“Oh, Shadow!” the woman called out. “You leave that nice lady alone!”
Shadow hopped to his feet at the sound of her voice and bounded away.
When the trio reached the others, Nina said, “Thank you so much for this.”
“Not a problem,” the older man said. “I remember hearing about the young woman who was found here. I didn’t quite remember that it was this campsite, though. We just got here. I hope we don’t get visited by any ghosts tonight!” He laughed in that wheezy, hearty way of jolly old men.
Riley, Nina, and Olivia only managed awkward laughter in response.
“You take as long as you need, ladies. We’re here for a week, so we’ll keep an eye on those flowers. I’m sure the young lady would appreciate you paying your respects,” the older woman said.
With that, the couple went back to their RV, Shadow trotting along with them. Paul the camp host wished them a good afternoon, but he said it in a way that implied he wanted them out of there in twenty minutes or less.
Once they were alone, the trio huddled up.
“I think you should take the flowers, Riley,” Olivia said, holding them out.
She did so.
“Shut out your other senses here, just as you did while you were in that hallway at Julie’s,” Nina said. “Focus your energy on these flowers, why you’re here, and call out to Shawna.”
“Tune out all the extra noise. I mean that both externally and internally. Focus on Shawna, and on this place—nothing else,” Olivia added.
Riley tucked the bouquet under her arm and then rooted around in her messenger bag, producing the single picture she had of Shawna. “I brought this, too.”
“Perfect,” Nina said.
The covered picnic table had nothing on it, nor did the cement slab beneath the green metal awning. The bright white “RB14” painted on the pole loomed in her peripheral vision as she stepped under the awning and made her way to the dark green picnic table. She placed the flowers and the photo of Shawna on the surface, then sat.
Nina and Olivia were on the back side of the picnic area, standing near the shore and gazing out at the beautiful landscape, as Riley had done when they first arrived. Blowing out a relaxing breath, Riley picked up the photo of Shawna and Malcolm, holding it in both hands.
Are you here, Shawna? We brought you flowers.
Riley glanced to her left, to the general area where Paul said Shawna had been laid out.
What had happened to her during that week she’d been missing? Had she been killed right away, or had she been kept alive for a while? She’d been washed, just as Brynn had been. How soon after death had he done that—why had he done it?
Riley returned her attention to the picture, then closed her eyes. She listened—to the soft hush of Nina and Olivia’s voices, a faint bark from Shadow inside the RV, the constant rush of the Rio Grande to her left, the faint crinkle of the cellophane that wrapped the flowers.
She felt it then—a presence beside her.
“Don’t be scared,” she heard, and it took a moment for her to realize it was Olivia’s voice.
Riley’s eyes opened, but instead of looking ahead to where she knew Olivia stood, she turned to her right, where Shawna, clear as day, sat beside her. The crinkle of the cellophane was from Shawna attempting to touch the flowers.
Shawna wore the same outfit from the photograph and appeared to be the same age, but the difference was the wide black-and-purple bruise that ringed her neck. A wound so violently administered that it was evident even with her dark skin. Riley clenched her teeth. Who had done this to her?
Swallowing, unnerved more by that ring around her neck than the apparition herself, Riley turned on the bench seat, taking in the details of Shawna’s profile. Shawna was still fixated on the flowers, her head cocked in confusion or concentration as she tried to touch them.
“Can you tell me who hurt you?” Riley asked.
Shawna’s attention swiveled to her. Her eyes were a startling light brown, almost golden. She slowly shook her head.
“You don’t know his name?” Riley asked.
Another shake of the head.
“She’s … confused,” Olivia said, her focus aimed toward Shawna, but not at her, so Riley guessed the apparition had only appeared for her. “Not just about what’s happening now, but in general. It feels a little like what Iris felt, but the confusion is more acute. My head is … fuzzy.”
Nina had joined them now, too. “She was drugged.”
Shawna nodded at that.
“You don’t remember who took you or how you ended up here?” Riley asked.
