“How old was he?” Nick asked.
“Middle teens, fifteen or sixteen.”
Another teacher said Nick should contact the elementary school.
“Anyone in particular?”
“Yes. Naomi Bartlett. She’s retired now. Used to teach sixth grade. Let me get you her number.”
So far what Nick was hearing was an assortment of minor events and details that on their own were innocuous enough but collectively pointed to unpredictable behavior.
Then he called the sixth-grade teacher.
“It may have been almost thirty years ago, but I’ll never forget that child. Such a shame.”
“What happened?” Nick asked.
“His fifth-grade teacher molested him. He was in my class the year after. I was supposed to keep an eye on him, let the school counselor know how he was adjusting. He was a quiet child. I never had any trouble from him.”
“His teacher was female?” Nick asked.
“Yes. At first they were just friendly. She would ask him to stay after school. She would help him with his homework. Then she started taking him places, to movies in other towns. She’d buy him gifts. She bought gifts for his family. Teachers were getting suspicious. In the investigation she admitted to touching the boy inappropriately and having him fondle her breasts. She said he made her feel beautiful. Can you believe it?”
“These incidents occurred in the classroom?” Nick asked.
“In the classroom and at her house when her husband wasn’t home.”
“Jesus,” Nick said.
“She went to prison. The school tried to keep things quiet for the boy’s sake, but you know how things go. At least it never went to trial. The case was settled out of court. She served five years.”
“Not long enough.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
* * *
• • •
When Nick was working on the Stillwater cases, he’d told authorities that the killer was in his twenties or thirties with above-average intelligence and possibly some postsecondary education. He had a job that took him into secluded, forested areas. His vehicle was very important to him, and he spent hours cruising back roads, giving himself a keen sense of the lay of the land.
Nick also believed the killer had been humiliated sexually at some point as a child, by a female who was close to him, most likely a mother or older sister or an aunt. This deep shame would have created some kind of sexual dysfunction for the killer, making him incapable of any real intimacy. Sex would have been seen as an act of dominance but also an act in which the killer experienced confusion between that dominance and his hostile feelings toward women. But Nick said that the humiliation would not really be a question of what had happened as much as how the killer chose to process it and what he chose to believe. For every killer who had been abused, there were tens of thousands of other persons, maybe more, who had been abused also, but had not grown up to be killers.
In the Stillwater murders, the perpetrator did not need to have intercourse with his victims for the murders to be considered sexual homicides. The sexual component was defined in terms of power. He took ownership of each of the women, he terrorized them, he humiliated them by having them take off their clothes, and he destroyed them. The attacks were sexual because of the killer’s predatory nature, and they were hostile acts of aggression and violence against women.
As a child, the killer had learned to survive in a world he could not trust by dissociating from his feelings, and as a result he could come across as having a calm and in-control demeanor. But beneath the surface the killer would be harboring fantasies of revenge in which he would reverse the roles of what had been done to him.
Nick had even gone a step further to say that the killer would blame the victim for her own fate as another means of establishing his power over her, of degrading and humiliating her. Ultimately, in the killer’s mind, the woman was at fault for being the weaker sex, for being vulnerable, for putting herself in a dangerous situation.
Additionally, Nick had said that the killer would have been close to his mother growing up but would have resented his dependency on her and her inability to protect him from the humiliation he had experienced. He possessed some voyeuristic tendencies such as viewing pornography, stalking women, and looking in windows.
Tate fit Nick’s profile of the Stillwater killer, without question. Nick reminded himself that no profiler and no profile ever caught a killer. Bundy was stopped for erratic driving. Joel Rifkin was stopped because he had a taillight out and there was a body in the bed of his pickup. The profiler’s goal was to narrow the field, to provide a focus for the investigation. And yet, were Tate still alive, Nick believed Tate would have been a person of interest.
PART TWO
I wanted to destroy her because of what she represented . . . a pretty girl, a threat to me, to my masculinity, and she was a child of God, God’s creation.
—DAVID BERKOWITZ, “SON OF SAM”
15
April 2017
MARIAN
The Den, Montana
The group’s work in Alberta had wrapped up at the end of March. The staff had been back at The Den for two weeks now, cutting and stacking firewood for the huts, exercising the dogs, restocking supplies, and training the dogs on their next target samples. Marian found it remarkable that a dog could be trained on a new species in as little as three days.
Tate would be leaving in three weeks for the wolf project, which would continue until the end of July and would take him into some of the densest forest terrain in the Colville and Kaniksu National Forests, where most of Washington’s wolf population—approximately seventy in number—lived, as well as into parts of southeastern British Columbia. The purpose of the study was to determine the impact wolves were having on other species, particularly deer and elk and the endangered woodland caribou. Tate would be working with Ranger, a three-year-old shepherd mix who was new to the program and who was in need of reinforcement from a veteran handler.
The bighorn sheep study that Marian had been assigned to would run from the first of July and into August. She would be working with both Arkansas and Yeti, rotating the dogs each day because of the desert heat. As with the wolf study, her work in Utah would involve one team. During the interim, as was customary for handlers between projects, she would work with the dogs, help with communications, and perform odd jobs around The Den.
