Moment of Doubt

by Sara Gauldin

  “Where is all of this coming from?” Jennings asked.

  “I spoke to Gerald New in lockup. He remembers Spencer from the camp.”

  The commander’s eyes bulged and I wondered if I pushed too far. “Why would you go down there with no other witnesses to talk to Gerald New, after he asked for an attorney?”

  “I’m not an officer. I don’t represent the department. If he asked for a lawyer, great: I’m not trying to build a case against him. I want to find Genevieve. That’s what matters. Until we can find her, everything else is secondary.”

  “I agree, we have to get Genevieve back. All the rest of this will fall into place. But I don’t understand where you found this lead. What does Gerald New have to do with any of this?”

  “I was afraid you’d ask that. It turns out my family has a lot of history in this town. An old co-worker of my mother’s dropped by earlier. It turns out she was the same P.I. that did some checking on Dana Myer.”

  “Did she tell you more?” Kirk Nelson came around the corner and into the commander’s office. “Sorry to eavesdrop, but I have some things to share.”

  “What did you find?” I asked.

  “Your victims were in deep. It looks like they were doing some heavy social influencing. That’s not all that they were involved in. They were social disrupters. They were heavy hitters who were trying to defame the governor’s reelection campaign. This was a hardcore smear campaign.”

  “What did they have against the governor?” Jennings asked.

  “I don’t think it was personal. There was a heavy influence from a Russian IP trail. I think the decisions were foreign driven.”

  I sighed. “Well, that would explain why the CIA was all over it.” My mind spun. How had Dana gotten involved with something like this?

  “You can say that again.” Brooks swaggered in. Losing the interview advantage had done nothing to teach him modesty. “This is part of a bigger pattern. Social media has advantages, but it is being exploited more and more with data mining and propaganda.”

  “I’m still not sure how the CIA case ties to the murders,” Commander Jennings said. “There are some common threads, but I can’t think of a reason one would cause the other.”

  “Someone who commits these kinds of crimes isn’t following a sane thought process,” Brooks said.

  Brooks had a way of stating the obvious like it was profound. It was irritating. “I don’t think the CIA case caused the murders, but it created a hunting ground for the killer,” I said.

  “A hunting ground, yes, that sounds right.” Brooks looked at the map that Genevieve and I had marked, still hanging on the wall. “Most people who commit these types of crimes do so because they feel they must, either to avoid some perceived danger or to set something right that’s broken in their world.”

  “Look at this,” I pointed to an area of the map. “Everything seems to revolve around the property that was once part of this old camp, Camp Ottawa.”

  Kirk bent over his laptop, typing faster than I realized was possible. “I’ll run some background on Camp Ottawa and see if I can get a last name for this Spencer person, or a connection to Bren Clancy. If we can learn more about this guy, then maybe we can find out what may have set this all in motion.”

  “That’s all great, but I want to know why. We need to get out to that area and try to find this guy. Genevieve is running out of time.” I looked at the clock on the wall. Twenty hours had passed since the moment they took Genevieve. The other victims were missing for much longer before anyone realized it, but we already knew the killer was speeding up. His attention to detail was wearing thin. Something was changing; he was rushing it. He took Genevieve in broad daylight on a public sidewalk. Her time was limited. We needed to go now.

  The commander straightened his collar. He looked me in the eye, and I knew he was deciding if I would try to go it alone if he said no to my plan. “All right, while Mr. Nelson here works his magic, we can take a couple of patrol cars out and see if we can find this place. Do you have any idea where this old cannery is? Much less the man’s address?”

  “No, but New said it was near the old Camp Ottawa.” I took a step toward the door.

  “Here, I bet this is what he was talking about.” Kirk spun his laptop around, so we could see the screen. He was looking at area GPS data. I could see the shape of a tired-looking building and an overgrown parking area surrounded by trees. The forest was reclaiming it. In a smaller window on the bottom left corner of the screen, I could see the corner of a home, peeking from beneath the canopy of the trees.

