The Last Woman in the Forest

by Diane Les Becquets

  32

  PRESENT

  August 2017

  MARIAN

  Flathead County, Montana

  Marian had to get back to her vehicle, where she’d left her phone. She had to call for help. She could cut through the woods and pick up another trail that would take a couple of miles off her route back to the truck. The dogs were prancing and wanting her to play. Marian sat on the bank of the lake and put on her running shoes, both dogs shaking their coats beside her and Arkansas dropping the wet stick onto Marian’s lap. “Let’s go,” she called to the dogs. And she took off running onto the forest road, and then veered off into the woods to catch up to the trail she could take for a shortcut to her vehicle. She tried to keep her steps measured so as not to stumble in the woods, branches catching her hair and snagging her clothes, and she continued to move with haste, and the dogs leapt and ran alongside her and then ran farther ahead, and stopped occasionally to look back at her.

  Eventually she found the trail and turned right, the dogs now a good fifteen to twenty feet or more in front of her, and Marian began to sprint, and the dogs picked up their speed, as well. She slowed her pace only once to catch her breath, then sprinted again. She knew this trail, knew its curves and inclines and descents. She felt as though a fist were pushing up from her sternum, a mixture of panic and fright. She gauged that she was about a half mile from her vehicle now, and she would get her phone, and she would call the police. But then Yeti veered off the trail and began running due north. “Yeti, no!” Marian called to her, but Yeti didn’t stop. And once off trail, there was deadfall and dense thicket, the kind that covers a bog, and the ground was marshy. Marian could no longer see Yeti. She was now walking briskly, pushing the overgrowth aside, straining to listen for the dog’s bell, which was hard to hear with Arkansas making noise beside her. They were moving parallel to the banks of Logan Creek. Marian finally caught sight of Yeti, whose nose was to the ground, and Yeti’s bell was ringing, and she was whining nervously, and Marian called to her to stay. Yeti continued to whine, never raising her head, until Marian and Arkansas had caught up to her, and Marian saw the badly decomposed body, lying on its side, along the creek bed.

  She screamed when she saw it, and backed away from the body, and called the dogs to her, and Yeti was still whining, and now Arkansas began jumping on Marian and was barking. Marian’s hands and legs and arms were shaking. She told Arkansas to get down. She grabbed hold of both dogs’ collars and got a closer look. And there was the beautiful long braid of dark hair, and oh, God, it couldn’t be, please God, no, and then on the naked corpse Marian saw the St. Francis medallion that she had known so well, the one Marian’s grandfather had given her when she was just ten years old.

  Marian was now crying, and did not know when the tears had come, and she did not want to disturb the area, and yet here she and the dogs were. She had to get to her vehicle. She had to get to her phone. And so she pulled the dogs with her and backed away from Jenness’s body until they were on the trail and she was sure the dogs would stay with her this time, and she kept talking to them. She told them she was going to get help, she told Yeti she was a good girl, she told them how sorry she was, and she continued to cry and talk to the dogs in gasping breaths as she ran the rest of the way on the trail and to the forest road, and up ahead she saw the front of her vehicle.

  Her keys were in the hip pocket of her running tights. She reached for them and unlocked the doors. Then she loaded the dogs in the cargo area inside their travel crates. They continued to whine and Yeti was now barking and both dogs were moving about and scratching at the inside of their kennels. Marian tried to reassure them, but her voice was shaking as much as the rest of her. She told them to stay, even though they were now confined, and she jogged around to the driver’s side and opened the door with haste, and there was her phone. As soon as she picked it up from the console, the screen lit up and she saw that she had two text messages. One was from Trainer, telling her he’d be back around two, and the other was from an unknown number with an Idaho area code. The message was from Nick, who she thought didn’t own a cell phone, but here he was telling her she was in danger, to stay away from The Den, to go someplace safe.

