“Is there something wrong, Mr. Dunlop?”
His gaze dropped and he studied his hand for a few seconds. “I just hope the news about the shooting on my property and that body found so close doesn’t impact business. The camping season is short. I can’t afford to lose occupancy.”
“You still have a few months.” Bree wanted to fault him for caring more about money than a man’s death, but she didn’t know how much income the campground generated. Was Phil in financial trouble?
“Yeah.” But he didn’t look convinced. He tugged the ACE bandage lower on his knuckles.
“Thank you for your time.” Bree left the office. In her vehicle, she confirmed that the F-150 parked behind the cabin was the only vehicle registered to Phil.
Then she drove back to cabin twenty. She sat in her vehicle drinking the last of her coffee and scanning the surroundings. The sun glittered on the snow, and she could see the lake shining through the trees. Nice and quiet, like Phil said. Maybe she needed to start camping.
Phil. She didn’t know what to make of him. The bandage on his hand seemed like a big coincidence, and he’d seemed awfully worried about a pair of cabins he normally didn’t visit all winter, even after Bree told him there was no damage.
She sent Todd a text asking him to do a full background check on Phil Dunlop.
She stepped out of her vehicle. The air wasn’t as cold today, and the snow was beginning to melt in a few sunny patches of grass. She walked to the front door and went inside. Standing at the window that overlooked the back porch, she imagined Alyssa in this very place, in the dark, seeing a shadow on the snow and thinking it was the girl who’d stolen her wallet and vehicle key.
She went out the back door, down the steps, and across the open yard. When she hit the trees, she stopped where Alyssa had watched the shooting. The man had been in the trees, about twenty-five feet away. He’d been in profile to Alyssa. He’d raised his arm and fired.
Bree flinched as if she were hearing the shot in the present. Maybe her imagination was too good. She moved to where Alyssa said Harper had been standing when she’d gone down. Yet they’d found no blood in the snow.
In her mind’s eye, Bree watched Alyssa run away. Why had the shooter not chased her? Maybe he removed the body instead. It was almost impossible to prove a murder took place without a body. Bree imagined the shooter hauling Harper’s limp body over his shoulders and carrying her down the frozen lake to the boat ramp, where he put her in his vehicle and drove away.
Was she alive or dead?
Did he somehow clean up any blood? Maybe her winter coat absorbed it.
Bree turned, deep in thought. Her mental reenactment placed her behind cabin nineteen. Something shifted in the window. Bree watched to see if the motion was repeated, but all she saw was the reflection of the trees blowing in the wind. She strode toward the cabin and went up the back steps onto the porch.
Standing to one side, she tried the knob. It turned in her hand. The back of her neck prickled.
It should be locked, right?
She opened her jacket and drew her weapon as she pushed the door. It swung open. Bree listened, but heard nothing. She could see one half of the living area through the gap. The inside looked almost exactly like cabin twenty. Seeing no one, Bree stepped across the threshold.
Something banged. The door flew back at her, knocking her backward. Her gun soared from her hand into the snow. A large body came at her. She automatically registered his appearance as she prepared to defend herself. Male, about six feet tall, wearing a dark coat, a ski mask, and winter gloves.
Lowering his head, he charged her like a bull. His hands swept out, trying to catch her knees. Bree sidestepped out of reach. His shoulder rammed into her ribs, but her hands landed on his upper back. She put all her weight into them. With his weight forward and his arms splayed out, he had no leverage and went down on his face.
Bree reached for the handcuffs on her belt. Before she could snap them over his wrists, he snagged her ankle and yanked. Her feet went in the air, and she landed flat on her back. Her lungs emptied with a painful whoosh. Something stabbed the back of her shoulder, and her head hit the ground with a force that left the bare tree branches overhead spinning.
He shed his gloves and jumped on top of her, straddling her chest. He wrapped his hands around her throat and squeezed. The pressure cut off her air. Dots swam in front of Bree’s eyes, and she grew instantly light-headed. Fear cut through the haze. Her vision and hearing dimmed. She was seconds from passing out and being at his complete mercy.
