by Blake Pierce
If it weren’t so late, she would have called Ellington. In fact, she was strongly considering it despite the time as she made her way back to the bed. She crawled back under the sheets slowly, as if she did not trust the bed. She could feel where she had sweat on the mattress and it brought back flashes of the dream.
She thought about something Ellington had told her during their FaceTime conversation. She knew that trauma from her past could easily influence the way her memory worked. It was something she had read about even as a little girl when relatives had given her faith-based books on how to cope with loss. She knew all about trauma and how it affected the brain. But Ellington had put it a very simple and well-stated way.
Memories do some weird things when there’s trauma involved…
Sure, it explained away how the memories of that day on the side of a rock wall were only now surfacing, but it opened up a whole different possibility. It meant that there was no telling what other memories were buried in her subconscious. Had she really been foolish enough to think that wrapping up her father’s murder case was going to magically heal her of all of her pain and trauma?
Maybe I do need to see a shrink when I get back home, she thought.
She lay in bed for a while, letting these thoughts sort themselves out in her head. At some point, she started to notice the little slants of light spilling across the end of the mattress and the opposite wall. The sun had started to rise. Somehow, she had stayed in bed after the nightmare, trying to sort of her past and how it might affect her future.
If the sun was up, she figured she might as well be, too. Maybe she’d get a head start down at the station and dig deeper into the files concerning Yorke and Evans. But first, maybe she’d find a greasy spoon–type diner in town and veg out on a huge unhealthy breakfast. If this trip had initially started with the idea of seeing her mother while living it up in a posh hotel, she figured she could still factor in a selfish moment or two.
She took her time getting dressed, again slightly uncomfortable with not having her proper bureau attire. She was equally uncomfortable with the Glock Timbrook had loaned her. But she had to make do, she supposed.
As she once again tried to get around how unorthodox this assignment was, her phone buzzed from its place on her nightstand. She practically dashed for it, thinking it might be Ellington for some reason.
But as she grabbed it up, she saw that the number contained an area code local to Jackson Hole. She answered it and heard Timbrook greeting her on the other line.
“Agent White, sorry to wake you.”
“I was already awake. What is it?” It was an early-morning call; Mackenzie had gotten enough of them in her time with the bureau to know that it was almost always bad news on the other end.
“Our gut instincts were right. There’s been a third victim. And this one’s fresh.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Two officers were still setting up the yellow crime scene tape when Mackenzie arrived on the scene. This crime scene was not inside Grand Teton National Park, but about three miles away from park and a bit further outside of town. Mackenzie had parked about a quarter of a mile away and found herself walking down yet another trail through the forest before she came to the site.
Timbrook greeted her, holding up the crime scene tape for Mackenzie to step through. Several yards ahead of them a body lay sprawled on the ground. Towering very far over their heads was a rock wall that gave in to assorted vegetation and trees before disappearing at an angle and then jutting back out even farther up in a series of rock formations.
“Fair warning,” Timbrook said. “Don’t check the body out unless you absolutely have to.”
“That bad?”
“We’re pretty sure he hit the wall several times on his way down.” She looked up and pointed. “See how it sort of angles back? He likely hit that wall, bounced around a bit, and then finally landed here. The back of his head is caved in and there’s nothing but torn skin and broken bones on his right side.”
“Jesus. Who discovered him?”
“A morning jogger, passing by. She’s been taken away, though. She was a mess. You just missed her by about five minutes. She said she heard screaming from somewhere overhead and then she actually heard it when he hit the ground. From the way she describes it, she was right over there when he landed, right where you came in from.”
“Any ID?”
“Don’t know yet. I was about to check for a wallet.”
Mackenzie followed Timbrook to the body and saw just how hesitant Timbrook was to go near it. “Got extra evidence gloves?” she asked.
“No.”
“Here’s a pair,” a male voice said from her right. It was one of the policemen who had been putting up the tape. Mackenzie was surprised to see that it was Sheriff Duncan. The other officer came up beside him, doing everything he could to not look at the body. It was Officer Waverly, looking a little sick.
Duncan handed her his gloves as if he were quite happy to be rid of them. “Thanks for sticking around for this,” he said.
“Of course.”
She slapped the gloves on and hunkered down by the body. Timbrook had not been exaggerating; even though she did her best to avert her eyes from the worst of the damage, there was no way to not see it. She only hoped the poor man had died quickly—perhaps during his first collision with the side of the wall.
“What’s this site called?” she asked as she gently pushed the body onto its side, revealing the back pockets of the shorts the man was wearing.
“Well, way up there is a place called Devil’s Claw. Because it’s not in the park, it’s pretty open to the public. No rails, no guards, nothing like that. There’s Heinz Trail about a mile from where we’re currently standing, and it walks all the way to the top, where it ends at a huge outcropping of rock—Devil’s Claw.”
“How far up?”
It was Waverly who answered, craning his neck and looking up. “I think it’s somewhere around twelve hundred feet.”