  Marian’s hands were trembling. She opened the glove compartment and took out the gun. She checked to make sure it was still loaded. She needed to call the authorities. She needed to report the location of Jenness’s body. She would then drive to the police department in Whitefish. She would do as Nick said. She would make sure the dogs were safe, as well. Breathe, she told herself. Just breathe, because her hands were still trembling and she wanted to be able to use the gun if she had to. She dialed 911. She was about to hit send. She looked around her vehicle, then across the clearing and along the woods. Jenness was dead; her body was beside the creek bed. Four other women were dead, also. The Stillwater killer was still out there. Oh, God, she thought, Jenness was dead.

  And again she reminded herself that Tate was left-handed. The bruises were on his right arm. His face had been mauled. Marian had hiked part of the Pacific Northwest Trail that abutted the area where the bear attack had occurred. Two hikers had seen Tate the morning of his death. And oh, God, it couldn’t be, she thought. Tate had killed the four Stillwater victims; she was sure of it. The boy Jeffrey had identified the ring. Tate had described one of the victims’ bodies to Marian. He had never been in Norway. He was at the same convenience store as Lynn-Marie Pontante the day she went missing. He’d driven a green loaner vehicle. Melissa Marsh was picked up by a guy in a green SUV. And now Jenness was dead. And something cold and dark sank into Marian’s body, and into her arms, her legs, her hands that held on to the gun. The killer was still out there. There was the message from Nick. She was in danger. And there was the victim of the bear attack, whose larynx had been crushed, and Marian realized what had been nagging her all morning, and she held the gun tighter. Tate might still be alive. She continued to slow her breathing. Her body became calm. She knew how to use the gun.

  Once more she looked across the clearing and into the woods. There was movement, perhaps a deer, somewhere off in the trees. She heard the breaking and stirring of branches. Then she saw him, Ranger, emerging from the spruce and western larch, his tail wagging, his muzzle in the air. And could it be that he had traveled this far, that he had found his way back and he had not been killed by the grizzly bear?

  Ranger stopped, maybe twenty feet in front of Marian, his haunches barely touching the ground. He lifted his head and looked behind him, and she knew. She steadied her right hand around the grip of the gun. She stood behind the driver’s door, which was still open. She stared ahead at the woods. Ranger trotted the rest of the way to her, his head toward the ground, his tail wagging. Arkansas and Yeti were still whining in their crates. Yeti began to bark, high-pitched and rhythmic. And there was Ranger, now sitting beside Marian, and yet she did not take her eyes off the tree line. She pressed her thumb against the safety and switched it to off.

  Mere seconds passed before he appeared, and she almost didn’t recognize him. His hair was cut short above his ears, and his beard was gone. He wore a green brimmed cap and a long-sleeve camouflage shirt.

  “Matilda,” he called to her. “We’ve been looking all over for you.” In his left hand was a neon green item of clothing, the same color as Marian’s running tank. And there was Ranger at Marian’s feet, and he was wagging his tail and looking back at Tate.

  “Good boy, Ranger. You found me,” Marian said, her voice flat and as steady as her body had become. She grabbed Ranger by the harness, all the while keeping her eyes on Tate. She patted the driver’s seat and commanded Ranger to jump up, and thankfully, he followed her lead and jumped into the vehicle. Marian closed the door, stepped away from the vehicle, and planted her feet shoulder width apart. She held the gun in her right hand down by her side. All she needed to do was raise the gun, support it with her left hand, and align the gun
’s sights, her finger on the trigger. It was all so easy, really. Tate had killed Jenness. He had killed four innocent women whose bodies had been found beside a stream.

  Tate glanced down quickly at the gun in Marian’s hand, then looked back up and met her eyes. And he was smiling, as if the whole thing amused him. “What’s this?” Tate said. “I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

  “Tell me, Tate. Why did you do it? Why did you kill those women?”

  “Now hold on just a second, Marian. I don’t know what that crazy shrink has told you, but you’ve got it all wrong.”

