The Last Woman in the Forest

by Diane Les Becquets

  Nick went on to tell Marian that he’d had a call from a friend of Erin Parker’s. “I’ve been mulling over the conversation, and I have to tell you, it’s not sitting right with me. This friend confirmed that Erin was a nail biter. He said she was terribly self-conscious of her hands.”

  The dark corner Marian felt trapped in suddenly became a whole lot tighter. “When Tate described the body, he said the woman had bitten her nails until they’d bled.”

  “Erin’s hands had been severed at the wrists,” Nick reminded Marian. “I’m convinced the killer cut off her hands because he couldn’t stand the sight of them.”

  Marian felt the pressure in her eyes building, her throat constricting with the horror of it all.

  Nick continued. “There’s something else. It may mean nothing to you, but Jeffrey, the young man I’m referencing, gave Erin a ring. He wanted to know if the ring was ever found. To my recollection, it never was.”

  The shadows on the highway from trees as tall as the sky suddenly loomed giant and portentous. “What did it look like?” Marian asked, her voice barely audible. Please, God, Marian thought. Tell me it isn’t the same ring.

  “It was fourteen-karat gold plated. The face of the ring looked like a compass.”

  And God help Marian if she didn’t gasp, and she shook her head slowly, and she was no longer holding the receipts, having already set them aside on the console, and her left hand went instinctively to the ring on the index finger on her right hand, and her eyes went wide like someone who is about to be hit and sees the punch coming, and tears ran down her face—hot, angry tears. Marian tried to pull the ring off, but her hands were still swollen from a day spent hiking at almost seven thousand feet elevation, so that it wouldn’t budge past her knuckle.

  “Marian, what is it?” Nick asked.

  “The ring,” Marian said. “I have it. Tate gave it to me for my birthday. Oh my God, Nick, it has to be the same one. It was too big for my ring finger. I switched it to my index finger instead. You said Erin was a large woman. Her hands would have been bigger than mine. Do you realize what you’re telling me?” And Marian continued to pull at the ring, the metal digging into the flesh of her finger.

  “Send me a picture when you get back tonight. I’ll see if the young man can identify it.”

  And Marian said, “Hold on. I can take a picture right now.” Marian held her hand over the center of the steering wheel and took a photo of the ring. Then she emailed the picture to Nick. “You should have it now,” she said. Nick told her he would check his email when they got off the phone.

  And he said, “Marian, I’m sorry. I know things aren’t stacking up the way you had wanted. There’s nothing that could have prepared you for this.”

  “You believe Tate killed these women,” Marian said, still in disbelief, her emotions trying to catch up with her thoughts, her senses as raw as a gaping wound. “Nick, how did this happen? How could I have been in love with a killer? This is a man I made love to. This is someone I trusted.”

  “The psychopath is a master of manipulation. He mimics the behaviors of others. He studies his victims, and once he chooses that victim, she may have little choice, he is that good. You’re blaming yourself for your vulnerability. That’s exactly what Tate would have wanted you to do. Guys like this have a way of increasing their control by making their targets question themselves. We can be quite effective at punishing ourselves for our perceived sins when what we really need to do is get in touch with our own anger. Your personal world is stacked against you. The culture is stacked against you. Your gender becomes a target you wear on your back. Are you at fault for any of this? Of course not. Maybe it’s past time to be totally pissed off.”

  An idea came to Marian, slowly at first. “I think someone else has been on to Tate,” she said. She told Nick about Jenness. “I found the tracklog, the one that showed the dates coinciding with Lynn-Marie’s disappearance, in Jenness’s hut. She was Tate’s orienteer on the study.” Marian went on to tell Nick about the articles and the pictures on Jenness’s camera. “At first I thought she was jealous, that she had a thing for Tate. She wasn’t jealous. Jenness had been involved with Melissa Marsh. She wasn’t interested in a heterosexual relationship. If anything, she was looking out for me. I’m convinced of it.”

