Hunting Ground

by Meghan Holloway

  “Please state your emergency,” a voice on the other end of the line said when the call was picked up.

  “I…” I had to clear my throat. “I think I just found Rachel Vickers.”

  Part IV

  Cut Above the Bud

  Thirty

  A bit of fragrance always clings

  to the hand that gives you roses.

  -Chinese proverb

  HECTOR

  Even the detective’s face was pale as he joined us on scene. Sarah Clemens, Amanda Thornton, and now Rachel Vickers.

  DNA tests would have to confirm her identity. She was beaten beyond recognition with more brutality and rage meted out to her than I had ever witnessed. It was a gut-wrenching sight, the horror of it impossible to stomach.

  The cause of death was evident and vastly different from the previous two women. But the stained dress she wore matched the pattern the two other women had been found in. Her toenails were painted the same pink. And the hair attached to the one section of skull that had not been caved in was fashioned into a rough braid matted with blood and brain matter.

  My cell phone rang in my pocket, and it was a relief to turn away from the scene. The number displayed on the screen was the station. “Hello?”

  “Officer Lewis,” Joan said, “an officer with the Gardiner PD, just called. He saw your ATL. Rachel’s car was found parked behind a gas station.”

  “Send me the address and tell him I’ll be there in twenty.”

  The officer was waiting for me when I arrived. He was built like a tank, almost as wide as he was tall, with a face like a pit bull. He introduced himself as Davis.

  “It’s around back. Some kids noticed it was unlocked with the keys still in the ignition and thought they’d take it for a joy ride. Until they noticed the backseat. Spooked them.”

  I could see why. The lower half of the exterior was splattered with mud and dirty snow. One side of the backseat was saturated in blood with pieces of Rachel’s shattered skull and the gray pulp of her brain matter left behind.

  “Has anyone else touched it?” I asked.

  “Not since I came on the scene.”

  I pulled out my cell and called Ted Peters. He had another scene to process after he finished at the inn. When I hung up the phone, I directed my gaze upward and searched the eaves of the building.

  I pointed to the surveillance camera. It faced away from where we stood, directed to look out over the side entrance into the gas station’s lot. “I need to see that footage.”

  The clerk in the store readily agreed and led us into a cramped office space. She pulled the feed up on the desktop and then toggled through several computer screens to the archived data and began to rewind.

  Davis’s eyes were quicker than mine. After a few minutes, he said, “There,” and pointed to the vehicle pulling into the station from the left side of the screen. The vehicle was only in view for several seconds on the far side of the screen as it pulled around the building, but it was unmistakably Rachel’s car. The headlights were off, and it was too dark to make out any details of the figure sitting in the driver’s seat. The time stamp on the camera read 04:27.

  “Let it play forward,” I said, pulling my reading glasses from my pocket and leaning over the clerk’s shoulder.

  The screen showed nothing but the still night for several long moments. Whoever drove the vehicle to the spot and abandoned it did not walk through the camera’s field of vision upon their departure. But when the timestamp read 04:39, headlights cut a swath across the surveillance tape. No vehicle came into view, and the headlights were extinguished for two minutes before they suddenly lit the screen again and veered off.

  I straightened. “Pause that a moment,” I said as I fished my phone from my coat and swiped through the home screen. I logged into the tracking app. I selected the date range and data points from the drop-down menus in the app and pulled up the travel log report on the device I had attached to Jeff’s vehicle. A map view slowly loaded on my screen. “I’ll be damned,” I breathed. “Rewind the feed.”

  The clerk toggled the mouse across the screen, and the footage rolled backward. And then there it was. At 21:07 the night before, Rachel’s vehicle could be seen driving past the gas station, starting in the upper right hand corner of the screen and a moment later disappearing in the upper left hand corner.

  “That’s headed up to Jardine,” Davis said.

  “I need copies of that footage dating back to Wednesday evening.” The last time Rachel had been seen alive was at the community meeting at the bookstore that night. “I’ll be back for them.” I turned to Davis. “I need that vehicle to remain exactly how you found it until my evidence tech shows up.”

  He nodded, and I strode out of the gas station. I stopped in the parking lot, peering at my cell phone screen before glancing at the crossroads. On foot, I traced the path marked in blue on my screen.

  I crossed the street, followed the route back down to 89. I walked along the highway and crossed the river. The road became 2nd Street on the south side of the bridge, and I followed the route two blocks and turned left. The blue line on the map ended here. I pocketed my phone. I turned in a slow circle, studying the area.

  A cluster of hotels and inns past their prime lined either side of street, and cars were parked in front of each one. It would be an ideal spot to leave a vehicle for a couple of days without raising suspicion.

  The laundry stood out on the street, a small brown building with red trim and a bright yellow sign. I approached the building and stopped under the awning.

  I studied the dome of the surveillance camera. “I hope you smiled for the camera, you son of a bitch.”

  Thirty-One

  Man is harder than iron,

  stronger than stone and

  more fragile than a rose.