Shawna looked around, taking in the scenery, with her brows pulled together. When she refocused on Riley again, she shook her head.
Riley clenched a fist, frustrated not with Shawna, but the man who killed her—and Brynn, Emery, and who knew who else. Was this why Emery was always so damn sad? Her life was taken from her and she’d been so heavily drugged by this monster that she couldn’t even remember what had happened to her? Could she not speak because of the damage done to her throat?
An image pushed its way into Riley’s mind then, crowding out the thoughts of wanting to strangle the bastard the way he’d strangled these women. It was just a flash of an image, but it was so bright and detailed, it was like a neon sign flaring to life against a dark sky.
“Whoa,” Nina said, stumbling and shaking her head as she pressed a hand to her temple. She yanked her keys out of her pocket and held them out. “Uh … Olivia. Can you get me a pen and something to draw on?”
Olivia snatched the keys and ran off, returning what felt like seconds later. Riley watched as Nina sat at the table, closed her eyes, and said, “Again, Shawna.”
Then, like Nina had done during the séance when she’d channeled Orin, her pen started to fly across the page as if guided by someone other than herself. The pen moved with such speed, Riley couldn’t process how this was happening without Nina looking at what she was doing. What was stranger still, was that the more Nina drew, the more Riley knew it was the same image that had popped into her head. It was a large circle with a smaller one inside it. In the center of both was an intricately rendered tree—reminiscent of the Tree of Life. In front of the tree was the silhouette of a big rig.
“Is that a … logo?” Olivia asked, watching over Nina’s shoulder as the drawing came to life.
Riley glanced at Shawna, who still sat silently beside her. “Was he a trucker? The man who took you?”
Another image—this of gray metal siding. Metal was below her, too. A pair of bare, dark legs stuck out in front of her, bare feet dirty. The dark pink polish was chipped on most of the toes.
The image ended.
“Scared,” Olivia said, standing to full height again. “Hungry. Thirsty. Confused. So … confused. She wants to know if Malcolm is okay—I just can’t tell if she’s asking that now, or if she was wondering that then.”
“He’s okay,” Riley told Shawna, staring at her face and doing her best to ignore the ligature marks on her neck. “He’s married and just had twin girls.”
Tears filled Shawna’s almost-golden eyes.
The door to the RV flew open then and Shadow charged out, barking furiously. His hackles were up, but he stopped shy of stepping onto the cement slab the awning stretched over. It wasn’t an aggressive bark so much as a fearful one.
The woman came running toward them, calling the dog back. “Shadow! What on earth has gotten into you?”
Shawna vanished.
The barking stopped immediately and Shadow came wiggling under the table, whimpering.
Riley tipped onto her side to address him. “You silly dog! Shawna isn’t scary.”
Shadow licked her face.
She laughed, sitting back up.
“Shadow!” He wiggled back out and ran to the older woman, who grabbed the dog by the collar. “I’m so sorry, ladies. He must have seen a squirrel.”
Olivia was seated bes
ide Nina now.
When Riley took in the detailed drawing of the trucking logo again, she said, “He had her in the back of a big rig. If Emery was from Texas … I don’t know, maybe that’s how he found women—through his job as a trucker? Or at least how he found places to leave them.”
Nina nodded. “We need to figure out what company this logo is for.”
“But first we have to see if we can get Brynn to talk to us,” Olivia said.
They gathered their things and called a goodbye to the couple who now had Shadow tied up near the RV. The man was attempting to start a fire in the cooking pit.
The picture of Shawna went back into Riley’s bag, but the flowers she left on the table. Riley had just stepped off the cement slab when she heard the rustle of cellophane. She turned and eyed the picnic area but didn’t see Shawna. The flowers shifted an inch or so to one side.
“Happy birthday, Shawna,” she said, then followed after Nina and Olivia.
CHAPTER 19
Nina left the Rio Bravo campground and continued on NM 570 toward their next destination: the Taos Junction Bridge. Brynn’s body had been found at the end of the boat ramp nearby.