  “Jenness was involved with Melissa?”

  “I don’t think the others knew, but yeah, I found pictures of them. Trainer said Jenness had known one of the victims, that they’d been friends. Emily Marsh said her sister and Jenness had been friends also. But I’m not sure anyone at The Den knew of the romantic connection. Except—”

  “I spoke with Jenness,” Nick said. “I talked with her at great length. She was introduced to me as Jen. I didn’t know she was connected with your program. If we’re talking about the same person, she was working at the same clinic as Melissa.”

  “She took a break from the program for a while. That’s when she worked at the clinic. She started back with the program about a year ago, around the same time Melissa’s body was found.”

  “You were going to say something before I cut you off.”

  “I was saying I’m not sure any of the others knew that Jenness and Melissa were romantically involved, except for Tate. He may have known.” And Marian told Nick about the picture that had been taken of Tate with Jenness and Melissa. “It was in the same folder as the articles,” Marian said.

  “That’s it,” Nick said. “I knew I had seen Tate before. I was speaking with Jenness at her apartment. Tate stopped in to check on her.” Nick explained, “Because each of the Stillwater murders began as a missing-person report, one of the detectives got in touch with me right away, on the off chance these cases were related. I wanted to get a sense of the victim and began talking with the people she’d worked with. When speaking with Jen, or Jenness, I got the sense that she and Melissa were more than friends. I told her that their relationship would eventually come out in the investigation. She admitted then that they’d been involved. They’d only been together a short time, three months at most. They’d been discreet about their involvement because of a rule at the clinic that prohibited employee relationships. We were wrapping up our conversation when Tate stopped by. He was checking in on Jenness, swooped down on her like a knight in shining armor. I shook the guy’s hand and introduced myself, glad the poor girl had someone to look after her.”

  Nick continued, “If Tate was the one who stopped to give Melissa a ride the day she disappeared, he had any number of tactics at his disposal. He could have said one of the dogs was in trouble, or Jenness needed to see her. How long has Jenness worked with your group?”

  “At least six years, not counting the year she worked at the clinic.”

  “Let’s back up for a minute,” Nick said. “I told you not everything about a case is leaked to the public. For example, the green SUV that the witness saw wasn’t leaked for a reason. If the killer found out we had a witness, he’d drive to Timbuktu and trade in his vehicle, or get a paint job. But the family knew, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Jenness found out, as well,” Nick said.

  “Let’s play this out. Tate stopped by to check on Jenness; the two of them talked for a while. She thanked him for coming to see her, walked him out to his vehicle, saw the green loaner. He told her his vehicle was in the shop. She wouldn’t have thought anything of it at the time. Tate was a friend. But something stuck in her craw. Maybe she wondered how he had already heard about Melissa just two days into the search. Maybe other things came to her mind. You mentioned Jenness had been Tate’s orienteer on the bear study. According to the tracklog, he had a window of opportunity. Jenness could have gone looking for him during that window. When he got back, she may have asked him where he’d been and he’d given her some glib answer. Over the years, Jenness could have picked up on the same odd traits you picked up on—things Tate said, moments that felt off, maybe an
empty look on his face where he didn’t seem to be all there. She tried to capture those looks on her camera, analyze his expressions, take pictures of him when he was unaware. A serial killer doesn’t want his photo taken. He might turn up for a group shot, then at the last moment face away from the camera. My take on that is that he not only wants to avoid someone recognizing him, but he wants to prevent someone getting a glimpse of his reptilian eyes—that vacant, vague, nobody’s-home gaze that shows itself from time to time when he isn’t performing.”

  Marian knew the look. She hadn’t seen it often on Tate, but it had been there.

  “Have you talked to Jenness about any of this?” Nick asked.

  Marian said she hadn’t talked to anyone about this except for Nick and that Jenness was in Alaska and was backpacking off the grid.

  “When does she get back?”