  “How do you know about Nick?” Marian asked.

  “Are we really going to do this? Is this what you want? Is this what you need in order to feel okay about yourself? If that’s what it takes, sure, I’ll go down that road with you.”

  Marian held on to the gun tighter. The dogs were whining from the vehicle. She stared straight back at Tate. “Answer the question.”

  “Let’s just say I know all about you and that psychologist friend of yours. In fact, I had a little chat with him this morning. Nice guy. A little hasty, though. But it’s a shame, Marian, it really is, how easy it was for you to betray me. I was testing you, watching you. I messed with the dogs a little bit. Nothing too serious. Just enough to keep you around.”

  “The sandpaper,” Marian said. “That was you?”

  “Like I said, it was nothing serious. And sure, you could have quit, run back to Michigan. But that wasn’t like you. I should know. I trained you. I just needed to be sure of your feelings for me. You had me fooled, Marian. Here I’d thought you were a woman of your word. I thought I was the love of your life. But I was wrong, wasn’t I? I was coming back to you all this time, thinking we’d have some glorious run of it, that we’d make a life together, so convinced the two of us were unstoppable. I tried to come for you, crept right up to your hut, and there you were talking to some shrink on your computer, spinning off all sorts of lies about me. What kind of fool did you play me for?” Tate said. “Look, it’s not too late for us, Marian. Everyone makes mistakes. I’ve made my share of them. I’m willing to put this all behind us.”

  “Why did you do it?” Marian asked, because he still had not given her an answer. “And Jenness . . .” Here Marian’s chin trembled and she was sure Tate saw her weakness. “Why did you have to kill Jenness?”

  “Whoa, her blood’s on your hands, not mine,” Tate said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t play innocent with me. You’re just as guilty as anyone, telling me about all the photos Jenness had taken, like she was watching me, isn’t that what you said? I was framed, Marian. I thought you’d be smart enough to see that. This Schulman reporter starts hanging around, asking me questions one day. I knew someone close to me was talking to him, trying to blame me for what happened to those women. But I hadn’t figured out who. For all I knew it could have been Lyle or Trainer or Dudley. But no, you went and made that easy for me. I set up a fake email address. Used Ryan Schulman’s name. Told Jenness I was emailing her from my personal account. Just like that, she fell for the whole thing. I asked her to lay it all out for me again. And she did. Said she was ready to go to authorities, said she owed it to Melissa. That’s not something you know a whole lot about, now is it? Devotion isn’t really a word in your vocabulary. I asked Jenness to hold off for the time being, said I was pulling together some additional information for her. I was in Washington then. I even sent Ryan Schulman an email, pretending to be Jenness. Told him not to contact me until he heard from me. And like Jenness, he fell for the bait. When I got back, I emailed Jenness again as Ryan, asked her if we could meet. It worked out beautifully. She told me all about her trip. She suggested we get together on her way out of town. We could grab coffee. You know I don’t like coffee. I chose a remote location. I told her I had something to show her that she would want to see. I swear to God, she was just like the others. Women will fall for anything.”

  Tears filled Marian’s eyes. She had to be stronger. Tate was getting to her. All she could think of was Jenness, and that she’d played a part in her death. And then it hit Marian. “How did you do it?” she asked. “Once you were back, how did you send an email to Jenness when you didn’t even have your phone?”

  “Well, now, that’s the easy part. I used the phone of the sorry bastard up in Washington. I unlocked his phone with his thumbprint. Then I changed the settings.”

  “You killed that man,” Marian said. “I saw the images of the attack. I read the report. Was it really worth it, Tate? All these people that you killed? Their whole lives in front of them? For what?”

  “You give me too much credit.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I can’t change your mind if you want to think of me as a cold-blooded killer. But it’s not going to do you or me any good. You saw the images. A bear got to that guy. It happens,” Tate said.

  And Marian realized Tate must have used Jenness’s phone in the same way he’d used the device of the man he’d killed, posting messages and sending emails to the group.