The road there had several gentle switchbacks, the sides of the two-lane road flanked by dry desert brush. The landscape was dominated by sage-green and interspersed with bright yellows and dull oranges. The most vibrant color out here was the double yellow line painted in the middle of the road. A few mesas dotted the horizon.
The bridge eventually appeared in the distance. It was a small boxy metal structure that no more than one car could drive on at a time. A sign for the boat ramp on the side of the road was placed just before the turn to get on the bridge, so instead of crossing it, Nina turned left and pulled into the small parking area near the top of the ramp.
When they got out of the car, Riley took in a 360-degree view. To their backs were the impressive canyon walls layered in those huge chunks of dark lava rock. Turning back around, the bridge loomed in the distance off to her right, and to the left was the easily accessible boat ramp. A pair of guys in shorts and T-shirts were on their way down the ramp now, each with a kayak hoisted above his head—one red, one yellow. Riley, Nina, and Olivia followed.
The ramp was a wide, cement slope with an incline that could be navigated with little trouble on foot, leading to the calm water below. A family of four was at the bottom of the ramp, and a father and young daughter strapped into bright yellow life jackets had just cast off in a kayak. The mother was trying to get her son’s life jacket cinched tight, but he was twisting this way and that in the small boat, loudly asking his mother if she’d seen the beaver that had just slipped under the water on the opposite side of the shore. Riley and her friends waited halfway down the ramp for all the kayakers to make their way into the water and down the Rio Grande.
“I’m surprised the water is so calm,” Riley said. “Don’t people usually come up this way for white water rafting?”
Olivia said, “Yeah, but this part of the Rio Grande is really mellow. There’s about a six mile stretch from this bridge to Pilar that’s both very wide and very tranquil. Popular destination for float trips and such. It’s a Class II at most around here.”
When Riley had first read the reports about where Brynn and Shawna had been found, she assumed the locations had been rather secluded since they were way out in the wilderness. But now after seeing the Rio Bravo campsite and this spot, it struck her that even if the killer had left them in a seemingly remote location, he also had chosen spots where the bodies would be found quickly. The killer could have easily chosen a different area along the river, or in the river itself, where they would have been taken down the higher-class rapids, battered along the rocks and possibly carried hundreds of miles away from their original dump site. Instead, Brynn’s body had been left at the bottom of this ramp, frequented by families and people wanting to spend a relaxing day in the calm waters of the river.
“Dumped” no longer felt like the right word. She’d been placed here. Washing her body might have had less to do with removing evidence of his identity, and more to do with showing a twisted kind of care for the woman he’d kidnapped, raped, and then murdered. Riley suppressed a shiver, despite the warm afternoon sun on her back.
To their right, and under the bridge, was a little swatch of beach, which Riley was sure was a popular destination for kids and families. The area was relatively empty now, but she suspected that during the summer, cars would fill that lot and people would be entering the water with their kayaks and inner tubes with great frequency.
Once the kayakers were out of sight, and for the moment no new ones were making their way down the ramp, they walked the rest of the way to the water’s edge. Riley stood dead center, the toes of her ratty shoes just out of reach of the gently lapping water. The mirror image of the trees and shrubs that lined the river was reflected on the surface of the brown-tinted water, only cut through by the rippling Vs made by the retreating kayaks. The occasional small fish darted among the river rocks. Other than the little boy once more shouting about the sighting of a beaver, Riley was overcome by how peaceful it was here—soothing water, flitting insects, and a faint breeze rustling leaves.
She imagined the scream that might have torn out of an unsuspecting person’s throat upon the discovery of a strangled young woman laid out right where Riley stood now. A sound that could shatter the quiet in a place like this, startling birds into flight. Pictures of the bodies hadn’t been released to the public. Now that Riley had seen the bruises on Shawna’s neck, she could understand why. How much more pronounced had those looked on Brynn’s fair skin? Riley was grateful that she’d been able to admire the beauty of Shawna’s almost-golden eyes, and hadn’t seen the burst blood vessels.
