The Last Woman in the Forest

by Diane Les Becquets

  He’d been retired for a year now, and the past three months of that year had been spent in doctors’ offices. Sometimes he’d hear from the investigators he’d worked with, but ever since his diagnosis, they seemed to bother him less and less, and when he did happen to run into them, they wanted to talk about sports or politics or misdemeanors, which suited Nick just fine.

  Doctors told him the cancer had probably been growing for a couple of years before they’d discovered it, before the day Nick had walked out to get the mail and his left foot wouldn’t move the way he’d wanted it to and he’d called his wife and told her he was going to drive to the hospital to get himself checked out, and she’d told him to call an ambulance or to wait five minutes and she’d be home and would take him. But the hospital was close and Nick knew he could get there sooner if he drove himself, and really, what he was worried about was that he might have suffered a stroke.

  Nick was glad he didn’t know about his disease when he retired, because if he had, maybe he wouldn’t have gone on those long walks with Cate, or taken up bird-watching, or made the trip to Michigan where he’d visited the shores of Lake St. Clair in Detroit. He took Cate by his childhood home, or what had remained of it, a small bungalow his parents had rented when his father was working in the auto industry. From Michigan, they’d traveled back to Boston, where they visited their son and their two granddaughters, and Nick fished once more off the John W. Weeks Bridge, as he had done when he was at Harvard.

  And since those trips, he’d turned to writing and literature, even composed a handful of poems, and yet not a day went by that he didn’t think about the victims, especially the ones from the Stillwater cases: Natasha Freeman, Erin Parker, Lynn-Marie Pontante, Melissa Marsh. And though he’d turned over thirty-plus cartons of notes to the Canadian archivist, sometimes he’d pour a drink of the harder stuff and take out the file from his desk drawer in a small room at his home.

  Inside the file were portraits he’d written on the lives of the four women from the Stillwater cases. These cases weren’t the only ones Nick had worked on that had never been solved. There were the missing children in the San Francisco Bay Area; there was JonBenet; there were the Connecticut River Valley murders. But the Stillwater cases had been Nick’s last assignment. And during his work on these cases, from what the doctors told Nick, is when the cancer began.

  With these cases Nick had spent an even more exorbitant amount of time examining the lives of the victims. He’d visited Natasha Freeman’s childhood home, tying it in with a visit to see his son; he had interviewed the professors of the courses she had taken at the University of Montana. He’d done something similar with Erin Parker’s case, interviewing Erin’s mother upon multiple occasions, shopping at the Walmart in Kalispell where Erin had worked. He’d driven the roads that she’d hitchhiked, had sat with his own back against the building of the Stillwater Bar, as she had done.

  With each portrait, Nick’s writing changed, his intuition sharpened. One portrait had taken on the form of a letter to the killer, another that of a diary. Nick’s tumors were in the left hemisphere of his brain. Intuition occurred in the right hemisphere, specifically the cerebral cortex, the ventromedial prefrontal, and some ceruleus or other whose name he couldn’t recall. Understanding now that the cancer had already begun its malignancy, Nick wondered if perhaps in the weakening of his frontal and temporal lobes, these other sections of his brain had become more active, had overcompensated for his other deficits.

  Nick remembered sitting for hours in Melissa Marsh’s apartment, or art studio, as he liked to think of it. She’d captured her life in five distinct images that she’d painted on the walls. The fifth image was left unfinished. He’d spent a similar amount of time in the yurt where Lynn-Marie had been living. He’d held her personal items. He’d spoken to her acquaintances and friends. He’d sat in her pickup truck. He’d petted and held her dog and looked into the dog’s eyes because he knew the dog named Tully had seen Lynn-Marie’s killer. The sharper Nick’s intuition became, the longer he spent trying to inhabit the past lives of these women, looking for the kinds of clues the crime scenes had omitted.

  Some might think of the intuition as something magical. Nick understood otherwise. It all came down to subtle and brief signals in the brain. Einstein called the intuitive mind a sacred gift and “the rational mind a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift,” he’d said.

  Nick had written the portraits with a typewriter much like the one a teacher had given him when he was in eighth grade. His son said typewriters like these were in vogue. Nick didn’t care about vogue. “Buncha crap,” he said. He liked the way his fingers felt on the keys, and the way the keys sounded when they snapped and struck the paper. There was a kinesthetic connection that Nick found appeasing, and a nostalgia for those days as a young teenager when he would tap out stories and ideas, when he learned that, aside from disease, the only power anyone or any event had over the quality of his life was what he allowed. This made him think a bit of Viktor Frankl; the Nazis could imprison Frankl, hold possession of his body, cause him great pain, but his mind was his alone. Nick had allowed these women into his life. Marian was a reminder of these women and the killer who’d never been found.

