by Jeff Carson
Wolf slapped the stack of photos into his chest. “What’s this all about?”
Rachette fumbled the pictures and then studied them. He flipped from one to the next, and with each photo his face deepened another shade of red. When he reached the final pages, and then the Ashland PD police report, his eyes narrowed and he looked up at Wolf.
“Sir. This is me and this girl I’ve been kinda seeing. But”—he pointed at the police report—“that’s not her name. She told me her name was Jessica.”
Wolf blinked.
Rachette turned to Patterson and squinted. “What the hell, Patterson? That’s what was in the envelope and you didn’t tell me?”
Patterson stared at him. “MacLean said we were both in trouble.”
“I … so what? You think I’m what? You think I’m running drugs for this girl?”
Patterson shrugged, glancing meaningfully at the stack of photos in her partner’s hand.
“When did you meet this woman?” Wolf asked. “What did she tell you? I want to know everything. What is this?”
“Sir,” Rachette raised his face to the sky, “she just said she had to take off to go to Denver, and couldn’t wait around to return this backpack to her girlfriend. Said I was doing her a favor. That was it! She never told me what was in the damn thing.”
Patterson popped her eyes. “And you didn’t think to ask?”
“She said it was her friends overnight bag. Clothing and stuff.”
Wolf snapped his fingers.
They froze and looked at him.
“I want to know who this girl is.” Wolf’s voice was a growl. “I want to know when you met her, exactly. Where, exactly. What she said, exactly.”
Rachette swallowed, and began recounting his tale of a night in downtown Rocky Points that seemed too good to be true. A night when all of Rachette’s bad luck with women had miraculously reversed its course and he’d become the Casanova of the local zip code.
Patterson watched Wolf as Rachette told his story. He was eerily still, staring across the pond. She noticed a blotch of blood spreading on his pant leg, but he was oblivious to it; his mind was elsewhere and, by the look of his flexing jaw, it was an angry elsewhere.
When Rachette was done, Wolf stood in silence a while longer.
Rachette shifted his weight. “Sir.”
Wolf turned and looked over their heads. “What’s that?”
Patterson pulled her eyebrows together and looked behind them, noticing for the first time that radios were exploding with voices.
“What’s going on?” Wolf walked away, leaving Rachette glaring at her.
“They’ve found something up at Olin Heeter’s house on the lake!” Baine had his radio pointed toward them.
“Thanks,” Rachette said under his breath as he walked away.
Someone’s scratchy voice on her handheld said something about blood, and a door. But her thoughts were too mangled to comprehend.
Wolf jogged to his SUV, still clutching the stack of photos in his hand. “Baine, you’re with me!”
“Sir, I drove up here.”
“Leave your vehicle for Patterson.”
Baine shrugged and jogged past her, bouncing his eyebrows on the way by. “Keys are in the ignition. See ya up there.”
Rachette ran to their SUV and got in without a glance back to her.
Wolf’s SUV revved and bounded up the steep incline, past the other SCSD vehicles, and then out of sight. Rachette struggled to flip his vehicle around for a few moments, then peeled after him.
It took Patterson another few seconds to realize she’d been rooted to the same spot.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Lorber stared at her.
She shook her head. “Maybe some other time.”
“Go get ’em, tiger,” he said with a fist pump.
She smiled despite herself, and jogged to join the cavalry.
Chapter 34
Wolf stared down at a blood smear on the doorknob of Olin Heeter’s lake house, contemplating how he’d failed to see it the night before.
The mid-afternoon sun shone on the front porch, warming his back, which served to evaporate the cold from his body, which had lingered since his dip in the tailings pond.
The wind breathed through the trees surrounding the property, bringing the scent of pine and the faint noise of motorboats tooling around the lake below.
Patterson drove up to the property and scraped to a stop. When she got out, she pointedly ignored Rachette, who returned the favor.
Wolf sighed inwardly, knowing those pictures were the beginning of something big. The fact that MacLean had delivered them told him a full-blown scandal was imminent.
