“Anything I can help you with, Officer?”
“I was wondering if anyone in your group saw or heard a vehicle come through the area Wednesday or Thursday night. It would have been a silver Honda Accord.”
He turned and repeated my question to the group. A woman joined us. “I don’t know if it was a Honda, but I woke up early the other morning and was sitting on the porch admiring the sky. We don’t see the stars like this back home.”
I fought the urge to prompt her to hurry along and waited for her to finish waxing poetic about Big Sky Country.
“It was maybe around four in the morning, and I heard a vehicle coming down Old Bear Creek Road. I thought it was odd because of the time of day, and because the car didn’t have its headlights on.”
She filled out a witness statement for me, detailing everything she could remember.
Old Bear Creek Road was a ten-mile stretch of rough mountain road that twisted deep into the wilderness. A few pack-in, pack-out campsites were located off the trail, but no one would be camping out that way this time of year. I needed to contact Park County and see if we could utilize their drones to search the area.
My cell phone rang when I reached the state road.
“An officer from Gardiner just dropped off some discs for you,” Joan said at the other end of the line.
“I’ll be at the station shortly.”
I carried Louie in the crook of my arm, and Frank trotted at my heels as we crossed the parking lot and entered the police department fifteen minutes later.
Joan slid an envelope across the counter to me with a polite smile. “Here you are, Officer Lewis.”
I caught a glimpse of the name scrawled across the top of a form on her desk. “Is this for the course the chief is offering?”
“It is. We’re getting a lot of interest.”
I stared thoughtfully at the form and wondered if Evelyn had purchased a gun. I collected the envelope. “Thank you, Mrs. Marsden.”
In my office, Frank settled on his bed, but Louie pawed at my ankle until I picked him up and let him perch in my lap. The little dog had to keep me in his sights and had spent the last two nights curled against my side.
I slipped two discs from the envelope. One had GAS STATION written on it, the other LAUNDRY. I loaded the disc labeled LAUNDRY into my computer.
The date stamp on the recording read a week ago, so I fast forwarded and watched the accelerated motion of the street in front of the laundry in Gardiner pass from day to night again and again until I finally clicked pause. The date stamp matched what I was looking for. I carefully fast forwarded the recording until the screen darkened as night fell.
I glanced at my notes, moved the cursor on the recording until the time stamp read 20:30, and then let it play. At 21:03, headlights lit the street, and less than a minute later, a figure crossed the screen. It was a man moving down the street on foot, stride confident and unhurried.
The camera had a wide angle lens, and I watched him cross the street and walk directly to a vehicle parked in front of one of the nearby inns. There was a brief flash of light as the interior light came on when he opened the door. When he pulled out of the parking spot and drove back the way he had come, I could clearly see that it was Rachel’s vehicle.
I rewound the feed and watched the scene again. The image was grainy in the dark. The man stayed in the shadows and never looked directly at the camera. Even though I could not see his face, there was no doubt in my mind the identity of the man.
Noting the location of where Rachel’s vehicle was parked on screen, I started the recording at the beginning. I let the feed run as I worked, glancing at the screen regularly to see if Rachel’s vehicle was parked in the spot. Each time I looked, it was either empty or occupied by another vehicle.
The dress all three women had been found in bothered me. It looked like something that would have been worn decades ago, not something modern.
I brought up a second window and minimized it so I could watch the security video feed alongside it. I accessed the software program the department used for its case reports and pulled up the photo attachments on all three cases. I saved one of the photos of Amanda to my desktop and cropped the photograph until it was just a square of patterned fabric.
An image search on the internet brought up a vast array of photos and patterns. I scrolled through numerous pages until one in the bottom corner of the screen caught my eye. The pattern was not an exact match, but it was close. When I expanded the view and clicked on the link to visit the website, I was directed to an online auction site to a listing for a vintage sundress. The listing labeled Sears as the brand, the 1980s as the decade.
