“Andrea told me about this story,” Stevens told Windermere now. “Some guy in New York whose phone was stolen, and somehow it made it all the way to China. The new owner posted, uh, selfies, and they showed up on the New York guy’s new phone. The old phone was never logged out of his cloud.”
“Aha.” Windermere sat back in her chair. “And I bet you’re going to tell me Higgins had his phone swiped recently.”
“Six or seven months ago, from a bar in Minneapolis. A smartphone, just like his current one. Same brand and everything.”
“Well, gee whiz, Stevens.” Windermere clapped her hands. “Maybe we should hire Andrea onto our task force. That’s exactly the kind of fresh thinking we need.”
—
They drove to the Mall of America, Stevens’s Cherokee cutting through what slush remained on the roads from yesterday’s blizzard. Other drivers, though, weren’t so lucky; they passed multiple spinouts and cars run into ditches, more casualties of this merciless winter weather.
The mall, at least, was mostly empty.
“Sure, that could happen,” the kid at the phone store told Stevens and Windermere when they’d outlined Stevens’s theory. “We don’t really like to talk about it, but it happens occasionally.”
“Perfect,” Windermere said. “So how do we track down who’s using the phone now?”
The kid shifted his weight. “Well, that’s tricky. If you have a phone tracker app activated, you can just follow the app.”
“And if he doesn’t have a tracker?”
“Gah.” The kid grimaced. “Then you might be out of luck. Whoever’s using the phone now probably has a new service provider, so you can’t track it through the phone company. I hate to say it, but your best bet is probably to just study the pictures as they come in for clues. It’s a long shot, but you never know, right?”
“We tried that,” Stevens said. “It didn’t get us anywhere.”
The kid winced again, like he was passing a kidney stone. “I mean, if you have your guy bring his phone in to one of our technicians, we can adjust his account to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
“Thanks,” Windermere told him. “We’ll pass that along.”
—
The Boundary County sheriff was a man named Chuck Truman. Stevens reached him at his office in Bonners Ferry in the northeast corner of the Idaho panhandle.
“Glad to hear from you,” Truman told him. “Word has it you have a man in custody. Some tractor salesman?”
“Had in custody,” Stevens corrected. “We had to let him go. He swears he didn’t take the picture, and we have no other proof that he’s ever been to Idaho or ever knew the victim. Frankly, Sheriff, we were hoping you might have some answers.”
The sheriff chuckled a little bit. “I suspect we’re both going to walk away from this call disappointed, Agent. I told your SAC about all we know. It was a railroad maintenance crew who found her, in Moyie Springs, about ten miles east of here on the Northwestern Railroad’s mainline.”
“And nobody knows who she is.”
“We canvassed the town, the county, the Kootenai tribe,” Truman said. “No missing persons reported. Of course, the woman was buried under a deep pile of snow. She could have been there for some time—heck, since October, for all we know.”
Stevens made a note in his notebook. “But the body was preserved enough to determine a cause of death?”
“That’s right,” Truman said. “To be honest with you, I was set to write the poor woman’s death off as accidental. It happens more than we’d care to admit in the wintertime in these mountains. You make a mistake out here when the temperature drops, you can wind up dead pretty easily.”
“Sure,” Stevens said. “We know a thing or two about that ourselves over here.”
“Minnesota, yeah. Anyway, Cathy—that’s my coroner, Cathy Blake, and she’s a crackerjack—Cathy agreed with me that most of the injuries our victim suffered could have been accidental, like maybe she fell off a train or something. The girl had been dead too long to really tell.”
Stevens put his pen down, intrigued. “But?”
“But,” the sheriff continued, “Cathy was damn sure the damage done to the victim’s throat was emphatically not accidental.” He paused, and Stevens could hear him flipping pages.
“‘The victim’s larynx was crushed, as was her thyroid cartilage,’” Truman read. “‘Further, I found numerous petechial hemorrhages when I examined the victim’s eyes.’”