Mackenzie felt a wallet in the man’s back pocket. She fished it out and saw that it was a minimalist wallet, with just a credit card, a license, and a money clip containing around fifty dollars. She ignored everything but the license.
“Our victim’s name is Charles Rudeke. A Jackson Hole native.”
She handed the wallet to Timbrook and then cautiously looked over the body for a phone. She did not find one, though she did see plenty of evidence that the man had been climbing. There was a pack slung over his shoulder, just about as torn up as his body. There were also a few carabiners and a belay device attached to the belt of his harness.
“No phone,” she said.
Still looking up the side of the mountain, Waverly said, “I’d say from a fall like that, it’s a very good chance he lost it on the way down.”
Mackenzie stood up, also looking up. “When did the call come in?”
“Forty minutes ago,” Duncan said. “We got here about fifteen minutes ago. Would have been sooner, except for the damned walk from the parking lot.”
“Where’s the trail to the top?” Mackenzie asked.
“Just to the left there,” Timbrook said. “Heinz Trail.”
“Feel like going for a walk?”
“No. But do I really have a choice?”
***
Mackenzie and Timbrook started up Heinz Trail less than five minutes after Mackenzie had arrived on the scene. Waverly and Duncan remained at the foot of the climb, waiting for forensics and the State PD. Birds were singing in the forest and much further off, the sounds of the city starting to come awake filtered in through the trees.
“I made this walk a few times when I was younger,” Timbrook said. “It comes in at a little under two miles.”
“Any secondary trails that feed of it?”
“Oh, I’m sure there are. Now that I think of it, I should maybe call Petry to see if he knows of any we could use to shorten out walk back down.”
As Timbroo
k made the call, Mackenzie looked to the trail ahead. It looked easy enough from the start but she saw the terrain angling upwards pretty severely about a hundred yards or so ahead of them. While she wasn’t exactly looking forward to the trek, she knew it was exactly the sort of exercise she needed to get back into shape. It was much more enjoyable than the gym back home anyway.
Timbrook ended her call with Petry with a sigh. “He says he isn’t sure. He’s going to place a call to a friend of his to see if they can be of any help.”
“I don’t mind the walking,” Mackenzie said. “I just hate to waste the time with this death being so recent. Did you take down the name and contact information of the woman who found the body?”
“Waverly did. We already told her that we may need to reach out to her. I hated to send her away like that, but she looked like she was about to pass out. Petry was the one who took her back to her car. He just said he had to end up calling the woman’s sister to pick her up. She couldn’t stop shaking to drive.”
“Poor woman,” Mackenzie said.
Those were the last words spoken for quite a while as they started to traverse the harder parts of Heinz Trail. There were a lot of parallel tracks, walking around large outcroppings of boulders and large trees. As they neared the top, and when the trail leveled out a bit, Mackenzie started to see a spectacular view through the trees to her right. There was a bit of a drop-off made of mostly trees and fallen debris, but the open sky was easy to see through it all.
“No one even wondered if this one was an accident,” Timbrook said. “When the call came in and we knew we had another climbing death…even Duncan assumed it was a murder. Three of these in less than ten days. We no longer have the convenience of hoping it’s all just a coincidence.”
“That’s right. It’s definitely a serial. And while three deaths in ten days is terrible, it also tells us a few things.”
“Like what?”
“That the killer is methodical. He doesn’t want to wait. This doesn’t necessarily mean he’s impatient…but it does mean that he or she feels like they have something that needs to get done. And with murders like these—having to meet the climbers at the top of their climb—that denotes a methodical mindset.”
“So you think it gets easier to track a killer with every new death?”
“There’s no science to it, but that has been my experience. Of course, I count each new death as a loss. So it’s a win-lose sort of situation.”
Timbrook seemed to mull over this as they neared the end of the trail. The way the trees started to essentially disappear from view, as if swallowed up by the sky, clued Mackenzie in to the fact that they were near the top—near Devil’s Claw. The ground leveled out and started to bend to the right, slowly revealing a large outcropping of rock that looked as if it were some sort of bridge into the sky. As they closed the distance to it, she saw that it did look to be in the shape of a claw, curling upward slightly like a large talon pointing to the clouds.
“That’s it,” Timbrook said. “That’s Devil’s Claw.”
“Looks pretty treacherous. Any deaths from accidental falls in the past that you know of?”
“A few years back, yeah. A ten-year-old boy fell off of it. His mother said he got too close to the edge and sort of freaked out. Poor woman said she actually felt his shirt on her fingertips when she grasped out for him.”
An image of her nightmare flashed through her mind, reaching out for Kevin as he plummeted to the ground below.
Before stepping up to the rock or taking a moment to appreciate the view, Mackenzie stood her ground and looked the place over. There was disturbed soil, dirt, and pebbles almost everywhere between the end of the trail and the patch of dirt that led out to the rock outcropping that looked out to the sky.
