Into the Black Nowhere

by Meg Gardiner

  He spoke up. “Emily, this is Special Agent in Charge C.J. Emmerich. The FBI and Phoenix police are looking for your mother. But it’s best you stay in Oregon.”

  “We’ve got to find her.”

  “That’s our job. You need to stay put. The Portland police and campus public safety department will contact you about personal security.”

  “Personal security.” Emily’s voice abruptly sounded ten years older. “You think this guy would come after me too?”

  Caitlin said, “It’s possible. Right now, we have no evidence that he knows your whereabouts. But he’s extremely dangerous. We want you to take every feasible precaution.”

  “Got it.”

  Another whistle blew.

  Caitlin said, “Where are you, Emily?”

  “Rugby practice.”

  Caitlin looked again at the girl’s student ID photo. She looked wiry—not big enough to throw a heavy tackle.

  Caitlin said, “When practice ends—”

  “I’ll have Coach walk me to my bike . . .”

  “No.”

  “Right. I’ll get Coach and two teammates to accompany me home.”

  “That’s it.”

  With every sentence, Emily seemed to be getting the idea. Though deeply shaken, she sounded grounded and steady.

  “And once you’re at home, don’t open the door,” Caitlin said.

  “I assure you I won’t open the door to anybody but the police, or walk a single step across campus without an escort.”

  “Good. We’ll keep you updated whether we have new information or not.”

  “Just find Lia,” Emily said.

  “We’re doing everything we can.”

  Caitlin hung up, relieved that the girl was safe and on alert. But they were scrambling to recapture Detrick. Every minute that passed felt like sand falling through an hourglass.

  52

  Saturday, the sun hung high above US 93, four miles east of the Colorado River. The freeway sliced a black line through the pale desert. The road was empty. Sagebrush twitched in the wind.

  The Corolla sat on the shoulder of the highway with the hood raised. The driver leaned against the flank of the car, arms crossed, peering up and down the road. Finally, from the east, a pickup truck crested the hill. It was noon.

  The young woman stuck out her thumb.

  The pickup roared past her, raising dust. She threw her arms wide, like, Dude, what the hell?

  But, in the end, it took only five more minutes before a blue Subaru Outback slowed, cruised past, and pulled over. She jogged toward it.

  A bumper sticker read ASK ME ABOUT MY EAGLE SCOUT. The man at the wheel looked friendly and capable. He buzzed down the passenger window.

  “Need me to look at the engine?”

  She shook her head. “Fan belt’s gone. A ride to the nearest gas station, that’s enough.”

  The man glanced in the rearview mirror, and turned to take a longer look at her car. Inside his Subaru, the radio was blaring. She caught a few words of a newscast. He hit the power button and silenced it.

  The news report had been about that jailbreak in Crying Call.

  The driver offered a wry look. “You’re smart to worry, but it’s not me. I’m an off-duty sheriff’s deputy.”

  He wrestled his wallet from his back pocket and flipped it open to show her a badge.

  It was shiny, and the star looked official.

  She rested her hands on the windowsill. He seemed sincere. She straightened, eyeing the road east and west. A lone big rig blew past and vanished over the crest of a rise. There might not be another chance.

  “Yeah, okay.” She hopped in. “I’m grateful.”

  He signaled and pulled back onto the roadway. One of those pine-tree-shaped air fresheners swung back and forth from the rearview. The back seat was piled with camping gear.

  “Excuse the mess,” he said. “I’m on my way to Vegas but I can drop you in Boulder City. If you don’t mind riding along until we hit the Nevada side.”

  “That’s fine. I’m just glad for the warmth. That wind is cutting.”

  She tossed her blond hair over her shoulder. “I didn’t get your name.”

  He accelerated and turned to look at her. She held out her hand to shake his.

  A handcuff flashed into view and snapped shut.

  • • •

  In Rincon, the storm had finally blown itself out. The Oklahoma plains were white, the trees glittering with ice. Emmerich drove up the wooded gravel drive to Aaron Gage’s house. A police cruiser and a county crime lab van were parked outside it. He got out. A man wearing a Rincon PD jacket came out to greet him.

