“Rowan,” Constance poked her head in through the doorway. “Has Felicity been to Woodcrest Park before?”
“Yeah, we both have,” I nodded as I spoke.
“Would she be more likely to take Highway Forty, then head south, or get off at Two-Seventy and head south before going west?” she asked.
“Probably Forty,” I replied. “But in her present state, who knows.”
My agitation seemed to have leveled off for the moment. It wasn’t lessening, but at least it wasn’t getting any worse. I turned back to Ben and mouthed the words ‘hurry up’. He gave me a quick nod and finished the call as fast as he could.
“Marshall will be callin’ on my cell if she shows up out there,” he offered as he hung up the handset then glanced over at Mandalay. “Whaddaya got?”
“Only one road leading in to the park, and that’s Piper Valley. From here she can come at it one of three ways. Out Forty to Millstone which eventually turns into Piper Valley; or Two-Seventy to Woodsbend which intersects Piper Valley just before the park entrance. The third option would be to take Two-Seventy to Forty-Four then up Woodsbend from the backside of the park. But that would be going out of the way.”
He looked over at me. “Row?”
“Could be any of the three,” I returned. “It all depends on what’s driving her.”
“Okay, lemme think.” He huffed the word out as he smoothed his hair back then brought his hand to rest on his neck. After a pair of seconds he spoke again. “Mandalay, you take Forty, Rowan and I will take Two-Seventy. Sound reasonable?”
“That would be my call,” Constance replied.
“What about Forty-Four?” I appealed.
“We gotta rule that out,” he answered quickly. “Too far outta the way to make sense.”
“But we don’t know for sure,” I pressed. “I can take my truck and…”
“Fuck no,” he cut me off. “One loose cannon is enough right now. I don’t need you runnin’ around all Twilight Zone too. Besides, Woodcrest PD is gonna be lookin’ for her too.”
“Dammit, Ben, she’s my wife.”
“No shit,” he snapped back. “I was there, remember? You ain’t goin’ off alone, end of story. Now lock it up and let’s hit the road. Maybe we can catch up to her before she pulls another Rowan.”
*****
Neither of us had said a word since getting into the van. I don’t know if it was because discussing the possibilities only served to make both of us sick to our stomachs; or, if it was simply because there was nothing more left to say on the subject. In any case, silence had become the rule, and we were making no move to break it.
We were winding down Woodsbend Road toward Piper Valley, shrouded in darkness by the tall stands of trees on either side of us. Technically, we were cutting through one edge of the park itself, even though there was a sparsely populated residential area to our right. Still, there was no actual access to the interior roads until one went through the main entrance at the end of Piper Valley, so that was where we were headed.
Slightly better than twenty-five minutes had passed since we had set out from my house, and I still hadn’t relaxed. In fact, the closer we came to the park without any sign of Felicity the more stressed I became. Now that we had all but arrived, I had become a knot of nervous energy with no place to go.
Every muscle in my body was aching, almost certainly from being tensed for what seemed like forever. My head was throbbing, and while I suspected that some of it was ethereal in nature, a good portion was nothing more than plain old stress combined with a lack of sleep.
I was almost certain that I was going to have a bruise across my chest from where I had been straining against the safety harness. I had been pitching myself forward every time we spied a set of taillights, and then I would remain there, staring intently through the windshield until we came close enough to identify the vehicle we were approaching. Invariably, when the necessary details came into view, it would not be Felicity’s. I would then slump back into my seat, even more agitated than I had been the moment before. But, even sitting back, I couldn’t force myself to relax because we would almost immediately spot yet another pair of red, glowing pinpoints in the distance, and I would begin the cycle anew.
Ever since we had exited the highway and continued our trek along the serpentine, downward slope of Woodsbend, we had been the solitary vehicle in the darkness. There was nothing for me to crane my neck or strain my eyes to see, except the reflective dividing line down the center of the asphalt before us. Still, proximity to the park kept me wrapped so tight that I felt as if I was about to burst out of my own skin at any moment. And, I almost did just that when Ben’s cell phone chirped then moved immediately into its ever-increasing warble.
“Storm,” he said after fumbling the device off-hook and placing it to his ear. “Yeah… Yeah… Okay… Yeah, I think we’re pretty close right now… Uh-huh… Thanks…” He reached over to the passenger seat and handed me the cell phone. “Hang that up, will’ya?”
“What?” I demanded as I took it, thumbed it off, and then dropped it back into the center tray. “Who was that?”
“That was Marshall,” he replied. “She says they found Felicity’s Jeep on the shoulder of Woodsbend.”
“Is she okay?” I asked with a note of relief.
“All they found was the Jeep, Row,” he replied, keeping his voice as businesslike as he could. “We should be comin’ up on ‘em in just a sec…”
The phone began warbling again, and Ben repeated his earlier grope. “Storm… Yeah, Marshall just called me… Yeah, be there in a minute… Bye.”
He handed the phone to me again, this time without a word, and I simply disconnected the call. My fleeting moment of relief had now become alarm. “Who was that?”
“Calm down. It was Mandalay. She just got there.”
