by Jeff Carson
Lorber nodded. “I agree. Looks to be a long sword of some kind that did the deed, or a machete. Most of them look like a one-blow severing of the head.” He stepped toward one of the heads in the center. “This one, however, was chopped a few times. That’s how I initially matched it with the body.”
Wolf blinked the image of a killer doing the deed out of his mind. “All male?”
Lorber nodded.
The bodies were nude and each was more or less clearly male. Wolf, however, had learned long ago to confirm the obvious with Lorber rather than assume. Lorber, having a highly analytical, scientific mind, often neglected to mention some of his more developed theories, assuming other people saw them as he did.
“From radiocarbon dating of the tooth enamel, I’ve determined seven of them being anywhere from late teens to early twenties, though this one here, number eight, doesn’t fit the mold. He’s older. Looks to be forty, plus or minus three years. Obviously his head is still attached.”
Wolf looked at number eight. The face was bearded, the mouth gaping open, revealing a swollen black tongue and brown teeth. On the forehead was a gaping exit wound. The one eye-socket was devoid of an eyeball, but there were no cut marks.
Lorber walked near. “Number eight, shot in the back of the head from point-blank range. If you look in his mouth, our number eight has some pretty extensive dental work. I’m checking with Dr. Unruh and the offices in Ashland. I’m doing the same with the other heads. The seven heads are all missing their eyes, as you can see.” Lorber walked away and shoved a gloved finger inside a skull as if testing the finger size of a bowling ball. “Clearly these are ritualistic killings. Perhaps the killer believed the eyes were the window to the soul, and wanted to … I don’t know, I’m not a profiler.” Lorber twisted his finger in the socket and removed it with a faint sucking sound.
“Easy doc,” Rachette said.
“Ritualistic, or the opposite,” Wolf said. “They’re gutted like fish or rodents. Chop off the head, slit the underside to remove the insides.”
Lorber pulled the corners of his mouth down and looked at the bodies as if for the first time. “I guess. Only the insides are all there.” He shook his head. “The eyes. The barbarism of cutting off the heads.”
“Yeah.” Rachette swallowed. “Pretty damn sick.”
Wolf bent over a head and looked into a slice mark through an eyelid. “In the early nineties there was a guy in Texas who removed his victims’ eyes. Kept them for souvenirs.”
“I think it’s safe to say that whatever the reason was, it was messed up.” Rachette was looking pale, talking rapidly. “Where’re the files, doc?”
“Over there on the counter.”
Rachette walked over and opened the thick file folder. “So basically you’re saying you have nothing. And it’s up to me to find out who these guys are?”
Wolf ignored their banter and walked to a numbered row of bricks on a metal table. “These are what the killer used to weigh down the bodies?”
Lorber nodded. “Burnt clay brick, made by a Denver company called Tracer Building Supplies.”
Wolf frowned. “How did you figure that out?”
“Says on the side of three of them.”
Wolf leaned down and saw the logo pressed into the side of one.
“I’m out.”
Wolf turned just in time to see Rachette disappear through the door.
Lorber smiled. “Patterson’s meeting the parents, huh?”
“Keep me posted on anything else you find,” Wolf said.
“You got it.” Lorber pulled his gloves off and walked Wolf to the door.
Wolf shook his long, sweaty hand and left.
Rachette was outside, standing with his head tilted to the clouded sky, welcoming the mist beading on his skin.
“You okay?”
“Ah,” he said, sucking in a breath through his nose.
“That good, huh?”
“Sorry. Something just came over me. It was all those heads. I can see why they used to put heads on stakes back in history, to scare the crap out of people, make them subservient or whatever. That shit is not right. I’m not gonna sleep tonight. I know it.”
Wolf tilted his back, too, feeling the cool mist on his cheeks. It was disturbing. And that it’d happened so close to home made his hair stand on end.
The vibration of his phone snapped him out of his thoughts and he pulled it out of his pocket. It was Patterson.