  “Lieutenant Pacheco,” Emmerich said.

  The man pulled off latex gloves and shook Emmerich’s hand. “The crime scene team is nearly done. Your eye will be welcome. And any suggestions to help us track the bastard who killed Aaron.”

  Emmerich took an aluminum briefcase from his car and followed Pacheco inside. The house was small but uncluttered, laid out with clear pathways that worked for a blind homeowner. Or had. On the kitchen floor, a heavy bloodstain marked the spot where the army veteran had died.

  Emmerich oriented himself to the flow of the house. “What’s been moved since the attack?”

  “Nothing. From what Aaron told me, and from tracing the path of the blood, he confronted the killer in that hallway.” Pacheco gestured.

  Emmerich saw immediately: Gage had held the point. The attacker had not gotten past him to his daughter.

  “Gage told you he cut the killer,” he said.

  “He felt the knife slice through flesh. He would know. He was trained in close combat.” Pacheco eyed the stain in the kitchen. “Aaron fought. Damn hard.”

  Emmerich went to the hall. The blood on the hardwood had dried into swirls and smears, evidence of Gage and the killer grappling on the floor. But on the wall, there was castoff—blood that had been flung either from a swinging knife or from a bleeding, swinging arm.

  He saw how the battle had unfolded. Gage had engaged the killer in the hall. The fight had worked its way to the living room, where Gage was stabbed. After the killer fled, Gage dragged himself to the kitchen, trying to reach the phone.

  A sliced forearm. Six stab wounds. Those penetrating wounds significantly distinguished this killing from Detrick’s other murders. The fight could account for the difference in MO, but Emmerich didn’t think it provided an explanation.

  A crime tech came in.

  Emmerich nodded at the hallway. “Have you collected blood samples to determine whether any of this impact spatter belongs to the killer?”

  The young man said, “Yes. They’ll be going to the lab.”

  “How long will it take to get results?”

  The man shook his head. He didn’t know. Not today.

  Emmerich set his aluminum briefcase on the kitchen counter. He unlatched it. “Let me perform a couple of spot tests. I may be able to narrow the possibilities down.”

  • • •

  It was nearly five P.M., the sun angling toward a burnished winter sunset, when the tourists strolling along the top of Hoover Dam stopped to admire its awesome height and scale. On the north side, Lake Mead sparkled. On the south side, below the dam—far, far below—the Colorado River spilled out, an indigo snake sliding through stark canyon walls.

  Jeremy Chung raised the camera that hung on a strap around his neck. He’d come from Saint Louis with his wife and kids, a winter break to grab some sunshine, see some shows in Las Vegas, maybe gamble a little, and eat—oh, the all-you-can-eat buffet at Bellagio—and to visit Hoover Dam. To a civil engineer like Jeremy Chung, Hoover Dam was Mecca. He’d pined to see it all his life. Now, at forty-seven, he was finally here.

  He raised his Nikon and snapped a dozen shots.


  “It’s an arch-gravity dam,” he said to his teenage son. “Seven hundred twenty-six point four feet tall. Six-point-six million tons of concrete. At its base, the water pressure is forty-five thousand pounds per square foot.”

  The light was sinking—this was the start of the golden hour, and he was lucky to catch it.

  Kelly and the kids strolled ahead of him. He lowered the camera.

  “Guys. Turn around.”

  He wanted to compose the shot so the family was just off center, with the graceful curve of the dam at their backs, and beyond that the rugged hills of Black Canyon jabbing the blue sky, electricity pylons rising along its crest like sentinels.

  They turned. They looked forgiving. Jeremy loved his camera. He was at best a middling photographer, but it was a hobby that got him outdoors. He waved them closer together.

  He peered through the viewfinder and with two fingers gestured his daughter to scoot in. Olivia sighed, but smiled.

  “Perfect,” Chung said.

  While they posed, he checked the light settings. He got the camera halfway to his eye and paused, caught by motion in the distance.