“Ben, if Felicity isn’t with her Jeep, she’s already in the park,” I told him.
“Yeah, Row. I know.”
“Then we’ve got to get in there,” I implored.
“We’re workin’ on it, Row. Calm down.”
We continued down the sloping road, easing slowly into a particularly tight bend of which we had been forewarned by a yellow caution sign emblazoned with a sharply twisted arrow. As we started into the switchback, we could see an undulating glow against the trees. The farther into the turn we went, the brighter and more frantic they became. Finally, we hooked around the opposite side of the angle and were greeted by flickering emergency lights atop a patrol vehicle.
Ben slowed the van and brought it to a halt behind the squad car then levered it into park and switched off the engine. I was already unbuckling my safety belt before we had come to a complete stop.
Ben grabbed my arm as I began to shoulder the door open. “Let me and Mandalay do the talkin’. Understand?”
“Yeah, whatever,” I answered absently.
“I’m serious, Row,” he told me.
“Yeah, fine,” I barked back. “Let’s just find Felicity before it’s too late.”
“That’s the plan, Row.”
The bright beam of a flashlight hit Ben as soon as he was out of the vehicle and then slid over into my face, effectively blinding me. Ben called out to the uniformed officer as we walked toward the Jeep. “Detective Storm. I’m the one who called.”
The light came down out of my eyes, and I blinked to re-acclimate my sight to the darkness. I could hear Agent Mandalay talking to the officer and verifying our identities.
“You the one who found it?” Ben asked, continuing forward.
“Yeah,” the officer said as we approached. “Found it a few minutes ago, just like this.
The door of the Jeep was hanging open, and though the engine was switched off, the keys were still in the ignition. The officer shone the flashlight around the interior of the vehicle and then aimed it toward the nearby tree line.
He nodded toward the point no more than a dozen feet away where the light fell ag
ainst a chain link fence, then played it upward to the strands of barbed wire across the top. There, hanging across the barrier was what looked to be one of the floor mats from the Jeep.
“Looks like your suspect might have gone over the fence there.” he said.
“Suspect!” I blurted, starting forward.
Ben’s hand clamped onto my shoulder and pulled me back. He stepped forward himself, interposing his huge frame between the officer and me.
Agent Mandalay was already on the defense. “She’s not a suspect.”
“Listen,” Ben spoke, voice calm but adamant. “Let’s get one thing straight right now, she’s a consultant, and if she gets hurt I’m holdin’ you responsible.”
I’d had enough. Standing here bantering with the Woodcrest cop wasn’t accomplishing anything other than raising my ire. Not to mention, every moment that passed was taking Felicity closer to a possibly fatal decision, if she hadn’t arrived there already.
I glanced around and saw that the three of them were intent on one another at the moment, so I began moving toward the fence.
Behind me I could hear the officer talking to Ben. “Yeah, okay, so what’s a consultant doing trespassing in a state park in the middle of the night?”
“Makin’ my life hard, obviously,” Ben returned.
“What case are you working anyway?” the cop demanded.
“Nothin’ that concerns you right now,” Ben shot back.
“It’s got to be something big,” the officer pressed. “A city homicide detective and a Fed out here in the dark…”
“Look, Officer…” Constance started.
“Martin,” he replied.
“Officer Martin,” she continued. “We’re working against the clock here, and we don’t have time for this. Now, has anyone gone in?”
I was only a few steps from the fence now, and I knew that I was going to be discovered at any moment. I was going to be very hard to miss when I started climbing.
“Not yet,” the officer replied. “Dispatch is sending a car to the main gate.”
“Good, I’ll go meet them,” Constance announced. “Storm, why don’t you and Rowan…”
The moment I heard my name, I knew my time was up. I took the last two steps at a run and launched myself up onto the fence. Twining my fingers into the metal links, I kicked the toes of my shoes into the small holes finding any kind of hold I could as I scrambled to pull myself upward.
“Rowan!” Agent Mandalay exclaimed, obviously noticing me.
“Jeezus H. Christ!” came Ben’s bellowing voice amid the sounds of them starting to move. “Rowan! Stop!”
My only saving grace was that they were stunned enough by my action not to have started moving immediately. The delay, brief as it was, allowed enough time for me to put distance between the ground and me.
By the time they reached the fence, I was already pitching my waist over the rubber mat and rolling forward. I wasn’t about to win any medals for my dismount, but I still managed to drop myself to the ground on the opposite side with only a minor stumble.
As soon as I gained my footing, at my back I could hear Ben’s exclamation, “Goddammit, Rowan, STOP!”
My gut reaction was to simply start running as fast as I could in the opposite direction of the fence. I looked forward into the woods, following the filtered beam of the uniformed officer’s flashlight that was apparently aimed at my back. I hesitated and then took a step toward the dense thicket.
“Dammit, white man, I said STOP! What the hell are you doing?” Ben yelled at me through the fence.
I froze and cast a glance back in his direction.
“She came in this way, Ben,” I shot back. “She had to have a reason.”
