by Leslie Wolfe
Kay looked at Elliot with an unspoken question.
“MacPherson is the owner of Katse Coffee Shop,” he clarified quickly. “He’s got a rap sheet a mile long. Assault, battery, breaking and entering. He’s an angry fellow with a short fuse, but is not a registered offender.”
“An unsub this organized wouldn’t draw attention to his own coffee shop, Elliot,” she replied. “The profile doesn’t fit. He’s not the person we’re looking for. But he is a strong lead; maybe, if we apply the right pressure, he’ll share something about Kendra and Alison, and what brought them to Katse before they vanished. Sheriff, if you don’t mind, let us interview him instead. He might be more cooperative in his own setting.”
“Thank goodness we have Dr. Sharp here, to teach us how to do our jobs,” Logan said, the sarcasm in his voice heavy.
“I mean no disrespect, Sheriff,” Kay replied. She seemed composed, but he already knew her well enough to guess she was boiling under the surface of that perfectly balanced politeness. “I was under the assumption that we’re working together as a team, under your leadership, with the goal of saving the lives of two innocent people and catching a dangerous killer who will not stop. If I was wrong, I apologize.”
Logan was slack-jawed for an embarrassing moment. Kay knew precisely when to cut short.
“I am your resource, Sheriff. Use me as you would any of your deputies.”
“Sure,” he said, then swallowed with difficulty and cleared his voice before continuing. One of the deputies turned away to hide a smile. Their boss had been taught a lesson he wasn’t going to forget anytime soon, like a rodeo bronc saddled for the first time with calfskin-gloved hands. “Who else do we have? Is Eggers out of jail?”
“Yeah,” one of the deputies replied. “His last number was assault, and he did his time up at state. Got out last year.”
“Who’s Eggers?” Kay asked.
This time, the sheriff had an entirely different demeanor when he answered. “Our very own registered sex offender. He’s done time for statutory rape, rape, aggravated assault, the whole bag of beans.”
“He’s not our guy,” Kay replied. “If you don’t mind,” she added, and paused to let the sheriff weigh in. He invited her to speak with a hand gesture. “We’re looking for someone who’s highly organized, smart, and has the technical abilities to tamper with a car’s navigation system. He’s able to abduct women without being seen, and dispose of their vehicles quickly and effectively, choosing—at least from the cases we know—to return them to a place where they go undiscovered for the longest possible time. He’s a sadistic, sexually motivated serial killer who takes his time inflicting pain. He demonstrates a detailed, ritualistic manner in disposing of his victims’ bodies that reflects a strong, trauma-based motivation, most likely childhood or early adulthood trauma. Is that who Eggers is, Sheriff?”
Logan shrugged before replying, probably an involuntary reaction he most likely regretted. “No, but we’ll bring him in, nevertheless. Maybe he’s seen something.”
The darkness outside the window had started lifting, a signal that the search for Alison and her daughter could finally start.
“I believe the most important question we should answer right now is, how does he get those cars back to San Francisco?” Kay said. “If we learn that, we might get him on camera somewhere, although I don’t imagine he’d make such a mistake. But maybe we get lucky; maybe there was a camera he didn’t know to avoid.” She paused for a moment, while the sheriff coordinated with the deputies. They had requested assistance from the neighboring counties, and their units were starting to pull into the parking lot. The excited bark of a German Shepherd police K9 came across loud and clear, signaling to the deputies it was time to begin the search.
“Deputy, um, Hobbs,” Kay said, reading the officer’s name off his tag. “Ask the teams to look for any evidence, anything that could tell us where he grabbed them from, and how.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Hobbs replied, then rushed out the door.
Elliot grabbed the door, holding it for Kay.
“Before you leave,” the sheriff called, “I have a message from Dr. Whitmore; it just came in. DNA came back on the other victim. Her name is Shannon Hendricks,” he said, after reading the notes on a piece of paper. “She was thirty-two years old, a mother of two.” He suddenly looked tired, as if the dark circles surrounding his eyes had deepened as he’d read the notes. He ran his hand over the back of his head, easing the stiffness that tensed his back, but he obviously wasn’t done breaking the news.
