White Out: A Thriller (Badlands Thriller)

by Danielle Girard

  At the end of Horchow’s report, he had written that the body was in full rigor as well as frozen solid. Why would Larson have killed Abby Jensen in a drunken rage and then waited hours—four or five or six of them—to dump the body? Whoever had done it had to have broken the rigor and also lifted the woman overhead and into the dumpster. Dr. Prescott’s warning came back to her: the drug in Larson’s tox screen impaired strength and coordination.

  She glanced at the first page of the autopsy report. Horchow had listed the deceased as weighing 137 pounds. What would it take to lift that much weight while on a drug that reduced your strength? Would adrenaline make up for the deficit? Was Larson working with someone? Or maybe the reason he’d waited to dump the body was to give the drugs a chance to metabolize out of his system so that he had the strength to lift her.

  Kylie went back to her email and sorted through the long list of unread messages. Gilbert had copied her on a report to Davis and Vogel that no prisoners recently released on parole lived within thirty miles of Hagen, and no registered sex offenders resided within fifty miles. Sheriff Oloff in Elgin had forwarded Abigail Jensen’s bank statements for the last three months. Back in October, she had emptied her bank account—$457—and stopped using the account. No debit card use, no deposits. Nothing. And her mother had told Sheriff Oloff that she’d stopped supporting Abigail, seeing her rarely in the months before her death. So who had been helping her?

  She forwarded the message to Davis and Vogel, copying Gilbert, and requested that they obtain bank information for Iver Larson and Lily Baker. She would have liked to get it for Brent Nolan as well, but she knew how Vogel and Davis would respond to that request. God forbid they ruffle the feathers of a drilling exec—dead or not.

  In an earlier email was a note from the manager at the man camp. They had only one resident who wasn’t on campus Wednesday night, but they had confirmed that Benny Schade had been in Minot, North Dakota, with his family. The manager had attached a gas receipt for Wednesday evening, the night of the murder, at just past five p.m., where Schade had supposedly filled his tank as he’d arrived home to visit his family. Kylie entered Schade into the police database, but he came up clean. Not so much as a speeding ticket.

  She scanned the email from the man-camp manager again. It wasn’t Fort Knox over there. Surely someone could have gotten out unnoticed if he’d wanted to. She made a note on her list and told herself she’d go up there next week if she didn’t find any better leads.

  She opened the image of a furious Iver Larson gripping a woman’s arm that had come from Sarah Ollman. The woman’s thin wrist was visible, as was the edge of something dark, maybe the leather band Jensen had been wearing. Though they’d studied the images at the department, Kylie went back through them, searching for another angle of that moment or of Larson, searching for the woman whose profile might match. It could be Abigail Jensen. The waves of blonde hair were the right length and shade to be Jensen’s. If only the camera had been shifted one inch to the right, they’d have been able to see her.

  Her beer drained, Kylie shut down her computer. Her thoughts went to what Lily Baker had told her in the parking lot. Convenient, how she remembered nothing about the car accident or why she’d been in Brent Nolan’s car. Kylie had thought it a ruse to get away with something, but the more Kylie had listened to Baker run through everything that had happened, the harder it was to hang on to her disbelief. Maybe Baker really had lost her memory.

  Certainly, Baker hadn’t slipped up as she recounted the story to Kylie, and she hadn’t hesitated as she’d spoken, instead letting it out like one long stream of vomit.

  In her notebook, Kylie jotted down a few phrases from Baker’s story. Attacker smelled like licorice, Tim Bailey, and wet shoes and pants. That last one, she underlined twice before yawning as she rose from the couch and padded into her bedroom.

  You should brush your teeth. And change your clothes. Get under the covers. Instead, she lay across the bed and pulled a throw blanket over her shoulders. As sleep drew her in, her mind drifted back to Baker’s story. Nolan had been unconscious, but Baker had been able to get out. She hadn’t been wearing a jacket, and it was freezing on the overpass. Her boots and the hem of her jeans were wet. Wet made Kylie think of springtime and fall. How could she have gotten wet? There was no water near the overpass where they’d gone over.