I couldn’t see his expression. The flashlight was aimed at my face, and the glare blinded me to any details. Ben was a massive silhouette against the chain link, flanked by the smaller shadows of Agent Mandalay and the patrol officer. I held up my hand in an attempt to block the light.
“Wait up,” my friend finally said with a heavy sigh, then turned to the Woodcrest officer. “Gimme the flashlight.” Surprisingly, the officer didn’t argue and instead simply handed over the multi-cell Mag-lite without a word.
“You stay here,” Ben instructed him as he switched off the light and tucked it into his belt. “Mandalay, you meet the other uniforms at the main gate and work your way in. If you find her first, call me on my cell.”
“How will you know where you’re going?” Mandalay asked quickly.
“Hell if I know,” Ben spat as he hoisted himself onto the fence and began to climb. “Ask Rowan.”
CHAPTER 24:
The bulk of the nearly two thousand acre park was a woodland refuge, bordered along the western edge by the Missouri River. Taken in that context, finding a solitary, petite, redheaded woman amid it all presented itself as an overwhelming task. Fortunately, we knew where she had entered, and she probably had no more than a thirty-minute head start. We hoped.
The thing that kept gnawing at me, however, was what she could manage to bring upon herself in those thirty minutes. I quickly found myself dwelling on the possibilities and had to force them out of my head at regular intervals, lest I become literally paralyzed by a fear of what might be. The thoughts were already playing hell with my confidence. The last thing I needed was to have an emotional meltdown before we even found her.
I didn’t have a solid idea of where to go from here. For all I knew, she could have simply plunged directly into the woods; or she could have followed the fence line and entered them elsewhere. However, it seemed logical that if she had taken the time to scale the fence at this specific point, walking the fence was probably the least likely of the options. So, I decided to take the straight-line approach and set out into the tree line.
I had been to the park enough times to know that it was segmented along one small portion by a railroad that was still in use. And, as I recalled, the railway ran through the edge of the park we had just entered. Something told me the tracks were where Felicity was heading. I don’t know why the rail line popped into my head, or even why it would have been the destination of the killer. But at this point, intuition was all I had going for me, and I wasn’t going to doubt it. Not yet, anyway.
The first fifty yards of our trek had been uphill, and with me in a frantic lead, we had topped the ridge quickly. Still, even with fear and adrenalin driving me, I was winded, and so was Ben.
The night had only allowed the air temperature to dip into the mid-eighties, and with our proximity to the river, the humidity was making it feel more like the high nineties. I was already drenched in sweat, and I suspected Ben was as well. Even though he was certainly in better shape than me, the closeness of the air combined with the upward sprint was enough to open anyone’s pores wide.
“Jeezus, white man,” my friend huffed as we came to a halt atop the rise. “Can’t you two do anything the easy way?”
I ignored the question. I was pretty sure he didn’t really want an answer, and besides, I was far too busy to talk. I was standing as still as I could manage, reaching out for my wife with every earthly sense I had available. My eyes were searching for shadows in the harsh beam of the flashlight as I played it across the landscape before me. All the while, I was listening for telltale sounds of movement; or even, goddess forbid, a distant scream. Every now and then, I would take a moment to concentrate on breathing in hopes of catching a whiff of her perfume. Unfortunately, I was yielding no results.
Of course, I wasn’t stopping at the physical. On a preternatural level, I was sending feelers out far ahead; but, thus far, I was having no more luck in that arena than the other. I’m sure my now rampant fear for Felicity’s safety was clouding my ability to sense anything outside the scope of the mundane, but still, I truly believed that I should have felt something. The fact that I couldn’t only served to frighten me more.
Sunrise was now less than forty minutes away. A quick glance upward through t
he small gaps in the trees showed that the sky was beginning to pale with the first inkling of the approaching dawn. Still, the canopy of foliage overhead was containing the darkness as if it were a black fog- hugging it close to the ground and obscuring the landscape.
“This way,” I said after a moment, aiming the flashlight down a gradual slope.
“You sure?” Ben asked.
“As sure as I can be at the moment,” I returned, my voice edgy.
We started downward, stumbling as we worked our way through the murky forest, thick undergrowth hindering our every step.
“It’s gonna be okay,” Ben told me. “Felicity’s not stupid, Row. She’s not gonna do anything that’d get her hurt.”
“It’s not her doing the something stupid I’m worried about,” I explained. “It’s whatever she’s tapped into. The spirits of the dead don’t always have the living’s best interest at heart.”
We continued in silence for a moment. I could tell he was chewing on what I had just said.
“Are you sayin’ Larson’s ghost would try to hurt her?” he finally asked.
“Probably not on purpose, butssppptt…” I replied, sputtering suddenly as a low hanging branch caught me across the face, then barked an exclamation. “Dammit!” I stopped, reached up and pushed the near invisible trap out of my way, then continued my answer as I forged the path. “Like I was saying, not on purpose. But, tortured souls are in search of one thing, and that’s closure. Since conduits into this world are few and far between, they tend to clamp on and not let go… The results aren’t always pretty.”
“Like what happens to you,” he grunted.
“Yeah,” I returned with a sigh. “Like what happens to me.”
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