by Meg Gardiner
“Wait here,” Detective Perez said.
He swept the beam of his Maglite across the mine tunnel and led a uniformed deputy inside. Caitlin tried to see beyond the intense sunlight into the shadows.
Perez turned to gray scale. His breathing and footsteps faded. After a minute, the deputy’s voice echoed. “Detective. Over here.”
Footsteps pounded deeper into the tunnel. Flashlight beams swung across the walls.
“Agents!” Perez called.
Emmerich ducked his head and charged in, with Caitlin and Rainey right behind.
Fifty yards into the tunnel, the motel clerk, Ezekiel Frye, lay crumpled facedown on the ground. He was a young black man with dreads, his face dusty. His jeans and T-shirt were stiff with dried blood. Perez rolled him onto his back.
He went rigid. “Oh, Christ.”
Emmerich’s flashlight illuminated the clerk’s body. Perez dropped to the young man’s side. Frye was breathing.
55
In the abandoned hillside mine, Jester firefighter-paramedics slipped a cervical collar around Ezekiel Frye’s neck and got an IV running. Frye had been stabbed in the abdomen, and one wrist had been hastily, shallowly slashed. He was hovering at the edge of consciousness. From the blood trail and drag marks on the dirt inside the tunnel, he had been dumped deep inside and tried to crawl back to the entrance, before collapsing.
Caitlin stood in the sharp sun on the slope outside the mine entrance. Fire trucks, an ambulance, and sheriff’s SUVs were massed at the bottom of the hill. The medics brought Frye out, strapped to a stretcher, and used a rope pulley to lower him carefully down the slope to the valley floor. They lifted the stretcher into the ambulance.
Detective Perez came out of the shadowed mine entrance. “The kid’s going to survive. Why’d Detrick do such a sloppy job?”
Emmerich turned. “I suspect that Detrick’s groupie is the one who attacked Frye.”
“Think they had to leave the scene in a hurry? Or did she think he was as good as dead?”
Below them, a paramedic jumped down from the back of the ambulance. He waved. “Detective.”
Perez half jogged to the bottom of the slope, with the others sidestepping behind him on the crumbling dirt. Perez spoke to the paramedic and climbed into the ambulance. When Caitlin got there, Perez was leaning over Frye, hand on his shoulder, head turned to listen to the young man’s whisper.
Perez nodded, squeezed Frye’s shoulder, and climbed out. The paramedic slammed the doors. He got in the cab and the ambulance pulled away, lights spinning, jostling at speed over the sandy ground.
Perez’s narrowed gaze was chilly. “There were two of them. A man tied him up. Woman stabbed him. Untied him when they dumped him in the mine.”
Emmerich said, “They wanted him to escape.”
Perez nodded. “Man gave him a message. ‘She couldn’t keep her mouth shut. So I shut it for her.’”
Emmerich flexed and opened his fists. He seemed to stare through the detective for a moment. “Where’s the mortuary?”
Perez frowned. “Four blocks from the motel.”
Emmerich jogged toward the detective’s SUV. “Let’s go.”
Caitlin said, “I’m coming.”
It took two minutes for Perez to drive them to their rental car, and two more for him to lead them in a convoy to the funeral home. Inside, they were directed to the prep room. When they came through the swinging double doors, the forensic pathologist and a mortuary assistant were gowned and gloved. The two men turned in surprise. On the stainless steel preparation table lay a black body bag, still zipped. The thick smell of embalming fluid permeated the air.
“Detective?” the pathologist said. “We’re just about to start.”
Emmerich strode up to the table. “May I unzip the bag?”
The doctor gestured for him to go ahead. Emmerich grasped the zipper ring and pulled.
The victim’s face came into the light. Dead eyes open, lips parted, face flaccid under the thick layer of white pancake makeup. Her short hair was white-blond. It had been harshly and recently bleached. She was dressed in a see-through baby doll nightie. Against the black plastic of the body bag, she looked like a photo negative.
It was Lia Fox.