Her sight tunneled. In one last, desperate move, she pried one of his fingers off her neck and bent it backward. He released his grip before his finger broke. She grabbed his sleeve, yanked him sideways, and tried to buck him off her. He spread his arms out on either side of her body for balance. His face was closer to her. Pulling her arms in tight to her body, Bree jabbed at his throat. Her fist struck his windpipe, and he made a choking sound. The ski mask twisted, and she opened her hand to drag her fingernails through the soft skin at the base of his neck. As he coughed and gagged, Bree took hold of his sleeve, bucked, and rolled him off her. The last thing she saw before he levered to his feet was a large red patch on the back of his hand.
It was shaped like the state of Texas.
An engine sounded. His head turned. Then he scooped up his gloves and bolted for the trees, disappearing as she blinked her vision clear.
Still light-headed, she floundered on the ground like a dying fish, her hand sweeping the wet snow. She needed to stop him. Where was her gun? She flung her body into a sitting position and almost threw up. She turned onto her side and breathed the cold air in and out of her lungs for a few deep breaths until the nausea faded. Minutes passed. She couldn’t keep track of how many.
“Bree!”
Matt? What’s he doing here?
The sight of him sent a wave of relief through her. She hoisted herself onto one elbow. Matt was running toward her from cabin twenty.
“Are you all right?”
She waved toward the trees. “Someone jumped me. He went that way.” Her sense of time had been hazy, but she suspected too much time had lapsed. Matt would never catch him.
Matt changed course and veered for the trees. A few minutes later, he jogged back into the clearing. “I didn’t see anyone, but his footprints led to the road.”
Bree sat up slowly. The wooziness was passing.
“What happened?”
She tugged on her jacket collar and described the attack. “When I tried to get up, I almost passed out.”
“Instead of trying to get up immediately, you should have elevated your feet to restore blood flow to your brain.”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly.” Bree fought her hazy brain to focus on the job. She touched her empty holster, and a stab of panic speared her.
Where’s my gun?
She spotted an indentation in the snow and retrieved her weapon. After wiping the moisture from it, she shoved it into the holster on her hip. Feeling better with her gun in its rightful place, she pulled out her phone. “I’ll call for backup. We’ll send out a BOLO with his general description. The sun has softened the snow here. These boot prints look castable.” She made her calls, then slipped the phone back into her pocket. Dusting some wet snow off her pants, she rose to her feet. “What are you doing here anyway?”
“I called to talk to you, and Marge said you were here,” Matt said.
“I interviewed the owner of the campground, then I wanted to walk the scene again,” she said. She summed up her interview with Phil Dunlop. “If the injury to his hand is fake, then it could have been him. I sat in my vehicle for a while before I drove here. He could have beat me on foot.”
“Motivation?”
“I have to think about that.” Bree rubbed her neck.
Matt moved her collar and examined her neck. “You’ll have a bruise.”
“Not my first.” She assessed her conditio
n. The good news was that her hearing and vision had almost returned to normal. Her stomach had settled, and she no longer felt like she was going to face-plant. The bad news was—Alyssa had not imagined the stalker.
Matt pointed to his own neck. “You just smeared blood on your neck. Are you bleeding?”
Bree examined her fingertips. She’d forgotten. “Not my blood.” She raised her hand and showed him the blood and skin under her fingernails. “I got the bastard’s DNA.” Which had been the whole point of the scratch. Gross, but effective.
“Nice going.”
“He’s marked now. Unfortunately, the scratches are at the base of his neck and pretty easy to cover up in the winter.” Bree’s shoulder ached. She’d landed on something hard. She was going to have a mark there as well.
Holding her right hand away from her body to preserve the evidence, Bree turned toward cabin nineteen. “He came back for something. We need to find out what he wanted.”
“Weren’t these cabins searched?”
“Yes. But they clearly need to be searched again. He was wearing gloves while he was inside the cabin. No point in looking for prints. Guess what I saw when he took them off to choke me?”
“What?”