“Hey.”
“Sir, I talked to Wilson. He agrees—there’s nothing we can do about the CD. It had to have been that damn storage room. Twenty-two years of extreme temperature and humidity fluctuations is not good for evidence, apparently.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“You sure it’s okay for me to go out to dinner tonight? I can cancel.”
“No. Have fun. See you tomorrow.” He ended the call.
“What’s up?” Rachette asked.
“Patterson says the rest of the Katherine Grey and Kimber Grey interview is damaged beyond repair.”
Rachette nodded in resignation.
“Get back to the station and get after those files.” He started walking.
“Will do.” Rachette stepped next to him toward the parking lot. “Not sure how it’s going to go.”
“I know it’s going to take a while, but it’s all we have to go on. Do what you can until the end of your shift and then hand them off to Wilson tonight. Tell him it’s top priority. And then both of you get back on it tomorrow.”
Rachette nodded. “So your dad thought it was Parker Grey who did this?”
Wolf nodded. “Far as I can tell from his notes, it looked that way to him.”
“None of those bodies were female in there.”
Wolf shook his head.
“But Katherine disappeared, too,” Rachette said. “The day after the interview we just watched.”
Wolf nodded.
“Why?” Rachette asked. “Did she leave to go find Parker? Or was she killed, too?”
“All good questions.” Rain drops slapped the ground and they jogged to their vehicles. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”
Chapter 17
Wolf turned up the windshield wipers to a steady beat and flipped on his headlights as the SUV rolled down the muddy road.
Just like the foggy view outside, he was going into this interview almost blind. Instead of watching Kimber Grey’s reactions to his father’s questions on video, Wolf was going to be talking to a woman he’d never met, listening to her relaying her side of things, and over two decades later. That would have been fine had he known the interview video was waiting for him when he got back.
Beyond the droplet-covered windshield, the surrounding forest was socked in with fog, cutting visibility to fifty yards or less. Somewhere to his left, past the trees and thick weather, sat Cold Lake, which he could smell through the vents.
Crawling down a steep grade at ten miles per hour, Wolf feathered the brakes as a couple of craters in the road came into view. Flanked by car-sized rocks on either side, the bottleneck forced him to almost stop and enter the dip straight on. The rear bumper scraped as he dropped in, and then he lifted in his seat and the rock and dirt beneath the tires smoothed out.
Just before he let off the brake and coasted, he jammed to a stop, sure he’d seen something on a tree next to the rocks. Hoping his parking brake would hold on the steep grade, he stepped out. The rocky wet earth gave way underneath his work boots as he stepped back toward the massive potholes.
Sure enough, he’d seen something on the tree—a camouflage-painted rectangular game camera with a shiny black lens in the center, more or less pointed straight at him. A four-inch-long antenna jutted out from the side of the device. He’d seen these newer-model cameras before, and knew them capable of transmitting pictures and video feeds via Wi-Fi.
Raindrops slapped on his coat, coaxing him back into the idling SUV.
After a short coast down the roa
d he stopped and studied a perpendicular road jutting to the left. The fog had lifted just enough to see that the road veered up before disappearing around a bend and into the pines. He pushed the button on his phone screen to check the map, but there was no service. He checked the Wi-Fi settings and found one secure network requiring a password called “XXXXX.”
He continued straight, using his memory of the map that he’d studied before leaving the County Hospital parking lot.
Two gentle turns and a brief straightaway later, he reached his destination.
Someone was out front of the cabin, wielding an axe, chopping down on a vertical piece of firewood with a fierce blow that sent two chunks flying to the ground.
The person turned, and as his wipers swished he saw a pretty face buried inside a blue parka hood.
Kimber Grey, Wolf recognized, though much older than the photos he’d seen in the file sitting on the passenger seat.
Not that she looked old. She appeared young, and her jeans were snug, showing she was fit. She gave another piece of wood a savage blow, revealing her strength.