Her lips were open a centimeter. Emmerich leaned close.
“Something’s stuffed in her mouth.” He pulled on gloves. “Doctor?”
The pathologist handed him a pair of tweezers. Emmerich drew out a crumpled Polaroid.
He set it in a stainless steel tray and teased it open. It was old—very old. It showed a blond teenager on a sunny day, at a picnic on a Houston college campus.
Caitlin stared. She and Rainey had seen a nearly identical photo in the album at Aaron Gage’s house.
The black vines swirled again, threatening to wrap Caitlin’s throat and cut off her air. She put a hand to her neck. Breathed through her mouth.
Perez’s phone rang. The detective stepped outside to answer it.
Emmerich thanked the pathologist for letting him intrude. He headed through the swinging double doors. Rainey followed.
Caitlin hesitated. She could do nothing for Lia Fox now. Couldn’t comfort or reassure her. Couldn’t even touch her, not without contaminating the body.
But she could find Detrick and stop him from doing this to anybody else. She reached out. With her fingertips, she brushed the exterior of the body bag. She blinked.
Nodding to the pathologist, she turned and left.
Outside, the low winter sun cast stiletto shadows. Emmerich, Rainey, and Detective Perez stood beside Perez’s SUV. Perez had his laptop open on the hood.
Emmerich beckoned her. “The car belonging to the deputy who was killed at Hoover Dam. It’s been found.”
On the computer screen were photos. The deputy’s stolen Subaru, with the ASK ME ABOUT MY EAGLE SCOUT bumper sticker, had been abandoned at a trailer park north of Lake Tahoe. The victim’s blood splashed the seats. Covering the dashboard, and taped inside the windows of the car, were Polaroids. Some showed the murdered man. Others showed Lia Fox, propped on the bench in the lobby of the Circus Inn. The rictus grins of clown dolls filled the screen.
Taped to the steering wheel was a single photo of Teri Drinkall, the woman missing from the Dallas parking garage.
In the photo, Teri was alive, but Caitlin felt a draining sensation. She knew Teri was dead. And she felt certain that Detrick had posted it as a personal rebuke to her, for questioning him about Teri that day at the jail.
The truth broke through the frayed barrier of denial she had erected. Her eyes stung. For a second, the shields she tried to keep up seemed far too porous. She felt Rainey at her shoulder. She thought, Rainey’s wrong. I need stronger walls. Not more openness. She took a breath.
Emmerich said, “It’s a taunt.”
No kidding, Caitlin thought. Detrick was telling them, You lose. Victims will continue to die. She heard his voice in her head. Should have done yourself. Gonna wish you had.
Static erupted from the radio in the SUV. Perez got in and grabbed the transmitter. A minute later he got out with a map in his hand.
“That trailer park where the deputy’s Subaru was dumped? Another car’s been reported stolen from there.”
Perez unfolded the map on the hood. From Jester, Lake Tahoe was two hundred fifty miles north.
“Detrick could head in any direction from Tahoe,” Perez said. “He could take I-80 into Reno. From there he could head to either Salt Lake City or San Francisco. Or he could head north. It’s wild country in that direction, for a good three hundred miles.”
Caitlin stuck her hands in her pockets. “We know which way he’s heading.”
Rainey nodded. “Agreed.”
Caitlin stabbed the map. Crying Call. Phoenix. Hoover Dam. Jester. Lake Tahoe. With each abducti
on, every murder, each stop to kill and mock, Detrick was drawing closer to the Pacific Northwest.
“He’s going to Portland,” she said. “Detrick’s going after Emily Hart.”
Emmerich thought for a moment, his gaze sharpening. “He knows we’ll come. Everything he did here in Jester after the murder has been deliberate. Leaving the clerk alive, showing us how to find his tracks, giving the young man a message that led us to the mortuary.” He looked up. “He wanted to slow us down.”
Caitlin pulled out her phone to call the Portland police. Emmerich managed to shake Perez’s hand but was already rushing toward their car.
