The Last Woman in the Forest

by Diane Les Becquets

  It was the third Thursday in July and she had the day off. Owen had told her about a trail along Stryker Ridge, just north of Whitefish. Erin set out that morning from her apartment, as she often did, with her backpack on her shoulders and her thumb in the air. A man driving a truck pulled over. He said he was a fishing guide. He could take her as far as the Stillwater Bar. Erin said that was far enough. She could get another ride from there.

  The man pulled into the empty parking lot of the Stillwater Bar about ten that morning. As Erin was climbing out of the truck, her cell phone rang. She thanked the man for the ride, then went to retrieve her phone. She had a missed call from Jeffrey. They hadn’t talked in over a week. Erin walked to the side of the bar and sat down in the dirt. She leaned against the brown siding and called Jeffrey back.

  “I was just leaving you a voice message,” he said.

  They talked about their jobs and employees Erin still knew from the Walmart in Greenwood. They talked about the video games that Erin no longer played.

  After almost twenty minutes into the call, Jeffrey said, “You’ve changed. You seem different.”

  “I feel different,” Erin said.

  “Don’t you miss it?”

  “I miss you and my mom, but no, I don’t miss it. I like it here.” She went on to tell Jeffrey that she was getting in good shape. “My hips aren’t as big, and my legs feel really toned.”

  “You don’t have big hips,” Jeffrey said. “And I always liked your legs.”

  Erin was about to say something else, but then she paused. “That’s strange,” she said.

  “What?”

  Erin spoke again, “Hold on a minute.”

  A white Jeep Wrangler had just pulled into the parking lot. It turned around as if it were going to head back onto the road in the same direction. But then its brake lights went off, and the driver’s-side door opened.

  “I’m going to go,” she told Jeffrey. “I’ll call you later.”

  A man climbed out of the vehicle. “You okay?” he yelled.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” Erin had already stood up and was putting her phone away.

  “Do you need a ride somewhere?”

  “You wouldn’t by chance be heading up toward Stryker?”

  “I am if you are,” the man said.

  The man asked a lot of questions on the ride: Did she hike a lot? Where was she from? “Not often we get a Southern accent all the way out here,” he said. He wanted to know what the Ozarks were like and why she had moved. And when she talked he seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say. “You’re a courageous woman,” he told her. “You should feel proud of yourself for making such an important decision. You’ve no doubt got an exciting future ahead of you.”

  The man was older than Erin but not by too much. He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and hiking boots and he wasn’t wearing a ring, and Erin felt good about herself as the two of them exchanged banter.

  “What about you? Do you hike a lot?” she asked.

  The man told Erin he’d just gotten back from a thru-hike.

  Erin wasn’t familiar with that term, so she asked the man about it.

  “It’s where you go from one end of the continent to another. I started in Mexico and hiked all the way to Canada. It’s called the Continental Divide Trail. You ever hear of it?”

  Erin told him she hadn’t.

  “Have you ever seen the Continental Divide?”

  “No,” Erin said.

  “Well, now, that’s something you should see.”

  The man parked his vehicle at the entry for Stryker Ridge. Erin removed her phone from her pants pocket.

  “Why don’t I get a picture of you at the trailhead,” the man said.

  They climbed out of the vehicle and walked over to the trail. Erin handed the man her phone and posed next to a sign that read: Warning! Grizzly bear habitat!

  “Did you bring bear spray?” the man asked.

  “It’s in my pack,” Erin said. The bear spray had come with a holster that Erin usually attached to her belt or the shoulder strap on her pack. She was about to remove her pack and retrieve the holster and spray when the man asked her if she’d like company on the trail. He didn’t have anywhere he had to be, and he’d really enjoyed talking with her. It would be nice to get to know her better. Besides, people weren’t supposed to hike alone in bear country, he said. His gear was in the back of his Jeep, and he could bring the bear spray.

