The Girl in the Moss

by Loreth Anne White

  “Better than OD’ing on some other shit. And you wanted me to come with you why, exactly?”

  “I told you. I might need backup, and I can’t go to Corporal Darnell Jacobi for that backup without him potentially alerting Axel and that gang, sending them all into cover-up mode. Plus, I’ve got nothing concrete to take to Jacobi or to any other cops outside of his jurisdiction that would explain why I’m trying to circumvent Port Ferris police in the first place. If you come with me, and we see something that can give probable cause for a warrant, you’re with iMIT, which has interagency protocols. You could officially kick this into motion. Bring in an ident team and search the place, arrest him even, if it came to that.”

  Holgersen fell silent as he considered the parameters of the case. “You say this Axel Tollet works as a driver for Sea-Tech Freight?”

  “Yeah. The freight division of Sea-Tech is run by Wallace Carmanagh, an aggressive dude who might have been the main guy behind Porter Bates’s murder. I was told he looks after Axel well at the company. Jessie Carmanagh is Wallace’s brother. Jessie handles the agribusiness side of Sea-Tech.”

  Holgersen fiddled with his smartphone, looking up Sea-Tech. “Hey, lookee here,” he said as the company web page came up. “It’s one of the ones we’re looking at.”

  She shot him a glance. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the logo. Look.” He held out his phone. Angie cast a quick sideways glance at the screen. It showed a dark-blue logo of a stylized eagle’s head with wings stretched out. Like one might find atop a totem pole.

  “Remember?” he said. “I told you how’s we were looking for white Merc vans that go way back. Ones with logos like this on the sides.”

  She frowned. “Have you found anything at Sea-Tech that could link to those old cases?”

  “Nah. It’s just on our list that we gave to the analyst. I don’t think she’s even got to Sea-Tech yet. There’s shit-ton of companies out there—you wouldn’t believe how many—that have white vans with dark graphics on the sides in their fleets.”

  “Sure, I believe it. I told you so myself.”

  He started to punch a number into his phone.

  “Who you calling?”

  “Maggie, the analyst who works for our new little cold case division. She’s the one combing through the companies, cross-referencing routes, times and dates of shipments, and vehicle models with the various missing persons cases. I’m just gonna leave her a message and get her to puts Sea-Tech at the top of her list when she comes in Monday. Along with this driver dude, Axel Tollet.”

  “Because?”

  “Because you justs told me this driver matches a certain suspicious pervy pathology an’ he drives vee-hickles with logos like this on the sides, and this website says Sea-Tech ships all over the island, the mainland, and to destinations in the States an’ has been doing so for years. We’d be dumbass not to run this first.”

  His call connected. “Yeah, Maggie, it’s Holgersen on a Sunday, and I knows you’s off, but I needs something urgent when you gets in.” He gave her the details and killed the call. Angie could sense a fresh tension in him. It was infectious. She could feel it inside herself, a charge building as they got closer to Port Ferris and the clouds rolled thick down the desolate and forested mountains.

  CHAPTER 43

  Garrison Tollet stood looking out the living room window. It was 11:45 a.m. on Sunday morning, and there was a hint of snow in the fine rain falling outside. A fire crackled in the lodge hearth. He, Shelley, and Claire had enjoyed a relaxed brunch of waffles that Claire had made.

  He loved this lazy time between seasons, when Mother Nature shrugged her shoulders to roll over and sleep, drawing up a blanket of snow around her. Predator Lodge had tours booked for December and through the winter. Backcountry skiers who would use the lodge as a base for sorties. He might do some guiding if requested, but most of their guests over the winter were self-reliant. Come spring things would get busy again, but from now until then Garrison planned to enjoy the downshift in gears and focus on repairs and some home projects.

  Claire was washing up in the big kitchen. Shelley was setting up for a quilting project in her sewing room. Their talk over the table had been about the big news on television—that filmmaker Rachel Hart, seventy-two, had confessed to having witnessed her daughter, Dr. Eden Hart, now thirty-eight, pushing Jasmine Gulati to her death twenty-four years ago.

