The Last Woman in the Forest

by Diane Les Becquets

“I made a couple of calls,” he told her. “The first was to the attorney in Norfolk. He acknowledged that Tate was a client of his. Due to client confidentiality, that was all he was going to tell me. The second call was to a friendly court clerk in the county office who did some digging for me. During the time Tate was attending classes at the college, he was charged with unlawful intrusion. There’d been a telephone complaint of someone looking in windows. Police caught him, charged him under the statute. The case was turned over to the prosecutor. Tate hired a lawyer, gave some story about taking a shortcut, said he saw a light on and kept moving. His attorney made the argument that Tate was a full-time student, employed, with no prior record or offenses. The charge was dropped.”

  Marian stared back at the screen, in shock. “What if he was telling the truth? What if he actually was taking a shortcut through someone’s yard?” But really what she was doing was giving herself time to let Nick’s words sink in.

  Nick’s face appeared resolute and calm. He was leaning back in his desk chair.

  “What kind of person does that?” Marian asked.

  “A predator,” Nick said. “Someone with a sexual deviance.”

  “You think he was a peeping Tom.”

  “That was the charge.”

  Marian felt like she was losing another piece of the man she’d loved, and part of her wanted to hold on, even frantically, to the person she’d thought he was. Tate would have still been a teenager, not even twenty. It was a long time ago. She reminded herself that the charges had been dropped. Shouldn’t that account for something? But she was disturbed by what Nick had told her; of course she was.

  “Your first loyalty right now is still to Tate,” Nick said. “That’s understandable. But at some point your first loyalty needs to be to yourself. I hope that in our working together, you’ll be able to get to that place.”

  “Is that why you’re helping me?”

  “That’s part of it, yes.”

  “This is taking up a lot of your time. And you’re okay with that?” Marian was thinking of Nick’s illness. He had not mentioned it to her, and she did not feel it was her place to bring it up.

  “I’ll help you as I can,” he said.

  Marian asked Nick what his other reasons were for getting involved.

  “My involvement has to do with the victims. No stone left unturned. Something like that.”

  Then Nick said, “Let’s bring the conversation back to Tate for a minute. I’m wondering if he was ever humiliated by a woman he was close with, particularly when he was a young boy or a young man.”

  “I don’t know,” Marian said. “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Is this something you could ask the sister?”

  Marian was thinking. “Tammy mentioned a girlfriend of Tate’s from when he was in college. I found her online. I’ve thought about reaching out to her. She’s married now. Lives in Lincoln. She might know something.”

  “Reach out to the girlfriend. See what you can find out.”

  They were about to end the call when Marian asked Nick about Dana Lear.

  “There was never an inquest, but yes, he was a person of interest. The guy collects knives. He drives a green SUV, or at least he did at the time. He’s creepy as hell. Is he capable of murder? He very well may be. Did he commit the Stillwater murders? I’m not convinced he did.”

  Nick said, “One woman worked the night shift at a convenience store. Lear invited the woman to his house. He became noticeably upset when she turned him down. When she got off her shift, he was waiting for her at her vehicle. He said if she didn’t go out with him, he would have to show her his knives. She made up some excuse, said she had to get home, that she would think about it. Then she called the police and filed a restraining order. Another woman was a waitress at a diner. The guy wrote letters to her explicitly describing his sexual fantasies. Each fantasy involved knives. The police didn’t do anything until she looked out her window one night and saw Lear standing across the street from her house.”

  “Police never questioned him in the Stillwater cases?”

  “They asked him to come into the station. He refused. He was a suspicious character who drove a green SUV. That wasn’t enough to charge him with a crime.”

  “But he wasn’t your person of interest,” Marian said.

  “He never was. Lear is a schizophrenic. At the same diner where the one woman worked, Lear had been seen having an entire conversation with himself. The Stillwater killer is methodical. He was able to get these women to trust him. I don’t think Lear is capable of that same level of manipulation and organized thinking.”