Elliot and Kay waited for him to continue, standing in the doorway.
The sheriff added, his voice low and strangled, “Her missing person report says she disappeared last November with her five-year-old son.”
Seventeen
Search
The sun hadn’t risen yet when they reached the focal point of the search grid, determined with accuracy from the Nissan’s GPS records. It was an isolated spot over the ridge, about a mile down from Katse Coffee Shop, where Kay’s latest-generation smartphone didn’t get a single bar of signal. A gently sloping stretch of two-lane road, it led to a valley between mountain ridges, the entire length of it probably a cellular blind spot.
The road was bordered by thick woods on both sides, while the distant landscape was breathtaking; rocky mountain peaks covered in snow, touched pink against a glowing light show in deep purple, bright orange, and the promise of a perfect azure sky once the sun was up. Not a hint of the tragedy happening somewhere in the thickness of those woods, not a shred of evidence to speak of the place where a young woman and her daughter were being held.
Kay held close to the K9, waiting impatiently for the officer to leash his dog, a large Malinois with a work vest was tagged, Niner. Unzipping an evidence bag, she offered the dog the plush teddy bear recovered from the Nissan. The Malinois sniffed it thoroughly, obeying short commands given by his handler, then whimpered, signaling he was ready to trace. Niner lifted his nose into the air at the side of the road, turning and seeking the scent where it was stronger, then decided to lead them uphill.
The deputies had started the grid search, and were headed into the woods on both sides of the highway. Other than the two of them, the K9 officer and his dog, no one else was on the road, blocked with hastily deployed barriers on both ends. But she could hear voices coming from the woods, calling out Alison’s name, sometimes Hazel’s. While they walked briskly on the asphalt behind the Malinois, the voices faded farther into the woods.
Neither Alison nor Hazel had answered, the silence of the woods the only witness to their whereabouts.
Niner stopped and angrily sniffed a certain area, walking in circles and whimpering quietly. Tire tracks were still visible where a car had pulled over. Niner’s handler pulled him away and patted him on the shoulder.
“This is where the trail goes cold, Detectives,” he said, assuming Kay was there in an official capacity.
Kay pulled out her phone and studied the photo she’d taken of the Nissan’s navigation history. The blue dot in the car’s system was barely two hundred yards from where they stood.
After taking out his phone, Elliot put it back inside his pocket with a sigh of frustration. “No signal,” he said. “Let’s get an impression lifted off those tire tracks,” he told the K9 officer.
“That won’t tell us much, just confirm our theory,” Kay replied. She was crouched by the side of the road, studying every inch of the shoulder carefully. She could visualize what had happened. For some reason, Alison and Hazel had pulled over, then decided to walk toward Katse. Was that when Alison had bought the coffee whose moldy remnants were found in the Nissan? “We know whose tire tracks they are.”
But why did they stop in a no-cell-phone-service area?
Because they had to, she thought. It was the only logical answer.
She stood and closed her eyes, to shield them from the piercing sun and focus on the image of the Nissan’s dashboard, th
e way she’d seen it when Roderick had started the engine. She rewound the images burned into her memory, then played them back again. The young man had started the engine for her, triggering lights and chimes on the dashboard that she ignored, fixated as she was on the media center and the GPS.
In her recollection, she focused her attention on the dashboard and what lights had come on when the engine started, the way they normally do to show drivers the respective sensors worked and could be relied on. Then they all turned off, after being on for just a second.
Not all.
One had stayed on. The check engine light.
She opened her eyes and looked at Elliot. “Her car broke down,” she said, already starting to walk downhill toward his SUV. “That’s why they were on foot in the middle of nowhere. It’s time to visit Katse Coffee Shop and its ex-con owner. Although he doesn’t fit the profile, I believe he could’ve sabotaged her car when she stopped there for coffee, coming from the airport.”