  The reporter credited private investigator Angie Pallorino for unearthing the long-buried secret.

  As Garrison watched the weather outside, hands deep in his pant pockets, Claire came up beside him, drying her hands on a dish towel.

  “Why do you think she did it? I mean, a fourteen-year-old kid just deciding to attack another woman on the trip and send her to her death? It’s insane.”

  He nodded. “Some people are just insane.”

  But his daughter’s question made him tense. He knew from Jessie that the Hart kid had stolen a peek at that journal while on the river trip. He also now knew from Shelley what had been in that journal—a detailed account of Jasmine Gulati sleeping with him on the first night of the trip. Shelley had told him everything after she’d sent Angie Pallorino packing the other day. He’d been rocked to the core that Shelley had known all along exactly what he’d done with Jasmine. And that Shelley had been prepared to bury it all. Mostly he was relieved Claire had not learned about his affair and that Shelley had ripped those pages out and burned them for good.

  But there would be a court case years down the road. Eden and Rachel Hart and the others would take the stand. Eden Hart might testify she’d read those now-burned pages. It might have been why she’d pushed Jasmine into the water, because in the journal, Shelley had said, was a detailed account of Jasmine’s affair with the Eden kid’s father. Claire might yet learn the sordid truth.

  Would it be so terrible if she did? By the time that case made it to trial, Claire would be even older and on her way. She’d have witnessed for herself what a devoted and good husband he’d been all the years since. She might forgive him.

  He smiled at her.

  “What?”

  “I love you, kiddo.”

  She snorted. “What’s with the sudden sentimentality?”

  “Just glad it’s all over. That we know what happened.”

  She frowned, then said, “Do we? Really?”

  He stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, we know what happened with Eden Hart killing Jasmine Gulati, but . . . I heard what happened to Uncle Axel.”

  “What happened with him?”

  “When he was thirteen, Dad.”

  Garrison felt blood leave his head. He reached for the sofa, sat down slowly.

  “Angie told me he was gang-raped by some schoolkids. Friends of a boy named Porter Bates. Then in retaliation, some guys lured Porter into the woods and jumped him and allegedly drowned him in the quarry.”

  He stared at the fire, the crackling flames. This was not over. Far from over. Inhaling deeply, Garrison said, “That’s the story, yes. It was terrible, and we don’t talk about it. Axel . . . it helps if no one mentions it. He can pretend it never happened.”

  “Never happened?” Claire seated herself in front of her dad. “That a kid was drowned, murdered?”

  “He went missing. Nothing was proven.”

  She eyed him. “So who were the guys who raped him?”

  “Porter’s gang.”

  “They were never prosecuted?”

  “No one officially reported the rape.”

  “Who jumped Porter?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  Disbelief filled her eyes. “In this small town, no idea? He’s your cousin, Dad. He’s BoJo’s brother. You were all in a gang with Wallace and Jessie Carmanagh. You must have some idea who might want to protect Uncle Axel and exact revenge?”

  Garrison heard his pulse boom against his eardrums. He felt dizzy. “I don’t. I really don’t know.”<
br />
  “Right.” She balled and hurled the dishcloth into the kitchen. It fell short near the table. “So many goddamn secrets.” She got up, retrieved the cloth, and disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Why did Angie tell you!” he yelled after her. “What’s it to her, anyway?”

  Claire stepped back out of the kitchen. The look on his daughter’s face cut Garrison to the quick.

  “Angie was trying to figure out where allegiances lie in this town,” she said. “I reckon she was asking herself, if a bunch of guys could kill Porter to punish him, then maybe they could have killed Jasmine, too. They’d have been bonded in secrecy over the first murder, so maybe no one would talk about a second, either.” She paused, watching him intently. “Apparently Jasmine made some people really angry in the pub on her first night in town.”

  He stared at Claire, his heart beating into his throat. “Well,” he said softly, “turns out Angie Pallorino was wrong, because no one from town laid a hand on that Jasmine woman. It was Eden Hart, and it’s all over now.”

  She held his eyes. “You really don’t know who drowned Porter Bates?”

