The Only One Left

by Pamela Beason

  The enormity of the loss rendered Grace speechless. And now this poor woman’s remaining child might be gone, too. Mia. Matt had shown her the first photo he’d received of the blond girl. The picture depicted Mia staring at the camera, one hand on her hip and a sly smile on her face, a petite teenager who appeared delicate but somehow vivacious and daring at the same time.

  Grace wanted to ask more about Mia, but it didn’t seem right to press for details now.

  “It was a long time ago. Twelve years.” Robin took another deep breath and wiped her eyes again. “And now, this. I feel cursed.”

  She sat up straighter. “The Irelands think Keith and I smother Mia.” She sighed. “Mia hates being only five feet tall; did I tell you that? The other kids took after Keith, taller, with dark hair. Mia apparently got my genes. She once told me that there are no short leaders in history except for Napoleon, and everyone makes fun of him.” She moved her sorrowful gaze to the trees at the edge of the yard. “I hope I never made her feel small.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t,” Grace said. “I’m sure you made her feel loved.”

  Robin didn’t appear convinced. “Some people are even suggesting that she might have run away. I can’t believe she’d do that to us.” Taking a tissue from her pocket, she blew her nose. “But it’s pointless to whine, isn’t it? I’m sure you have problems, too.”

  “Teensy ones, by comparison. Can I ask how old you were when Mia was born?”

  “Forty-two, nearly forty-three.”

  “You must have gotten pregnant a long time after . . . the others.” It seemed almost sacrilegious to mention the dead children. “How did you feel about that?”

  Robin’s blue eyes met hers. “At first, I was shocked, and frankly, a bit resentful.”

  Grace swallowed. “I can understand that.”

  “But then I realized what a blessing a new baby could be at that stage of my life.”

  Grace turned away to focus on the horizon. A blessing? When she got pregnant at forty-two, Robin had a steady husband and had already been a mother three times over. She had wanted children, she understood children, she planned for children. She wasn’t treading water in a rising tide of fear and dread.

  How could Grace explain her emotional turmoil to this mother who had so loved and so tragically lost her children?

  As far as Grace knew, every major problem on earth could be traced back to homo sapiens. People were the reason that the oceans were filling with plastic, that there was no longer room for orangutans and tigers in Asia, for gorillas in Africa. People were the reason that orcas were starving in the sea. Human greed and ignorance murdered elephants for ivory and rhinos for their horns, and drowned dolphins and turtles in drift nets.

  She had always felt righteous for not adding another destructive human to the overloaded planetary ecosystem.

  Even if she could get over that feeling—a monumental if—how could she have a child now? She lived in a single-wide trailer, for heaven’s sake. She’d have to change her tiny office into a nursery to keep a baby there.

  No upwardly mobile career path stretched out in front of her, not even a trail that promised a comfortable life and a secure retirement. Just an endless calendar of gorilla care and struggles for money.

  Her next birthday cake would have forty-one candles. It would be a conflagration; she’d need to keep a fire extinguisher close by. When this child was ready for college, she’d be in her sixties. She already felt old.

  But maybe a child would change that feeling. This was not just any baby. It was her baby, and Matthew Finn’s. She knew Matt had moved from Chicago to Evansburg to raise a family with his wife. He was still bitter that Wendy had divorced him to have a baby with her former lover.

  Grace flattened a hand against her abdomen. The embryo, if there really was an embryo in there, wouldn’t be bigger than a peanut. She couldn’t feel anything inside yet, but she could envision this child. A girl with Finn’s piercing blue eyes and the dark hair they shared. Black Irish coloring.

  Or a boy. Didn’t most men want a boy? Just one child to add to the world, to the human gene pool. She and Matt had good genes. She often felt like a lesser woman in the company of mothers, and she knew she was missing out on the loving bonds they felt with their children.

  Nobody else seemed to feel this burden of environmental guilt; why should she? She could teach this child to love nature and appreciate the amazing skills and intelligence of all animals, wild and domestic. She could teach her—or him—to understand the complexity of ecosystems, to respect and preserve the environment.

