by Lisa Gardner
I pegged him as a future serial killer, but then, I’ve never been good with kids.
When we finally stepped up to the counter, Kimberly flashed her FBI creds and the motel attendant regarded us even more suspiciously than the evil kids. Every time I looked at him, I wanted to reach for my butterfly blade.
Play well with the locals, Kimberly had told me. I swear that woman sees everything.
Over dinner, she’d reviewed process for the morning. Dogs would go first, then humans. We’d be assigned a search grid and a dozen little orange flags. Work our area, stay hydrated, check in frequently.
It sounded simple, the way she said it. Yet, I already understand there is nothing simple about the day ahead.
I want to be in the woods already, tapping some hollow tree and magically producing Lilah Abenito’s fingers, ribs, vertebrae. Or maybe a femur, with the hand-carved message Jacob Ness was here. I want answers, even as I understand there’s never going to be anything adequate enough to explain what happened to Lilah. To me. We exist in rarified company—two girls who one day met a real live monster. Except I survived.
Now I’m back in Georgia, waiting for something to feel familiar. To turn a corner of the road, or walk into a restaurant and experience a sense of déjà vu. I feel I should know something. I need to know something. Or once again, Jacob wins.
I hear a noise from the room next to me. The sound of a door opening, then closing. Footsteps in the hall. Soft. Discreet. The steps of a person who doesn’t want to call attention.
I cross to my door immediately, on high alert. I have the chain fastened, as well as the dead bolt deployed, but compared to my system at home, this is nothing. Cheap locks for a cheap room.
I pull out my butterfly blade from the waistband at the small of my back. I’d had to check my luggage to bring it and the rest of my toys to Atlanta. D.D. had scowled at me. She’d known why I couldn’t carry on my tiny bag. You’ll be surrounded at all times by armed members of law enforcement, she’d muttered tightly. But we both knew I wasn’t going to budge on the subject. I’d checked my bag. And upon arrival, unpacked my knife, flipped it open, shut, open, shut, open, then folded it up neatly, like closing a fan, and slipped it in my pocket.
Now, I flick open the blade as twin shadows appear in the beam of light beneath my door. The shadows pause. Solidify.
Someone is standing outside my door.
Keith. Who, given tomorrow’s adventure, probably also can’t sleep. Who swore he knew everything about me, including my insomnia. Who claimed he cared, maybe enough to offer . . . what? Conversation? Solace? Distraction in the middle of the night? Or maybe more, some kind of physical interlude to keep our minds off more serious matters?
I could open my door. Reach forward, unfasten the chain, release the bolt, swing open the door until there was nothing between us. He would enter my room.
And then?
This is what other girls did. Other people. Take comfort where they could find it. A few moments of oblivion to balance out their turbulent lives.
Was sex oblivion to me? I didn’t know anymore. Once I’d been an active, healthy teenager. I certainly hadn’t gone off to college a virgin. But those days, that girl . . . She feels so long ago. Not even a memory of my life, but a film reel from someone else’s. Surely I never flirted shamelessly. Never coyly tossed back my hair. Never dug my fingers into a man’s shoulders and urged him closer, faster, harder.
My breathing accelerates. Maybe I’m not as immune as I think.
The twin shadows remain. The person in the hallway clearly working as hard on his courage as I am on mine.
I raise my hand. I place it against the hard plane of the cheap wooden door, moving slowly, careful not to make a sound. I close my eyes. And for a moment, I let myself imagine:
Keith’s hand, splayed on the other side. Keith’s palm connecting with mine. Our fingers touching.
Deep breath in, deep breath out.
Then I take my hand away, and walk back to the bed, where I lie on my side, and stare at the light limning the doorframe until the twin shadows finally shift, then fade away.
* * *
—
I HIT THE MOTEL LOBBY thirty minutes early. Keith is already there, looking like an advertisement for Jogger’s Monthly. Black running tights, topped by some wicking shirt in electric blue, further covered by a long windbreaker with a million zippers, snaps, and light reflecting strips. His tennis shoes complete the ensemble, base black with swishes of silver and blue.