“Meaning what, exactly?” Stevens said. “I’m a little rusty on my forensic pathology.”
“You and me both,” Truman said. “According to Cathy, though, it’s a clear sign the victim died by asphyxia. Meaning—”
“She was strangled to death.”
“Exactly,” Truman said. “We may not know much, Agent Stevens, but we’re firm on cause of death. Beyond that, I’m afraid we’re stymied.”
Stevens leaned back in his chair. Figured he’d about exhausted the sheriff’s supply of information. “Cause of death is a start,” he said. “We’ll keep working the picture angle, see if we can’t dredge up the photographer. In the meantime, you let us know if you catch any more leads on this girl’s ID.”
“Will do,” Truman said. “As far as we can tell, she’s just another poor transient whose luck happened to run out in our mountains. Sad, but it kind of goes with the territory around here. Although . . .” He trailed off. Didn’t finish the thought.
“Yeah?” Stevens prodded.
Truman cleared his throat. Spoke softer. “There are rumors about this part of the country,” he said. “Cascades to Glacier Park. Anytime anyone turns up missing, there are people who’ll tell you it’s the work of a killer—one killer, every dead body.” He laughed a little bit, hollowly. “I’ve looked into the stories, as much as I can, but I don’t have the resources to go chasing down bogeymen. It’s an old wives’ tale, what I figure.” He paused. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t find it all a bit creepy.”
6
The rider stepped off the train and down into the snowdrifts. It was near dark already, late afternoon, the night coming fast and mean and long at this latitude. The rider didn’t mind. He loved the winter months.
It was the emptiness, mostly. It was the way the tourists cleared out, their camper vans and SUVs all done choking the highways, crowding into towns, pushing out the locals. It was the way the restaurants emptied out, the stores, the parks. It was the stillness, the way the snow muted every sound until it felt like you were the only person in the mountains, and maybe the world.
There was a peace in the winter that didn’t exist when the weather warmed. There was a calm, but that calm had an edge to it, a darkness on the fringes. People left the mountains in the winter because the mountains were dangerous. They left for fear of the cold, for fear of the howling-banshee storms that brought snow and wreaked havoc, closing the roads and isolating the towns, sending cars skittering off the highway and into ravines. Only the strong survived in the winter. The weak perished long before spring.
It was true that it was more difficult to find prey in the winter. Every predator knew that. Most viable candidates had learned to migrate or hibernate; anything with any sense left the mountains, and people were no different.
But the rider didn’t mind. Those who stayed behind stayed because they had no other choice. They were bound to the mountains by circumstance, lack of resources, lack of opportunity. They were weakened by the cold and the lack of tourist dollars, desperate and vulnerable. The rider liked vulnerable. Vulnerable made for easy targets.
And the snow was damn good at hiding bodies. People disappeared in winter. They turned up in the thaw, dead as could be, and nobody batted an eye. Easy for someone to get lost in a storm. Walk the wrong way coming home from the bar and you’d die in a snowdrift, easy. No one really asked
questions. The winter was deadly. People took that as fact.
The rider had come west again, caught on a slow, heavy drag, stepped off when the train slowed at a crew-change point nestled deep within the mountains. The change point was a small town, railroad-dependent, a hotel for the train crews and a bar for them, too; a few houses and a gas station, a sad excuse for a school.
The snow had eased to a few stray flakes, but the roads were still covered, and what little traffic passed the rider passed him slowly and cautiously. He kept to the shadows, turned away when he saw headlights, heard the crunch of tires approaching.
The bar was half full when the rider walked in the door, Bob Seger on the jukebox, a thick cloud of tobacco smoke filling the small room, nobody caring to enforce the state’s smoking ban. A few faces turned when the rider walked in, looked him over from behind their bottles, turned away again. Impolite to stare, and anyway, the rider knew he didn’t look like much. He fit in, in places like this. He looked like he belonged with this crowd.