A short walk to the car and an even shorter drive later, Elliot pulled up on the gravel in front of the coffee shop just as the owner, a bulky man who looked about fifty, was unlocking the rusted padlock that secured the place overnight. He wore a dark blue shirt with white stripes, but that did little to help him conceal a potbelly worthy of a champion eater.
“Thomas MacPherson?” Elliot asked, showing his badge.
Fear flickered in the man’s eyes for a brief moment, and he flinched almost imperceptibly, as if getting ready to run.
“Don’t even think about it,” Elliot said, his drawl heavier, his hand on his sidearm.
The man shook his head with a sad smile. “I’m not an idiot,” he replied. “You’d catch me in no time. It was just an impulse, man, what can I say? Once you’ve been on the inside, cops scare the shit out of you, even if you haven’t done anything.”
“Aren’t you going to ask us inside?” Kay asked. “After all, the coffee shop is now open, right?”
He muttered something, but stepped out of the doorway to let them in. Elliot gestured to him and he led the way, sighing a lungful of frustration. “What do you need, officers?” he asked, demeaning Elliot’s rank on purpose, but he was too smart to let that get to him.
“One of your customers has gone missing,” Elliot said, and his statement set MacPherson off like a can of dynamite.
“Oh, so now I’m a suspect?” he asked, slamming the kitchen utensils he’d pulled out to warm up some bagels. The implements clattered loudly against the stainless-steel sink behind the counter. “This is about the bodies you’ve been digging up at Silent Lake, isn’t it? I won’t let you pin those on me!”
“Why don’t you come on over here,” Elliot said, “and keep your hands where I can see them?”
MacPherson obeyed, the glint of hatred in his eyes tangible and sharp as a hunter’s blade.
“There, happy?” he asked, once he was a few feet away from them, standing with his pudgy hands propped on his hips.
“Now take a seat,” Elliot commanded, pointing his finger at a nearby chair.
He pulled the chair out and sat, mumbling profanities under his breath.
“Thank you,” Kay said. It was a little late to try to build rapport with the man, but it wasn’t impossible. “And no, Mr. MacPherson, you’re not a suspect,” she confirmed, earning herself a quick look from Elliot.
“Good, ’cause I ain’t done much but work my ass off since I got out of the joint and built this place up on my own. And it ain’t much.” He sounded a little relieved, but still wary.
“It’s the only coffee shop between Redding and downtown Mount Chester, isn’t it? It’s got to have some customers, right?” Kay probed.
“I can barely afford to keep the lights on, and I sleep in the back room, with the supplies, so that I’m not stargazing at night, if you catch my drift.”
“Seems to me you could’ve done something else with your life, if this isn’t what you wanted,” Elliot said.
“No one would hire me, with my record. No one cares I’ve been on the straight and narrow since I got out five years ago. You make one mistake and that’s it, your life goes down the drain.”
He’d made more than one mistake, at least three different ones for which he’d been charged with a felony and convicted, but Kay wasn’t about to argue. Instead, she lowered her voice to almost a whisper and said, “I understand, and I appreciate your willingness to help us, especially under these circumstances.”
“Uh-huh,” he muttered, “so, what do you need from me?”
“Like my partner said, one of your customers never made it aboard her flight, and she’d been here before she vanished. Maybe you remember her, a twenty-seven-year-old woman with long, curly hair? She came in with her daughter, maybe,” Kay added, thinking that Alison could’ve asked Hazel to wait outside.
MacPherson ran his fingers across his three-day stubble, scratching his chin thoroughly, as if considering whether to remember them or not. “Yeah, I remember them,” he eventually said. “She said her car broke down, and she had to walk for a mile to use my phone. No cell phone coverage in the valley, you know. She bought something, can’t recall what, made her call, and left. End of story.”
“Had she been in here before?” Kay asked. “Maybe on her way in from the airport?”
“When was this? Last Friday?”
“We didn’t say, but that sounds right, yes,” Elliot replied.