“I’ve got a key here.” Yates stood up at the end of the porch with a key in his gloved fingers. “Was underneath this flowerpot.”
Wolf nodded. “Let’s go in.”
“Sir.” Rachette appeared next to him. “Kimber Grey was behind me on the drive up. She’s probably arrived at her place now.”
Wolf nodded.
Yates gingerly inserted the key into the knob, not disturbing any of the blood smeared around the sides of it, and twisted.
The door opened a sliver, and Wolf pushed it open.
With a groan, it swung wide before hitting a coat rack behind it, sending a crumple of fabric to the wooden floor.
“Put these booties on,” Patterson said, handing out pairs of shoe-coverings to everyone.
“You think?” Rachette grabbed a pair and put them on.
Wolf donned them and stepped inside the doorway.
The interior of the house was cool, almost cold, and dark, the air heavy with the scent of chemical cleaner. As he stepped inside, a honeybee dive-bombed past his ear and went down the hallway in front of him, disappearing around the corner.
Yates sniffed behind him. “Smells like some one’s been cleaning recently.”
Wolf flicked the light switch on the wall and a yellow bulb above his head brightened the entryway. At the end of the hall in front of him stood a dining table.
Walking after the buzzing insect, Wolf reached the end of the hall and turned into a wood-and-linoleum kitchen, where brass-colored pots and pans hung from ceiling hooks above an antique-looking stove. Black-and-white checked drapes covered a sliding glass door, blocking out natural light.
He flipped the light switch on the wall and squinted as the overhead lights glared on.
Yates was right: the smell of cleaner was overbearing and the linoleum countertops were spotless, the dining table shiny, and every nook devoid of dirt or dust.
The refrigerator hummed.
“Looks definitely lived in,” Patterson said.
“Sir.” Yates crouched next to a door knob. “More blood.”
Wolf stepped closer and examined another smear of maroon on the brass fixture.
“Both these stains, the front door and this door, look fairly new,” Patterson said. “Lorber would have to check with the spectrometer, but I’d say they’re recent.”
“Open it,” Wolf said.
Yates studied the knob and then gingerly put his hand on it and twisted. The door swung open, revealing a cramped stairway leading down.
Wolf reached and flicked on another light switch. The overhead light illuminated brown carpet steps and beige walls, and at the bottom of the stairs hung a painting of a full moon over the lake.
Wolf walked down, and with each step the wood squealed under the carpet.
The air was dusty and colder still as they descended into a walkout basement. Wolf flicked a light switch at the bottom of the stairs and lit a wide-open space to the left.
A hanging lamp and canned lighting in the ceiling blazed bright, showcasing a covered pool table and a bar crafted of logs and lacquered boards. The drapes were all shut, covering a large sliding glass door and two windows that faced the back of the property.
The walls were covered in paintings, and it took little time to realize they were all of the moon: the
moon waxing, waning, full above the lake, full rising through the trees, close-ups of craters as if seen from a telescope lens. There had to have been thirty of them, mounted all over the walls in neat rows. The artistry was impressive.
Wolf pulled aside one of the drapes covering a sliding glass door. Natural light streamed in, mixing with the harsh yellow coming out of the ceiling fixtures. Outside, the lake glittered diamonds beyond the wall of stacked rocks he’d stood next to the night before. Below, boats streaked in all directions, leaving white wakes.
He fished inside the fabric, found the cords, and pulled the drapes open. The room brightened with each yank until the glass doors were exposed. He pulled it open and walked outside onto the grass and dirt.
“What’s up?” Patterson asked, following him out.
Wolf pointed down and to the right. “You can’t see where we’ve been pulling up the bodies from this vantage. It’s blocked by that land jutting out to the south, towards Kimber Grey’s house.”
Patterson followed his eyes. “Yeah … so?”
He craned his neck and looked up through the slivers of light in the deck above him.