What crowd there was consisted of a handful of aging loners propping up the bar, a table of railroad guys in the corner by the jukebox, some truck drivers playing pool, and a couple of women. And the bartender, who wore a look like he was wishing he’d skipped town when he was still young enough to make a go of it.
The rider slid a five on the bar and ordered a Budweiser. Left the change and retreated into the smoke, found a booth in the corner. He kept his eyes on the table as he drank the beer, avoided eye contact with the rest of the crowd, knew mostly everyone would forget he was there.
“Buy me a drink?”
One of the women; she’d watched him come in. She stood at the edge of his table, hip cocked, a short skirt and a beer company tank top, cut low enough to show off the tops of her breasts. She wore heavy makeup, was fighting a losing battle; even in the dim light, the rider could see she was well past middle age.
The rider met her eyes, then looked away fast, a reflex he hated and was powerless to control. He forced himself to look up again, study her face. Made himself see that she was just like the others.
She’s just an animal. An ignorant beast, simple and cruel. And she’s only here to manipulate you, just like the others.
Like all of them.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you before,” the woman continued, smiling everywhere but her eyes. “You work on the trains?”
The rider shook his head. “Just passing through.”
“A wanderer, huh? Man after my own heart.” The woman shifted on her heels, smiled wider, plastic. “Listen, you’re cute and I’m thirsty,” she said. “How about we get this thing started?”
The rider swallowed his revulsion. He set the bottle down, lay his left hand flat on the table so she could see the glint of gold on his ring finger. Now wasn’t the time. Not yet. Not like this.
“Gee, I’d love to,” he told the woman. “But I swore I’d behave.”
Disappointment flashed behind the woman’s eyes, but just briefly. Then she smiled again, bright as she could fake it, and straightened. “The last honest man,” she said, turning to leave. “I guess I can’t be mad at that. You have a nice night, anyway.”
—
The rider stayed in the bar, in his corner, all but invisible. He finished his Budweiser and ordered another, left another five on the bar. He drank slow, and he watched the railroad guys play the jukebox. Watched the truckers shoot pool. Watched the woman and a couple more work the room.
Whores. The rider made himself sit still. Watched the women and let the hate burn hot inside him—need and jealousy and envy and desire, a hundred emotions burning together in one searing flame.
After about an hour, the woman found a willing partner, one of the railroad guys. His friends hooted and jeered after him as he took the woman’s hand and followed her out of the bar. The rider watched her go. Watched the railroaders laugh and slap one another on the back. He nursed his beer.
The woman and the railroader came back a half hour or so later. His buddies cheered again, and he blushed and bought a beer and sat down, steadfastly refusing to look in the woman’s direction.
A couple other women dropped by the rider’s table. They made similar pitches for his time. The rider showed them the ring. The women wandered away again.
Fat fucking chance, the rider thought. Money, that’s all you’re after. You wouldn’t even look at me if you didn’t see me as a mark.
Another hour passed. The rider finished his Budweiser and was about to order another when the woman walked out again, the first woman, with one of the truck drivers this time.
The rider watched her go. Stood and walked through the smoke to the men’s room, pissed in the urinal and zipped up again. Opened his coat and checked the handcuffs on his belt, the scarf he’d fashioned into a garrote. And the knife in its sheath on his belt, the bowie with the custom handle, the knife he’d taken from the Indian girl. The rider liked the knife. It was a nice souvenir.
He replaced the knife. Slipped the handcuffs and the scarf into his coat pockets, buttoned his coat closed again, and walked out of the restroom. There was a rear exit to the bar, just beyond the restroom doors. Let the marks walk out the front door with the whores. When a girl disappeared, they’d be the first suspects. The rider slipped out the back door instead, unnoticed.
The snow had picked up a little bit, but not enough to be consequential. The rider circled around the side of the building to the parking area, kept to the edge of the lot, found a stand of pine trees, and waited there.