  There was no water anywhere nearby. The closest rivers were miles from Hagen. Some realization drifted by, but Kylie was too exhausted to catch hold of it, so instead she let sleep take her.

  CHAPTER 39

  LILY

  Lily didn’t sleep. Instead, she lay in her bed, Cal beside her, and listened to the night tick by. The detective was right. Getting her memory back was about the only thing she could do to be of any help to the police.

  Abby Jensen had been staying at her home, which meant she and Lily had almost certainly been together shortly before Abby was killed. Had she seen the killer? She remembered images of a dream, the woods with Abby. But she couldn’t find his face in her memory. Was his name buried in her subconscious? And could she unlock that place?

  Outside her window, the black sky grew inky blue and then a deep violet before Lily got out of bed. She had to get a new cell phone, but the small store in Hagen that sold them—the only store that sold them—wouldn’t be open until ten a.m. It was barely seven now. She thought back to the articles she’d read at Iver’s about her captivity. Only a handful had an image to go along with the story, but the ones that did had shown the same photograph—a view of the cabin where the girls were held. In Molva.

  Lily made her way to the entryway. On top of the mail sat a set of car keys with a VW sign. She took them to the front door and hit the lock button. The white car on the curb chirped. Her car was here. She had driven away from the bar with Brent Nolan. But how had she gotten to the bar if not in her own car? She ferreted in her mind, searching for clues. She could remember running through the woods, getting into Nolan’s car, but the time between being with Abby in her kitchen and that was blank, like a dark room with not a sliver of light.

  Lily had an idea. A terrible, crazy idea. But despite her doubts, the longer the idea lingered in her mind, the more convinced she became that it was the only way. She pulled open the drawer of the entry table and searched the contents, then did the same in the kitchen drawers and finally in her bedroom. In the back of the bedside drawer, she found a credit card, wrapped in a yellow sticky note that read, Emergencies only.

  She wanted to laugh.

  She dressed quickly, fed Cal breakfast, and grabbed a handful of stale crackers from a box in the pantry for herself. The grocery store was nowhere near the top of her list, but it would have to be eventually. When Cal had finished his food, she packed a bottle of water and a bowl for Cal, pocketed her emergency credit card and car keys, and headed out with Cal loaded in the passenger seat.

  Her first stop was a gas station, where she filled the tank. Inside the small convenience market, she bought two granola bars and a North Dakota road map.

  “Hey, Lily,” the cashier said, and Lily smiled, fighting against the urge to stare at his name tag. He lifted the road map and laughed. “Haven’t sold one of these in a while.”

  “I know, right?” she said, sounding like an idiot as he rang her up. She slid her credit card into the reader and prayed it didn’t reject her or ask for a PIN. A quick beep sounded, and a receipt slid out of the machine. The cashier handed it to her.

  “Thanks,” she said, grateful to return to her car.

  She left the gas station and drove several blocks in what she guessed was the direction of the highway out of town before pulling over to consult the map. The crisp paper spread out before her, Lily found Molva immediately, tucked in the southwestern corner of the state, its name in tiny font. She scanned the intricate maze of roads and towns and decided it should have taken her ten minutes to locate Molva. But it was there, in her subconscious. Using her fingers to measur
e the inches, she figured the town was about a two-hour drive. Gathering her nerve, she switched on the radio and let the soothing voice of Waylon Jennings fill the car.

  Cal settled in on the passenger seat as Lily put the car in gear and started toward the town where all her nightmares had come true.

  CHAPTER 40

  KYLIE

  By six a.m., Kylie had finished a pot of coffee on her own and paced a new rut in the living room carpet, waiting for a response to her early-morning text to Deputy Sheriff Pete McIntosh in Glendive.

  Even before falling asleep, Kylie had decided she needed to go to Glendive to meet McIntosh. The deputy sheriff was in the same position she was—with a dead body and looking for someone to put behind bars for the crime. Kylie had texted him to let him know they’d made an arrest, but she still had questions. Plus, she wanted to see the place where the third victim, Jenna Hitchcock, had been killed. She didn’t know the details of Hitchcock’s death or what he’d found on his end. There had to be something—some little nugget that would make it worth the drive.