“Sir. Look at this.” Yates pointed at a pile of red-clay bricks near the rear wall of the house. “Same type of bricks found in those bags.”
Wolf picked one up and saw the Tracer Building Supplies logo.
“That’s not good for Olin Heeter,” Patterson said.
He dropped the brick back on the pile and turned back toward the lake, returning to his line of thinking.
“Sir!” Rachette called from inside. “I’ve got more. More blood.”
They went back inside and found Rachette pointing to another closed door.
“Open it up,” Wolf said.
Rachette waved Yates over. “You do it. I don’t have gloves.”
Yates twisted the knob and pushed it open, revealing a pitch-black void beyond. He clicked on his Maglite, took a deep breath and stepped inside. “What the hell?”
Chapter 35
Patterson watched with mounting curiosity as Yates and Wolf shuffled into the small room.
Wolf stood blocking the doorway, then finally stepped forward, freeing up space so she could see what the commotion was.
She waited for Rachette to barge in front of her, but he stood still and held out a hand for her to go first, which she found deeply unnerving and out of character.
With guilt wriggling her gut, she stepped inside the room.
Wolf pulled on a string dangling from the ceiling and the room lit up, revealing a scene that made her skin crawl.
A cluster of photographs was affixed on one wall, every one of them of Kimber Grey. They were tacked to the wall tilted every which way, some on top of others. The whole montage, when looked at as a whole, was circular. Like a moon made of photographs.
Kimber chopping wood. Kimber milling around her boat. Kimber standing on her porch, looking directly into the lens of the camera, though from such a distance that it would’ve been impossible for her to know she was being photographed.
Yates leaned close to one of the prints of Kimber standing naked behind her yellow-illuminated window. “Can I keep this one?” he murmured, looking back at Rachette.
Rachette ignored him, not even cracking a smile.
Extremely unnerving.
“Kimber Grey is the moon.” Yates stepped back and folded his arms. “And the moon is the world to Olin Heeter. Jesus … obsess much?”
“Let’s process that rifle,” Wolf said, pointing behind Patterson.
She turned around and saw a midnight-black bolt-action rifle leaning in the crook between a bookshelf and a blank wall.
“I didn’t even see that,” Yates said.
A lot of reading material lined the small shelves, its subject matter seemingly suited for such a man as Olin Heeter: survival techniques, military history and tactics, at least a hundred hunting magazines, and several horror fiction novels. A box of .308 Winchester cartridges bookended one row. The cardboard was cracked open, revealing the box was less than full.
“There’s blood on it,” Wolf said, keeping his nose to the photo wall.
Patterson nodded and looked at the rifle. “Yes. I see that … now.” There was a smear of blood on the stock and on the trigger guard.
Wolf stepped back and put his hands on his hips. “There’re bloody gloves on the lowest shelf.”
Patterson saw the gloves.
“These photos were all taken recently,” Wolf said.
When no one else spoke, Patterson asked, “How do you know that?”
“Kimber has the same hair in all of these. Same length, same ponytail, with a strand flipping out on the side. She has the same outfit on in these over here. The same jeans and shoes, but some with her long-sleeved shirt, others with the rain parka.” He pointed to some of the photos scattered in different spots. “It’s raining in these. Look here.” He pointed at the corner of a photograph.
Patterson leaned forward and saw an unfocused blob. A few moments later she realized she was looking at a tiny droplet of water on the lens, which was causing the refraction. Then she realized what he was getting at, because it was in every single photo on the wall. “They were all taken on the same day?”
Wolf nodded. “Looks like it. And this is the outfit Kimber had on yesterday, when I came and talked to her. I think these were all taken yesterday.”
“What the hell?” Yates asked no one in particular.
Wolf looked like he suddenly remembered something, then pushed past them and out of the room.
The remaining deputies exchanged a glance and then followed.
Patterson took the lead, catching up to him as he climbed the stairs.
“What’s up?”