  He seemed legitimately concerned about Erin hiking alone, and hadn’t Owen told her that some of his best friends were those people he’d met on the trail? Any concern she may have had she quickly dismissed.

  They hiked for almost a mile and didn’t see anyone else. Then the man told her about a hot spring due east of the trail and that it would be a good spot for them to stop for lunch. Though Erin had never thought of herself as attractive, she’d been feeling good about herself lately, and she wondered if the man might be interested in her.

  She said the hot spring sounded like a good idea and she followed the man onto a game trail that led through a forested area of western red cedar. She listened to the man tell her stories of his hiking adventures. He told her stories about the trees, too. At one point he picked up a large strip of cedar bark. He took out his knife and scraped the inside layer of the bark until he had roughed up the fibers into what looked like a fuzzy ball of thread.

  “Even if it’s raining,” the man said, “you can start a fire with this. Some of the best tinder around.”

  Then the man stepped aside and let Erin walk ahead of him. “We don’t have much farther,” he said. “Just keep following the game trail.”

  As they continued, the air seemed to change, something electric like the stillness before a storm. The man had become quiet, and Erin began to wonder if something was wrong, and her heart beat funny, as if it were skipping a beat. “Maybe you should take the lead,” she said. But in the second she stepped off the trail to let the man pass, he pressed in from behind her and wrapped his left arm across her chest, and the blade of the knife grazed the side of her neck, and Erin’s thoughts were reeling and she opened her mouth to scream, but the man’s right hand clasped over her face, covering her mouth, and she gagged on the taste of his sweat and the bark resin on the skin of his palm.

  “Didn’t your mother tell you never to talk to strangers?”

  Erin’s voice still struggled to get out. Tears stung her eyes.

  “You’re going to do exactly as I say.”

  Her head jerked forward in a nod.

  He began to loosen his grip. “Easy does it,” he said.

  Erin leapt forward and ran fast and hard. Her pack pounded on her back. She unclasped the straps, all the while her legs still pumping, moving deftly over debris and limbs. Her pack caught on a branch and jerked her backward momentarily until the pack slid from her arms. She could feel the man closing in on her, could hear his laughter. No! Oh, God, no!

  And then he was on top of her and her face dug into the ground and her mouth filled with pine needles and dirt. She could not move. The man’s arm was braced across the back of her neck.

  “Please!” Erin cried.

  She rocked her hips back and forth until she was able to free her right arm and reach it over her head. She grabbed hold of the man’s neck, dug her fingers into his skin.

  He grunted and shoved her that much harder into the ground. Her face began to bleed and burn.

  “You’re going to do exactly as I tell you,” he said.

  Erin tried to nod beneath the weight of his arm. The flesh of her face caught on something beneath her and made her wince.

  Slowly he climbed off Erin, all the while holding the knife close to her face. “Take off your clothes,” he said.

  Erin sat up, dirt and blood and tears streaming down her face. She remo
ved her fleece shirt and let the garment fall onto her lap.

  “That’s it,” the man said. “Now, take off the rest.”

  Erin pulled her T-shirt over her head. She was wearing a sports bra. Its snug elastic cut into the extra flesh that she’d yet to lose. She stood up and began to work the bra over her hips, feeling as though her legs would crumple beneath her.

  “Everything,” the man said.

  She removed her boots and socks. The pine needles felt like hot embers beneath her feet. Then she unbuckled her pants, slid them down her legs, and stepped out of them. Her lip continued to bleed. Her teeth were coated in the gritty mixture of spit and dirt and blood.

  “Underwear, too,” the man said, because she was still wearing the new boyfriend briefs she had bought herself. She slid them down and stepped out of them also, and when she did, her foot got caught on the elastic. She toppled over and cried that much harder. She curled up into a fetal position and rocked herself back and forth against the ground.

  “Get up,” the man said.

  Erin continued to cry. “I can’t.”

  “Get up!”

  She pushed herself onto her hands and knees, and then to a standing position, blood and snot and tears dripping from her chin.