* * *
• • •
It was the fourteenth of April, Marian’s twenty-seventh birthday. Marian had spent the afternoon with Liz, who had also been offered a full-time position. They’d taken Lyle’s truck into the forest to look for deadfall in groves of aspen and birch and had cut firewood for the huts. They’d brought a plastic sled with them, the kind hunters use, to carry the wood to the truck. Liz talked to Marian about her boyfriend, who was working on his doctoral degree in biophysics at the University of Washington, and Marian felt encouraged that her relationship with Tate could work out, despite the distance that would soon come between them.
That night, Marian had plans with Tate to go out to dinner. As she was getting ready she had a text message from Jeb: Happy birthday! Hope it is a good one. California is better than muskeg. Drop me a line when you have time or come visit.
At the end of the study, Jeb had left the cold and the rest of the orienteers and handlers and moved to Riverside, California. He was currently living with four other guys and working as a bartender, but in the fall he would start classes at UC Riverside as a fully funded graduate student. “They liked my life experiences,” Jeb told her. “They said I have a lot to write about.” The two of them had celebrated over a game of pool and an upside-down cake the consistency of pudding, which Marian had attempted to make in the kitchen of the trailer where she’d been staying.
Marian texted Jeb back. She was happy for him, she
said, and maybe one day he’d write about a bunch of dogs in the tundra, and they should catch up soon, and she would give him a call.
In the small closet in Marian’s hut was a pair of Laredo cowboy boots with turquoise threading that she’d bought when she was working in Texas. She’d never worn the cowboy boots. The weather had been too warm on South Padre Island, and the weather had been too cold in the oil sands in Alberta. But now it was April in northwestern Montana, where lawns were turning green and sidewalks were clear, and the snow had all but melted in the hills surrounding Whitefish, and Marian wanted to wear something other than hiking boots or gum boots on her night out with Tate. Hanging in Marian’s closet, aside from jeans and a fleece vest and a Thinsulate jacket, was a white silk blouse that Marian’s mother had given her for Christmas that still had the tags from Kohl’s in Grand Rapids.
Marian dressed in a pair of stretch jeans and her cowboy boots and her silk shirt, then brushed out her long hair and swept it over her shoulders. She didn’t have makeup, so she dabbed Vaseline onto her lips. Then she grabbed her black fleece jacket from the back of her door and left her hut. The sky had that end-of-the-day glow to it, the remaining light fending off the cold for now.
Tate was leaning against the passenger side of his vehicle when she got to the parking area, or the gravel pit, as the handlers called it, and the first thing she noticed was his black leather jacket, and then his long legs in what looked like new jeans, crossed at the ankles. He was smiling demurely, and his beard had been trimmed, and as Marian stepped closer he stood away from the vehicle and took her hand and kissed it. “You look beautiful,” he said. Marian blushed, and he let go of her hand and hugged her, and she wrapped her arms tightly around his waist. He didn’t smell of diesel oil and sweat, or of Arkansas or Ranger or any of the dogs, but of leather and wood smoke and the faint scent of soap, making the cool spring air taste sweet.
Tate opened the door for her. Any loose gear had been moved to the back. The cup holders were empty and had been wiped clean; the floors and seats had been vacuumed; the dashboard was free of dust. He had made reservations at The Lodge at Whitefish Lake, and he hoped she was hungry, and she said she was.
They were seated by a fire and had a nice view of the lake, and Marian would occasionally look out the window at the lake, which had only recently thawed, until the sun dropped over the mountains, and the lake and the sky became indistinguishable in the dark, and all that was visible was her own reflection and the twinkle of lights from properties across the water, but mostly Marian looked at Tate. They ate jumbo shrimp and bread and salad and sirloin steaks and drank a bottle of Shiraz. They talked about their jobs and their upcoming assignments and soon moved on to bigger things like the ISIS attack in Kabul and the conservative dissent in the Vatican, and though Tate said he wasn’t Catholic, for the most part, he liked the pope.
Marian was lulled by the candlelight and the fire and the live acoustic music that had begun to play. She ordered the crème brûlée and Tate ordered the chocolate decadence, and before their desserts were served he moved his chair closer to her so that he was now sitting to her left, with only the table’s corner between them. He put his right hand on her leg, with his fingers against the inside of her thigh. “You’re beautiful, you’re intelligent, you’re exceptional,” he told her. “And I know you keep working every day to be that.” And then with his left hand, he traced the front of her neck to just past her collarbone, until the weight of his fingers tugged lightly against the first fastened button, and he told her that his relationship with her was the fullest he had ever known. “You’re the whole package, Marian. I truly adore you and love you,” he said. “You are my all. A-L-L, all.”
Marian was about to respond, but the server was now standing beside them with their desserts, and the young man set the dishes in front of them, and would they like anything else, coffee or tea, and Marian shook her head and Tate said they were good, and Marian brought her hand to her face, and her freckles felt hot, and the server walked away, and Marian said, “I love you, too.”