• • •
Only hours after they arrived in Jester, Emmerich, Rainey, and Caitlin raced back up to the airstrip. The door of the Gulfstream was open, pilots in the cockpit running through their preflight checklist.
As Emmerich squealed up outside the hangar at the edge of the tarmac, he got a text. He read it as he climbed out.
“The vehicle that was stolen from the trailer park in Lake Tahoe—it could have been taken as early as seven P.M. last night.” He checked his watch. “Detrick could have been driving all night.”
Caitlin said, “How far is it from Tahoe to Portland?”
“Five hundred seventy miles. He could do it in ten hours.”
Detrick wasn’t just ahead of them. He could already be there.
They grabbed their gear and strode across the chilly tarmac. Swinging a duffel over his shoulder, Emmerich jogged up the jet’s stairs. As he ducked his head through the door, he called to the pilots.
“We’re all here.”
The first officer greeted Caitlin and Rainey as they climbed aboard. He raised the stairs and closed the door. He returned to the cockpit. As soon as he squeezed into the right-hand seat, the captain began engine start-up.
Emmerich took a forward-facing seat. “Flight plan’s filed for seven hundred twenty miles.”
Caitlin stowed her gear and took a seat across the aisle. She pulled her phone from her back pocket. On the way to the airport she had liaised with the Portland police as well as the cops at Greenspring College, arranging for uniformed officers to guard Emily Hart until the FBI team arrived. Now she had to make a more difficult call.
Emily picked up immediately. “Agent Hendrix. My mom? Have you found her? I heard . . .”
Outside, the twin engines of the jet hummed to life.
Caitlin inhaled, preparing to break the news of Lia’s death, but pain flashed through her. No. A seventeen-year-old, alone—she couldn’t tell Emily under these circumstances. Not over the phone. Not when Emily needed focus and calm and mental clarity. Caitlin needed to wait until she saw her in person.
“Sorry. I can’t tell you anything yet,” she said.
“Why are you calling?”
“Where are you?”
“Chem lab.” Emily’s voice took on a starker tone. “Why?”
“Is your professor there? Staff? Building security?”
“My TA. What’s wrong?”
Rainey had already pulled up a satellite map. The Chemistry Department lab was in an annex at the butt-end of campus, down a dead-end road.
“Emily, this is urgent. I need you to stay in the lab and wait for the Portland police. They’re on their way. Tell your TA. The officers will take you to a police station. You should wait there until I arrive.”
“He’s coming, isn’t he?”
“We want to take no chances,” Caitlin said.
The jet’s engines spooled up. In the cockpit, the captain nudged the throttles. They swung around and began a slow roll to line up at the south end of the runway. Rainey was on the phone to the Portland police.
Emily’s voice had a nervous edge. “He knows I go to Greenspring? He knows where I live?”
“We have to presume so.”
“So—what about my sorority sisters?”
A cold light hit Caitlin’s eyes. “Sorority?”
“I just pledged Xi Zeta. I’m moving in this weekend—I’ve already filled out a change of address for everything,” Emily said. “If this guy figures that out, what happens to my sorority sisters?”
Caitlin ran her knuckles across her forehead.
“They need police protection too,” Emily said. “Half the women in the house are on the rugby team with me. But backup would be good.”
Caitlin almost laughed. Emily’s confidence in her teammates was sweet and sisterly and empowering, and, in these circumstances, absurd. She thought about the sorority house. It would have staff on duty, and some security. But Emily was right: If Detrick managed to learn that she’d pledged Xi Zeta, that wouldn’t be good enough. They needed police backup.
“We’ll arrange it,” Caitlin said.
“Good. Awesome. Thanks.”
Across from her, Rainey confirmed the plan with the Portland cops.
“The police are on the way to the chem lab,” Caitlin said. “When you get to the police station, sit tight and wait for the FBI.”
“I will. Absolutely.”
The jet taxied along the narrow airstrip. The landscape outside was still. No traffic, no other aircraft coming or going, seemingly no birds aloft. Just thin, empty blue air. And the barren land. So barren, Detrick had already skipped town.