Clad in my uniform of bulky cargo pants, a faded cotton T-shirt, and worn Gap sweatshirt, I look like I’m about to board a subway, while he looks like he’s about to hit the start line of the Boston Marathon.
Which makes my lip twitch. I giggle, then snort. Because honest to God, neither of us looks like any kind of search and rescue volunteer. Keith must’ve gotten it, too, because a moment later, he starts chuckling, as well.
“Welcome to the dream team,” he says, crossing over. “Coffee?”
“I’ll take a gallon.”
He leads me over to the meager breakfast offerings. Basically fresh coffee, a small basket of fruit, then anything that comes from a cellophane wrapper. I snag blueberry Pop-Tarts.
I’d just made my way through the first mug of coffee and one of the pastries when D.D. careered into the small lobby, looking bleary-eyed and cranky. For a city slicker, she’s still dressed better than us—gray outdoor pants, topped with a dark blue fleece embroidered with BPD on the upper left corner. She even has a backpack, with both sides sporting bottles of water.
“Coffee, black,” she grunts. Keith doesn’t question, just starts pouring.
“Why do you have outdoor clothes?” I ask her. “You said you didn’t do mountains.”
“Training exercises.” She takes the mug from Keith, downs the first half in a single gulp, even though it’s steaming hot. “Department keeps us outfitted.”
“Should I have a backpack?” I eye her supply of water, and start feeling nervous all over again.
“They’ll give you a light pack at check-in. Gotta carry marking flags, map, water, maybe a compass.”
I stare at her. “I don’t know how to read a compass.”
Keith raises a hand. “I have an app on my phone.”
“Of course you do.” D.D. downs the second half of her mug, holds it out for more. I wonder if we should just give her the pot.
“Food?” I ask.
This cheers her up. She paws through the slim pickings, selects two packages of Pop-Tarts, an apple, and a banana. One package of Pop-Tarts and the apple go into her day pack. The rest she tears into.
My lack of a backpack is bothering me more and more. I stick the remaining pair of Pop-Tarts into the front pouch of my hoody, then add an apple. I look like a kangaroo, but I tell myself fashion has never been my crutch.
Keith disappears, reappearing with a lightweight runners pack, with strings spooling over his shoulders. He adds fruit, two bottles of water.
Then that’s it. We have a runner, a thug, and a detective. The dream team indeed.
D.D. heads for the car, and Keith and I follow.
* * *
—
THE DRIVE TO THE TRAILHEAD is short enough. The volunteers are already pouring in, and D.D. has to work for parking. We follow the flow of humans—a mix of male and female, young and old, all more appropriately dressed than we are—to the check-in table, where SSA Quincy, in an FBI windbreaker, is clearly in charge, along with some older woman who is wearing a sheriff’s department fleece with the same aplomb other women wear cashmere.
D.D. checks us in. She doesn’t make small talk with Quincy. Given the long line and level of activity, now is not the time. On the table, Quincy has spread a huge map that is broken into brightly marked squares: the search grid. To the side, I see the key. Neon p
ink belongs to Nate Marles, bright green to Mary Rose Zeilan. Team leaders, I figure.
Quincy hands us a small map with notations. Our first assignment. I check it out on the larger map. We’re about a quarter mile up from where the body was first found. This disappoints me till I remember what the forensic anthropologist said—many predators like to retreat with their treasure to higher ground. So maybe this will be a good place to find a raccoon’s den or an abandoned squirrel’s nest. I need us to find something. Make some kind of difference.
At the next table there are cases of water and piles of bananas, then boxes of mesh gear bags filled with tiny surveyor’s flags.
“One bag per search team,” Quincy is saying now, voice brisk as the line builds behind us. “Should you see anything you think might be relevant, you stop and take out a flag. Write your grid coordinates in Sharpie beneath the flag number. Then mark the flag on your map and call it in to your team leader. Got it?”