  The man stepped toward her slowly. He traced her arm with the fingers of his right hand. He moved behind her. His fingers then traveled over her abdomen. His other arm reached across her collarbone. Using his chin, he moved her hair out of the way. His voice and breath were against her ear. “Like I said, didn’t your mother tell you never to talk to strangers?”

  In that second Erin held in her mind the image of the beautiful Nancy Parker. Erin’s chest rose as she gulped in air, as a sob racked against her rib cage. The man’s arm tightened around her neck, and there were Jeffrey and Owen and a father whom she’d never known, and her legs kicked beneath her in a frantic rush, and oh, God, the pressure in her head. Oh, God, she couldn’t breathe.

  12

  PRESENT

  August 2017

  MARIAN

  The Den, Montana

  Without remote access on her laptop, the only way Marian could log on to the program’s network was from Lyle’s desktop. Lyle typically worked for at least a couple of hours each afternoon, training the dogs in the backfield of the property. The day after Marian had come upon the login information in Jenness’s hut, and Lyle had gone outside to begin the afternoon training, Marian sat at his desk, slumping low in his chair so as not to be seen through the window. He’d left his computer on and the screen saver was rotating through photos of the program’s dogs. When Marian moved the mouse, the login page came up. She entered gator, and felt wildly excited when Lyle’s desktop appeared. She quickly identified the icon for the program’s network on his desktop screen, double-clicked the icon, and was brought to a second login page. She felt a buzz in her fingertips, that jittery feeling she got when she’d drunk too much coffee. Lyle could come back to the house early. Trainer could interrupt her, and here she’d be, surreptitiously trying to access a network that Lyle had not given her access to. The windows in the office were open. She would have to listen carefully for sounds of Lyle or Trainer approaching. She typed in the username and password. The network loaded. She couldn’t believe it. She was in. And there, in front of her, was a list of program folders, including one titled Archives.

  Marian opened the Archives folder, where she found another folder named Research Projects. The latter contained information on the program’s field studies going back more than six years, which would cover the time span when the last three Stillwater victims had gone missing. Marian decided to work backward. She ran a search for studies that took place in May two years ago, when Melissa Marsh had disappeared. Three projects came up. Marian tried to narrow her search by typing in Tate’s name. No luck. She began opening documents, reading through reports and summaries from the three projects until her eyes blurred, but was not finding any mention of Tate. She would need to look through the files at large, and there were hundreds of them. She simply didn’t have enough time. She would have to copy the files onto a flash drive and go through them at her leisure on her laptop.

  From the open window above the desk, she heard Trainer and Lyle talking. She logged out of the network, then went into preferences and locked the computer so that the screen saver would show up instantly. She crouched out of the chair and moved over to the small workstation on the other side of the room, where her laptop was plugged in. She would bring a flash drive with her tomorrow and copy the Archives folder. She wished Lyle had been more specific regarding the projects Tate had worked on. He’d mentioned a moose study in the Adirondacks, the wind farm study in Illinois, and then there was Tanzania, a trip Lyle had made with Tate, for the purpose of studying the effects of poaching on African elephants. But Lyle had given no order or dates to any of the studies. Tate’s ten-year history with the program felt like one enormous Hidden Pictures puzzle in a Highlights magazine. And yet everything about this search felt urgent. Nick was ill. Marian was unsure how long he’d be available to assist her. Already she felt guilty for taking up his time, though he’d willingly committed himself to helping her as long as he could, had even seemed to enjoy it. And any day Lyle might assign Marian to a project, and she’d enthusiastically jump all in. She would have to work through the files in the evenings. If Tate had an alibi, she was determined to find it.

  Lyle would be returning to the office any minute. Marian occupied herself on her laptop. She saw that she had a new message on Facebook. After Marian and Nick’s Skype session had ended the night before, Marian had reached out to Holly Fontaine, Tate’s college girlfriend. Holly had now written back and said she’d be happy to talk and was glad Marian had contacted her. She’d heard of Tate’s death through a mutual friend of hers and Tammy’s and said how sorry she was. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. She said she’d be available that evening if Marian wanted to give her a call, and included her telephone number.