She had been seventeen when Nick Pollard went missing. And within days, her father, her father’s truck, and her mother were gone too. That was twenty-two years ago. Wolf had done the math: she was thirty-nine, just a year younger than Wolf, and had lived at this location her entire life since that fateful summer. And yet he could not remember ever seeing this woman in person other than at this moment.
“Kimber Grey?” Wolf got out and zipped up his parka. The air was thick with the scent of fresh-cut lumber.
“Yep.” She kept her back to him, raising the axe behind her and swinging down with precision. The wood clanked to each side and she bent over, picked up another piece, and placed it on her stump.
The wood-frame construction cabin stood two stories, with the entrance on the upper level. The lower floor was halfway sunk into the ground. Wooden steps climbed up to the entrance, which was a shiny wood-slab door. A covered deck wrapped around to the right and presumably to the back of the property. A large bay window revealed open curtains and a spinning ceiling fan inside.
“I’m Sheriff David Wolf of the Sluice County Sheriff’s Department. I’d like to talk to you for a bit.”
“Okay.” She chopped another piece.
Wolf heard a faint motor to his left and turned, noticing the land ended abruptly fifty yards away. He figured that was the cliff-line, and on a cloudless day, the view would have been of Cold Lake’s shimmering waters.
“Can you please stop with the axe?”
She jammed the axe into the stump, pulled down her hood and turned around. “Sorry, I’m low on firewood. Need to get some stocked up. Still gets plenty cold up here in the summer, you know?”
She flashed a smile, and Wolf saw the mole above her lip, like her mother’s. She pulled off her leather glove and pointed to the beauty mark, then pointed at Wolf’s face.
“We both have these damn things,” she said.
Wolf smiled and shook her hand, which was hot and sweaty, slender, fitting easily inside his. When she took it back it was like pulling sandpaper from his grip.
“Kimber Grey,” she said.
“Nice to meet you. I’d like to talk to you about the”—he gestured to the lake—“recent activity on the lake. I take it you’ve heard?”
She put her hands on her hips and stretched her back. “Yeah. I’ve heard. I’ve been watching it.”
“Do you think we could go inside for a chat?” Wolf asked.
“Follow me. You drink coffee?”
Chapter 18
Wolf sat at a small eating table and watched Kimber work in the kitchen.
She made coffee with elegant movements: lifting a back leg as she bent into a cupboard and pulled out a French press, jumping just the right height to grab a bag of coffee grounds stored on top of the cupboards. There was no wasted action. She knew every centimeter of the kitchen, and she was well practiced with what she was doing. Apparently she liked her caffeine.
By the time she was depressing the plunger the clouds outside had slid to the east, revealing the silver lake below. He wondered how much the property had cost when they had moved here all those years ago. Now it would be worth a pretty penny.
“How many acres you have here, if you don’t mind me asking?”
She poured the coffee and set it down in front of Wolf. “Sixty-three. It’s mostly that way, up towards Olin Heeter’s place.” She faced the lake and then pointed left.
Wolf remembered his father’s notes, and Olin Heeter’s mention of seeing something being dropped in the lake on the night of July 6th.
He sipped the strong coffee and then stood up and bent over the counter to get a better look out onto the land below the house. The cliff line below ran parallel the side of the house. Grassy land ran up to the precipice off to the left, and to the right scrub oak obscured the edge. A wood staircase with a hearty handrail disappeared over the edge. There was no fence. He considered it a small miracle Kimber Grey had survived her childhood in this place.
“That’s quite a ways down.”
“Oh yeah.” She leaned over next to him and pointed towards the scrub oak. “If you don’t want to go down the stairs, you can always rappel down my rope.”
A turquoise-and-pink climbing rope was attached to a sophisticated top-rope anchor system that hooked to two tree trunks, dangling over the edge and out of sight. He whistled softly and walked back to the table. Sitting down, he noticed she looked satisfied she had impressed him.
