The Search

by Нора Робертс

  “And wanders into the forest to roll in dead bird, eats my universal remote.”

  “Simon, you’re such a Pollyanna.”

  He sent her a narrow stare and only made her laugh. “You’re making progress. Work on training him to come, every time you call. Every time. It’s essential. We’ll work on some leash training, then give him a refresher on coming.”

  As she rose, she saw the cruiser heading down her lane. “It’s a good time to teach him not to run toward a car—and not to jump on a visitor. Keep him controlled, talk to him.”

  She waved and waited for Davey to pull up and get out of the car. “Hi, Davey.”

  “Fee. Hi, guys, how’s it going?” He bent to rub black, yellow and brown fur. “Sorry, Fee, I didn’t know you had a lesson going.”

  “No problem. This is Simon Doyle and Jaws. Deputy Englewood.”

  “Right, you bought the Daubs’ place a few months back. Nice to meet you.” Davey nodded at Simon, then crouched to greet the puppy. “Hey, little fella. I don’t want to interrupt,” he said as he scratched and rubbed the exuberant Jaws. “I can wait until you’re done.”

  “It’s okay. Simon, why don’t you get the leash, do a little solo work on heeling? I’ll be right there. Is there a problem, Davey?” she murmured when Simon walked to his truck.

  “Why don’t we take a little walk ourselves?”

  “Okay, now you’re scaring me. Did something happen? Syl?”

  “Syl’s fine, far as I know.” But Davey put a hand on her shoulder, steered her into a walk toward the side of the house. “We got some news today, and the sheriff thought, since we go back, I should come talk to you about it.”

  “About what?”

  “A woman went missing mid-January back in California. Sacramento area. Went out for a jog one morning and didn’t come back. They found her about a week later in Eldorado National Forest, shallow grave. An anonymous tip gave them the basic direction.”

  She swallowed the flutter in her throat and said nothing.

  “Ten days ago, another woman went out for a morning run in Eureka, California.”

  “Where did they find her?”

  “Trinity National Forest. The first woman, she was nineteen. The second was twenty. College students. Outgoing, athletic, single. Both had part-time jobs. The first worked as a bartender, the second in a bookstore. They both were taken down with a stun gun, then bound with nylon rope, gagged with duct tape. Both were strangled with a red scarf left on the body.”

  She couldn’t feel the flutters now, not when her body had gone numb. “And tied in a bow.”

  “Yeah, and tied in a bow.”

  Fiona pressed a hand to her heart, felt it pounding. “Perry’s in prison. He’s still in prison.”

  “He’s never getting out, Fee. He’s locked up, locked down.”

  “It’s a copycat.”

  “It’s more than that.” He reached out, gave her shoulders a rub. “It’s more than that, Fee. There are details the Perry investigation didn’t release, like how Perry took a lock of hair from his victims and wrote a number on the back of their right hand.”

  Already the numbness was wearing off. She wanted it back, wanted it to block this sickness roiling in her belly. “He told someone, or one of the investigators did—someone in the crime lab or the medical examiner’s office.”

  Davey kept his eyes on hers, his hands on her shoulders. “Has to be. They’re going to track that down.”

  “Don’t treat me like an idiot, Davey. Any of dozens of people could’ve passed that information on. It’s been nearly eight years since...”

  “I know. I’m sorry, Fee. I want you to know the cops are all over this. We wanted you to be informed, and it’s likely the media’s going to make the connection pretty quick. They might poke at you about it.”

  “I can handle the press. Greg’s family?”

  “They’re being notified, too. I know this is hard for you, Fee, but I don’t want you to worry. They’ll get him. And as bad as it is, this asshole’s sticking to Perry’s pattern. Young college girls. You’re not twenty anymore.”

  “No.” She bore down to keep her voice steady. “But I’m the only one who got away.”

  Simon didn’t have to hear the conversation to know something was wrong. Bad news or trouble, maybe both. He couldn’t see why Fiona would want anyone around—especially when the anyone was the next thing to a stranger.