  He’d asked her questions. One in particular: When did she first sense something was off about this guy? And like too many other women, she hadn’t paid those kinds of moments much attention. And wasn’t that usually the case? It was a deadly shame. Nick told Marian he would help her, and he’d made a couple of calls over the weekend. One was to a reporter who owed Nick a favor and had covered the Stillwater cases. Nick said he was getting his files in order, while his mind was still capacitated, and could she help him with some missing information. This wasn’t exactly untrue, as lately Nick had been thinking about making such a gesture to one of the universities. The other call was to the man in Canada: Had he digitalized the Stillwater files yet? The reporter had gotten back to Nick that morning. Marian’s boyfriend hadn’t found one of the bodies. Nick was interested, a feeling, like a slow trickle in his sternum. He, like Marian, wanted to know who this boyfriend was. Maybe it was nothing, and yet already he felt the familiar buzz, a bit dulled, but it was still there. He would follow up with the digital archivist. He would need the details from the cases. Maybe this Tate fellow was worth looking into. Though there’d been persons of interest in the investigations, none had become real suspects.

  Cate was worried, Nick knew. Was he sure he wanted to get involved, she’d asked. “What is it about this one?”

  “For one, there’s the boyfriend’s name. I can’t place it, but I’ve heard it before. It’s relevant, and I’m not sure why. Then there’s the girl. She’s young, she’s innocent, just like the victims. The clock is ticking, I know. But it’s important that I help her.”

  Cate had given him her reassuring smile. “That’s all I need to hear.”

  6

  February 2017

  MARIAN

  Oil sands, Alberta, Canada

  Though Marian had been tempted to take a more direct route than the path she and Noah and Chester had made, she realized that breaking trail on a new course would actually take longer. It would also require her to use the GPS on her phone, which would deplete the phone’s battery. As she got going, she found it easy to follow their earlier tracks and was thankful that though the sky was heavy with clouds, she and Noah hadn’t experienced snow.

  She wanted to run, but even with the broken trail, there was no way she could. Still, she challenged her pace, and as her legs moved, this was what she heard: the crunching and squealing snow underfoot; the rhythmic travel of air in and out of her lungs; the scruff of nylon against nylon as her arms brushed against her coat; the dull thumping of her heartbeat in her ears. This was what she saw: snowmobile tracks in the timber where the trees’ proximity to one another had expanded, allowing
Marian to make out the general direction that a sled had taken. How had she missed these tracks earlier? How had Noah missed them, as well, this sure sign that a trapper had been in the area? But then she saw where she had collected the last sample. She would not have even gotten to the place in the timber where the tracks of the snowmobile could be seen before Chester had already triggered the trap. Yet she knew Noah’s mistake could have easily been her own. She’d been too focused on her aching hands and her frustration with him.

  She made it back to the truck within a couple of hours. Her eyes had adjusted to the growing darkness, and she had not used her headlamp until the last thirty minutes or so. She started the engine and switched the CB radio to channel thirteen for Pétron Oil’s emergency response dispatcher. The responders were almost there, she was told, with a trailer loaded with a couple of snowmobiles that were ready to go.

  Marian pulled out her satellite phone and sent Noah a text. Help on its way. How are you doing?

  After she texted him, she called Jenness to let her know she’d made it back to the vehicle.

  “How cold are your hands?” Jenness asked.

  “They’re okay,” Marian told her.

  “What about your feet?”

  “They’re fine,” Marian said.

  And then Jenness said that Tate had gotten a ride with the responders.

  After the call ended, Marian saw that a text had come in from Noah. Still here. We’re okay. Glad you made it.

  Within a half hour, the responders arrived and Tate was with them. They’d brought three snowmobiles, a large first-aid kit, and two ski stretchers that could be pulled from the back of the sleds. Marian climbed out of the truck. No sooner were her feet on the ground than Tate was jogging toward her. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  He placed a hand on each of her shoulders and was holding her square in front of him. “Are you sure?” he said.

  “Yes. I’m fine. I want to help,” she said.

  The stretchers were secured behind the two responders’ sleds. Tate handed Marian an extra snowmobile helmet from the truck. She pulled on the helmet and then climbed onto the third sled to lead the group to the location. Tate straddled the seat behind her. In less than twenty minutes they saw Noah’s flashlight.

  As Marian had predicted, though he was cold and distressed about Chester, physically, Noah was okay. But Chester had continued to lose blood despite the pressure Noah had applied to the wounds. The responders were ready to load the dog onto one of the stretchers and strap him down. Tate told them to hold on. “He can’t afford to lose any more blood.”

  Tate had taken out his first-aid pack from the back compartment of the sled. Inside the pack was a tactile suture kit. “It’s okay, boy,” Tate said. He instructed the rest of the group to hold Chester still. With all the calmness in the world, Tate cut back the fur on the wound over the neck, where Chester was losing the most blood. Then he cleaned the wound and rubbed it down with sterile wipes. Tate opened a package with suture thread and a needle attached. He held the needle with a metal instrument. Despite the cold, Tate moved with the deftness of a surgeon. Within a couple of minutes Tate was able to close the wound. “This should hold for now,” he said.

  And as if speaking through her own shock, Marian said, “You just saved his life.”

  But Tate didn’t seem to hear her. Already he was helping the responders secure Chester onto the stretcher. “There, there, boy,” Tate said. “You’re going to be okay.”