  “I know that was over a long, long time ago, Claire. If you go dragging that up and mentioning it around town, it’s going to hurt your uncle Axel real bad.”

  The phone on the oak server near the dining table rang. Claire glanced at it, then turned irritably and went into the kitchen. Garrison got up and saw the caller ID on the landline. He called out over his shoulder, “It’s for me. I’ll take it in my study.”

  When Garrison reached his office, he quickly shut the door and picked up the phone on his desk.

  The voice on the other end was cold, firm. “Her Mini Cooper is parked in the rental lot. She’s back.”

  Shock rippled through him. He eyed the door and lowered his voice. “What? What’s she back for?”

  “I asked Freddie at the rental shop. He said she and some cop from the city rented an all-wheel drive to head up the logging road on the south side of the Nahamish, but first they called Sea-Tech to check if Axel Tollet was working or at home.”

  “Fuck,” he whispered. “It’s supposed to be over.”

  “She must know something. If they go up there and look around his place, they’ll find something to pressure him. You know Axel; he’ll talk. And when he talks, we’re done. All of us. I mean really done. Prison for life done.”

  “Bates, I only lured him. I wasn’t part—”

  “You listen to me, Garrison. You helped Axel bury that woman. You helped him hide everything because he threatened to squeal about Bates. Your helping him was a mistake. You got us all tied into this. Now you’re in as deep with the Bates shit as the rest of us.”

  His brain reeled. He was going to throw up. If this got out . . .

  “What do you want to do?” he almost whispered.

  “What we have to do, Garrison. We have to tie up that loose end.”

  “Axel?”

  Silence.

  “Jesus, no. No—”

  “It’s him. Or us. We’re already on our way. Meet us there, because we’re not doing this alone. It’s all of us or nothing.”

  Claire carefully replaced the receiver. Bury that woman? Helped Axel? Prison for life done?

  She heard the downstairs door slam. Claire hurried to the window. She looked down to see her father’s truck reversing out of the carport at speed. He turned west on the logging road.

  Fear, worry, sickened her stomach.

  She’d recognized the voice on the phone. Nothing made sense.

  She hastened down the passage and stopped to look in on her mother. Her mom’s head was bent over her sewing machine, the radio tuned to some talk show playing loudly. Claire had seen the crazy way in which her mother had sent Angie off the other day. Claire had watched from the upstairs window. She made her way to her room and found the business card Angie had left for her.

  Chewing on the inside of her cheek, pulse racing, Claire studied the card. Was it a betrayal? Or would it stop more people from getting hurt? Would it stop her father from doing something else terrible? No, not Angie. Claire had a better plan. She scooped her cell off her dresser and dialed the nonemergency number for the Port Ferris police station. Her call was picked up instantly.

  “Hello, it’s Claire Tollet. Is . . . is Officer Jacobi there?”

  CHAPTER 44

  Angie and Holgersen negotiated the rutted logging track in the small Subaru Crosstrek they’d obtained from the rental outfit in Port Ferris. It was cold but hauntingly beautiful along the river. Cloud sifted in skeins through the dense, dripping trees, and as they gained elevation the rain turned to thick sleet that began accumulating on the ground.

  Holgersen drove as Angie fiddled with her Garmin satellite GPS, in which she’d preflagged locations. They came upon a track that led into the trees to their left. Holgersen slowed, peering into the woods. “What’s down there?” he said.

  “Looks like it leads to Budge Hargreaves’s spread,” Angie said, studying the GPS map. The area appeared unfamiliar to her from this approach. She and Claire had hiked in from the back. “This road we’re on should veer away from the river shortly and curve in a big arc. On our right we’ll pass a hiking trail that leads down to the grave site. Then should come a smaller vehicle track that’ll take us down into Axel Tollet’s spread.”

  “Pretty damn remote out here,” Holgersen said as the forest grew denser around them. “Nothing but mountains and rivers for miles from whats I can see. Can’t imagine anyone wanting to live out here.”

  “Apparently that’s exactly why Tollet and Hargreaves do. Isolated.”