  He considered loading the dog back in the truck and taking off. It would be rude, but he didn’t particularly mind rude.

  But it also seemed downright cold, and that he did mind.

  He’d just wait until the deputy left, let the woman make whatever excuses suited her, then escape. Nobody lost face.

  Plus, miracle of miracles, he was actually getting Jaws to heel about thirty percent of the time. Even the pup’s cooperation stemming from having the other dogs stroll along, stop on command, didn’t negate success.

  So he could go home flush from that, get a little more work done, then have a beer.

  Take the dead bird out of the equation and it added up to a pretty good day.

  When the cruiser headed out, he expected Fiona to wander over, make those excuses, then go handle whatever needed handling.

  Instead, she stood where she was for several minutes, just staring out at the road. Then she walked back to the porch steps, sat. And sat.

  So he’d make the excuses, Simon decided. Easy enough. Just remembered something I have to do. Dog’s coming along, blah, blah, see you.

  He crossed toward her, pleased it only took a couple of tugs to have the pup fall in line. And as he approached, he saw she was dead white, and the hands clutched on her knees trembled lightly.

  Crap.

  With walking casually away no longer an option, he scooped up the puppy before Jaws could try to leap into her lap.

  “Bad news,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The deputy brought bad news. Is Sylvia all right?”

  “Yes. It’s not about Sylvia.”

  Her dogs, sensing her mood, clustered around her. The big yellow Lab rested his head on her knee.

  “Ah... we should...”

  He watched her struggle to pull herself out of whatever hole she’d fallen into.

  “We should work on sit and stay.”

  “Not today.”

  She looked up at him then, but he couldn’t translate what clouded her eyes. Grief ? Fear? Shock?

  “No,” she agreed, “not today. Sorry.”

  “No problem. I’ll see you next time.”

  “Simon.” She drew a breath as he hesitated. “Would you mind... Could you stay for a while?”

  He wanted to say no—wished he had it in him to say no. Maybe he’d have found it in him if it hadn’t been so obvious it was as hard for her to ask as for him to agree.

  “All right.”

  “Why don’t you let him run awhile. The big guys’ll watch him. Play,” she said as Simon unclipped the leash. “Stay close. Close,” she repeated, stroking fur. “Watch Jaws, go play.”

  They whined a little, and each glanced back at her as they started into the yard.

  “They know I’m upset. They’d rather stay until I’m not. You’d rather go.”

  He sat beside her. “Yeah. I’m not much good at this kind of thing.”

  “Not much good’s better than no good.”

  “Okay. I guess you want to tell me the bad news.”

  “I guess I do. It’ll get around the island anyway.”

  Still, for a few moments she said nothing at all, then seemed to gather herself.

  “Several years ago there was a series of abduction murders. Young women, ranging from eighteen to twenty-three. They were all college students, twelve of them over a three-year period. California, Nevada, Oregon, New Mexico, Washington state were either abduction sites or burial sites—or both.”

  It rang a bell somewhere, dimly, but he said nothing.

&nbs
p; “They were all the same type—not physically, as he crossed races and coloring, but basic body types and all college students, athletic, outdoorsy, outgoing. He’d stalk them for weeks once he’d chosen a target. Sometimes longer. Meticulous, patient, he’d record their routines, habits, wardrobe, friends, family, schedules. He used a tape recorder and kept a notebook. All of them either jogged or hiked or biked routinely. Habitually.”

  She drew another breath and made him think of someone preparing to execute a surface dive in murky water.

  “He preferred women who went out alone, early morning or dusk. He approached from the opposite direction—just another jogger, another hiker. And when he closed in, he used a stun gun to take them down. While they were incapacitated, he carried them to his car. He had the trunk lined with plastic so there’d be no trace on the bodies, and no trace of them in the trunk.”

  “Thorough,” Simon said, thinking out loud.

  “Yes. Very.” She continued briskly, without inflection, like a woman giving a report she knew by rote. “He bound them with nylon cord, gagged them with duct tape, then gave them a mild sedative to keep them under, keep them quiet. He’d drive to a national park. He’d already have the spot picked out. While the search went on for her, in the area she’d been abducted, he was hours away, forcing this groggy, terrified woman to walk, through the dark, off the trail.”