  When they returned to the compound, Jenness was waiting for them in the parking lot. She’d already arranged for a veterinarian to meet Tate and Chester at the animal hospital in Fort McMurray, about a forty-five-minute drive away.

  “I’m going with them,” Noah said.

  Jenness didn’t answer, and neither did Tate.

  Chester was still in the backseat of the responder vehicle. Jenness leaned in and stroked his head. “How is he?” she asked Tate.

  “Sore and weak. His breathing is steady, but I don’t think he’s going to be working again any time soon.”

  Jenness had her camera with her and took a few shots of Chester’s wounds.

  “How are you on fuel?” she asked Marian.

  “Over half a tank. We’re good.”

  Jenness and Tate thanked the responders, one of whom only spoke French. Then Tate laid Chester on a blanket in the front seat of the conservation group’s truck. But when Noah opened the door to climb in the back, Tate made it clear Noah wasn’t coming along.

  “Get a shower,” Tate said. “Get something to eat. Both of you.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Later that night, after Marian had eaten and showered and had spent a couple of hours in her room feeling bad about the whole thing, she put on her boots and parka and walked up to the first handler trailer to check in with Jenness.

  Jenness’s bedroom was a short distance off the workstation. Her door was cracked open enough for Marian to see her sitting on her bed cross-legged. She was holding a mug and looking at some papers in a blue folder that was on her lap. Yeti, a border collie mix, who, like Arkansas, had been brought along as a backup dog, was stretched out on the bed with her head on Jenness’s thigh. As Marian looked at the two of them, she thought Jenness was beautiful, in this natural, I-am-exactly-where-I-am-supposed-to-be sort of way, with dark-framed glasses and a knit hat pulled low over her forehead and ears. Marian knocked, which seemed to startle both Jenness and the dog. Jenness quickly closed the folder and set it aside. “Come in,” Jenness said.

  “Can I talk to you?” Marian said.

  “Of course.”

  And so Marian took a few steps toward the bed. She tugged at the zipper on her parka and pulled the zipper two thirds of the way down. “I just wanted to apologize to you about today,” she said. “I’m really sorry.”

  Jenness held her mug with both hands a few inches from her face. But then without taking a sip, she lowered the mug to her lap. “We want everything to go perfectly. We do the best that we can. But things don’t ever go perfectly,” she said. “Accidents happen. We make mistakes.”

  “I should have paid closer attention. I should have seen the tracks. I wasn’t keeping up. Noah and Chester got too far ahead.”

  Jenness set her mug on the nightstand. “Do you think Noah was pushing Chester too hard today?”

  “I don’t know,” Marian said, because she didn’t want to be put in that position.

  “Maybe I’m not being fair asking you that,” Jenness said.

  “He loves that dog.” And Marian wasn’t sure why she was defending Noah. Maybe it had to do with the defeat she’d seen on his face, and because that defeat could have very well been her own.

  Yeti had inched herself closer to Jenness, who was now gently massaging her behind the ears. “We’re not saying he doesn’t love the dog, but right now Chester’s out of commission. We’re going to bring Arkansas in as his replacement.”

  Then Jenness said, “What would you think about becoming a handler? It’s something Tate and I have talked about. You’d have a learning curve.”

  And Marian said something about being a fast learner, that becoming a handler was the reason she’d applied for a position on the study. “I’m ready for this.”

  “Do you think you’ll still feel that way in another month?”

  “I know I will. It’s the work, the outdoors, the dogs. It’s everything I could imagine.”

  Jenness told Marian about two full-time positions that were opening up after the oil sands study. The candidates would need to be ready to make a long-term commitment. “Think about it,” Jenness said. “It might be a good fit for you. The pay’s not great, but we manage.”

  “I’ve spent the last four years managing,” Marian said. “It’s never been about the money.”

&n
bsp; “It’s not a normal life.”

  “I don’t want normal. I don’t even like normal. I’m unhappy with normal.” And then Marian said, “I would give anything to be living in these kinds of places and going out and seeing things that others will never see and having a dog by my side. I want the bigger perspective.”

  Jenness laughed a little. “This is a palace compared to most of the places we’ve stayed.” But then her face became serious. “It’s not really a job. It’s a lifestyle. There’s no pay raise. No ladder. There’s not a next step.”

  “I don’t want ladders,” Marian said.

  “It can destroy your life,” Jenness said.

  Marian moved over to the foot of the bed and sat down. “Did it destroy yours?”

  Jenness looked at the night-black windowpane to her right, or at her own reflection, and was it sadness Marian saw on Jenness’s face, or nostalgia? She leaned back against the pillows and pulled her long brown hair over her shoulders. Her eyes turned to Marian. “I was dating someone when I came onto this job,” she said. “We were going to do this together. We went through training, got hired on at the same time. Our first project was in California. We were on a fisher study. Then I was in South Africa and Jamie was studying lynx in Maine. We lasted a couple of years. That’s pretty good. Most people here can’t handle a relationship.”