“You climb up that?” Wolf asked, remembering her callused hand.
“Yep.”
“And who’s belaying you from below?”
“I self-belay.”
Wolf nodded.
“You rock climb?” Kimber’s amber-brown eyes locked on his as she took a slow, careful sip of her coffee. Then she set her cup on the counter and leaned back on her hands, back arched, presenting her smallish breasts and erect nipples through the thin fabric of her long-sleeved shirt.
“No. Not unless I have to.”
“So you found Nick Pollard.”
“What makes you say that?”
“So you did?”
“We did. Why did you suspect that?” Wolf asked.
“I thought it would have been obvious to you. You watched the interview tapes of me and my mom that your father made, right?”
“Actually I haven’t watched your interview yet. I wanted to get your version of events from you first.”
She reached for her coffee cup and twisted to look out the windows. With slow deliberation, she caressed her jeans, and then slid her fingers inside her rear pocket.
“Okay. So what do you want to know?”
“Everything. I’d like to start with that week of the Fourth of July. Tell me about you and Nick, and about that night.”
She turned and walked over, then sat down across the table. With an exhale she closed her eyes and her brown eyelashes swung to the top of her cheeks like Chinese fans. Her chestnut hair was pulled back in a ponytail that couldn’t tame the wavy thickness of it. Frizzy strands popped up everywhere and she tucked one long one behind her ear.
She smelled like flowery scented deodorant and sweat.
“It’s been so long,” she said.
“Take your time.”
She looked at Wolf and smiled without teeth, as if he was being the kindest person in the world to her. At that moment, Wolf admitted to himself that she was an attractive woman. Had he been a single man, he’d have declared her beyond attractive.
“Let’s see. I started seeing Nick two weeks before that.”
“How did you two meet?”
She smiled. “I went to a party some guy was having out in the woods one Saturday night. I remember I heard some other kids talking about it over at the marina, and I just showed up. By myself.”
Wolf nodded.
“Anyways, I didn’t get out much with my parents, being how they were. I wa
sn’t invited, and I didn’t know anyone. I was seventeen, and just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. The whole high-school scene. The whole being-social scene. So I walked up to the keg, and I remember everyone was staring at me like I was a bear or something coming out of the woods, and he came up and started talking to me. Wouldn’t leave me alone, actually. After a while I guess I started to like him. He was, after all, a boy talking to me.”
She shrugged and sipped her coffee.
Wolf saw her mother’s spitting image in her actions.
“So you two dated a few times leading up to the fourth?”
She nodded. “Yeah. We went out twice. Went and saw a movie down in Ashland once. And I went to his house for dinner.”
Wolf took a sip of coffee, thinking about how Nick Pollard’s mother had said she’d badgered Nick into bringing Kimber over, but that Nick hadn’t. So that was a lie. But was it Kimber Grey’s or Wendy Pollard’s?
“The place the Pollards have on the hill?” Wolf asked.
Kimber looked at him. “No. The one by the river. Mrs. Pollard has another place? Didn’t think they had that much money.”
Wolf sipped his coffee. “And how about the Fourth of July? Were you two planning to meet that night?”
“No. I’m not sure why Nick’s mother said that. Maybe Nick was lying to her, I don’t know. But we never had any plans for meeting that night.”
“Tell me about that night.”
“My mom and dad and I went in the boat to the marina to watch the fireworks. When we were there, my dad got a call and he left in a hurry. Then he came back later and picked us up.” She took a sip of her coffee and seemed to steel her thoughts. “I remember he was so sullen on the trip back. And then when we got in the house, he went crazy.”
“Meaning?” Wolf asked.
“He was screaming and throwing things. Calling me a whore. Yelling at me about how I was disgracing the family.” She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head.
“And then what did he do?”
“He locked me in the room. That was it. I went to sleep.” She shrugged again.