  McIntosh’s response came in shortly after six thirty. I’m around all day if you want to come down to see the Hitchcock scene.

  Two heads were better than one, and a fresh perspective would be nice, too. Hagen felt claustrophobic that way—Sheriff Davis, DA Vogel, and even Carl Gilbert seemed each to have his own personal agenda. Every interaction included an element of history, obvious or subtle. The subtext dealt with what trouble you had gotten into as a kid, if you’d been an asshole in high school, who your father was, and sometimes even who your father’s father was. To close this case and walk away confident that she’d put the right man behind bars, Kylie had to clear all that away and come to the crime objectively—something that was almost impossible for folks in Hagen.

  Carl Gilbert was a perfect example. He’d been so aggressive with Larson in the hospital, like the beef he had with Larson was personal. They’d gone to school together, so maybe there was some high school shit still lingering. But she didn’t like how close Gilbert was to the case. And she particularly didn’t like that he’d been the one to search Larson’s car.

  Hagen had official crime scene investigators trained in evidence collection, and Gilbert wasn’t one of them. Maybe she was just sensitive to the fact that she’d been left out of the loop on the warrant for Larson’s car. She was definitely bent out of shape about that.

  But Pete McIntosh had no connections to Hagen. And neither did she.

  Heading your way within the hour, she texted in reply to Pete McIntosh.

  Forty minutes later, Kylie got into her department car with a thermos of black coffee and a piece of banana-cream pie that Amber had brought her. When she considered how many pieces of banana-cream pie she’d eaten since Wednesday, she almost felt too sick to eat it. Almost.

  Unfortunately, banana cream went well with coffee. And it was all she had for breakfast as she drove out the 1804, the same road Brent Nolan had died on, and headed west toward Glendive and Billings beyond. She’d made it eight miles when she grew close to the home of Alvin Tanner. Tanner, who had footage of Highway 1804. She glanced at the clock. It was seven thirty a.m. on a Saturday morning. She’d been here less than twenty-four hours earlier, but it felt as though days had passed.

  It was too early to go calling on an unsuspecting citizen, but Tanner had been warned, so Kylie didn’t hesitate to pull off the highway and turn onto Tanner’s creepy camera-ridden property. She’d barely made the final turn when she noticed the absence of the cameras that had lined the roof yesterday. All four were gone.

  She hesitated in the driveway, waiting for Tanner to come charging out, but the house was still, quiet. Kylie gripped the radio on her dash, then let go and picked up her phone to text Sheriff Davis directly.

  We ever see the footage from Alvin Tanner of the 1804? Never came to my email but maybe he sent through highway patrol? I’m at his residence now.

  She made no mention of the missing cameras or the quiet eeriness of the property.

  I haven’t. You check with Gilbert?

  Why would Gilbert have it? He hadn’t even come to Tanner’s. It was just Kylie and the highway patrol officer, Merkel.

  No. Going to talk to Tanner now.

  With that, she pocketed her phone and drew her weapon from its holster. She cracked the car door and waited for some response from Tanner. The house remained quiet. She stayed in the shelter of her car and called out, “Alvin Tanner?”

  The wind picked up, shaking the evergreens and hissing through their trembling branches.

  She shivered and called out again. “Mr. Tanner, it’s Detective Kylie Milliard from Hagen. We spoke yesterday.”

  Nothing.

  She took a step away from her car, crossing the yard toward Tanner’s old Chevy. As she approached, she saw the driver’s door hung open. A plastic grocery sack had spilled on the driver’s side floor mat, a fifth of some brown liquor and several cans scattered about. A single apple had rolled out onto the ground. She reached down to touch the liquor bottle and found the glass cold.

  “Mr. Tanner?” She heard the crack in her own voice.