“Got it.” D.D. almost sounds chipper.
“Run out of flags, send one of your teammates down for more.” Quincy glances up, takes in Keith’s outfit, pauses slightly. “Send him. He looks fast.”
Keith doesn’t bat an eye. “Like the wind,” he assures her.
Now D.D. is smiling, too.
“Pace yourself,” Kimberly warns. “Eyes open. Step steady. Good luck.”
Quincy looks behind us to the next guy. We move down the line of tables and finish picking up gear. The older woman from the sheriff’s department takes our names a second time, checks us off a list, and that’s that.
Up into the woods we go.
* * *
—
I DON’T MIND THE HIKING. I jog almost daily, though not in fancy clothes like Keith’s. But a woman who lives in my constant state of hypervigilance has to run endlessly just to burn off steam. Plus lift weights and scamper along buildings and swing my way around abandoned structures. I can’t reason my anxiety away by admonishing myself that the worst will never happen. Because the worst thing did happen to me, making all fears real, all terrors genuine. So I role-play my way through it. I find an old warehouse, I get myself untrapped. Samuel, my FBI victim advocate, first told me about the technique—easing anxiety by building strength—but I don’t think he expected me to take it this far.
Now, looking at the towering trees all around us, with a thick undergrowth of leafy green bushes—I think someone mentioned mountain laurel—it occurs to me all the new escape models I could be prepping for.
I keep moving. D.D. and Keith have no problem with the pace. Apparently, we’re all crazy.
No one speaks. We hit the one-mile mark. Shortly afterward we come to a small clearing, where another law enforcement type is standing with a clipboard. He checks us off as having survived this far, and gets serious about how to find our particular section of the grid.
He and D.D. talk for a few more moments. Keith, I notice, keeps looking behind the guy, as if there’s something he’s trying to see deeper in the woods. Then I get it. This is ground zero, so to speak. Where the hiker went in search of a stick and found a bone instead.
I look down the hill where we just came. And for the first time, I feel uneasy.
That climb was nothing for me. But Jacob? Jacob who sat behind the wheel all day and lived on fried food and was famous for his week-long drug- and alcohol-fueled benders . . .
I can’t picture Jacob here at all. Does that mean he never came to these mountains? That he lied to me about the Georgia cabin? Or does that mean I don’t know him as well as I thought I did? That he kept secrets even as I surrendered every last bit of me?
“It’s okay,” Keith says.
I realize I’m standing with my hands fisted.
“He didn’t win. You’re the one who’s about to help a murdered girl go home again. You got this.”
“Stop looking inside my head,” I mutter.
“Then stop being so easy to read.”
I scowl, but being pissed at him has made me feel better. Which is probably what he intended. Keith always seems to know me too well. Which is the reason I don’t trust him at all.
D.D. has our coordinates. We resume climbing.
* * *
—
BY THE TIME WE REACH our assigned area, we’ve shed our outer layers. We can hear things from time to time, other searchers in the woods, but we don’t see them. Each area is that large, given how much ground we have to cover.
“The body searches I’ve done,” D.D. says, “we stand in a line, walk forward at the same pace and prod the ground with a stick. You’re looking for softness, signs of recently disturbed earth. This is totally different from that. I’m not even sure of the best approach. It’s going to be hard to look beneath every leaf for small, random bones, so I’m liking Dr. Jackson’s advice: Let’s look for animal activity. Knock against some hollow trees, investigate fallen logs. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” She pauses. “This is where we leave the trail. It’s important that we stay together. Keith, time for your magic compass app. We don’t want to become the next thing the search party has to find.”
Keith pulls out his phone. We’re all sweating. It’s cooler in the shade of the woods, but I now eye those same shadows skeptically. The trail had been easy to follow. Wide, nicely carpeted with fall leaves. Now we face clumps of giant mountain laurel clogging up the sides. There are gaps here and there.