  “Even if he’s taking his meds?” Marian asked.

  “I never talked to the guy. I can’t know for sure, but it’s doubtful.”

  Marian heard something outside, the breaking of a limb, the crunching of ground cover and debris, the footfall of a large animal. She wondered if she might be hearing the sow whose tracks Trainer had seen.

  “What’s wrong?” Nick asked.

  Marian had been staring out at the blackness through her open window. She turned back to Nick’s face on the screen. “I live in the woods,” Marian said. “There are a lot of noises outside.”

  “Do you lock your door?”

  “After what you told me about Lear, I’ll make sure I do.” She wouldn’t tell Nick about her stopping at Lear’s house. She could already hear Nick’s reprimand.

  After the call was ended, Marian shut her window. She grabbed the can of pepper spray from the holster on her pack beside her bed, and after she had waited a few minutes to make sure the animal was gone, she picked up the flashlight that she carried with her when she went to the bathhouse at night and stepped outside. She wanted to see if she could find any tracks that would identify the animal. But the ground around her was strewn with pine needles and scrub grass and creeping juniper. She walked up the hill a little ways behind her hut, stepping among the shadows in the woods from a crescent moon, her own shadow looming larger than life like Goliath. A light blinked on from down the hill. The motion sensor bulb on the outside of the shower house had clicked on. Marian stood still, her body jumpy and alert. Within no time, she heard the sound of water splashing onto concrete. The shower house windows were open. Trainer was getting a shower.

  She turned back around, her flashlight pointed at Jenness’s hut. The west-facing window was open. Weather forecasts predicted rain over the next couple of days. Marian was sure Jenness would not have intentionally left the window open. And so Marian walked toward the hut and saw that the screen had been removed. Each hut had a keypad where a passcode had to be entered to lock or unlock the door. Marian did not know the code, and the door was secure, so she walked back to the window and opened it farther. She set the flashlight on the windowsill and hoisted herself up and into the small quarters.

  Marian had never been inside Jenness’s hut before, though she wasn’t surprised to find it arranged the same as her own. The room was tidy, the bed made. Everything seemed to be in its place, and Marian thought how fitting for Jenness, and yet how unfitting for the window to be open and the screen to be out. She did not want to turn on the overhead fixture or a lamp, for fear the light would draw the attention of Trainer, and so instead she shined the flashlight around the room.

  Under the bed were several clear plastic storage bins. One by one Marian pulled out the containers and looked inside. The first was full of clothes, fleece tops and sweaters, all neatly folded. Another contained a smorgasbord of freeze-dried meals and a package of butane lighters. The third bin contained more packages of freeze-dried food and several cans of bear spray. Marian scooted the bins back under the bed.

  There were a number of framed photos on top of Jenness’s bureau. One was of a woman who looked to be in her fifties, whom Jenness bore a resemblance to—dark hair, dark eyes, dark eyelashes. Another picture loo
ked like a family shot: two parents, three young girls, a white German shepherd. Marian picked up the photo, certain she could recognize Jenness in the face of one of the girls who appeared to be the middle one in age. Evenly taped on the wall above the bureau were photos from different projects, including the recent study in Alberta, and group shots of some of the handlers and orienteers. Next to one of the group pictures was a photo of Marian, a close shot with only a gray sky behind her. She was wearing her multicolored knit cap. She was smiling, and the close-up image was so clear Marian could count the freckles along her nose and across her face, and yet she had no recollection of when the photo had been taken.

  There were other pictures as well, some taped above Jenness’s desk. Marian pulled open the desk drawer, where she found bills and receipts and a backpacking magazine with a feature on Alaska.

  On Jenness’s nightstand was a photo with the printed caption Denali State Park: Kesugi Ridge that looked as though it had been cut out of a travel magazine. Jenness had left for Alaska almost a week after the vigil for Tate. She’d taken a month’s leave from work and two weeks’ vacation time with plans to backpack in Wrangell–St. Elias National Park, hike Kesugi Ridge, cross the Arctic Circle all the way to Prudhoe Bay, and camp the entire way. She wouldn’t be back until the first weekend in September.