  “All this time it was you,” Marian said, “emailing me, pretending to be the reporter.”

  “Just another way of seeing what you were up to,” Tate said. “There really was no harm in it. I was biding my time. Waiting for a new identity to come through. I even used your computer to surf the dark web. Checked out all your emails with ole Nick Shepard while I was at it.”

  “You couldn’t have. My computer has a password.”

  “Really, Marian? The password Deacon wasn’t hard to figure out.”

  Tate took a step closer. “But like I said, that’s all behind us now. You were afraid. I get that. You were confused. We can make everything right. Jenness is gone. It’s just the two of us. We’re meant to be together, Marian. Everything changed for me once I met you. You had that kind of effect on me. You’re all I’ve been able to think about.” Tate took another step toward her.

  Marian raised the gun. “Don’t come any closer,” she said. She searched his eyes, looked for that one glimmer of truth, something to make him human, to resemble the man she thought she’d loved. And for a second his eyes appeared full of emotion.

  “You weren’t just my girlfriend. You were my friend,” Tate said. “How could you turn on me?”

  But Marian knew it was all a charade. She felt the knowledge of his lies like concrete. And in that moment, something in Tate’s eyes shifted, and she saw the absolute emptiness, as vast and cold as outer space. And she heard Nick’s words again, that Tate would have killed her a thousand times over in his mind. She had been Tate’s perfect target. She had been his special one. She’d fallen for all of his lies. She couldn’t undo what she’d already done. God, how she wanted to, though. She’d made a mistake. She’d loved the wrong man. The weight of her shame entered her bones, gave her strength. She wouldn’t make a mistake this time.

  Her finger was on the trigger. Her hand was steady, her body and legs sturdy. And maybe Tate saw the anger in her eyes, because his tone changed.

  “You’re not going to kill me. You couldn’t pull that trigger.”

  He stepped closer still. “You can’t do it, can you?”

  Marian waited until he was no more than ten feet away. Tate reached out his hand. Marian fired, and she kept firing until Tate’s body hit the ground and she knew he had to be dead.

  Marian was not sure how many bullets she had shot. Tate’s shirt was saturated with blood; the ground had turned crimson beneath him. His eyes stared off in the distance from the angle where he lay, and the three dogs were barking from the truck, and Marian was shaking uncontrollably. She was afraid that if she moved, her legs might buckle beneath her. She could still hear the gunfire in her head, and her heart was thudding wildly in her ears. Jenness was dead. Marian had to call for help. She turned back to the truck, opened t
he door. And there was Ranger, ready to leap down, and Marian wrapped both her arms around him and told him to stay, and she held him against her, his body thrashing about, trying to be free. She set the gun on the dashboard and swooped Ranger into her arms and carried him around to the back of the truck. Ranger was not a large dog, no more than thirty-five to forty pounds. Marian put him in the crate with Yeti. She talked to the dogs. She tried to calm them down, and their barking turned into whimpers. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay now,” she said, but it wasn’t okay. Jenness was dead; four other women had been murdered as well; and someone’s son or brother or father had been killed and fed to a bear off the Pacific Northwest Trail.

  Marian walked back to the driver’s side of her vehicle, her legs still quivering. She climbed into the vehicle and reached for her phone, which at some point had fallen onto the floor. And the first thing she did was call the number Nick had texted her from. Her call went to voice mail. “Nick, it’s Marian. I’m safe now. Tate is dead, Nick. This time he’s really dead.”

  33

  September 2017 through May 2018

  MARIAN

  Lyle had insisted Marian take a leave from the program. “I’ll handle the reporters. Go home. Take some time for yourself. The job will be waiting for you when you come back.” And Marian had assured Lyle she still wanted her job. She’d never been happier than when she’d been working in the field with the dogs, and she hated the fact that she would not be making the trip to Oregon for the northern spotted owl project. “There will be other projects,” Lyle had told her.