Riley didn’t have a physical photo of Brynn readily available, so she took out her phone and pulled one up. She sat on the end of the ramp, stared at the picture a few moments, and then closed her eyes, hoping to make contact with her the same way she’d made contact with Shawna. She idly wondered if Nina had a second bouquet of flowers handy. Riley tried to relax her body and open her mind, just as she’d done earlier. She pictured the light under her name on the Great Beyond switchboard flashing green. Come talk to me, Brynn. I’m here.
Riley was distantly aware of Nina somewhere behind her, uttering a prayer to the Goddess as she had before the séance. Olivia wasn’t currently speaking, but the faint crunch of sand underfoot to Riley’s left told her Olivia was moving around, using her own methods to make a connection to the plane beyond this one.
As strange as the trio probably looked to an outsider, Riley felt deeply appreciative in that moment to have found people who were not only like her, but who were just as invested in finding answers to this mystery as she was.
Their time here wasn’t as relaxed as it had been at the Rio Bravo site though, because within twenty minutes, a school bus arrived. It was only a matter of minutes before scores of kids layered in sunscreen and full of pent-up energy went running down the ramp, a harried-looking woman chasing after them.
It was all the same to Riley; she couldn’t feel Brynn’s presence here the way she’d felt Shawna’s. As Riley stood from her spot at the end of the ramp, she brushed off her jeans and turned to find Nina and Olivia walking her way.
“We can wait them out and see if they move on in a bit …” Nina said, but Riley could read her tone well enough to know she’d rather not.
“I don’t feel anything,” Olivia said. “Well, actually, I might feel too much here. The kids’ living energy is fritzing out my connection to any other energy that might be lingering.” She shrugged causally enough, but she’d gone a little pale. “Sometimes crowds can be hard for me.”
“I’m game for grabbing lunch somewhere and then heading into Taos,” Riley said.
“Ohh, yes. I know of a really great Mexican restaurant nearby,” Olivia said.
They headed back up the ramp. Riley hoped Brynn truly was
n’t here, and not that she was hiding among the brush, watching them walk away.
After lunch—spent eating excellent food and having conversations about anything other than ghosts and murdered women—they piled back in Nina’s car to make the three-hour trek back to Albuquerque. Olivia almost immediately fell asleep. Nina put on a pop station, which she softly hummed along to. Riley, unable to keep her curiosity in check any longer, got out her phone and started searching for that trucking logo. It didn’t take long to find it. Though there weren’t words in the image Shawna had shared even more vividly with Nina than she had with Riley, the images popping up in her search all had a name below the Tree of Life image: Amity Trucking.
Riley searched that next, learning that Amity Trucking was headquartered in Florida. Well, it had been—the company folded in 2011. If the killer had used his trucking routes to find women, places to dispose of them, or both, had the company closing in 2011 derailed his plans? Or had he just found another job with another company?
Dejected, Riley turned off her screen and reported what she’d found to Nina.
“It’s still more information than what we had this morning,” Nina said. “This guy has gotten away with at least three murders. There’s a reason for that. Even with our abilities to communicate with the victims, it doesn’t mean that the answers will just be handed to us. Persistence is the most important. Now we just need to move onto the next idea.”
Sighing, Riley nodded and settled back against the seat, staring out the window at the passing landscape. I’m going to find you, she thought. And this time, she didn’t mean Emery, but the man who had killed her.
October, 2021
I stared at the pair of bolt cutters on the counter as I sipped my coffee. I had spent the better part of the week in Carlsbad, tracking the movements of a man’s business partner. My client was sure his partner was siphoning money from the business but wasn’t sure what he was doing with it. The answer? Gambling at Zia Park Casino out in Hobbs, some five hours away from Albuquerque. He dabbled in table games, but mostly preferred to bet on the horses. He rarely won.
Shuttered Secrets Page 24