  But Matt had said he was glad that he wasn’t a parent. When had that changed?

  She wanted Matt in her life. He was an honorable man, a kind man, a considerate lover. This could be a way of snaring him. She knew that he would ask her to move in with him, even to marry him. And the child could be a playmate for Kanoni for years to come.

  She caught her lower lip between her teeth. She didn’t really want to snare Matt, did she? And as for a playmate for Kanoni, that thought proved how insane the whole notion was—what sort of unnatural human mother considered the welfare of an ape before her own child?

  She could still be wrong. Maybe she should hope this was early menopause.

  Grace felt Robin’s gaze on her face. Her voice low, the other woman quietly asked, “Are you . . .?”

  She nodded, swallowed hard. “I think I might be.”

  “You think?”

  Grace grimaced. “Evansburg is a small town. A gossipy town. I can’t march into the drugstore and waltz out with a pregnancy test. The news that Gorilla Woman might be pregnant would be all over town within a couple of hours. There’d be jokes that I was having a baby gorilla. And Finn can’t know.”

  Sliding her hand under Grace’s where it rested on her abdomen, Robin interwove their fingers and then gave Grace’s hand a squeeze. “It will be our secret.”

  Fine lines pulled at the corners of Robin’s eyes and mouth. Purple shadows smudged her cheeks. How could this sad woman be comforting her now? This was the fourth night her daughter was missing. Tiny Mia, of the shining blond tresses and Cupid’s bow smile.

  Grace leaned forward to give Robin a hug.

  Chapter 19

  Thursday

  Finn stared at a yellow rectangle in the Google Earth window. Probably a wheat field, with a single tree in the middle of it. That field seemed likely to be the place that Darcy had described, about eighteen miles east and slightly south of Vantage, sandwiched between farm roads. He wrote down the GPS coordinates and the names of the roads that bordered it. The information would at least confirm where Comet had dumped Darcy Ireland, and that might be a starting point for finding Mia. He checked his watch. Nearly four p.m. already. He’d have to see if Grant County deputies could search the area, make sure the body of a teenage girl wasn’t somewhere close by. His imagination conjured up the awful image of a young blond corpse under that waving wheat.

  His desk phone rang again, and he wearily picked it up. “Detective Finn.”

  “My name is Felicia Morris, and I’m a reporter with—”

  “I have no comment at this time.” He tapped the phone back into its cradle. Why did the desk clerk keep putting reporters through to his extension? He called her to ask.

  “I’m sorry. Most don’t tell me they’re reporters,” she told him.

  He hung up. Of course they wouldn’t.

  “My skeleton is Magdalena Aguilar,” Sara Melendez startled Finn by saying from her desk across the room. “Confirmed by dental records.” She swiveled in her chair to face his desk.

  Finn found it a little creepy that the other detective had said “my skeleton.” “You got a whole skeleton?”

  “Not a single bone missing. We borrowed a Ground-Penetrating Radar device from the utility company. That barn hadn’t been used for anything but storing hay for decades, so anyone could have swung by to bury a body, but Magdalena was on Todd Sutter’s list of pr
obables.” She put a hand to her forehead. “The press is gonna love this.”

  “Good,” he said. “Get ’em off my back.”

  “Unfortunately, Magdalena’s only a skeleton now, and after the fire, there’s nothing left to link Sutter to her.”

  “At least the Aguilar family will know for sure. And it could come in useful when Sutter’s up for parole.”

  Melendez’s eyes narrowed. “If there’s any justice, Sutter will never be up for parole.”

  Finn agreed, but they both knew that wasn’t the way the system always worked. “Where’s that GPR unit now?”

  “Locked in the evidence room. Someone’s coming to get it day after tomorrow. Why?”

  He briefly considered telling her about the bones in Grace’s barn, but he’d promised Grace. Once the news was out, it would be all over Evansburg in a flash. He settled for saying, “Grace McKenna’s gorillas live in an old barn. I just want to make sure there’s not another body buried under there.”