  “The first weekend in September.”

  “I think it’s time the two of you talked,” Nick said.

  And then Marian said, “There’s something else. I think Jenness was talking with a reporter about the cases.” Marian told Nick about the notes she’d found in Jenness’s folder, along with the number for Ryan Schulman.

  Nick was familiar with Schulman. “There were a couple of reporters the detectives worked with. Schulman was one of them,” Nick said.

  “And this Schulman, he’s a good guy?” Marian asked. “He’s been emailing me about the program.”

  “From what I know of him, he seems to be a good guy.” Nick said, “Let’s take this good guy Schulman and play out our scenario a step further. Let’s say this reporter talked to Jenness when Melissa went missing, same as I did. Maybe she’d felt an affinity for him. He could have been kind to her, brought her coffee, withheld personal information she shared with him about her and Melissa’s relationship. Schulman gained Jenness’s trust. Over time, Jenness’s suspicions about Tate escalated. She reached out to Schulman for information, for details about the other cases. He could give her the kind of anonymity the detectives wouldn’t be able to guarantee. And she wanted to be sure of her facts before she contacted authorities. She was building up nerve. She may have told Schulman about a person of interest, but even with him she would have been careful. I doubt she would have given away Tate’s name. All the while, she continued to watch Tate closely. She became concerned when the two of you started dating. She’d not wanted to believe that Tate could be the killer, but what if he was? When she’d finally built up enough nerve to go to the authorities, the unthinkable happened. Tate was killed. Given the feelings she’d had for Melissa, she probably thought she should still go to the authorities. But now she had time. She’d make her trip to Alaska and decide on her return. You were no longer in harm’s way.”

  The nighttime temperatures were dropping. Cold drafts filtered in through the windows. Marian sat with one arm pressed snugly below her rib cage as if trying to contain her emotion—anger and fear so thick, she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Everything Nick said made sense. She wished Jenness were back from her trip. She wanted desperately to talk to her.

  Then Marian gathered her words in one deliberate thought; she needed to know. “When I was at your house, you said a serial killer might be in a relationship as a cover-up or as a matter of convenience. If Tate really was the killer, why do you think he pursued a relationship with me?”

  Nick exhaled into the phone, followed by a slow pause. “I’m not going to mince words,” he said. “No matter which way I look at this, I’m convinced you’re one of the lucky ones. The bear that attacked and killed Tate did you a service. I have every reason to believe that if Tate were still alive, you would have been his next victim. He was upping the ante, taking more risks. It was only a matter of time until he acted.”

  Marian’s body hunched forward until her forehead was pressed against the steering wheel. Her left arm dug into her stomach. She was folding like a tent. Big, silent tears ran down her face. “I need you to tell me,” Marian said. “At what point did he decide he was going to kill me?”

  “If I were to profile the victims, you would fit that profile. They were admirable young women, Marian. They were brave and trusting and kind. I have no doubt Tate considered you his next victim from the moment he met you.”

  Marian’s emotions were seething. She bit down hard to gain control. “Then why did he wait so long?” she asked.

  “Like I said, he was upping the ante. With each murder he was taking more risks. And if Tate was the killer, he would have been extending the foreplay, carefully selecting the precise place and circumstances for his next crime, enjoying the fantasy, no doubt having his way with you a thousand times over in his mind.”

  Marian lifted her left hand, raked her fingers through her hair, and sat back in her seat.

  “Marian, are you there?”

  “I’m here,” she said, her voice hoarse and hollow. Her body ached. She gave herself a few seconds. Then she said, “What do we do now? Where do we go from here?”

  “If Jeffrey gives us a positive identification of the ring, at some point we should be in contact with the authorities. There are a couple of detectives I still stay in touch with from time to time. I can reach out to one of them when you’re ready. A dead suspect isn’t someone they’re going to spend a lot of resources on, but if they have enough evidence, they can certainly let the families know. Giving the families a name can go a long way toward closure.”