Movement on the screen caught my gaze, and I turned my eyes back to the security feed just as Rachel’s vehicle was parked in front of the inn. I hit rewind and backed the video up a few seconds to when the car first appeared on screen. I hit play as soon as headlights lit the field of vision and noted that the time stamp read 23:57 from the night Rachel was last seen at the bookstore.
Even in the gray light of the feed, I could see how dirty the vehicle was. As if it had been driven on unpaved road in the mountains, like the dirt track leading up to Jardine. The vehicle was parked, and then a figure exited the car. Instead of traversing the street, though, the figure ducked between buildings on the opposite side of the street and disappeared from sight.
I grabbed my notebook from my pocket, flipped to a blank page, and plotted out a timeline of events. He had grabbed Rachel sometime after the meeting at the bookstore, and at almost midnight the same night, left her car in Gardiner. The attempted kidnapping at the museum had been called in the following evening, and at 21:03, he had arrived in Gardiner, left his vehicle, and retrieved Rachel’s. He was then caught on the gas station’s camera heading toward Jardine at 21:07. At 04:27, Rachel’s vehicle was left behind the gas station, with some return activity just out of sight of the camera twelve minutes later.
A picture was evolving in my head of the sequence of events. I needed to go back to Gardiner and find a surveillance camera that showed a different angle of the street. One that either showed Jeff’s vehicle or Jeff himself clearly and undeniably.
Louie had fallen asleep curled up in my lap, and I set him on his feet on the floor as I stood and shrugged into my jacket. “Ready, boys?” I asked. Frank stretched and stood.
The phone ringing on my desk interrupted my exit, though, and I snagged the receiver.
“I can’t get ahold of Yates. Any chance you can make a side trip to Livingston today?” Grover Westland, the county coroner, asked when I answered the phone.
“You found something?”
“I did. Get here as soon as you can.”
I dropped Frank and Louie off at home. Frank hated the smell of the morgue on me, and I had quickly learned Louie did not care to be left in the car. It took me an hour to reach the main sheriff’s department in Livingston. Once inside the building, I headed straight to the morgue. I knew why Frank hated the smell. It was one I could never acclimate to either. I breathed shallowly through my mouth when I entered.
Grover looked up from his desk. “Good, you’re here.” He moved to the mortuary cabinet and pulled open one of the drawers. “This young lady is about to go home to her family, but I wanted to show you something.” He lifted the sheet and revealed the colorless, lax face of Sarah Clemens, the woman Evelyn had found at the cabins. “You’re familiar with the basics of livor mortis?”
“Sure. Blood accumulating in the lowermost blood vessels after death.”
“Right. We call it postmortem stain. It becomes fixed at about eight to twelve hours after death.” He drew the sheet away from her entirely and patted her hand. “Pardon me, dear.” He rolled her onto her side. “What do you see?”
“The staining is in her buttocks and back.”
“Exactly.” He laid her flat on the metal slab once more and covered her back up. “All three women have the same s
taining.”
“Spell it out for me.”
“Hector, each woman had this pattern of livor mortis. Two were hanged. This staining should be in their feet and legs. And come look at this.” He moved across the room and flipped the switch on a display screen. The two X-rays pinned in place flared to life. “These are X-rays of Sarah and Amanda’s necks.”
I moved closer and studied each film. “Both are broken. Wouldn’t you expect that in a hanging?”
“Only a long drop hanging breaks the neck. These women would have had to drop a distance of five to nine feet for their necks to snap. Cause of death should have been strangulation in both of these cases.”
I stared at the X-rays. “These women were dead before they were hanged.”
“There’s more. There’s residue of 2-Bromo-2-Nitropropane-1,3-diol on each woman’s face. It’s a molecule called bronopol. It’s found in your standard makeup wipe sold at drugstores. And each woman had overdose-level amounts of diphenhydramine in their systems.”
“And that is?”