  Marian thought about her last conversation with Jenness before she’d left. The group had been worried about Jenness. Marian had been worried as well. Jenness would be driving alone over twenty-four hundred miles each way. She’d wanted to see the countryside of British Columbia and the Yukon Territory. Once in Alaska, she’d be backpacking solo, often for days without cell service. She had a satellite phone, she’d reassured everyone.

  “Do you still want to do this?” Marian had asked after the news of Tate’s death. “Aren’t you afraid?”

  Jenness had stopped by Marian’s hut to check on her. Marian was lying on the bed, the clumsy mess of grief all over her face. Jenness was sitting beside her.

  “I’m not afraid,” Jenness had said.

  Marian said, “I’m worried. But I’m also jealous.”

  Jenness, who had been brushing Marian’s hair, paused for a moment and held the brush lightly over Marian’s spine, as gentle as sunlight. “I’ll be okay,” she said.

  Marian was touched by Jenness’s comfort and the closeness she felt with Jenness now. She rolled over and pushed herself to a sitting position, bent her head forward, and unclasped the silver chain with her St. Francis medallion. “I want you to have this,” Marian said, as if this gesture would keep Jenness safe, because the tragedy of Tate’s death still felt entirely too close. She held the chain around Jenness’s neck, the medallion falling just above the neckline of Jenness’s top.

  And Jenness asked Marian if she was sure, and Marian said of course, and Jenness said how grateful she was. “You’re going to be okay,” Jenness said. “You know that. You’re going to get through this.”

  “I know,” Marian said.

  Within a week, the group had a text message from Jenness. She’d made it safely to Alaska. And she’d continued to check in every few days, as she’d promised.

  * * *

  • • •

  Beside the framed photo of Kesugi Ridge was a basket filled with different-colored yarns and a variety of knitting needles. Marian sat on the quilted bed covering and thought of Jenness with her long braid and her cup of tea, propped up in her bed with her knitting, or on the sofa in the main house when Lyle and Trainer and Marian and Jenness had watched The Return of the Jedi. Marian reached for the basket and brought it closer, and was surprised by the weight of it. She wrapped her fingers around the soft spun wool that reminded her of the scarf Jenness had knitted Marian for her birthday. With Tate now gone, Marian wondered if she and Jenness were friends, and Marian almost felt sorry for herself because she realized how few close friends she had.

  While lost in that thought, her hand sank deeper into the brightly colored skeins and touched something hard. Marian wrapped her hand around the stock of a gun and lifted the gun out of the basket, and when she did several needles fell onto the floor and clinked against each other, the noise startling Marian, who still felt jumpy. She held the nine-millimeter pistol in front of her. She’d fired one like this before. She’d grown up around people who owned guns, including her uncle. And yet given her current setting, the handgun felt severe. The Den was university property. Guns were not allowed on the premises, and only on one study in the Svalbard archipelago had a handler been allowed to carry a firearm. Marian released the magazine and found that it was fully loaded, and immediately felt something cold like shock. She wondered what Jenness had been up to, and whether she’d had the gun because she was afraid, and if she was afraid, should Marian be afraid also? Jenness would not have been able to bring the gun with her over the border on her trip to Alaska, Marian knew. The handlers weren’t even allowed to travel into Canada with cans of pepper spray. Instead, they had to purchase bear spray after they’d crossed the border.

  Marian reinserted the magazine, pressed her palm against it hard until the magazine snapped into place, and returned the gun to the basket. She picked up the needles from the floor and returned them as well. Then she stood from the bed and smoothed out the quilted comforter.