  “Ugh.” After wincing at the idea, she then said, “Maybe we should check all the barns in the county.”

  “Maybe all the barns in the surrounding area, too. Sutter picked up victims from several counties, didn’t he?” He made a mental note to read the entire Sutter file. “Any leads on your arsonist?”

  Melendez frowned. “We know he’s using gasoline and he’s targeting abandoned buildings, and we’ve found tire tracks.” Shaking her head, she added, “Unfortunately, they’re from really common tires. Half the pickups in the county are rolling on ‘em right now.”

  “The fact that he—or she—is targeting abandoned buildings means he—or she—is a local.”

  “She? How many arsonists are women?”

  Finn shrugged. “Something like fifteen percent.”

  “And their motive is usually revenge. What sort of a kick would this one get from burning down abandoned buildings?”

  “Just trying to give women equal opportunity.”

  “Well, stop it. Trust me, it will turn out to be a guy. Probably multiple guys. Probably multiple guys under the age of twenty-five. I have a few delinquents in mind.” She swiveled back to her computer.

  * * * * *

  Hours later, Finn was eager to finish his GPR scan of Grace’s barn floor. When he arrived, he’d been relieved to find Robin Valdez was out on an errand. He had no news for her, and he didn’t want to explain that he was searching for human bones under the dirt floor of the barn. It was bad enough to have a missing daughter, but it would be even worse to imagine she might be the latest victim of a serial killer.

  Finn noticed Kanoni was wearing a diaper.

  “Diarrhea,” Grace explained. “It’s easier to change her than to constantly wash her and Neema.”

  Slowly rolling the wheeled radar device forward, he watched the screen on the attached laptop, while Grace stood by with a shovel to dig as needed. They found a couple of metal pieces from some ancient farm implement, two broken bricks, a bit from a horse bridle, and an ancient spur that some cowboy had lost over the years. The only troubling discovery was another bone, buried only a few inches below the surface. This was the shortest yet, maybe the end bone of a finger or one of the smallest bones in a foot.

  Could someone have scattered a skeleton over the entire compound? Should he walk the machine over the courtyard between Grace’s trailers?

  Grace queried the gorillas about the latest bone. None of the apes showed any recognition of what she was talking about, which shouldn’t have been surprising, since the bone had been buried.

  Never one to pass up an opportunity to ask for food, Neema asked for apple. When Grace refused, Neema signed chase.

  Grace raised her hands and stomped her foot, and then her questions gave way to a wild, ear-splitting game of ape tag. Kanoni lagged behind the adult gorillas for a change.

  Grace pursued the apes outside into the rope net. Sliding the newest bone fragment into his pants pocket, Finn continued with his scan.

  When he was on his last pass, Robin Valdez slipped into the barn. Grace joined her, and both women leaned side-by-side against the far wall as they discussed something in voices too low to hear. Finn was hyperaware of Robin’s eyes following his every move, probably wondering why he wasn’t out chasing down leads to find her daughter.

  “This will only take a few minutes more,” he apologized. “The machine is on loan.”

  “What are you looking for with that thing?” Robin asked.

  Finn hesitated. No way was he going to admit to this anxious mother that he was searching for a skeleton. “Construction debris,” he finally said. “This barn was remodeled, and we suspect the crew simply buried the scraps instead of carting them away like they should have.”

  Grace shot him a querying look, but when Robin turned her way, Grace added, “I don’t want the gorillas digging up anything dangerous.”

  Robin must have wondered at the timing.

  The apes, tired of chasing one another up and down the netting outside, returned to the barn to observe the humans. Neema wanted to push the GPR unit like Finn had, and although it made him feel like an idiot, he let the mother gorilla have a go for a few yards. Then Kanoni wanted a try, but she couldn’t roll it far and ended up swinging on the handle by a hand and a foot until Finn pulled her off.

  Then Gumu, who had been watching from the doorway, lumbered toward the machine, eyeing it warily.

  He heard Robin mutter, “Oh, this should be good.”