“Well, it’s an antihistamine, a compound found in Benadryl. But it is also the active ingredient in over-the-counter sleep aids.”
I rubbed my jaw. “He’s grabbing these women, sedating them, and then recreating someone. Someone with no makeup who had her toenails painted a specific shade, wore her hair braided, and wore a specific dress.” Reminded of the dress, I said, “I think the dresses may be older, from the Sears catalogs in the 1980s.”
He moved to a cabinet and pulled out three evidence bags, each one with a stained but neatly folded dress inside. He offered them to me. “You’re right.”
The bags were already sealed, but I shifted the dress within until I could read where the tag said SEARS THE FASHION PLACE.
“I’ll spare you the sight,” Grover said, “but whoever did this removed Rachel Vickers’s breasts postmortem so she would fit into that dress.”
“Christ.”
His face was grim. “If you haven’t called the FBI yet, the department needs to. You have a serial killer on your hands.” He pointed to the sheet-draped body on his table. The woman whose head had been caved in and her breasts cut off. “And he’s only going to keep escalating.”
Thirty-Three
Medical examiner’s and coroner’s offices in the US
hold more than 40,000 sets of unidentified remains.
EVELYN
The snow fell in gentle, eddying spirals. Faye’s battered Ford Explorer blocked me from view from the street as I approached my car. I glanced at my watch. I would have fifteen to twenty minutes, but I did not need to go far.
Outside of town, I would pull onto the shoulder and let my tire finish deflating. The flyer for the book club was tucked into my pocket with the Book Ends phone number on it. Ed’s shop did not show up in an internet search, and I had left the card he had given me in my room. It would make sense for me to call the one number I knew in town to ask for his contact information.
I had no doubt Jeff would come. Hadn’t our paths been on a collision course since he had stopped and offered me a ride? There was a poetic inevitability to it. This time, though, when we met on that lonely stretch of road, I knew who he was. And the Glock was heavy in my coat pocket.
The small black box attached to the undercarriage caught my eye as I crouched beside my car. With a tug and a twist, the strong magnets keeping it in place relinquished their hold. Inspecting it, I realized it was some kind of case, and when I popped the latch, a small device lay within. An emblem like the wireless logo was emblazoned on the device, and a green light winked at me.
It had to be some sort of tracking device. I glanced into the woods behind me, wondering if he lurked there even now, waiting and watching. A chill crept over me.
I snapped the box closed and tucked it into my pocket. Perhaps I would not need to even place a call if he were tracking me. I retrieved the small folding knife. I glanced at my watch again and took a deep breath before I flipped open the knife. A small nick to the base of the valve stem was all that was needed. A soft whine of air signaled air escaping the tire.
As I cranked my car and put it in gear, my cell phone began to ring. I tossed the knife into my purse and fished my phone from one of the inner pockets. When I saw the contact I had saved into my phone, I hurried to answer it. “Hello?”
“Hello, may I speak with Evelyn Hutto?”
“This is she.”
“Oh, Evelyn! I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you. This is Roberta.”
I glanced at my watch. Nineteen minutes. “Thank you for returning my call. I take it you listened to my message?”
“I did. Now tell me about the collection again. I rarely accessioned private collections into the museum. That was more Annette’s territory.”
Her voice was friendly and matronly. She made noncommittal noises on the other end of the line as I described the pieces. The fresh snow made the inn’s drive slick, and my tires spun briefly before I reached the top of the drive. The plows had not been down the side streets yet, so I drove slowly into town.
When I mentioned the cradleboard, I heard a slight exclamation. “Oh, that collection. I do remember that. I really shouldn’t have accepted the donation. I knew the pieces didn’t fit with our collection, but it was such a generous donation. And he was so adamant about the museum having it.”
My heart quickened. “So you remember the donor?”
“Of course! He’s too handsome to forget. It was Jeff Roosevelt.”