Back on the main floor, Wolf twisted, searching for something, and then walked to another door. With his rubber-gloved fingers he twisted the knob and looked inside.
The other side of the door was dark, but she saw a gleaming car bumper and smelled motor oil.
He flicked on a light switch, revealing a two-car garage.
An older-looking Chevy pickup truck was parked inside.
“That’s Heeter’s truck,” Yates said behind them. “Those are his plates.”
“It’s clean, too,” Wolf said. “No dust on it.”
“So it hasn’t been parked here long?” Patterson asked.
“I’d say no. Let’s search it.”
Wolf turned to the door and stepped around Patterson to go back inside.
She watched him go into the kitchen dining area and pull back the drapes, unveiling another sliding glass door that led onto the deck outside. Abandoning the garage door and letting it click shut, she walked after Wolf again.
With a whoosh, Wolf pulled open the glass, letting in cool, fresh air smelling like lake water and pine trees.
He walked out toward a blue tarp that was tented at shoulder height, grabbed it, and lifted it off, revealing a telescope that reflected the surroundings off its silver cylinders, knobs, and mounts. He got in front of the telescope and looked at it, as if he was staring down the barrel of a gun. “Here. There’s a single water mark on the lens.”
Wolf looked closely at the eyepiece portion of the telescope and pointed. “This is an adaptor to attach a camera lens, for taking photos through the telescope.”
“What a perv,” Yates said.
Patterson watched Rachette. He was taking in everything in perfect silence, and Patterson wanted to punch him in the face for it. She got the point. She’d betrayed him, and he was hurt. But in her defense, Rachette had betrayed her first. Or at least she had been led to think so at the time. And that was if Rachette was even telling the truth that he’d been played by that floozy in the pictures. Screw him.
Her face dropped when she realized everyone was looking at her. “What?”
Wolf gestured to the sky. “I asked if you knew anything about celestial coordinates?”
“Celestial coordinates? That’s
a big no. Why?”
Wolf pointed at the lake. “See how we can’t see the diver boats out there?”
Patterson looked down at the shimmering water. She could only see one Sheriff’s Department boat, and knew it was there to keep a northern perimeter, making sure no other boats passed into the crime scene beyond as divers continued working.
“Yep. No diver boats. They’re behind the trees on that rise.”
“When my father spoke to Olin Heeter twenty-two years ago, he said he’d seen something suspicious on the lake the night of the sixth. Two nights after Nick Pollard’s disappearance.”
Patterson nodded. “Okay. And …”
“Yates,” Wolf said, “can you please get that report packet from my car?”
Yates nodded and bolted back into the house.
“Thanks.”
Wolf leaned on the railing. “So, because of Heeter’s interview, my dad and Burton spent a few days out on the lake with sonar and dive equipment. Looking in the exact spot that Heeter said he’d seen activity.”
Thumping and jingling keys approached, and Yates reappeared, out of breath and packet in hand.
Wolf leafed to a page and read, “… the night of July 6, at eleven thirty p.m., Olin Heeter saw Parker Grey’s boat go out in the water and stop. Olin says he got a clear view of the boat because it happened to stop in the stripe reflection of the full moon, which he was photographing that night. He saw (through his own eyes, not the telescope—the telescope was pointed at the moon) a splash, also heard it, and then the boat headed toward Parker Grey’s property.”
Wolf lowered the packet and looked back out at the water.
Rachette furrowed his brow. “I’m not pickin’ up what you’re puttin’ down.”
“The bodies we’re pulling out of the water are out of view from here,” Wolf said. “If Grey had dumped a body where we’re finding them, Heeter wouldn’t have seen a thing.”
They stood in silence.
“So there’s another dump site,” Patterson said. “Right out there.”
Wolf nodded, and then pointed at the packet. “It’s right here on the page. My dad wrote some coordinates in the margins. They’re celestial coordinates. The exact location of the moon on July 6th, twenty-two years ago, at 11:30 p.m.”