“A big red mark on the back of his hand shaped like the state of Texas.” Bree paced the ground behind cabin nineteen as she waited for backup. “What did you drive out here to tell me?”
“Eli Whitney’s roommate, Brian O’Neil, is missing.” Matt summed up his conversation with Eli’s roommates. “Brian’s mother said he went back to school, but his roommates haven’t seen him.”
“What does it mean?” Bree asked.
“I don’t know. I gave Brian’s mother Stella’s number.”
“Stella will probably call the medical examiner,” Bree said. “But I’ll call as well. What does Brian look like?”
Matt showed her Brian’s picture.
Bree squinted at the screen. “He’s about the same height and weight as the victim. The hair color looks right too.”
“It does, but that description is so vague, it could apply to two hundred university students.”
As soon as Todd arrived, Bree had him scrape under her fingernails to collect the biological evidence. “Let’s get that to the lab. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the scumbag’s DNA is already in CODIS.”
The Combined DNA Index System was the FBI’s national DNA database.
When Todd was finished, Bree used a dozen hand wipes and what felt like a gallon of hand sanitizer to clean under her fingernails. Then she headed for cabin nineteen. Matt and Todd were right behind her. She snapped on a pair of nitrile gloves and pulled a flashlight out of her pocket. “Todd, why don’t you take the kitchen area. Matt, the living area is all yours. I’ll handle the bedroom and bath.”
Bree went through the bedroom doorway and stopped. The obvious places had already been searched. She shone her flashlight into the corners, then moved it slowly along the floorboards, looking for gaps. She took out a pen and crawled along the floor, testing each board to see if it was loose. A half hour later, she stood, rubbed her knees, and stretched a kink out of her back.
Then she moved the bed and checked the wood floor beneath it. Sounds of furniture being moved on the other side of the wall indicated Matt and Todd were in nook-and-cranny mode as well. Bree removed the drawers from the dresser and nightstand, then examined the backs and sides. She checked behind and under each piece of furniture, lifted the mattress, and inspected the seams. Tile floors made her search of the bathroom short. Missing or cracked grout would be easy to spot. After more than an hour of searching, she’d found nothing.
Exiting back into the bedroom, she beelined for the closet. Opening the door, she felt along the walls, pushing and knocking on the panels to test for hollow spaces. Nothing.
She walked out of the room. “Anything?”
Matt shook his head.
“No,” Todd said.
Bree scanned the cabin. She could feel it in her bones that something was here. She considered the close proximity of cabins nineteen and twenty. Had Harper hidden something? On impulse, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed the phone number Alyssa had said was Harper’s. Tinny, muffled music played.
“What’s that?” Todd asked.
“Harper’s phone.” Bree followed the sound back to the closet. It was coming from the floor.
She aimed her flashlight beam down but saw nothing. She dropped into a crouch and crawled halfway into the closet. At the back corner, Bree spotted a small, light scrape on the otherwise dark wood flooring. Scratches marred the edges. The marks looked fresh, as if they hadn’t had time to darken with age. She tried to pry up the board with her fingers. The board shifted a millimeter, but she couldn’t get her nails under it.
She took a pen from her pocket, but it wasn’t thin enough to fit between the boards. She looked up at Matt and Todd. “Do either of you have a knife?”
“I do.” Matt pulled a folded knife from his pocket. He handed it to Bree. “Find something?”
“Not yet.” She went back to the closet and used the tip of the blade as a lever to pull up the floorboard. Inside, a gray backpack had been stuffed into the space beneath the floor. The surrounding boards were loose too, and Bree removed them.
“Bingo.” Bree snapped a few pictures. The brand was Osprey.
“What did you find?” Matt said over her shoulder.
“This looks like Harper’s missing backpack.” She hauled the bag out of the hole. It was surprisingly heavy, but then, it contained all Harper’s personal possessions. Bree opened the front pouch and pointed her flashlight at the contents. Inside were a brown wallet and a Toyota key chain. She lifted out the wallet with two fingers and opened it. Alyssa’s driver’s license photo stared back at her. Bree snapped a picture, then opened the main pouch of the backpack.