  She had not closed the desk drawer all the way. When she tried to shut it, the drawer jammed. She tugged it open to realign it, shifting the contents inside, and noticed a piece of paper with what appeared to be some sort of login information: gator, K9Con, WU1032. Jenness had added Marian as an administrator to the social media accounts before she’d left. This login key did not match what Marian already had. And Gator was the name of a dog who had worked with Lyle for years before Lyle had been promoted from handler to program coordinator. Marian felt that electric jolt of adrenaline. She memorized the information, hopeful that she had just stumbled upon access to Lyle’s computer and the program’s network.

  11

  FROM NICK SHEPARD’S FILE

  VICTIM PORTRAIT #2

  Erin Parker

  Erin Parker was from Greenwood, Arkansas. She wore glasses and talked with a lisp and a Southern twang. She was a large girl, with a solid build, which she’d inherited from a man whom she’d never known. She had quit high school when she was sixteen to work as a cashier at Walmart, and by the time she was twenty had remained at the same job and still lived at home.

  Her mom charged her fifty dollars a week for rent. Erin didn’t mind. Her mom had it hard. Hadn’t been with a man, as far as the girl knew, since Erin was born. It was the fact that her mom was beautiful that the girl minded the most. Why couldn’t Erin have come out looking like her mom? Instead she’d come out with big feet and hands and a freckled face like her dad.

  Erin had a picture of her father. He was leaning against a metallic gold Firebird. He had bulky arms that were crossed over his broad chest. His red hair was cut short. His eyes were green. He wore a navy T-shirt and blue jeans, and the kind of steel-toe boots Erin sold at Walmart.

  Erin learned that her father’s name was Owen and that he’d been visiting from Montana when Erin was conceived, but that was all that Erin knew, and all her mother had chosen to tell her.

  Nancy Parker was hard and sad and strong, and if she weren’t so beautiful with long brown hair that was almost black and clear blue eyes and lean hips that defied the fact that she’d ever borne a child, the girl might have stood up to her mom and demanded to know more. But all those ingredients, and the kind of sadness that felt like it just might be because she had a daughter in the world, made Erin shy away from her mom, and in some ways want to be just like her.

  “Don’t get pregnant,” her mother would tell her, even though Erin had never been on a date. But she thought about men. She liked the ones in Greenwood who wore working boots and blue jeans and rough flannel shirts, who’d ask her for a pack of Marlboros. When she got o
ff work, she’d think about those men. She’d imagine them at jobs in the woods or on farms, fixing trucks, driving tractors, or cutting up trees with a chain saw. She’d think about running away with one of them, of living on his farm or in his cabin in the woods.

  Erin’s only friend was a boy named Jeffrey who worked in the garden center. She thought he might have a crush on her, but he was shorter than she was, and he wore skateboard shoes, and sometimes he had acne. They ate lunch together most days, and played video games in the electronics section on their breaks. On her birthday, when she turned nineteen, he gave her a nickel-plated necklace with an opal pendant. On her next birthday he gave her a ring.

  They were in the break room when Erin told him she was moving to Montana.

  “You’ll never find him,” Jeffrey said. “You don’t even have his last name.”

  “I know that,” she’d said.

  “Then why are you going?”

  “It’s hard to explain.” And she thought about words like hope and love. “Because I want to do something different with my life.”

  When Erin got off the plane in Kalispell, she took a cab to the Walmart, where she’d already lined up a job, and after work, she pulled her suitcase behind her to a furnished apartment only five blocks away.

  A man named Owen worked in the sporting goods section. He’d never been to Arkansas and was too old to be Erin’s father. Sometimes Erin would have dinner with the man and his wife in their two-story home. On her breaks, instead of playing video games, she would hang out with Owen. When the two of them weren’t busy, he would teach her things about hiking and camping. He showed her how to set up a tent and roll up a sleeping bag into a stuff sack and read a trail map.

  By the summer, Erin had gotten good at hitching a ride to places she wanted to go, such as Glacier National Park, or the Flathead County Animal Shelter, where she volunteered twice a week and walked the dogs. Owen would worry about her, but she assured him that she was careful, that she was a good judge of character. Mostly she caught rides with women, or guys who looked more interested in hiking than committing a crime.