  Downstream, about fifteen hundred feet away, the O’Callaghan-Tillman Bridge carried US 93 across the gorge above the river—the border between Arizona and Nevada. Eight-hundred-eighty-foot clearance beneath the span—more than four times the height of the Golden Gate Bridge. Traffic was light. And something seemed off.

  “Dad,” Elliott said. “You’ve got the shot. Take it.”

  A car had stopped on the bridge. Road signs clearly forbade that. Stopping was plain dangerous. And this didn’t look like a breakdown. The car door was open. Somebody was moving along the passenger side.

  “Jeremy?” his wife said.

  Chung felt his feet moving almost without volition. He walked toward the concrete abutment of the dam.

  “No,” he muttered. “What . . .”

  Above him in the distance, a figure rolled over the railing of the bridge.

  Chung yelled, “No!”

  His family turned around to look at the bridge. Every tourist strolling along the dam did.

  “Oh, God,” Chung cried.

  But he was too far away. It was already too late.

  The distant figure was wrapped in a white sheet. It plunged from the span. Eight hundred eighty feet, straight down.

  People around him screamed. Chung screamed. His daughter screamed. He grabbed her and pulled her head to his chest, covering her eyes.

  Down and down and down the figure fell. The sheet streamed behind it like an angel’s robes.

  On the bridge, the car that had stopped pulled away.

  • • •

  Emmerich double-checked the two spot tests he’d performed. The results were incontrovertible. He pulled off his latex gloves and stepped onto the porch outside Aaron Gage’s cabin.

  He punched Brianne Rainey’s cell number.

  “Boss?” she said.

  The view across the plains was white, cut by the serpentine red scar of the river. His breath frosted the air.

  “It’s not Detrick. The DNA and colorimetric assay tests are undisputable,” he said. “Gage’s killer is female.”

  • • •

  A mile below the Hoover Dam, the white-shrouded figure that had plunged from the bridge washed up on the bank of the Colorado River. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Search and Rescue unit launched a boat, which swung along the rocky promontory where the victim had lodged. Two officers hopped into the knee-deep blue water and waded to the shore. They took their time. One of the officers signaled to the boat, and his colleague aboard began snapping photos.

  It was clear that this was a recovery, not a rescue. But they had to check.

  “Ready?” the officer said.

  His partner nodded.

  The sheet was tangled completely around the body, the ends floating like moss in the current. Getting their arms under it, they lifted it onto the shore. They grunted. It was heavier than they’d expected.

  The sun had dipped below the rim of the canyon walls. In the shade, the temperature was dropping. The officer had an uneasy sensation that left him feeling even colder than the day.

  He unwrapped the tangled sheet from the body.

  His partner said, “Damn.”

  The victim’s wrists and throat were slashed. The body had been stabbed, and Tasered multiple times.

  It was a man in a plaid shirt and jeans. When they pulled his wallet from his back pocket, they saw the badge.

  “He’s a sheriff’s deputy,” the search and rescue officer said. “What the hell?”

  • • •

  At the Hoover Dam, Jeremy Chung and his family milled, wretchedly, waiting for news. Finally, the cop who had responded to his 911 call—to all the 911 calls—replaced the radio in his patrol car and walked over. His face was hard.

  “No chance, was there?” Chung said.

  “No,” the officer said. “May I see your camera?”

  Chung pulled the strap over his head and turned the viewfinder so the officer could scroll through his shots. When the body fell . . . was thrown . . . plunged . . . from the bridge, some instinct in Chung’s mind had kicked in, and told him to get some damned photos.

  “The person who fell . . . ,” Chung said.

  The deputy’s jaw was tight. “He’s dead.”

  “He?”

  The deputy nodded.

  Chung shook his head. “I’m sure the person I saw at the rail . . . the person had long blond hair. It was a woman. I’m positive.”

  The deputy clicked through the photos. Chung had managed to catch a streaky shot of the car pulling away on the bridge. The Subaru had driven west into Nevada, in the direction of Las Vegas.

  • • •

  In Phoenix, Caitlin’s phone rang. Everybody’s did.