  Now her voice hitched, a quick tremble as she linked her fingers together in her lap and stared straight ahead. “He dug the grave first—not too deep. He wanted them to be found. He liked them to watch him dig so he tied them to a tree. They couldn’t beg, couldn’t even ask him why because he kept them gagged the entire time. He didn’t rape them or torture them, physically. Or beat them or mutilate them. He just took out the red scarf and, while they were bound and gagged, unable to defend themselves, strangled them. He tied it in a bow when he was finished, and buried them.”

  “The Red Scarf Killer. That’s what the press called him,” Simon commented. “I remember this. They caught him after he shot some cop.”

  “Greg Norwood. The cop was Greg Norwood, and his dog, his K-9 partner, Kong.”

  The words throbbed in the air between them like an open wound.

  “You knew him.”

  “Perry laid in wait for them. Greg had a place, a nice little weekend place near Lake Sammamish. He liked to take Kong there, work on his training. Once a month, just the two of them. Boy-bonding, he called it.”

  She laid her hands on her knees, a casual gesture, but he saw the way her fingers dug in.

  “He shot Greg first, and maybe that was his mistake. He put two bullets in Kong, but Kong kept coming. That’s what they reconstructed, and that’s what Perry said happened, trading confessions, information, details against the threat of the death penalty when he knew he’d lose the trial. Kong tore Perry up pretty good before he died. Perry was strong, and he managed to get back to his car, even drove a few miles before he passed out, wrecked. Anyway, they got him. Greg, he was strong, too. He lived two days. That was in September. September twelfth. We were going to be married the following June.”

  Useless words, Simon thought, but they had to be said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, me too. He staked Greg out for months, maybe longer. Meticulous, patient. He killed him to pay me back. See, I was supposed to be his number thirteen, but I got away.”

  She closed her eyes briefly. “I want a drink. Do you want a drink?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  When she rose and went in, he debated going with her, and decided maybe she needed a little time to pull it together.

  He remembered bits and pieces of the story. Remembered now there’d been a girl who escaped, and who gave the FBI a description of the man who abducted her.

  Years ago, he thought now, and tried to think what he’d been doing when the story had been hot.

  He just hadn’t paid that much attention, he thought now. He’d been, what, about twenty-five? He’d just moved to Seattle and had been trying to build a reputation, make a living. And his father had that cancer scare about that time. That had eclipsed everything else.

  She came out with a couple glasses of white wine.

  “It’s an Aussie chardonnay. All I’ve got, apparently.”

  “It’s fine.” He took the glass, and they sat in silence, watching the heap of dogs who’d decided to take a nap. “Do you want to tell me how you got away?”

  “Luck, on the heels of stupidity. I shouldn’t have been out alone that morning on that jogging path. I should’ve known better. My uncle’s a cop, and I was already seeing Greg, and they’d both made a point of telling me not to run without a partner. But I couldn’t get one who’d keep up with me. Track star,” she added with a ghost of a smile.

  “You’ve got the legs for it.”

  “Yeah. Lucky me. I didn’t listen to them. Perry hadn’t crossed over to Washington at that point, and there hadn’t been an abduction for months. You never think it’s going to be you. You especially never think that when you’re twenty. I went out for my run. I liked to go early, then hit the coffee shop. It was a crappy day, gloomy, rainy, but I loved running in the rain. This was early November, the year before Greg died. I had a second, just a second when I saw him. So ordinary-looking, so pleasant, but I had that click. I had a panic button on my key chain. I even reached for it, but it was too late. I felt that shock of pain, then nothing works.”

  She had to stop a moment, had to breathe. “Nothing works,” she repeated. “Pain, shock, then numb, useless. I felt sick when I came to in the trunk. It was dark, and I felt the movement, the sound of the tires on the road. Can’t scream, can’t kick, can hardly move.”