I braked too hard, too suddenly at the stop sign and felt my tires lock for an instant. “Jeff Roosevelt?”
“Yes, he’s that nice man who runs the bookstore in town with Susan.”
I angled my wrist to see the watch face. Seventeen minutes. “Did he say anything about the collection, make any stipulations about the donation?”
“No…he just said he was getting rid of some things he had collected over the years, and he thought the museum would appreciate the gift.” When I was silent for several long moments, mind racing, she spoke again. “I’m positive I had him fill out the paperwork, though. Did you check the filing cabinet in my old office? I know I was supposed to do these things digitally, but I may have forgotten to put it into the computer.”
“I haven’t checked the filing cabinet, but I’ll do so. Thank you for calling me back about it.”
“Of course, dear. I’m sorry if my forgetfulness has caused you any trouble with your cataloguing. I must have put it on a shelf and completely forgotten about it. Like I said, it wasn’t something that fit with our collection. But he’s hard to say no to. You’ll understand if you’ve met him.” She chuckled. I pressed a hand to my breastbone, feeling the pounding of my heart behind the caging of bones.
I could not bring myself to exchange pleasantries, so I thanked her again and finished the call. Instead of heading out of town, I turned the car toward the museum.
The museum was open for a half day today. I snagged my badge from my purse as soon as I parked and glanced at my tire before I hurried inside. I had to be quick.
There was no filing cabinet in the office, though. I imagined I heard the steady pulse of my watch as I rushed to the repository.
An old filing cabinet stood in the corner beside a replica of a giant ground sloth no one could bear to discard. The rollers groaned in protest as I yanked the top drawer open. The hanging folders within were neatly labeled, and I pulled all three bundles labeled ACQUISITIONS free and carried them to the work table. I glanced at my watch. Ten minutes.
A quick shuffle through the first folder revealed Roberta had filed the paperwork chronologically. I flipped through the third folder and found a section of paperwork from 2017. There were only three acquisitions from that year. The donation from Jeff Roosevelt was the second.
My fingers trembled as I flipped the pages and realized he had listed each piece in the collection, the tribal provenance, and the
date he had acquired the piece. Just like any collector would. I glanced over the list. The Arapahoe cradleboard’s date was listed as 2011, the Hopi katsina as 2012. I scanned the rest of the collection and noted the dates went back fifteen years.
The list sent a shudder through me. I knew without a doubt each item corresponded with a woman who had disappeared. Hector needed to see this.
I did not have time to return the paperwork fanned across the work table to their folders and to the filing cabinet. I left them where they lay, folded the acquisition paperwork for Jeff’s donation into my pocket, and hurried out to my car.
I glanced at my watch as I slipped the key into the lock. Four minutes. My tire had lost over half its air now. I hesitated. I could still carry out my plan. Now I wondered if I needed to with the evidence of Jeff’s link to missing women in my pocket. But I did not know if this would be enough.
A prickling at the nape of my neck, a heightened sense of no longer being alone, was the only warning I had.
Jeff met my gaze in the reflection of my car window. “I think you’re ready now, Evelyn.”
My heart lurched into battering ram pace, and it took everything I had not to reach for the gun in my pocket. I calmly opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat before turning my head to look up at him.
He caught the door, but I had no intentions of trying to escape. He had just made my decision for me. I should have known I would not need to draw him out. Hadn’t Chad Kilgore followed me to the woods with no provocation?
“I am,” I said.
He smiled, and I had never been more frightened. Not even when I had been locked in the dark basement and taunted by that voice coming ever-closer. Not even when I had waited on a deserted, lonely stretch of road in the woods waiting for a man I knew would relish hurting me before he killed me. Jeff held his hand out to me. I dropped my keys into them, careful to avoid touching his palm.
Fear gave me a heightened sense of calmness, and I tracked his progress around the back of my car in the rearview mirror. He opened the door, slid into the passenger’s seat, and inserted the key into the ignition.
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