI agent was making her move.
—
Windermere glanced back, saw Hurley was distracted. Couldn’t tell why, but then it didn�
�t matter.
This was her opportunity.
She torqued her body to the left, away from Hurley’s pistol. Reached back with her right arm and slammed Hurley’s gun hand to the side, heard the pistol go off beside her, the shot loud but harmless, bullet into the floor. Then she was spinning to launch herself at him, ducking under the gun, bear-hugging him into the wall and grabbing for the knife he kept in its sheath.
But she didn’t make a clean grab of it, felt Hurley swing back around, hammer down with the butt end of his pistol. He caught her between the shoulder blades, nearly knocking her to the carpet. But she held on. Wrested the knife out and swung it up and into Hurley, catching him in the midsection and jabbing again, and then Hurley hit her again, and this time she was falling, down down down to the carpet, hit hard and saw Hurley swing the pistol around toward her, knew in an instant that this was it.
And then Stevens fired. Stevens came out of nowhere, somewhere, wherever he was hiding, fired his pistol once, and Hurley’s eyes went wide. Stevens fired again and a third time, and Hurley pitched forward and fell, nearly landed on Windermere. She scrambled out of the way, rolled over top of him, landed on his back, and leapt for his gun hand, pulling Kerry Finley’s pistol from his grip. Kept Hurley pinned and reached back for her handcuffs.
And then Stevens was beside her, helping her cuff the bastard, knee on his back, and Hurley was fighting, bucking against them, but Stevens kept him pinned as Windermere put the cuffs on him, and still Hurley struggled, cursing a streak, the same old bullshit, dumb bitches this and stupid whores that.
Windermere let him rage. Let Stevens help her up, and together they covered Hurley and looked at each other while they caught their breath.
“Shitty deal for the feminist movement,” Windermere said. “Defenseless woman needs big tough man to save her from evil psychopath, details at eleven.”
Stevens shook his head. “Big man helps tough woman disarm psychopath. Get your facts straight.”
“Sure took you long enough to get here, though. I thought I was going to have to kick his ass all by my lonesome.”
“Too busy saving the hostages,” Stevens replied. “But I knew you could take him.”
Windermere looked down at Hurley, still struggling but calmer now, the fight leaving him, dissolving into frustration, until he resembled nothing more than a toddler having a tantrum.
A toddler who could have killed you. If Stevens didn’t have your back.
She was shaking. Hated herself for it, hated Hurley for making her do it. “We got him,” she said. “I guess that’s all that matters.”
“Sure.”
She straightened. Put a hand on his shoulder, squeezed. “Thanks for being there when I needed you, partner,” she said. “Let’s go tell the Mounties it’s over.”
125
He’ll live,” Cronquist told Windermere over the phone. “I don’t know if that’s supposed to be good news or not, but the bastard’s going to make a full recovery.”
“A full recovery,” Windermere said. “Lucky him.”
“You said it.” The Mountie paused. “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t hate it, but I do. If this guy is half the piece of work you and your partner say he is, I can’t say I’m happy that he survived.”
“Yeah,” Windermere said. “I’d say he deserves worse.”
Cronquist was quiet, and Windermere imagined she was thinking the same as Windermere: all of the damage that Hurley had wrought—Arnold Fontaine, Kerry Finley. And the women, Hurley’s victims, the full number of whom Stevens and Windermere were still trying to finalize. The agents’ working estimates counted twenty-five, but Windermere figured, given Hurley’s past, there were bound to be more. She wondered if the maniac would share his final tally once he was out of that Canadian hospital and back in an American interview room.
After a moment or two, Cronquist cleared her throat, told Windermere she’d keep her updated on Hurley’s condition, and asked her to keep in touch. Windermere told her, sure, of course, and they ended the call.
Windermere put down the handset and looked around the FBI office in Kalispell, Montana, headquarters for the next phase of the Leland Hurley investigation. Wasserman and Mundall had set up a bulletin board with pictures of the known victims, were divvying up the task of contacting the families while Stevens and Windermere worked through the paperwork.
And there was a lot of paperwork. The Canadian government had a question or two about the FBI’s unauthorized incursion onto their soil, and Windermere had spent more than a couple hours on the phone with an assistant FBI director in Washington, DC, justifying their side of the story. She knew they’d had to cross the border, knew Hurley would be long gone by now if they’d waited for permission, but the bureaucrats didn’t see it that way, and Windermere didn’t think they ever would.
Anyway, Windermere wasn’t worried. Hurley was in custody. The threat was neutralized. But a part of Windermere couldn’t help but wish the threat was a little more neutralized.