He surveyed the lot. Found the truck drivers’ rides, a couple of logging rigs, Kenworth sleeper cabs towing skeleton trailers. The rider watched the rigs. The snow fell. A car crunched by on the main road in front of the bar. Somewhere in the distance, a diesel engine throbbed.
The cab light came on inside the nearest rig. Then the door opened and the woman climbed down, slipping a little in her heels on the snowy ground. The trucker locked the door to his rig and hurried back into the bar. The rider heard the jukebox again as the driver opened the door, the railroad guys getting rowdier.
Neanderthals.
The whore didn’t go back inside right away. She crossed the lot to an old gray Ford Taurus, opened the driver’s-side door, and sat down inside. The rider watched her flip the mirror down, check her makeup, apply new lipstick. Perfect. He stepped out of the shadows and walked across to the car. He was shaking again, excitement and fear and anger, an energy that propelled him forward, drowned out his rational brain, replaced it with something urgent, something primal.
The whore didn’t see him approach. She didn’t look up until he tapped on the window. Then she flinched, gasping, froze up like a scared rabbit. But she relaxed when she saw the rider’s face. She put her lipstick away. Rolled down the window, and her smile was back. “Change your mind?”
The rider grinned back. Bounced on his feet. “You’re just too pretty,” he told her. “I guess I couldn’t resist.”
7
So we have a pretty good idea how the woman’s picture showed up on Higgins’s phone,” Windermere told SAC Harris. “But we still don’t know who took the picture or where he or she disappeared to.”
“The pictures should have location tags,” Harris said. “When I take pictures on my iPhone, it automatically knows when and where the shot was taken.”
“Sure,” Stevens said. “True. According to the tag on Mark Higgins’s phone, the picture was taken last Sunday—four days after Sheriff Truman and his deputies moved the body.”
“And if the location tag’s to be believed,” Windermere said, “the picture was taken at a roadside diner in Barstow, California. See, the trouble with geotagging is it only works if the phone is connected to a network.”
“So the picture could have been taken when the phone was offline and uploaded to the cloud when it came online at that diner,”
Harris said. “This guy would have had to travel all the way from Idaho to California without turning on his phone.”
“We put a call in to Barstow PD, have them canvassing the diner and the rest of the city for anybody who might have seen anything,” Stevens told him. “The diner doesn’t have any security footage, but at least we have a location.”
“We know the photographer hangs around the Southwest,” Windermere said. “And we can be certain that whoever’s taking those pictures can lead us to the victim’s identity. We just have to track him down.”
“Perfect,” Harris said. “So how are you going to do it?”
Stevens and Windermere looked at each other. Let the question hang there. Then Stevens had a thought, something he’d been playing with all morning.
“I don’t know much about this cloud thing,” he said, “as we’ve already established.”
“Definitively,” Windermere said. “But go on.”
Stevens sat forward. “I was just thinking: Higgins deleted the pictures he didn’t like from his phone. But if he was hooked up to the cloud and he had, say, a laptop, would the pictures have automatically been deleted there, too?”
“Most likely,” Harris said. “But not one hundred percent for certain. It’s worth a check.”
“Damn right,” Windermere said, reaching for Harris’s phone. “And even if they were deleted, maybe our friendly tech guru can get them all back. Let’s try it.”
—
By midafternoon, they had Mark Higgins’s laptop, couriered through the snow from Willmar. Windermere scared up the office’s resident computer whiz, a young tech named Nenad with a Superman tattoo on the inside of his wrist, set him loose on the laptop. Nenad looked almost bored when he found out the assignment.
“Pictures,” he said. “Old pictures, that’s it? You’re sure you don’t need me to hack anything?”
“Not right now,” Windermere told him. “They’re deleted pictures, if that makes you feel any better.”
Nenad cracked his knuckles. “Nothing’s ever really deleted,” he said. “Give me ten minutes.”
The Forgotten Girls Page 3