Todd whistled over her shoulder.
On top of neatly folded clothes and a toiletry bag, a gallon-size plastic bag full of jewelry glittered in the beam of her flashlight. There were rings, necklaces, and bracelets in gold and silver with colored and clear stones.
Behind her, Todd asked, “Think those are real?”
One piece had been separated from the rest and stored in its own sandwich bag. A stunning bracelet in clear and red stones. The clear gems had a silvery richness that didn’t look like Bree’s cubic zirconia earrings, and the red stones looked equally expensive.
Diamonds and rubies?
“I think they are.” Bree sat back on her heels and stared at the bag. “I don’t own much jewelry. But why would anyone carry fakes around? It’s heavy, and if this backpack contains everything Harper owns, the space in it is valuable.”
“Some of it has to be real,” Matt said over her shoulder. “No one would return to the scene of a crime for fake jewelry.” He scratched his jaw. His reddish-brown beard had filled into what Bree already thought of as full Viking. “When I talked to Detective Dane, she mentioned she’d been working on a series of residential burglaries.”
“Then I need to call Detective Dane.” Bree positioned her cell phone over the backpack and took a photo of the contents. “Let’s get that DNA sample and this backpack to forensics. Ask for a rush on the fingerprints.”
“Maybe Harper is a thief,” Matt suggested.
“Maybe they both are,” Todd added. “I wonder how much that jewelry is worth.”
Bree thought of her original call to a shooting.
Enough to kill for.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Matt looked over Bree’s shoulder into the backpack. In his opinion, two homeless girls with a bag full of jewelry did not suggest they were law-abiding citizens. He saw an old, yellowed box of matches. The logo looked familiar. “Can you read that matchbox?”
“Yes.” Bree turned her head and squinted. “It says Grey Lake Inn. Where is that?”
“Other side of the lake,” Matt said. “It’s been closed for years.”
They
shared a glance.
“How far is it from the boat ramp?”
Matt thought about the distance. “The road meanders, but it’s not far.”
“Then let’s check it out.” Bree stood and issued a few instructions to Todd regarding the backpack and casting of her assailant’s footprints. Then she led the way out of cabin nineteen. “Do you know where we’re going?”
Matt crooked a finger. “Follow me.”
He climbed into his big SUV and rolled out of the campground, checking his rearview mirror to make sure Bree was behind his vehicle. They drove out to the main road and passed the park with the boat ramp. The road twisted and turned away from the lake before finding its way back toward the water. He slowed his SUV and looked for the entrance to the resort. He almost drove past the opening. Weeds and trees were reclaiming the gravel lane. If he hadn’t been looking for the driveway, he would have missed it. But several sets of tire tracks turned off the road and through the snow. He made the turn, and the Suburban bounced through a deep, frozen rut in the private access road.
The lane ended in a circular driveway in front of the dilapidated, two-story lodge house. Matt pulled over and parked, not disturbing the tire tracks in front of the resort in case they needed to be cast as well. He parked his SUV and climbed out. He met Bree behind their vehicles. They stared at the old building. The original white paint had peeled to gray, and the wooden porch looked rotted.
Bree scanned the tire tracks. “Someone has been here since the snow fell.”
“Either several people or the same person multiple times,” Matt said. “Inside or outside first?”
Bree frowned at the decaying structure. “It’s cold. I would think anyone who came here would seek shelter. We’ll look inside first.” She walked toward the front entrance.
The front door was broken. She pushed it open and stepped inside. Matt stayed close. The air smelled like mold and must. Black stains splotched the carpet runners and wallpaper like a 3D inkblot test.
“This place used to be beautiful.” He skirted the remains of a dead rodent in the lobby. “When I was a kid, my family used to come here in the summertime. My dad knew the owner and he’d let me and my brother and sister use the little sunfish sailboats they kept for guests. My parents would sit on the dock and watch. We’d all have dinner at the restaurant afterward.”
See Her Die Page 12