“Not to criticize your work, partner,” she said to Stevens, who was sitting beside her in the tiny office they’d commandeered, “but couldn’t you have put a few more bullets in that asshole? Cronquist and the Canadians think he’s going to live.”
Stevens pushed back his chair. Crossed his arms over his head and blew out a long breath. “If the universe has any sense of justice, he’ll spend a long, miserable life behind bars,” he replied. “And maybe he’ll want to brag a bit, tell us all about his crimes. He could help the Bureau close a lot of cold cases, Carla.”
“I know,” Windermere said. “And you know I don’t take any pleasure from killing. It’s not something I ever enjoyed.”
“But still,” Stevens said.
“But still.” Windermere motioned to the bulletin board, the cold cases, scores upon scores of missing or murdered women. “All those women are dead. Kerry Finley’s dead. And Leland Hurley’s still alive.” She shook her head. “It just doesn’t seem like enough.”
126
The feeling stuck around.
It stayed with Windermere as she and Stevens signed off on the Hurley investigation, tossed the keys to the case to Wasserman and Mundall and to Boundary County’s Sheriff Truman, who’d been brought aboard to represent local law enforcement. It stayed with Windermere through the drive to the airport and the flight to Minneapolis, the taxi ride to her condo and her first long, sleepless night home.
The feeling stuck around, a maddening anticlimax, like somehow they’d failed all of those women Hurley had victimized, like if they’d done something sooner or just paid more attention, hell, Kerry Finley would be alive. Arnold Fontaine, too, and Kelly-Anne Clairmont.
And maybe Leland Hurley would be in the ground, where he belonged.
“Mila Scott’s still alive,” Stevens had said. “So’s Pamela Moody. We put a stop to him, Carla, about as fast as we could. He’ll never be a free man again.”
Maybe. But still, Hurley haunted Windermere. His victims lingered with her: twenty-five women (at least) who might still be alive, twenty-five women who deserved better than a killer who would live out his days eating three squares a day on the taxpayers’ dime.
It was scary to think about. Unhealthy. Awful. But Windermere knew if she could go back to that farmhouse, that final showdown, she would have stabbed Leland Hurley dead with Ashlyn Southernwood’s knife. Maybe then the women Hurley had murdered would find their peace.
And maybe Windermere would, too.
She moped. Shrugged off Mathers’s attempts to comfort her, shut down on her shrink, couldn’t push past the block Hurley had set in her consciousness.
She moped, and she stayed moping for days, weeks, after her return, until one day Mathers knocked on the door to her office, poked his head in, and told her there was a woman he wanted her to meet.
—
And that’s how Windermere and Mathers wound up in Wisconsin, on the shore of Lake Superior, a cemetery overlooking the water, an icy wind blowing in off the lake. Stevens was there, too; he’d tagged along, said he was bothered himself by what had happened in Canada, hoped he’d find closure here. They’d all bundled up, taken Stevens’s old Cherokee, driven four hours to get here. And when they’d arrived, Mila Scott was waiting, and Nicole Corbine, Ashlyn’s mother, and Mila had Ronda Sixkill along with her, too.
Sixkill was smaller than Windermere had expected. She’d heard Mathers talk about her, read the woman’s file, expected to find some tough broad ex-con waiting at the cemetery gates. And Sixkill was solid, sure, didn’t look like she brooked being pushed around, but there was a kindness about her, too, the way she drew Mila closer to her, some protective instinct, as the agents climbed out of the Cherokee and approached the three women.
Mila, for her part, looked more or less unruffled by the whole Leland Hurley encounter. She wore a cast on her ankle from the fall she’d taken, had suffered some minor frostbite, but Hurley hadn’t robbed her of anything more. She shook hands with all three agents, met their gazes directly. She didn’t look beaten; rather, she looked relieved.
She was holding a small urn. “Ash,” she said when she caught Windermere looking. Smiled just a little. “Ash’s ashes. I figured if she had to spend time somewhere, this would be it.”
It was a beautiful spot, Windermere had to admit, as she followed Mila and Ronda Sixkill through the small cemetery—the barren trees and their naked branches, brown earth and patchy snow, the lakeshore frozen over, ice piled up into bergs and ridges and fault lines. It was cold, but where wasn’t, this far north, this time of year? And anyway, Windermere had a new winter coat, bought it first thing after she stepped off the plane from the mountains.
They searched the cemetery for longer than they’d intended, nobody quite knowing where they were going, Nicole Corbine navigating by memory and a vague sense of direction. But they found it at last on a slight rise facing north, the water, a small weathered headstone in a sea of them: Southernwood.
The Forgotten Girls Page 30