D.D. picks one. Keith and I muscle our way through behind her.
On the other side, the woods are more open than I’d imagined. The trees spread out, the ground cover a mix of leaves, fallen debris, rocks, and scraggly bushes that don’t get much sunlight.
The earth smells loamy. It tugs at me. Memories of my mother’s farm, of a childhood spent running around forests not so dissimilar to this one. I always felt most at home in the wild. It’s been a long time now, though, since I left for the streets of Boston.
“Um, we should probably pick a line and walk it,” Keith suggests. “I say we head due west, straight across our grid. When we reach the coordinates on the other side, we’ll shift north, then head back due east. Like vacuuming a carpet.”
“Works for me,” D.D. says. “Remember, Team Roomba: stay together.”
We all start walking. I find myself trying to look up, down, and around all at once, which leads me to seeing nothing at all. I try to re-focus myself. First, eye level—looking for signs of nests, animal activities—then looking high.
It gives me some sense of discipline, but doesn’t lead to instant results.
Keith finds two nests. D.D. works a hollow log. Still nothing.
“You know there’s a good chance we won’t find anything,” D.D. says an hour later, after informing us it was time for a water break. The day is getting warmer. Though we’re moving slowly through the woods, my cotton T-shirt is now plastered to my skin.
“We’re talking a few dozen small bones spread over half a mountain. Most searchers won’t find anything. We just have to hope that some do.”
I nod. I know what she says is true. Still, if we do all this and come up empty . . . I can’t take the idea of failure. I can tell by the look on Keith’s face he’s thinking the same thing, too. He didn’t don his ridiculous running outfit to return home empty-handed.
We sip a little more, then cap our bottles, get back to hunting.
There’s a big tree up ahead. I can already see part of it has been bored away, maybe from a woodpecker or some other animal. I feel my pulse quicken even as I rise on my tiptoes and, turning on the flashlight function of my cell phone, shine it in. No tiny eyes peer back at me. I reach in, pat around lightly. Downy feathers, leaves, and something slightly more substantial. A pile of twigs. Bones?
We’re not supposed to touch anything. But then again, I can’t flag what I can’t inspect. I find another small stick on the ground, and use it to po
ke around the hole until I find what I’d felt earlier. Slowly but surely, I use the twig to drag the item toward me. Closer and closer . . .
I pull a little too hard and it plunges from the opening onto the ground. I gasp, jump back, then immediately crouch down. It looks like bones. So many tiny, tiny bones.
I’ve done it. I’ve found . . .
“A mouse skeleton,” Keith says. I glare up at him, then poke the pile a bit more.
Dammit, the bones are too small, and now that he’s mentioned it, they do form more or less the shape of a mouse.
“Probably an owl’s den,” he says. “Looks like the guy had a good dinner.”
I scowl. “Don’t owls swallow the entire thing? Produce owl pellets or something like that?”
Keith blinks at me. “Oh. You might be right.”
“Score one for rural education,” I tell him. “I even touched one of those pellets at the local nature park, so whoever left behind these remains wasn’t an owl. But you’re right, they appear to be mice bones.”
Just then we hear something. Barking in the distance.
D.D. jogs closer. “Sounds like the dogs made a discovery.”
The barking goes on and on.
“Kind of a big discovery.” D.D. reaches for her phone just as it starts buzzing. She glances at the screen. “Quincy,” she informs us, then places it to her ear.
“Yeah. Got that. Dogs made a hit. What? You’re sure? Okay. We’re headed over.”
She punches off the call, turns to us with renewed intensity.
“The dogs found missing bones,” Keith says instantly.
“No. The dogs found another body.”
For a second, none of us speak. None of us can speak.
“There are more?” I ask softly.
“At least one more grave. Quincy wants us to go help.”
“A dumping ground,” Keith exclaims. “We’ve found a serial killer’s dumping ground.” He sounds excited. I know he can’t help himself.