  * * *

  • • •

  Instead of eating with Trainer and Lyle that evening, Marian told them she was going to make a sandwich to bring back to her hut because she had some more work to do. She propped her pillows behind her on her bed and gave Holly a call.

  “Every day I remember something we did or something he said,” Holly told Marian when they spoke. “This must be terrible for you.”

  Marian asked Holly how long she and Tate had dated, and could she talk about what Tate was like then, because there was so much Marian didn’t know. “We didn’t have enough time,” Marian said.

  Holly and Tate had met at orientation their first year of college. They’d dated throughout most of that year. “He was charming and sweet,” Holly said. “He hadn’t had much experience dating, and he could be a little awkward at times, which I found endearing.” She talked about some of their dates, to movies and to a college dance. “He didn’t know how to kiss. Like I said, he didn’t have much experience. But we worked on that. To be honest, the relationship was mostly platonic. Tate was shy in that way.”

  “Did he ever talk to you about his childhood?” Marian asked.

  “You know, he really didn’t talk much about it. He seemed mostly preoccupied with his studies, doing well in school. I remember him saying he was going to be a millionaire by the time he was thirty, that he was going to buy some land and a bunch of cattle and go into business for himself. He could be like that. He had a lot of big dreams.”

  “How was it when the two of you broke up?” Marian asked.

  “I was young. I wanted to date other people.”

  Marian was surprised. “I didn’t realize you were the one who had broken things off. How did Tate take it?”

  “I don’t think he took it well. There was something strange that happened. I can’t believe I’m telling you this. Maybe he was just really upset, but after we’d broken u
p, there was this night I was in my room. I looked up and I saw him staring at me through the window. It scared the daylights out of me. I was living on the first floor in a dorm, and visiting hours were over, so I opened the window, and Tate said he’d just wanted to talk to me. A few days later I spotted him walking across campus. I think that was the last time I saw him.”

  And Marian felt the same eerie disturbance as the night before when speaking with Nick, and suddenly she realized that Tate’s arrest for looking in someone else’s window would have happened before he and Holly had broken up, but if Holly was aware of the arrest, she didn’t mention it.

  “Did the two of you ever talk again?” Marian said.

  “I sent him a note when I heard about his mom getting sick. But, no, we never talked, and he didn’t try to contact me or anything.”

  Holly and Marian spoke about a half hour more. Holly wanted to know about the work Tate had been doing, the trips he had taken, and isn’t it crazy when something like this happens and you feel like you are nineteen again, Holly said. And Marian remembered that Holly was the same age that Tate had been, almost ten years older than Marian was now.

  Marian had heard the melancholy of nostalgia in Holly’s voice, and yet what stayed with Marian after they got off the phone was the image of Tate in Holly’s window, as if Marian were in that exact moment in time, the invisible watcher, and she could see Tate’s eyes through the pane of glass, and she felt something heavy in her chest, like depression, like she’d lost the possibility of anything good.

  There was still at least an hour of sunlight left in the day, soft and glowing. Marian changed into her running clothes because she did not want to remain alone in her hut. She wasn’t sure she felt like running; maybe she would walk. She shook out her arms as she stepped down the hill, and eventually picked up her pace to a jog, and as she turned onto the road, she thought of the morning Tammy had driven out to The Den to collect Tate’s things. Marian had finished exercising the dogs, and upon coming out of the barn she had seen Tate’s vehicle parked next to the main house. Her hand had instinctively gone to her chest and she’d been filled with the strange sensation that she could walk around the vehicle to the passenger side and open the door and climb in. And Tate would return from a death that had never been and the two of them would pack up the dogs and go back to the fields and the woods and the forests and the mountains. And Marian was thinking of this because her love for Tate had felt sweet on that morning almost four weeks ago, her grief still holding on to what was good.