I told her I was, but the room swam as she drew me to my feet and my stomach crawled into my throat. I swallowed convulsively. Sam tucked himself against my other side as I swayed. It took long moments before I was steady on my feet and my stomach ceased its escape attempts.
When I could speak, I said, “He told me it was just him tonight. There shouldn’t be anyone watching.”
“Good. That will help.” She kept her arm around my waist as she led me into the living room. “But we need to move quickly. The sun will be up in a few hours. We need to be finished by then.”
I knew immediately what the rolled rug in the center of the floor contained. My legs were so shaky that my gate was off kilter and drunken. I stopped and stared, dazed.
Terror and relief coursed through me in such a torrent that my knees threatened to turn to water. Evelyn’s arm tightened around me, and Sam leaned against me. A sob crept into my throat. I contained it with a hand pressed hard enough against my lips that I tasted blood. All these years of fear. Now it was done.
“I can’t carry him by myself,” Evelyn said.
I glanced to the windows. Dawn had not yet lightened the darkness of the sky to gray. “I can do it,” I said in response to her unspoken question.
She took one end of the rug, and I grasped the other. It was heavy, far heavier than I anticipated. I staggered at the awkwardness of carrying it.
“Close and lock the door,” I told Sam.
He darted back into the bedrooms as Evelyn and I maneuvered into the hallway. When the door closed behind us and the lock tumbled into place, he reappeared at my side carrying his baseball bat. My heart ached for him.
It took us long, tense minutes to get the rolled rug through the inn to the side door leading off of the dining room.
“Wait here,” Evelyn whispered, easing her half of the burden to the ground.
She darted outside, and a moment later, her new hatchback pulled around the side of the inn and backed up to park at the bottom of the steps leading down from the deck.
Anyone passing on the road could have seen us struggling to load a heavy, thickly rolled length of rug into the back of her vehicle. But the road remained dark and empty.
We had to lay the backseat flat to fit him into the back, and even then the end of the rug jutted up between the driver’s seat and the passenger’s seat.
Sam sat in the floorboard at my feet with his head resting against my knee. Evelyn drove, not flicking on her headlights until she turned onto the state road leading through town. Her gaze darted between the road ahead and the rearview mirror, but her hands were steady on the steering wheel.
I watched the side mirror as she drove out of town, but the road behind us remained deserted.
When we were almost to Gardiner, she turned off the state road. The Yellowstone River curved north in an oxbow. An old track angled off of the state road and crossed the curve of the river over a narrow single-lane bridge. The spring thaw had the river flowing high and white under the bridge.
The bridge did not appear to be well used any longer. It was more suitable to traffic on foot than on wheels. But Evelyn drove slowly across the rickety planks. I did not realize I was holding my breath until we reached the far side of the river.
The old road was more of a trail, though it had seen more traffic recently with the FBI coming and going from the area. The turnoff five miles down the road was almost hidden by the spring overgrowth. Evelyn pulled carefully down the rutted lane. When we rounded a curve, the derelict ruins of the old Labelle Hot Springs Resort were a dark shadow against the night-cloistered woods.
“The FBI has been over this area with a fine-tooth comb for months,” Evelyn said. “All the women Jeff buried here have been found. No one will think to look here when they start to search.”
I studied Evelyn’s face in the pale moonlight. Her words were matter of fact, but her face was set in tense lines. She pushed her glasses up her nose before turning off the car and opening her door.
The greenhouse I heard about had been torn down. The thorny tangle of rose bushes that had been hacked down lay at the back of the ruins of the resort like discarded carcasses. The breeze that drifted through the trees made the yellow police tape seem to crawl across the ground to investigate our movements. I scuffed it aside with the toe of my shoe when it wandered too close.
Much of the work of digging a grave had already been done for us by law enforcement. They had dug up the bed of roses that served as a tomb for Jeff Roosevelt’s fifty-six known victims. I shuddered looking at the turned dirt. When I glanced at Evelyn, she stood frozen, staring at the remnants of her own nightmarish encounter with the serial killer.
She dropped her end of the rug to the ground and walked back to her car, returning a moment later with a shovel. She climbed carefully down into the pit the forensics team left behind and crossed slowly to the deepest depression in the earth. She stood beside it, staring into the dirt.
I let my end of the rug fall and placed a hand on Sam’s shoulder when he moved to follow me. I pointed. “Sit under that tree over there,” I said quietly.
When I reached Evelyn’s side, she said, “It could have been me in this hole.”
It was about four feet deep, two feet wide, and six feet long. “But it wasn’t.” I took the shovel from her and climbed carefully into the grave. “We’ll take turns.”
The eastern horizon was gray by the time the hole was deep enough. My hands were raw and blistered, and I was drenched in sweat and coated in dirt. I leaned down and extended my hand to Evelyn to help her climb free of the grave we dug. She was in the same state I was with blisters and dirt.
She flexed the hand missing her pinky, ring, and half of her middle finger and shook it briskly. As she moved to the rug, though, her steps were quicker and steadier than I had seen them since she came home from the hospital.