  “No way.” Finn held out his hand in a “stop” motion. He was having visions of the silverback swinging the expensive GPR device around his head like a lariat. “This is a valuable machine. Not a toy for gorillas.”

  Gumu rocked forward on his knuckles and glared at Finn for a few seconds. Then he rose up to his full height and pounded with cupped hands on the black leather of his chest, bared his huge canine teeth, and grunted to add menace to his threat display.

  Finn glanced nervously at Grace. She seemed to be more interested in her cell phone than in keeping her gorillas under control.

  He squared his body between the machine and the silverback. “No!” he shouted, snapping the hand sign at the gigantic ape.

  Gumu sank back down to his knuckles, then reached around Finn and slapped the handle of the GPR machine as if to prove he could touch it if he really wanted to. Snorting, the silverback strutted stiff-legged to the doorway as though he’d won the contest.

  Grace held her cell phone in front of her with both hands, filming.

  Finn threw a hand up in front of his face. “Stop that!”

  After poking the screen with her index finger, Grace lowered her phone. “That was very interesting. A meeting of two alpha males.”

  Robin Valdez covered her mouth with her hand, trying to hide a smile.

  Finn fumed. “Gumu could have ripped out my throat.”

  “But you prevailed,” Grace said. “He respects you.”

  A scoffing noise escaped his throat. He aimed an index finger at her. “Do not post that video anywhere.”

  “Detective Finn!” A voice hailed him from outside the barn. Agent Alice Foster. He welcomed the interruption.

  The FBI agent stood on the other side of the enclosure. “I have information to share.”

  Finn pushed the GPR init outside, detached the laptop, and with the help of Agent Foster, loaded the device into his car trunk. He was grateful Foster had not seen his argument with Gumu. He needed to preserve some dignity in his work relationships.

  “Cooper Trigg is rumored to be in Spokane, so I put some feelers out there, but we haven’t scooped him up yet,” she told him.

  Finn envied the FBI’s resources. “Okay.”

  “We got email back from the organizer of the Roadkill Riders Meetup website,” she told him. “Get this: she doesn’t even attend most of the rides.”

  “Great.”

  “But she knew Comet. He’s Kane Metrios, lives just outside of Evansburg, works at the local SpeediLube
. Want to go grill him with me?”

  “You betcha.”

  Robin Valdez was watching both of them, her expression hopeful.

  “We may have found one of the boys who took Darcy and Mia,” he told her. “It might not lead to anything right away, but every clue helps.”

  The woman pressed her hands together in front of her chest as if praying.

  * * * * *

  Kane Metrios was as Darcy had described him, a clean-cut type with buzz-cut hair and startling blue eyes. He was an oil change technician at SpeediLube and nervous as hell that a police detective and an FBI agent had surprised him at work. They interviewed him at a picnic table set up outside the shop for employee breaks.

  According to his driver’s license, Metrios was twenty years old. When they showed him their badges, he immediately blurted, “I didn’t rape that girl.”

  “Interesting way to start a conversation,” Agent Foster observed.

  “Well, I didn’t.” He crossed his arms. “So you can’t pin that on me.”

  Finn leaned in. “We’re more interested in your friend. What is Dusty’s full name?”

  Metrios seemed relieved. He clasped his hands on the table in front of him. “I’d like to help you guys. But see, I don’t really know Dusty. See, that’s the thing about the club. Roadkill Riders. It’s just all for fun, right? We all use these nicknames, and it’s not like we hang out all the time. We just ride together sometimes.”

  “And kidnap girls,” Agent Foster added.

  Metrios blanched and moved his hands to his lap. “Not true. That was the first time.”

  “So you admit you abducted Darcy and Mia?” she pressed.

  A perplexed expression crossed his face. “They said Sunshine and Blackbird. You know, more nicknames. They wanted to join in the fun.”

  “Where’d you get the idea to cruise the Sasquatch Festival?” Finn wanted to know. It nagged him that Melendez’s skeleton had been a girl picked up at the Gorge Amphitheatre. Could there be a connection between Sutter’s previous crimes and this current case?