  53

  At the FBI’s Phoenix Division, Caitlin stood in front of the USGS topo map of Arizona. She was examining photos sent by the Las Vegas police.

  They included crime scene photos from the bank of the Colorado River. And the victim’s driver’s license: David Nordlinger, age forty-three. And a streaked, out-of-focus picture, shot by a tourist who’d been atop Hoover Dam—Nordlinger’s car, being driven away.

  The driver’s license listed Nordlinger as five-seven, one forty-five. Welterweight. Still, the woman who dumped him over the rail had to be seriously strong. A photo of his body, laid out on the stony bank of the river beneath towering canyon walls, revealed cuts to his wrists and throat that were deep and showed no hesitation.

  “Slashed and stabbed,” she muttered. Like Aaron Gage. A woman involved. Like with Aaron Gage.

  Across the floor, Rainey was on the phone. She was scribbling on a notepad. Her voice sounded—for her—unusually excited. “Thank you.”

  She hung up and strode over to Caitlin, holding a tablet computer. “State troopers found a car abandoned with its hood up on US 93, four miles east of the Colorado River. A blue Toyota Corolla.”

  Caitlin’s eyebrows went up. “Blue, Japanese make. Like Lia Fox’s neighbor reported seeing at her apartment complex.”

  “A trucker phoned the cops when he saw the news about Deputy Nordlinger’s murder—says he passed that broken-down car on US 93. Nordlinger’s Subaru was stopped in front of it. A blond woman was standing at the window, talking to him.” Rainey’s eyes were bright.

  “There’s something else. What?”

  Rainey turned the tablet to show Caitlin. “Phoenix PD got video from a gas station up the street from Fox’s complex.”

  She hit PLAY. The video showed morning traffic on the street outside the gas station. And, in the distance, the driveway at Lia’s apartment complex. A car was pulling out. A blue Corolla.

  “It’s the same car,”
Rainey said. “It’s him. Detrick, this killing—it’s all connected.”

  Caitlin eyed the topo map on the wall. Hoover Dam was two hundred seventy miles from Phoenix. Almost twelve hundred from Rincon, Oklahoma.

  “What the hell is going on?” she said.

  • • •

  Jester, Nevada, was a faded mining town three hundred miles north of Las Vegas. In the high desert, the air floated thin and chill as the sunset emptied in the west. A billboard proclaimed JESTER—GATEWAY TO NEVADA’S GHOST TOWNS. Scrubby sagebrush dotted the edges of the highway. The mountains were brown, rocky, and bleak. The horizon, glowing orange and pink, gave way to a sapphire sky. The stars were winking on overhead.

  A car passed the city-limits sign and rolled along the main street, headlights bright in the deepening dusk.

  Jester featured shuttered mines, twelve slot machines at the Silver Dollar Saloon, and two unadvertised local attractions. One was the old cemetery, a creepy spread of sand, rock-bounded graves, and tilted, weathered wooden crosses. Pioneer families were buried there from the late 1800s. Along with miners who’d been crushed, or died of thirst, or were shot in gunfights over cheating at cards at the Silver Dollar Saloon. The cemetery gate creaked, the wind howled, and sand was constantly scoured from the graves. It was a desolate place to lie for eternity.

  The second attraction, next door, was the Circus Inn. On its sun-bleached sign, a whiteface clown leered at the highway.

  The New York City tourists in the rental car slowed and pulled in, relieved to see VACANCY in the office window. To connoisseurs of tacky Americana, the Circus Inn was legendary.

  Lissie and Xander Bailey parked and got out. They stretched and pulled their jackets tight in the chilly air. Jester was at six thousand feet elevation, and on winter nights like this, the desert turned freezing.

  Xander sauntered across the parking lot, mouth open. “Unreal.” He laughed.

  Lissie clapped her hands. “Finally.”

  They’d planned their western road trip for months. Jester was a definite must on their itinerary. They’d seen the Circus Inn on friends’ social media posts and thought they couldn’t just snap a photo as they drove by. They had to stay here.