  “I bet that’s it.” Brooks pointed to the cabin.

  “Well, it’s isolated enough. Can you give us GPS coordinates?” Commander Jennings asked.

  “Sure,” Kirk wrote the coordinates on a sticky note and handed it to Jennings.

  “Let’s go,” Brooks took his keys out of his pocket.

  ***

  The cannery was being overtaken by the surrounding forest. Trees thinner than baseball bats were growing from the degraded parking lot. We stood outside the chain-link fence and looked at the specter of a building.

  The commander turned to Officer Bradley. “All right, cut the lock as soon as the warrant arrives. I expect it within the hour. I want every inch of this place searched.”

  Officer Bradley nodded as he looked at the imposing building. “Yes, sir, but I don’t think we will find her. Look at this place. Nobody has been in or out of this gate in a long time. The padlock is rusted closed.”

  “Don’t worry, Bradley, I doubt it’s haunted,” I smirked.

  “No, but I bet it has decent freezer space,” said Commander Jennings.

  “Sure, if there is even any electricity,” I said.

  “We’ll find out either way,” said Officer Bradley.

  “We knew this place was a weak lead,” Brooks said.

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes. My weak lead was better than his nonexistent one. I wished I could have interviewed Bren Clancy. Maybe there was something she could tell me woman to woman. It was too late for that now; her attorney made sure we kept our distance. It wasn’t like Gerald New. I couldn’t risk it. She had to pay for her crimes in court. I owed Dana that and I owed Genevieve.

  “Are you ready to head out to this cabin?” Brooks asked me.

  “I think I’m as ready as I will be,” I said.

  “This place is creepy, let’s go,” Brooks said. For the second time, I wondered a little about his work under pressure, but I was out of other options. We would go as a team or not at all.

  Before we left, I took a moment to call Kirk and check-in.

  “Avery, great timing. I have a possible ID on Spencer. There was a Nathan Spencer that attended high school with your friend, Gerald New.”

  “Nate Spencer? I thought Spencer was his first name.”

  “If this is our guy, then I guess he was just one of those people who went by his last name. This guy is sketchy, Avery. As a teen, he was arrested at least four times, but I haven’t found out why. In his twenties, he was bad news. He has priors for animal cruelty, assault, and battery, disorderly conduct. It looks like he used an insanity plea for the animal cruelty—walked away with a recommendation for counseling and community service.”

  “So, we know he's a sicko, but what about Bren? Can you connect them?”

  “That one was a little more difficult. We don’t have any record of them together. I have little that shows a relationship except that they both spent time in the same rehab center. Nate Spencer was there for anger management, but it looks like our friend, Bren, had a substance abuse problem.”

  “Had or has?” I asked.

  “Good question, if she’s using, it may explain what keeps her loyal despite what her partner was up to,” Kirk said.

  “Either that or she is sharing his psychosis,” I said.

  “True. I’ll keep digging. If I find something, I’ll call you.”

  “Thanks, Kirk.” We ended
the call.

  “Avery, are you coming?” Brooks asked.

  “Of course.” He was crazy if he thought he could leave me behind. I climbed into the waiting car.

  ***

  A pine grove obscured the driveway to the cabin. There was no mailbox or marker to show that anything but forest extended beyond the tree line.

  “Are we sure this is the place?” Agent Brooks wore a flak jacket like he planned to lead a full SWAT team into a gun battle. The single patrol car behind ours suggested that it was far from the truth.

  “According to the GPS coordinates, this is our stop.” Commander Jennings said. He took out his phone. “I’m calling for the others to join us. This place is too isolated.”

  After creeping along, we spotted a small opening in the trees. A dirt pathway that was not worthy of the title of ‘driveway’ led through the woods. We bumped along the rutted path, trying to keep from getting stuck.