“Keep your eyes and ears open, Emily. Hang tight. We’re coming.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Caitlin ended the call. She looked out the cabin window. Scrub and sandy ground.
Detrick had gotten Lia. Caitlin was not going to let him get Lia’s daughter.
The jet braked at the end of the runway and swung in a tight one-eighty, lining up for takeoff. The sun arced across the cabin interior. She buckled her seat belt.
Her phone pinged. She glanced at it: a text from Michele.
We okay, girl?
Caitlin’s stomach was already churning. She swiped the screen to reply—but her thumb hovered over the keyboard.
The engines idled for a few seconds. In the cockpit, the pilots pushed the throttles forward. The power revved. The plane sat poised.
Caitlin reread the text. She shut off her phone.
Michele would know she had read the message and wonder if Caitlin was ignoring her.
The pilots released the brakes. The engines roared and the jet leaped down the runway, gaining speed.
Let Michele wonder. Caitlin couldn’t deal with her own life right now. Detrick was still ahead of them. The jet accelerated and soared sharply into the air.
56
The descent into Portland was turbulent. The weather had turned dirty as they hit central Oregon, crossed the spine of the Cascades, and flew into the latest winter system blowing in off the Pacific. The small jet swept through patchy rain up the Willamette Valley. Below, the landscape was a deep forest green. Caitlin tightened her belt as they jolted through the air.
Rainey eyed the clouds to the west. “The day’s going to get icy.”
Wind buffeted the plane. Out the right-hand window, beyond the long spread of the city, the eastern view showed green farmland and, sixty miles away, the massive, snow-coated slopes of Mount Hood. The volcano dominated the horizon like a lonely god.
The plane yawed sharply. Caitlin gripped the armrests of her seat.
Rainey said, “You know what Keyes would say if he were here.”
Rainey, former air force, had a cast-iron stomach and a casual disregard for the effects of even the strongest turbulence. Across the aisle, Emmerich was working on his laptop. He didn’t look up.
Caitlin watched clouds flash by. Rain streaked the window. And ice crystals. “Keyes would tell us our landing velocity, the height of that mountain to the inch, and inform us of the last time it erupted.”
“And how likely it is to erupt again.”
Emmerich hit
a few computer keys. “Mount Hood. Stratovolcano. Elevation eleven thousand two hundred fifty feet. Last eruption 1907.”
Caitlin laughed under her breath. Rainey smirked. The jet banked, and Caitlin got a tilted view of downtown Portland. Forested hills to the west, skyscrapers packing the Willamette River. Bridges and ships. The jet made a sweeping turn. From the cockpit she could hear the pilots talking to air traffic control.
Emmerich closed his laptop. “Don’t worry about Hood. Or about its sister there across the river. Not today.”
They descended below the last shreds of the clouds, and the Columbia River came into view. It was the color of slate. Beyond it, on the Washington side, loomed Mount Saint Helens.
“I won’t.” Today, volcanoes were the least of their concerns.
They landed parallel to the river, spray blowing off the wings and tires, thrust reversers deafening as Caitlin was pressed forward against her seat belt. They turned and taxied past the airport’s two commercial concourses, passing near the wings of jetliners bound for Seattle and Chicago and Tokyo. When they arrived at the general aviation terminal, two agents from the FBI’s Portland field office were waiting with a pair of Suburbans.
The captain spooled down the engines and opened the door. A cold, wet wind greeted them.
An agent got out of one of the SUVs to greet them, shoulders straining the seams of his raincoat. Emmerich didn’t slow.
“Update?”
The agent led them toward the vehicles. “Portland police notified us ten minutes ago. The car stolen from that Lake Tahoe trailer park has been sighted on the Greenspring College campus.”
Caitlin’s stomach tightened.
Emmerich gave a razor-sharp look. “‘Sighted’?”
“It parked in a disabled space without a placard. Student called campus public safety to get it towed. Read the plate number to the campus dispatcher. It’s the vehicle.”