  -Turkish proverb

  EVELYN

  I set to work as soon as the police left and the coroner drove away with Rachel’s remains, donning a pair of gloves before I extricated the digital camera from its case. The small remote shutter control was easy to program.

  The sun was setting when I stepped outside. I avoided looking at the taped off section of the front porch and hurried down the street. There was no one about, no vehicles driving past, no pedestrians passing on the walk.

  I veered into the woods, quickly losing sight of the road as I slipped down the ravine into the dense coverage of trees. I had not gone more than twenty yards from the inn, but the trek through the thicket of forest, heavily laden with snow and underbrush, felt farther.

  I stopped when I was still within the cover of trees downhill from the inn. From this vantage point, I had a clear view of my window. I had purposefully left the curtains pulled back and the light on.

  I drew off my mittens. I still wore the rubber surgical gloves beneath, and I pulled the camera from my pocket and snapped dozens of photos of the inn and my lit window. I tugged the roll of duct tape from my pocket and quickly mounted the camera on a tree. I adjusted the angle so the lens had an unobstructed view of the front drive of the inn, the porch, and the front door.

  I exited the woods the way I had entered them, waiting in the shadow of the trees until I was certain no one was passed on the road. On the street, I walked slowly, gloved hands tucked into my pockets, fingers wrapped around the remote shutter control. As soon as I thought I was in the camera’s viewfinder, I clicked the button on the remote control over and over as I traversed the front walk of the inn, climbed the porch, and opened the front door.

  The last of the day’s light winked out as I retraced my circuitous route and retrieved the camera. I was tempted to leave it there overnight. The less back and forth I did, the less likely I would be seen. But the battery light was already beginning to blink in the cold.

  Once back in my room, I checked the photos and was pleased with the result. I looked unsuspecting, innocently returning home, unaware that someone w
atched and photographed me. I kept the gloves on the entire time I handled the camera, only taking them off after I plugged it in to charge.

  I readied for bed and lay sleepless until the sky began to lighten. I dressed quickly, donned another pair of gloves, grabbed the camera and roll of duct tape, and headed back into the woods. I snapped photos again of the inn and of my window before mounting the camera on the tree and heading back inside.

  This time, I waited until I had dressed, eaten breakfast, and was leaving before I activated the remote shutter control and captured my exit from the inn on camera. My original plan had been to capture my comings and goings over several days, but I was running out of time. I needed to act quickly.

  I retrieved the camera from the woods and made my way through the early morning quiet of Raven’s Gap. A small herd of elk lay on the library’s front lawn, and only a couple of cars were parked on the street in front of the coffee shop.

  Main Street was still empty, and I veered through the public parking lot into the alley that ran behind the diner and the bookstore. I saw no security cameras in the alley. When I reached the back door of Book Ends, I donned another pair of surgical gloves and extracted two pins from my pocket that I had already shaped into a pick and lever.

  Within minutes, I was inside the dark bookstore. I closed the door silently behind me and tumbled the lock back into place. I stood still and silent, listening. My vision adjusted slowly, and I realized I was in the hallway at the back of the building. To my right was a door, to my left, the corridor turned a sharp corner, leading to the restroom and the interior of the shop.

  I went straight to the door to Jeff’s office and tugged the penlight from my pocket. I clicked the small beam of light on, tucked it between my teeth, and knelt to work on the lock. When the last seized pin clicked into place, a quiet creak of movement reached me.

  I froze for an instant, and then as soundlessly as possible, I slipped my pick and lever free from the lock and let myself into Jeff’s office. I closed and locked the door behind me, tilting my head toward the hallway, ears pricked. The sound came again, drawing my gaze to the ceiling.

  The building was similar to the hardware store where Jeff lived, a turn of the century structure with two floors. I wondered if Susan lived upstairs. Someone was moving around above me in the early morning hours. There was a sudden sigh of water in the building’s pipes, another creak above, and then silence.

  I crept across Jeff’s office to his desk and powered up his computer. The welcome screen appeared with the password prompt, and I was stunned when I carefully typed “rose” and was granted access. I had counted on it, but it still surprised me.

  The blue glow from the screen gave me enough light to work by, so I snapped off the pen light and tucked it away. I drew the camera from my pocket and ejected the memory card.

  His desktop was an iMac, and the memory card slipped neatly into a port on the side of the large computer. While the contents loaded in the photo application, I created three folders on this computer labeled AMANDA, RACHEL, and EVELYN. I opened the Apple’s Dock and found the Terminal application and entered a touch command to change the date and then dragged the folder labeled AMANDA into the Terminal window and pressed the return key. The folder’s date was now a week before I had found the woman hanging in the woods. I repeated the same process with the folder labeled RACHEL, backdating it to last week, and then did the same with the folder bearing my name.

  I dropped the two folders into the computer’s Trash application and then dragged the photos from the camera into the folder labeled EVELYN. I deleted the pictures from the photo application before scrolling through the Finder window. I hid the folder bearing my name within another folder in Jeff’s documents. Hidden from a cursory glance, but there when the police came to dig through his files.