We hauled the rug entombing Kevin Hastings to the edge of the hole and dropped him within. The sun’s dawn bled across the sky from the east.
I was breathing heavily, woozy from pain and exertion, and when I glanced at Evelyn, she leaned forward and braced her hands on her knees. I let the shovel hold me upright until Evelyn held out her hand for it.
“Almost done,” she said breathlessly.
I had to sit down as she began to toss dirt over the rug in the bottom of the hole. I tilted my head back as I caught my breath, studying the dense canopy of forest overhead. I glanced over my shoulder and my gaze found Sam, curled on his side under a tree. His eyes were closed, but I was not certain he slept. The baseball bat was clutched close.
I turned back and watched Evelyn shovel dirt into the grave. Her hair was falling into her face. Her hands and arms were smudged, and there was a streak of dirt across her cheek from where she adjusted her glasses. But she worked steadily, and her face was calm and set.
I often wondered what brought her west to this remote outpost. Her friendly but pragmatic nature made her seem forthright and engaging, but there was a reserve to her, a careful distance she kept even though I knew she considered me a friend. She handled the horror of Jeff Roosevelt with a strength that impressed me.
Watching her calmly and unquestioningly shovel dirt over a man I killed assured me she had dealt with her own nightmares. And I did not think this was the first time she had helped hide a body.
We made quick work of filling in the grave and sweeping away the evidence of our traffic through the dirt. My entire body was protesting and trembling by the time Evelyn retreated to her car and returned with bottles of water to wash away the worst of the dirt from our skin.
What water I did not pour over my hands, arms, and shoes, I drank thirstily. I turned and looked back at the loamy tomb.
“I feel like I know them,” Evelyn said quietly. When I glanced at her, I found her staring at the discarded, dead rose bushes. “I don’t know their faces or their names. I might never know. But I think of them often and want
them to know they will be remembered.” She met my gaze. “I think they would understand us using their grave for someone who deserved what they did not.”
I swallowed. “You haven’t asked me what he did.”
Her gaze moved past me. I did not have to turn to know she was looking at Sam. “I don’t need to know the details.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Her gaze returned to mine. She studied me for a long moment before stepping forward and wrapping her arms around me. My ribs ached, but I hugged her back tightly. For an instant, she was the only thing keeping me upright.
Then there was a rustle of movement behind me. I stepped back and turned to Sam. He moved straight into my arms. He tipped his head back, and I gently brushed the hair away from his forehead. His eyes studied me with a gravity far older than his years.
His gaze darted over the site of the greenhouse, and then he asked, “Are we safe now?” His voice was raw and hoarse from disuse.
We were not. I had just sentenced us to an entire lifetime of hiding, of leaving the home we had grown to love, of always looking over our shoulders. But it would not be the monster who showed up in Sam’s nightmares that we were fleeing. Not any longer.
I cupped his small face in my hands. “Yes,” I promised him.
thirty-five
HECTOR
This time, I waited on his front porch instead of breaking into his home and availing myself of his beer and his recliner.
I sat on the steps and closed my eyes. The wind sighed in the limbs overhead, and the trees creaked and groaned as they swayed. Birds called out to one another above. I thought I could make out a warbler, a junco, and a robin. A woodpecker hammered away somewhere nearby. The sun was bright against my eyelids, mottled with shadow as the wind moved in the trees, casting the boughs into the path of the sunlight.
Spring was settling firmly over the Greater Yellowstone area. The chill was diminishing in the air, and the wind was fragrant with new growth. Frank sprawled beside me with his head resting on my knee.
I could not recall the last time I had simply taken a moment to exist with nothing on my mind but the feel of the sun and wind against my skin and the taste of the shifting seasons lingering in my mouth when I inhaled.
I felt like a fucking poet sitting there enjoying the peace and quiet of the moment. Maybe it was the head injury.
The day was fading into evening when I heard the rumble of an approaching vehicle. Frank sat up beside me as Jack’s truck appeared around the bend in the dirt drive. The other man did not say anything after he parked beside his cabin and approached me.
I did not say anything either for a long moment. “You could have killed me,” I said finally.
He nodded. “Thought about it, to tell you the truth. But Maggie would have been pissed.”
“She already is pissed.”
“Yes,” he said. “But at you, not me.”
I grunted in acknowledgment. “Thanks for having me arrested.”
He stared at me for a long moment, and then he threw his head back and laughed. “It was my pleasure. It really was.” He sat on the other side of Frank and passed his hand over the poodle’s head before mimicking my pose of elbows on his knees. “We’re never going to be friends.”
“Nope,” I agreed. “Though I think she would have liked for us to be.”
He sighed. “What the fuck happened to her and to Em?”
“I ask myself that every day. And one day, I’ll find the answers. Larson claims he didn’t kill her. He would have done so to silence her, but she disappeared before he had a chance.”
“He could be lying,” Jack said.
“Possibly. But I don’t think so.” A man had his tells, and Larson had not shown any when he spoke to me of Winona. Or when I asked him about Jake Martin. Which led me here. “In Yellowstone, you said I had gotten to Baxter.”