“She could’ve been here earlier, and I didn’t notice her. On Fridays I have help. We get busy with weekend traffic. If she didn’t need to use the phone the first time, I probably didn’t see her if she stopped by.”
“How about outside? Did you step outside while she was here, to notice what kind of car she was driving?” Kay asked. She knew that asking direct questions rarely got her anything other than defensive behavior from people, especially those with a long and impressive rap sheet.
“No idea what car she drove,” he replied without hesitation, without the tiniest spark of fear in his eyes. “I can barely take a bathroom break on a Friday, we’re so busy. I have to keep the bagels and donuts coming. I work the oven nonstop; make the coffee, sandwiches, and omelets and take care of any customers who sit at the bar instead of a table.”
She could see he was telling the truth.
If he didn’t sabotage Alison’s car, how did the Nissan break down in that conveniently secluded, no-signal stretch of road? Did the unsub sneak into the café parking lot and sabotage it, knowing it would fail in an area where his victims were helpless and vulnerable? How precise could someone be, to get that kind of result? Was the location of the breakdown an act of chance or of expert engineering skill? The questions swirled in Kay’s head.
“Has anything like this happened before?” Kay asked, returning to the point where she’d left off before. “Women coming in here, saying their cars broke down?”
“A few times, and not only women,” he replied. “Cars break down when coming off the mountain. Them city drivers have no clue how to go down these mountain roads, keeping their foot on the brake pedal until it smokes. Every month we get one or two of them, more during winter.” He laughed heartily, his raspy voice echoing in the empty coffee shop. “Lucrative piece of business, if you were to ask me. They walk in here, ask to make a phone call, then sit and wait while ordering stuff. Then they tip well. Can’t complain.”
“Really?” Kay reacted, laughing with him. “How about frequent customers, locals maybe? Do you have a lot of repeat business?”
“I have a few,” he replied hesitantly, probably not willing to share that much about his regulars. “But most of my business comes from tourists. Them, and the folk who own cabins up on the mountain.”
“Thanks,” Kay said, visualizing what must’ve happened with her eyes closed. Alison had stopped here for coffee, driving in from the airport. Then she drove another mile, when her car broke down. That’s why she walked on foot back here, to Katse, with Hazel, and made a call. It
made more sense to imagine she’d waited here for whomever she’d called, than to assume she’d walked back to the car, coffee in hand. But she couldn’t be sure.
She smiled, looking at Elliot, then she turned to MacPherson and asked, “Who did she call?”
But Elliot replied before he could. “Tow truck.”
“Uh-huh,” MacPherson said.
“One more thing,” Kay said, getting ready to leave. “Did she wait here for the tow truck?”
He scratched his chin again. “For a while she did,” he said. “Then the tow truck guy called and said she should meet him at the car. She left by herself, just her and her kid.”
As they left the coffee shop, piercing rays of the sun brought a little warmth to the morning chill. Kay’s smile widened.
“I know how the cars made it back to SFO without the GPS showing anything.”
“Yup,” Elliot replied, “tow truck.”
Eighteen
Play
Kathy loved playing at Judy’s place. It was close to her home, and her parents let her cross the street and walk down the road the four houses over to Judy’s, all by herself, making her feel like a grownup. If it got late, Judy’s mother would make the girls dinner, and her food was delicious. She sometimes secretly wished Judy’s parents were her own, but then felt guilty because she loved her mom very much.
She was about twelve, that sunny September afternoon, when leaves had just started turning up on the hills and the evening chill had grown sharper. She told her mother she was going to Judy’s, but instead of just letting her go with a kiss on her forehead, her mom told her to wait a few minutes. Then her father had taken her reluctant hand in his and walked her there, joining Judy’s dad, Mr. Stinson, on the porch for beers.
Bummer.
Being away from her father was half the reason why she enjoyed being at Judy’s so much. It meant she was safe from the screaming and the beatings. But maybe he’d behave with Mr. Stinson there, watching.