  I ejected the camera’s memory card from the port and powered down the computer. To cover my tracks completely, I took the time to lock the office door and the back door behind me with my pick and lever.

  First stage complete, I stripped the surgical gloves off my hands, tucked them into my pocket, and strolled casually down the alley and back out onto the street to greet the sun’s rise. Adrenalin began to hum through my veins. I had set something in motion. Now I needed to stay ahead of the rolling stone as it gained momentum.

  My hands were trembling as I approached the police department, and I turned off course and entered the coffee shop. There was a lull, so I was able to place my order immediately upon entry. I had my peppermint hot chocolate within minutes.

  I picked a seat by the window and blew on the beverage until it was cool enough to sip. I drank slowly, watching the town stir to life.

  Chad Kilgore had followed me from the suburbs of Atlanta two hours north to the Chattahoochee National Forest. I had known he would. He shadowed my every step. My grandfather and I had already found the place. It was down a dirt road that branched off from the remote, two-lane state route. My grandfather was already there, waiting, his truck hidden out of sight.

  Deep in the woods, I pulled to the side of the dirt road and popped the hood on my car. Chad Kilgore had been lurking in my rearview mirror since I left Atlanta, drifting farther back as I ventured onto quieter and narrower streets. It was several minutes before I heard the rumble of his engine. I glanced into the woods, took a deep breath, and waited.

  He stopped in the middle of the dirt track. His smile as he approached me made my skin crawl. “You’ve led me on such a merry chase, Evelyn.”

  “And I’m ending that chase right here, you son of a bitch,” my grandfather said as he moved from behind the shelter of trees.

  Chad’s expression morphed from predatory to stunned confusion before the bullet my grandfather fired wiped his face blank. Even knowing what was coming, I had still started violently at the sharp report of the World War II-era pistol. When Chad had crumpled into the dirt like a puppet whose strings had been severed, my legs weakened and I fell to my knees.

  I had not realized I wept until my grandfather limped toward me, lowered himself to the ground, and enfolded me in his arms. “Hush now,” he said. “It’s over.”

  The blisters on my hands from digging his grave had taken a long time to heal.

  When I finished my hot chocolate, I took my empty cup with me into the bathroom. In the stall, I dropped the memory card into the toilet and flushed it. I donned the surgical gloves again and buried the digital camera deep in the waste basket. I tucked the gloves into my empty cup and, on my way out of the coffee shop, I tossed my cup in the recycling bin.

  Snow had begun to fall, and the gunmetal sky looked weighted. I took a deep breath and tucked my chin into my scarf as I traversed the distance between the coffee shop and the police station. The air was biting against the back of my throat and sharp in my lungs. It stung my cheeks, whispered into the recesses of my ears, and nipped at my lips.

  The doors to the police department opened automatically ahead of me, and I stamped warmth back into my feet before I approached the desk. I was relieved to recognize the woman sitting there.

  Joan smiled when she glanced up from her computer. She pressed the intercom to speak to me through the bullet proof glass. “Evelyn, what may I do for you?”

  “I have a couple of questions,” I said. I lowered my voice. “I’m afraid.”

  Her face moved and she leaned closer to the intercom. “It’s absolutely horrific. I think every woman in town is afraid. And you had to find…” She shook herself. “I can’t even imagine.”

  “I think someone is targeting me, Joan,” I whispered. “I’m afraid for my life. I purchased a gun yesterday.”

  She nodded. “I don’t blame you at all.”

  “I don’t want to get in trouble for having it, though. Do I need to register it here with the police?”

  “No, you don’t need to do anything here with us. You can apply for a conceal carry permit with the sheriff’s department. But
you need to have lived here for six months and have a Montana driver’s license.”

  I already knew the requirements, but I needed Joan to remember I had been here and asked the question. “Do you offer any kind of firearm safety training course?”

  “We do. The chief just decided to offer a course starting next week. He’s waiving the fee for any woman who wants to take the class.”

  “I’d like to sign up for that, please. What day does it start?”

  “Monday evening. Let me go ahead and get you registered.”

  I filled out the paperwork she slid through the slot to me. My fingers trembled slightly when I set pen to paper. Everything would be done by Monday evening, but it would help my case to have my name on the roster. It showed I was serious and conscientious and wanted to go about things lawfully.

  I needed the odds stacked in my favor. I had every intention of surviving this confrontation and no intention of going to jail. I needed to appear innocent. I needed to clearly be seen as a victim, even though I had no intentions of being one.

  Thirty-Two

  We can complain because rose bushes have thorns,

  or rejoice because thorns have roses.

  -Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr

  HECTOR

  Jardine was little more than a ghost town. The gold mine had closed in the nineties, and now there were only about fifty people living in the community. The outfitting companies, fishing and hunting expeditions, and vacation rentals were the only thing that kept the place on the map.

  I stopped at one of the cabin rentals when I saw a group of snowmobilers readying for a day on the trails. A man broke away from the group and approached when I parked.