  The night seemed to stretch on forever. Surely a deputy would be there shortly. And Nick had stayed on the phone with Marian the whole time, had talked her through this big web of a mess, despite his illness, despite being tired, which she could hear in his voice. And Marian said, “Nick, how long?”

  He didn’t grasp what she was asking.

  “I know about the cancer,” she said, because she no longer wanted this piece of knowledge to come between them.

  “Not long,” Nick said.

  27

  FROM NICK SHEPARD’S FILE

  VICTIM PORTRAIT #4

  Melissa Marsh

  Last night after work I drove into Kalispell to the used bookstore. I can spend hours there, especially when J is working the evening shift and I know we won’t be seeing each other. I’ve never written poetry, but I find myself gravitating toward it more and more as I seek inspiration for my drawings. Today was one of those days, and I felt oddly compelled to pull out a collection of poems by Billy Collins, whose work I’d never read before. I didn’t realize Billy Collins had been a poet laureate, which I found out when I opened the book and read this inscription: “For Fred, my choice for poet laureate. Love, Jeanne.”

  I was compelled by the questions the inscription raised: Some woman named Jeanne had loved a man named Fred, who wrote poetry. Was her love unrequited? Is that why Fred had released the book to this used bookstore, because the book held no sentimental value for him? And then I wondered if perhaps Fred had died, and upon the closing of his estate, his books had been donated.

  I was so perplexed by these questions as to the nature of Fred and Jeanne’s relationship that I purchased the collection and asked the owner at the counter if he recalled obtaining this book that, because of its inscription, made me feel incredibly sad. But with the over fifty thousand books in his store’s inventory, he said he did not.

  So I brought the book home, and because I wouldn’t be seeing J that night, I heated up leftover lasagna. I poured a glass of red wine from a bottle J and I had opened the night before. I turned on an Eva Cassidy recording. I’m the one who introduced J to Eva Cassidy’s music. J says there is something melancholy in the young woman’s voice that J finds soothing. While I ate and drank red wine and listened to the music, I read poems randomly from the Billy Collins collection, all the while wondering if Fred had read these poems as well.

  I think this is why I enjoy used books so much. They have previous lives, like old houses, lik
e people. Tonight I felt inspired by the poetry collection, and not because of the poems I read, though I enjoyed them very much, but by the inscription and my curiosity about these two people’s lives.

  These thoughts, along with a second glass of wine, and the fact that I was not going to be seeing J, left me thinking about Polebridge and the hood of a Honda Civic, and growing up in a small town.

  Ally was my first love, though she didn’t know it at the time. I wonder if she knows it now, as if in getting older and looking back on one’s life, we gain the perspective we were too naïve to understand then. She’s moved on from here, as I always knew she would. Though I’d thought she’d end up running a large business in a city like New York or Atlanta or LA, she married a surgeon instead and last year had her second baby. We keep in touch here and there, mostly on birthdays. She lives in Baltimore now.

  Ally and I played basketball together and were competitive to a fault: Which of us would score the most points? Who would make the most rebounds? Who would get the most play time? But when the season was over our senior year, sometime in the spring, and the snow had melted from the roads, one day after school Ally said, “Come on, let’s go for a ride.” We took her Honda Civic, which had seen better days, and drove northwest to Polebridge on that dirt-and-gravel road. We bought huckleberry bread at the mercantile. Then we drove six miles more to Bowman Lake. We sat on the hood of Ally’s car and ate from the loaf of bread, tearing off chunks until the loaf was gone. And we stared out at the lake, the cloud cover so thick it looked like snow. Ally had a scholarship to New York University for the next year. She said she’d wanted to drive to Polebridge and buy huckleberry bread and look out at the lake to remember what she was leaving behind. That’s how it went. Every couple of days we’d drive up to Polebridge, far enough away from town so that Ally could become quiet and remember.