  She stopped, breathed it out, took a slow sip of wine. “I cried awhile because he was going to kill me and I couldn’t stop him. He was going to kill me because I wanted to take a morning run by myself. I thought about my family, and Greg, my friends, my life. I stopped crying and got mad. I hadn’t done anything to deserve this.”

  She stopped again, drank again while the breeze whispered through the pines. “And I had to pee. That was humiliating, and as stupid as it is, the thought that I’d pee my pants before he killed me just revved me up. So I’m fighting that, sort of squirming around, and I felt the lump in my pocket. I had a hidden pocket in my jogging pants—one of those inside-the-back deals. Greg had given me this little Swiss Army knife.” She reached in the pocket of her jeans, pulled it out.

  “Tiny little knife, cute little scissors, mini nail file. A girl knife.” She closed her hand around it. “It saved my life. He’d taken my keys, the coffee money I had zipped in my jacket pocket, but he hadn’t thought of the inner pocket in the pants. Couldn’t know it was there, I guess. My hands were tied behind my back. I could just reach it. I think I was most scared then, when I managed to get the knife, when I started to think maybe, maybe there was a way out.”

  “Can I see it?” When she offered it, Simon opened it, studied the knife in the bright afternoon sun. Half as long as his thumb, he thought. “You cut through the nylon cord with this?”

  “Cut, sawed, hacked. It took me forever just to get it open, or it seemed like it, and a lifetime to saw through the rope. I had to cut through the one around my ankles because I couldn’t loosen the knot. First I was terrified he’d stop the car before I’d finished, then I was terrified he’d never stop that fucking car. But he did. He did, and he got out whistling a tune. I’ll never forget that sound.”

  He thought of it—a girl, trapped, terrified, very likely bloody where the cords had cut into her. And armed with a knife barely more lethal than a thumbtack.

  “I put the duct tape back over my mouth.”

  She said it so calmly now, so matter-of-factly that he turned his head to stare at her.

  “And I wound the rope around my ankles, put my hands behind my back. I closed my eyes. When he opened the trunk, he kept right on whistling.

  “He leaned in, tapped my cheek to br
ing me around. And I stuck that little knife in him. I’d hoped for the eye, but I missed and got him in the face. Still it surprised him, hurt him enough to give me a second. I rammed my fist into his face and swung my legs around and kicked. Not as hard as I wanted because the rope got tangled some, but hard enough to knock him back so I could get out. The shovel was right there, where he’d dropped it when I stabbed him. I grabbed it and I slammed it against his head—a couple of times. I got his keys. I’m still a little blurry on all of it—shock, adrenaline, they said—but I got in the car and floored it.”

  “You knocked him out and drove away,” Simon murmured, stunned and fascinated.

  “I didn’t know where I was, where I was going, and I’m lucky I didn’t kill myself, but I drove like a bat out of hell. There was a lodge, a hotel—I saw the lights. He’d taken me into the Olympic National Forest. They called the rangers, and the rangers called in the FBI and so on and so on. He got away, but I gave them a description. They had the car, his name, his address. Or the one he had on record. And still, he eluded them for nearly a year. Until he shot Greg and Kong, and Kong stopped him. Kong gave his life to stop him.”

  She took the knife back, slipped it into her pocket.

  “You seem like a fairly smart woman,” Simon commented after a few moments. “So you know that what you did saved other women. The bastard’s put away, right?”

  “Multiple and consecutive life terms. They made the deal after I testified, after he realized he’d be convicted for Greg, for me, and he’d face the death penalty.”

  “Why’d they deal?”

  “For confessions on Greg, on me, on the other twelve victims, for the whereabouts of his notebooks, his tapes, for closure for the families of the murdered women. For answers. And the certainty he’d never get out.”

  She nodded as if to a question in her head. “I always thought it was the right thing to do. It gave me, strangely enough, relief to hear him go through all of it, step by step, and to know he’d pay for it, for all of it, for a very, very long time. I wanted to put it behind me, close the door. My father died just nine weeks later. So suddenly, so unexpectedly, and the bottom dropped out again.”