  “This would be easier with an ATV,” I grumbled. I thought about the trails behind my cabin and how an ATV was the only way to travel them besides on foot. I missed those trails and my runs with Milly, but I wouldn’t miss being hunted there.

  “Whoa,” Brooks said. “What is that?” He pointed to something moving in the underbrush a good way off the trail.

  I narrowed my eyes, trying to make sense of the motion. “Oh no.” Some things you couldn’t un-see.

  Chapter 31

  “Stop the car,” I said. “We have to find out what is going on.”

  The vultures circled the carcass, competing for each rotting morsel in the partially excavated dip of the forest floor.

  “Is it human?” Agent Brooks asked.

  Please be an animal, I thought to myself. The feeling in my gut told me that my wishful thinking would stay a wish. We climbed out of the car together and headed toward the wake of vultures. The bird closest to us noticed our approach and made a squawking sound of warning to the others. Bald, bloodied bird heads now turned, looking toward us.

  “Do vultures attack?” Brooks asked. He looked at the birds with his lip curled in disgust.

  I couldn’t help myself. “You’re the behavioral expert, your interpretation should be better than ours.”

  He shook his head in disgust. “These are creatures, not people.”

  “No, but they may be more pleasant than some folks that have come through lock-up,” Commander Jennings said.

  “That’s not saying much,” I said.

  We continued to approach the wake of vultures. One by one, the birds retreated to the trees despite their protests. The threat of becoming prey overruled the appeal of the easy meal, at least for the time being. The ghastly scene was hard to take in. Sizeable chunks of flesh and bone lay in the leaves, abandoned to nature.

  Commander Jennings bent down to examine the remains. I could already hear the officers from the other car approaching through the woods. “What have you got there?” asked Major Watkins.

  “Well, whatever it is, it’s dead, but we will need some help to decide what it is we are looking at.”

  I forced myself to kneel next to the commander, hoping I wouldn’t see anything that confirmed that this was Genevieve. Up close, I could tell the remains were frozen.

  “It isn’t a natural kill, it’s frozen,” I said. There was nothing there that could tell me if the remains were human or something else.

  “What is this?” Brooks asked as he bent to look more closely.

  “Remains. We will have to have them tested to know for sure,” Commander Jennings said without flinching.

  “We will have to get a team out here to collect… this,” Major Watkins said.

  “We will get on that. But first, we need to get out to that cabin and find out what is going on,” I said. I looked down at the bloody meat chunks at my feet and shuddered. We hiked back to the car, leaving a uniformed officer behind to process the evidence.

  We made our way almost back to the car. I was fighting down the panic and the urge to vomit. I didn’t want to believe that the frozen remnants of someone or something that once was alive could be Genevieve. Were all my partners meant to end this way? If that was the case, then maybe I needed a desert island instead of a cabin in the mountains.

  The sound of a gunshot not far away startled me out of my thoughts. “That was close.”

  “It could be a hunter,” said Officer Bradley.

  “Of it could be our perp.” Brooks sprinted the rest of the way to the car and slid into the driver’s seat. Commander Jennings, Officer Bradley, and I followed close behind him. We barely had the doors shut before Agent Brooks hit the gas and sent us bumping over the rough terrain much faster than before.

  Commander Jennings was on his phone calling for backup. Everything was moving in fast forward, but to me, everything was too slow. Our killer didn’t shoot his victims; he tortured and bled them out. The method was off. Where would a gun come into play? I already knew the answer: Genevieve had her service weapon on her when they took her.

  I could see the cabin peeking through the tree lines in the distance. It looked like a hunting cabin, a tiny space with roughhewn logs and a rusted tin roof. I realized that what appeared to be branches covering an entire wall of the cabin were antlers. A large white box sat on the front porch. It was a chest-style freezer. I pointed to it. No words would come.

  “I see. It looks like this may be the right place,” Commander Jennings said. “Back up is on the way.”