  Pausing behind the protection of Tanner’s truck, she scanned the property for anything else that looked out of place. But it all looked the same—the neglected yard, a broken chair near a firepit, a handful of shingles that dotted the yard where they’d come off the roof. Where the cameras had been, the roof was slightly darker, noticeable only if you looked for it. The house remained quiet, but the groceries and the truck told her something was wrong.

  Rather than walking up the front steps, she approached the side of the house.

  Standing to the side of the first window, she raised her gun and edged close enough to see inside. No shades or curtains meant she had a full view of the room. It was a bedroom, the bed unmade, the sheets shoved back as though the occupant had gotten up in a hurry. She shifted across the window and looked in from the other side. A single chair sat in the corner, piled with clothes. A flannel similar to the one Tanner had been wearing yesterday and a pair of jeans lay on top.

  Nothing amiss. She moved toward the back of the house, where a window looked in on a smaller room. Another bed, made hastily, a blanket lying across the foot. A cobweb stretched from the old light fixture to a corner of the window like a ghostly veil.

  At the corner of the house, she listened for sounds. A motorcycle roared by along the freeway, its screaming engine adding to the thumping of her pulse.

  When the cycle had passed, she glanced around the corner before creeping along the back of the house. She reached a single window just above her eye level, but all she could see was a light fixture in the center of the room, the dim bulb on. Ten steps farther was the back entrance. She paused at its edge before peering through the small window in the door.

  A man lay on the floor near the table, on his side with his back to her. The man’s face wasn’t visible, but Kylie recognized the flannel shirt immediately—the shirt Alvin Tanner had been wearing when she’d last seen him. She twisted the doorknob, which turned easily, and stepped into the room, gun drawn.

  The room smelled of sour milk and cigarette smoke. Decades of it leached from the walls and floor. Bending beside the body, she pressed her fingers to his carotid artery without looking down, her gaze scanning the doorways, her gun ready.

  No pulse.

  She pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed Hagen Dispatch.

  “Cannon,” came the response.

  “It’s Milliard. I’m at Alvin Tanner’s, out on 1804. He’s on the kitchen floor, unresponsive.”

  “I’ll send an ambulance. You okay?”

  “Yeah. Think he’s been dead awhile.” But even as she said it, she glanced down and saw Tanner’s outstretched hand. A deep groove ran along the wrist where he’d clearly been bound, though the restraint was gone now. Small cuts covered the bare arm, horizontal slices, as though he’d been grazed by some sort of fine rake with razor
points. “Jesus,” she whispered, leaning in.

  Beneath his hand was a pool of blood. Only then did she notice he was missing two fingers—his pinkie and his pointer.

  She stood and backed away from the body. Heat pooled in her gut. What had happened? Had he had some sort of accident? But there were no weapons nearby, no drops of blood on the floor around him. Plus, he hadn’t bound his own wrists. She scanned the kitchen surfaces and bit back the sound at the back of her throat.

  In the center of the kitchen table was an ashtray, almost full. Lying among the ash and butts were the two severed fingers.

  CHAPTER 41

  LILY

  Lily arrived in Molva and drove slowly down Main Street, past a handful of shops and a delicatessen. She studied the buildings, scoured their facades, willing herself to remember something. A woman walked out of the deli, a white bag in her hand. Her gaze fixed on Lily’s car and followed it as she drove down the street. Lily was panting, her breaths coming shallow and too fast. In her rearview mirror, the woman still watched as Lily went by.

  The whole of Molva was about seven blocks long before Main Street reached the river and the road curved to the left. Lily found herself crossing the bridge and following Main Street as it wound out of town. As she drove, she studied the flat landscape, the low brush that grew thicker at the water’s edge. A mile passed and then another, the road winding left and then right along the river. She pulled out at the first turnoff and put her car in park.

  She had no idea where that cabin was and no way to find it. No phone to use Google Earth and search for it. She had gas and a map. Beside her, Cal rose on the seat, and Lily shut the engine off. She opened her door and braced herself against the cold wind as she rounded the car and let Cal out. He walked slowly to the edge of the gravel turnoff and did his business while she stood and stared back at town.