  Clouds thickened. The landscape turned inhospitable as trees crowded in tightly along the side of the road, tall, drooping branches draped with old-man’s beard. Holgersen turned up the heater and sped up the wipers. Snow was now starting to settle on the track in a slippery, gelatinous layer.

  “Whoa, slow down a sec,” Angie said suddenly as something in the road ahead caught her eye.

  Holgersen eased off on the gas.

  She pointed to marks in the slushy surface. “Tire tracks?”

  “Sure looks like,” he said, bending forward to peer through the arcs carved by the windshield wipers. “Fresh. Maybe made by more than one vee-hickle.”

  The interior of the Crosstrek started to fog. He turned up the fan. Tension mushroomed softly between them, Angie could sense it. To her untrained eye it wasn’t possible to tell whether those tracks on the road had been made by vehicles heading east from whence they’d come or going west in the direction they were traveling. They could have been made by Axel leaving or arriving at his own property. Either way, he’d had company. As far as Angie knew, there was no reason for anyone to drive beyond Axel’s homestead. It was just wilderness from his place all the way to the remote west coast of the island.

  “Hunters, maybe?” Holgersen said with a quick glance at her.

  “I thought the season was done by now, but yeah, maybe.”

  Holgersen clicked on the headlights and fog lights as they went deeper into a forest that swallowed what little gray daylight remained. It was only around 2:00 p.m., but it seemed like twilight.

  “There!” Angie pointed to a fork in the road. “That leads down to Axel Tollet’s place.”

  Holgersen swung the wheel and took them onto a bumpy, narrow track. The indentations from the tire tracks were still apparent under the fresh layer of snow. They saw the trees open up ahead. Her pulse quickened.

  “Slow down,” she said. “Stop at the entrance so we can get a lay of the land from this perspective and see whether he has company.”

  Holgersen brought the vehicle to a halt at the entrance to the clearing. Angie and Holgersen oriented themselves, engine running, wipers carving arcs in the wet snow.

  To their left, behind a clump of trees, was the converted shipping container set back into the mound of earth and overgrown with berry scrub. Brambles hung down over the window and around t
he door cut into the side of the container. To the right of the container was the small log cabin. The lights inside glowed yellow in the gloom. Smoke came from the chimney and blew in the wind, melding with the low cloud. The shed doors were all closed. Axel Tollet’s truck was parked under the carport, as was his ATV. Snow was turning the ground white, further obscuring the tire tracks that had led into the property.

  “Looks like he’s home,” Holgersen said, watching the cabin. “All cozied up by his fire. But where’s those other vee-hickles that left them tracks?”

  Angie scanned the area again, this time moving her gaze carefully along the forest fringe around the boundary of the homestead.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Is that them cages over there?”

  She nodded.

  “Freaking weird. Like something outta Grimm’s fairy tales,” he said. In her peripheral vision, Angie noted Holgersen’s hand moving to check the position of his sidearm in its holster under his jacket. He was edgy. She felt it, too—something off.

  “Since when do you read fairy tales, Holgersen?” she said quietly as she slowly scanned each of the outbuildings next, checking to see what might have set her warning senses prickling up the back of her neck.

  “I knows about Hansel and Gretels. And hows their woodcutter moms and pops tried to kill them kids by leaving them in the dark woods. My gramps read us them stories.”

  That’s when Angie saw it. A small black shape in front of one of the sheds. Wings spread out in the snow. “Poe,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “Over there. Axel’s crow, or raven, or whatever it is. Or was. He rescued it, and Claire Tollet named it. It was a pet. It looks dead. Something happened to it. This place doesn’t feel right.”

  “Not even close. How you wanna do this?”

  She worried the scar on her lip with her teeth. Her goal had been simply to talk to Axel, question him further about the old tins with baby formula logos, the bottles with teats, get another look around the property, check out those waders hanging in his shed, see what size they were, see whether there might be something here that would give grounds for a warrant or a more official investigation. Or whether she was completely off about the possibility Jasmine might have survived a plunge over the falls and been brought up here.