It was difficult to tell what was old and what was recent—all except a single print right along the edge of where the rock met the dirt patch. There, a portion of a shoe print stood out fairly clear. The outline around the arch was so well defined that Mackenzie felt confident it was very recent. Certainly no older than yesterday, but likely fresher than that. She took out her cell phone and snapped a picture of it. Everything was clear from the heel to almost the halfway point of the shoe. The tread along the heel was clear, fading out as it got closer to the rock. There was a very prominent N shape that was broken up by the rock—an N that was easily recognizable as part of the New Balance logo.
“I don’t recall seeing anything quite so clear in the other possible prints we’ve found,” Timbrook said from over her shoulder.
“Same here. But I think we do have a few shots where the tread is somewhat visible. We can compare when we get back to the station.”
“That’s a fresh one, right?”
“Right. And it’s almost too pressed down. It’s like he was stomping down or…or maybe he had something heavy.”
“Maybe a pack on his back?” Timbrook offered.
“Possibly.”
Mackenzie snapped a few more pictures of the print from different angles before pocketing her phone and stepping up onto the rock. The sweeping vista in front of her was beautiful but she was fine standing back at the base of the rock. After her nightmare and dealing with three deaths, she was not about to walk out to the edge and look down.
As she looked around on the surface of the rock outcropping for any other clues, Timbrook’s phone rang. The sound was so sudden and unexpected that it made Mackenzie jump a bit. Her heart slammed in her chest, startled so close to the edge of the rock. She turned back to listen in on Timbrook’s conversation but wasn’t able to pick up much. What she did note, however, was a dawning look of excitement in Timbrook’s eyes.
She ended the call after about thirty seconds and said: “That was Petry. We’ve got several pieces of information to work with. First of all, the woman who discovered the body is calm now and is not only willing to speak, but wants to speak.”
“And second of all?”
“Charles Rudeke was recently divorced. When Waverly called to inform her of her ex-husband’s death, she asked how it happened and when Waverly told her, she laughed.”
“Seems a little rude,” Mackenzie said.
“Also, Petry said he found out that there is a little trail off to the right side as we head back down, maybe half a mile away from here. It empties out into an old campground. He’s going to meet us there in twenty minutes so we don’t have to make the climb back down.”
Mackenzie nodded, but her thoughts were already on the two women they would need to speak with. An ex-wife, seemingly glad that her ex died while rock climbing, she thought. Sounds like an evil bitch. But she might have a reason for her laughter. Maybe she knows something about his climbing or even the people he might have once climbed with. Seems like a fairly promising lead.
She did her best to sort through these thoughts as she and Timbrook headed back down the side of the mountain. She texted the photos of the prints to Waverly as they made their way down.
The print was fresh, and so was this latest body. For the first time since stepping onto this case, Mackenzie felt as if she were truly on the hunt.
And God, had she missed that feeling.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Tamara Rudeke still lived in the home she had once shared with Charles. It sat four miles outside of Jackson Hole, a quaint little two-story home surrounded by a yard that had started to go into disrepair. It was in the middle of a row of houses down a little side street, a quiet neighborhood with the shapes of the looming mountains sitting to the east.
Mackenzie knocked on the door, not sure what to expect. Speaking with a grieving widow so soon after a loved one’s death was never easy; but then again, she had never spoken to one who had responded to the news with what Officer Waverly had referred to as gut-wrenching laughter.
Tamara opened the door fairly quickly. Her appearance did not quite match up with what Mackenzie had been expecting. The woman had clearly been crying. Yet, at the same time,
the news of her ex-husband’s death was apparently not going to slow down her day. It appeared as if she was getting ready for work. She held a makeup compact in her hand as she stood at the doorway and looked out at them.
“Ms. Rudeke?” Mackenzie asked.
“Yeah,” she said. She eyed them both, back and forth from one to another, and then stepped aside with a sigh. “Come on in.”
The front door opened directly on the living room. Tamara sat down on the couch, setting the compact on the coffee table. Even before Mackenzie and Timbrook were fully inside, Timbrook closing the door behind her, Tamara starting talking.
“I didn’t even think to ask where he fell from when the other officer called me,” she said.
“We believe he was scaling up to the site known as Devil’s Claw,” Timbrook said.
“Makes sense. He’d been talking about it for a month or so.”
“Do you mind me asking how long you and Charles have been divorced?” Mackenzie asked.
“The divorce was final about four months ago. But we’d been separated for about a year before that. Charles seemed fine with the separation. But when everything was final and we actually started facing the D-word, he sort of slipped a switch.”
“What sort of switch?”
“He just got very uncaring. Said some really mean shit to me all of the time. But then, within a few hours, he’d try to patch things up. Wanted to work on the marriage and try to get me back.”
“Was he ever violent?”
“No. No, not Charles. The closest he’s come to being violent was a few weeks ago when he tried to kiss me and I pushed him away. He pushed back for a while but then gave up.”
“So he wanted to work on the marriage?” Timbrook asked.