After dinner they sat in Tate’s vehicle outside the restaurant. Tate held Marian’s hand and said he hoped it would fit. And Marian said, “What?” And he said, her birthday present. Then he brought his other hand out of his coat pocket and slid a gold signet ring onto Marian’s third finger. The ring was too large, so Marian switched it to her index finger and held it up to her face, where she saw the image of a compass. She told him it was beautiful, and he said it was so she could find her way back to him when their work took them apart.
* * *
• • •
The stones along the path to the huts glowed white and the ground was soft, and Marian was trying not to trip from her own giddiness and the wine, and she and Tate walked with their arms wrapped around each other tightly and their hips squeezed against each other, which only made their going along the path even more cumbersome. She tried hard not to laugh, because she did not want to draw attention from the others, but Tate told her they were all down at the main house, she had nothing to worry about, and he was laughing and calling her funny girl. And once they were far enough up the hill, away from the reach of any lights, Tate grabbed Marian by the hips and swung her around and kissed her with more fervor than he had ever kissed her before, teeth and lips against each other, and a groan in the back of Marian’s throat, Tate’s fingers sliding underneath her blouse, callused and cool against her skin, Marian hooking a leg around Tate’s thigh to pull him closer, her hands grabbing onto the back pockets of his jeans, and his legs so firmly planted on the ground that she knew she would have fallen over if it weren’t for him. “I love you, Tate. I love you,” she said. And he picked her up and carried her over his shoulder and walked the remaining distance to her hut.
She told him the combination from her perch. He punched in the number and ducked when he carried her inside, then shut the door. Tate slid Marian down his chest and before her feet had touched the floor, she and Tate were at it again, mouths and hips and limbs, and the full length of their bodies strained and pressed together. Tate fumbled for the light switch, because he wanted to see her, he said, and when the light came on, he stared at her, looked at her shirt that was two buttons undone to the south and her cowboy boots, and her jeans, which were slippery with desire. He laid her on the bed, slowing their lovemaking to a deliberate pace, and began to undress her. He pulled off her boots and her socks and set them on the floor and unfastened her jeans and removed them as well. And then Tate asked Marian to take off her shirt and the rest of her clothing, and when she did, he took the shirt from her and held it to his face and gazed upon her body.
Perhaps after this night their lovemaking would go back to the way it had been, like that of two people who’d known each other for a hundred years, whose bodies by rote had become ever familiar, the two of them finding each other in the dark on his small bed, him on top, and the quiet noises they made, Tate lighting the candle for her when she would get up to dress or to relieve herself outside before climbing back in his bed. And Marian had understood all of this as tenderness, because really, she had never known anything else.
But this night, with the light on, Tate’s breathing had sounded hungry, and his orgasm wild, and when they were finished and their bodies were slick with sweat and began to chill in the cool room, Tate said he would build a fire and Marian saw him naked in front of the stove, his body supple and muscular and taut. He climbed into bed and sat against the headboard, and asked Marian to sit between his legs and lean her back on his chest. He stroked her hair and her shoulders. He ran his hands down the front of her neck and over her rib cage and breasts. Then he laid his arm across her, just beneath her chin, and Marian could feel the thudding of his heartbeat against her skin.
Tate’s clothes were next to the bed. He leaned over and reached for his coat, searched through the pockets, and pulled out his phone. Marian still had her back against Tate’
s chest and her hands on top of his legs. Tate called his voice mail. Then he followed a set of prompts and held the phone out in front of Marian as he entered the four digits for her birthday. He talked about the miles that would soon come between them. “I want you to know you can always trust me. You can check my voice mail anytime.” Tate then set the passcode on his phone to her birthday as well. “I swear to you, Marian, I have nothing to hide.”
16
PRESENT
August 2017
MARIAN
The Den, Montana
Every night for the past week, Marian had sat propped in her bed with her laptop, drinking from a quart-size thermos of coffee and combing through every file from the program’s Archives folder, rarely falling asleep before three or four. And each time she heard a branch snap or the wind tousle a leaf or the boards in her hut moan or an animal skitter up a tree, her body flinched and her heart beat crazy. She was running on too much adrenaline and too much caffeine, ingesting multiple cups of coffee during the day as well, just to keep going. She’d practically memorized six years’ worth of the program’s studies, identifying Tate as a handler on multiple projects, and yet none of those studies involving Tate coincided with any of the dates the Stillwater victims went missing. “Tate, where were you? Talk to me,” she’d pleaded out loud. And she’d prayed to God for answers, literally gotten on her knees.
And then there was her most recent call from Nick, where he’d told her Tate had been sexually molested by his fifth-grade teacher, and Marian had literally been aghast and had hardly slept at all that night. And all of this was made worse by the fact that piece by terrible piece Tate was beginning to fit Nick’s profile of the killer. And then there was this: Marian had loved this deeply flawed man, had believed they might have a future together. And now every part of that was disintegrating in front of her. Sure, she’d been naïve and blind and all those pithy things a wise person could tell her, but there were minutes during that past week when she didn’t care about any of those pithy things; she just wanted to crawl back in time and into Tate’s arms before any of this had happened. She wanted to live her moments with Tate all over again, because most of those moments had been supremely good, intoxicating, really, like nothing she’d ever known before.
The Last Woman in the Forest Page 15