  I checked my gun, making sure I was ready for anything that came of this. “We have to move. If we ruin the element of surprise…” I didn’t complete my thought. A movement behind the cabin caught my attention. Two people were fighting, rolling on the ground. I could see blood on a white shirt. “There, behind the cabin!” I yelled.

  Brooks pushed the gas, and we wheeled around the cabin, narrowly missing the trunk of a gigantic tree. The car slid in the gravel to a stop. My door was open, and I was in motion before Brooks put the car in park.

  Genevieve was fighting for her life against a middle-aged man. Both of them were covered with blood, and I couldn’t tell who was injured. The man pinned Genevieve. He held a knife and was trying to overpower her, the blade poised over her. As I ran, I saw she held his arm away with both hands. His other arm, the right one, hung limp at his side, and his shoulder was the source of at least some blood. “Get off of me,” Genevieve spoke through her teeth. She was strong and trained, but he was a foot taller than she was.

  I drew my gun. “Stop right there!” I yelled. The man looked at me as though I was only a figment of his imagination and turned back to Genevieve. I didn’t take my eyes off the struggle. We found her, still alive, and after all that had happened, we could still be too late. I looked for the shot to take, but there was too much motion. I couldn’t get a clean shot where I stood.

  I knew the others were there with me, with their weapons drawn. They fanned out trying to surround them.

  Commander Jennings spoke somewhere nearby. “Put the knife down. You don’t want to do this.”

  The attacker hesitated for a second, turning his head to see who was speaking. I could see he had a scar running down one side of his face, as though he had been in an accident. No, there was something different about this scar; it looked like there was a pattern to it. I didn’t have time to get a closer look, because he turned his attention back to Genevieve, determined to finish what he started.

  “We have Bren.” I didn’t know what made me say it, but it was there, hanging in the air between us.

  The perp froze again, then looked at me with his teeth bared like a caged beast.

  “You heard me. She’s in jail for you. Is that what you want?”

  “Don’t worry about her telling your secrets.” Brooks saw some flicker of emotion he could exploit. “She wouldn’t tell us anything. We found you from interviewing your fellow campers. You made quite an impression on them.”

  Brooks was telling about my interview. Part of me wante
d to redirect the narrative, but who was I protecting? Gerald New tried to have me killed for being my mother’s daughter. His tip helped find Genevieve, but that didn’t make him my ally.

  “Campers?” He looked at me like he was looking through me. “Oh, those jerks are long gone.” He leered.

  “Are they?” I asked. “I know some of them are still around.”

  “They’re planning to come back, you know,” Brooks lied. “They want to reopen the camp and host a new generation.”

  “A fresh batch of power-hungry little monsters. They ship them here to learn.”

  “Did you get shipped here?” I asked. Genevieve looked at me. Her strength was waning, and I could see the desperation in her eyes. We had to move this show along.

  “I was never supposed to be here!” he snarled. I saw Officer Bradley making his way toward the man. One solid step at a time, he took care not to crinkle a single leaf. I had to keep the man’s attention diverted a little longer.

  I took a deep breath and lowered my weapon. I held my hands up and took a tiny step toward them. “You stayed to make it right. You wanted to get back at all of them. They were wrong. And now, you are proving it. But this woman isn’t who you think she is. You were looking for the person who responded to your request for a job interview but it wasn’t her. You were there looking for me. I’m the one who applied. I’m the one you want. She was just in the wrong place.” I inched forward.

  “Liar, she was wearing the gray blazer. Bren already made sure she was related.” His nostrils flared and his grip on the knife loosened.

  “Right, but so was I.” At that moment, the situation changed. The man let out a guttural yell and scurried toward me with his knife, crouching, his limp arm trailing behind him. Genevieve rolled from beneath him exposing her bloodied legs, and Officer Bradly lunged at him, taking him to the ground at my feet. No one fired. I stood there in shock for a second that felt like an eternity, looking down at the man who would have killed me given the chance. I wanted to feel relief or hate. But I could only feel disgust for the man who was so broken he couldn’t touch reality anymore.