“Shifty little weasel,” he said.
“What about Jake Martin?”
“Who?”
“The taxidermist Larson had working for him before he brought Baxter in.”
“Baxter has been the only taxidermist working for Larson as long as I’ve been around,” Jack said, confirming my suspicions.
The sun gleamed gold as it sank below the trees. I stood and moved carefully down the steps. I checked myself out of the hospital today. A hot shower and a decent meal had gone a long way toward making me feel human again.
“Hector.”
I turned back and met Jack’s gaze.
“I’m sorry you lost your job. Calling the police was the only way I could think of getting you out of there.”
I nodded. “You saved my life.”
“Well,” he said, “don’t get sentimental on me.”
I chuckled. “I’ll try not to.” From the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a flash of white in the trees. When I turned my head, though, I did not see her. “Winona told me once about skin-walkers.”
Jack made a noncommittal sound. “A Diné legend, not Lakota.”
“That’s what she said. Are there similar legends in Lakota culture about people appearing as wolves?” I asked.
He was silent for a long moment. I stared into the trees, searching the shadows for the white wolf, and did not meet his curious gaze.
“In Lakota culture,” he said finally, “we believe in a wakan. A man or a woman capable of mediating between the supernatural and the common people.”
“Do they appear as wolves?”
“No, but there are a group of the wakan who all experience similar visions. Šung’manitu ihanblapi.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“They dream of wolves.”
I turned and met his gaze. His eyes searched mine.
“All Native peoples revere the wolf,” he said. “We admire them for their strength and endurance, for their courage and loyalty, and for their extreme devotion to family.”
Bitterness wrapped tightly around my throat. I called Frank to my side as I headed down the drive. I possessed no devotion to my girls when I had them. What I felt for them now was not exactly fidelity.
But still the white wolf dogged my steps at the very fringe of my vision.
The lock on the back door of the shop offered little resistance. I eased the door open and slipped within, Frank close at my heels.
I twisted the flashlight on and grimaced as I panned the narrow beam of light around the room. We were in a storehouse section of the shop. My light glinted dimly in the dull glass eyes of the dead animals around the room. The place was the perfect fodder for nightmares.
I crossed through the storage facility and tried the door at the opposite end of the room. It opened into a dark hallway. I paused in the doorway, ears pricked, but all was still and quiet.
My tread was silent down the hall, and I darted the light from my flashlight into the two open doorways on either side of the corridor. One was a neatly arranged office, the other was the break room I remembered from my previous visit.
The storefront was filled with moonlight, and all of the animal heads seemed to peer over my shoulder as I moved to the glass counter. The bugs within the case kept up their work even at night. I fought a shudder as I clenched the end of the flashlight between my teeth and slid the glass top aside.
I had to steel myself to reach within, and I was thankful I had donned gloves before breaking and entering as I swept the beetles aside. I could feel their creeping movement even through the gloves I wore. It was a sensation I would not soon be able to forget.
I moved the mule deer and elk skulls to the side and brushed away the mulch. Hidden beneath, beetles crawling over it, was a human skull.
“What gave me away?”
I turned, and my flashlight’s beam caught Arnold Baxter in the doorway. The gun in his hand looked like a Ruger. It was pointed at me unwaveringly. I glanced at my hands to be certain no beetles had latched onto my gloves befo
re I reached up and took the flashlight from my mouth.
“Put the flashlight on the counter,” he said. “Nice and slow. Your pistol, too.” I hesitated, and his gun jerked. “You can do it in one piece or with holes in you. Makes no difference to me.”
“Alright,” I said. “Take it easy.”
Frank was no longer by my side. No surprise there with the human skull in the glass case. Though we had attempted human remains detection training, the poodle had a strong aversion to the smell of decomposing human tissue. I did not glance around to see where he was. I placed the flashlight on the counter and then eased my CZ out of the holster on my hip and laid it beside the flashlight.
He motioned with his gun. “Step aside and put your hands on your head.” I obeyed with a grimace, the motion feeling as if my broken ribs were grating together. “So? How did you know?”
“You were the one who told me about Martin. But you’ve been Larson’s taxidermist this entire time, haven’t you?”
“I’m the best in the area,” he said matter-of-factly. “He came to me when he first started selling hunting trips.”
“And Jake Martin?” I asked. Sam had never seen the man murdered as I thought.
“He followed me one day and saw that I went to the Broken Arrow. He was able to guess the rest. He wanted a cut. When I refused, he had the nerve to try to blackmail me.”
“So you killed him,” I said flatly.
“I had to. He was going to ruin everything. Jake had a hot head and a big mouth.” His face tightened. “Now you’ve gone and ruined everything as well.”
I tensed as his hand tightened on the pistol. “I think you and Larson managed that easily enough on your own.”
His finger moved to the trigger. “You don’t—”
Frank hit him from behind, a silent, ghostly shadow launched from the depths of the hallway. I dove to the side as Arnold screamed, and his finger tightened on the trigger.
Hiding Place Page 22