by Jeff Carson
The collision was so fast and violent that he felt no pain, but he heard muffled crunches beneath his skin and felt the blows to his body as he tumbled down the rock face.
Completely disoriented, he sensed the ground nearing when his descent came to a complete stop.
The rope ripped at his harness, wrenching him around so he faced the sky. He grunted as his body arched backwards and folded in half, and he felt his feet kick the back of his head, and then an instant later he was laid gently onto his back, on the cool, wet ground.
As the bright world tunneled in from the edge of his vision, he watched the rope drop in an angry coil next to him, and then he felt a rush of wind and a spray of warm blood as Hannah landed next to him with a thud.
Somehow amid the numbness, Wolf found the muscle coordination to turn his head and look.
Hannah was next to him on her back, her head twisted two hundred seventy degrees, her face pointed at his. Eyes wide open but void of life, a web of blood trickled from her temple across her face, and then grew to a river that ran into her open eyeball and poured off the bridge of her nose.
Wolf’s eyelids fluttered once, and then he closed his eyes and felt nothing.
Chapter 56
Patterson stared dumbstruck at the precipice. Wolf had been planning something, she could tell that, and part of her was wondering just what exactly Wolf could do to right the situation, but never in a million years was she expecting to witness what she’d just seen.
With a shake of her head she snapped out of her initial shock, realizing there may have been method to Wolf’s suicidal move. By pulling Hannah over the edge, had he slowed his own momentum enough to survive the fall?
She turned to Rachette with wide eyes.
“Go,” he said.
Patterson exploded into movement. Sprinting to Rachel, she handcuffed one of her wrists, pulled her semi-conscious form to the side of the house, clamped it on a water pipe and sprinted to the top of the wooden stairway descending the cliff.
“All units move! Call Summit County and get a medevac helicopter up here now. Sheriff Wolf and Deputy Rachette are down and injured badly. Get the bus over here stat! I repeat, we need ambulances, and we need medevac!”
With thumping footfalls on the creaking wood, Patterson ignored the eruption of voices on the radio, keeping her eye on Wolf’s unmoving form at the base of the cliff.
She got to the bottom, jumped off the trail and flailed across the steep incline.
Slipping onto her hip as she stepped on loose scree and slamming her elbow on a rock in the process, she breathed through the pain with bared teeth, not slowing a second. When she reached Wolf she pressed her fingers on his carotid, feeling the slick warmth of his blood on her fingers, and then the weak rhythm of his pulse.
“Medevac on route,” Patterson heard the radio squawk.
A boat was roaring toward the dock beneath her, Wilson standing with fluttering hair above the windshield.
As she panted, she looked down at Hannah’s body. Her face was turned toward her and Wolf, but she was on her back and it looked like her neck had been twisted almost two hundred seventy degrees. Her head rested in a growing pool of blood, and her face was completely red. As if that was not enough, her chest was still. She was as dead as it got.
Patterson thought about the concussion of air she’d felt against her face as Hannah’s bullet missed by inches, and then she thought about Rachette’s pale face, and then she looked back down at Wolf.
“It’s going to be all right,” she said with little conviction.
Chapter 57
6 Days Later…
Patterson squinted and gazed up at the sky, feeling the sun warm her face. The cotton ball clouds above hung motionless, painting the water below with dark circles of shade, and the breeze brought the smell of freshwater and the whir of distant motorboats.
She popped her eyes open and sucked in a breath, remembering the zip of the bullet as it had passed inches from her face.
Perched atop the cliff below Hannah and Rachel’s house, Patterson stood feet from where she had almost a week ago. She took a deep breath, reminding herself that night was over.
“That was depressing.”
Patterson turned around at the sound of Rachette’s voice. She was surprised to see him. “You got that right.”
Rachette stepped next to her, thumbing the sling on his right arm that hung over his formal khaki uniform top, which bulged at his right shoulder like he had a pillow stuffed underneath.
Patterson knew there was a mass of gauze covering a line of staples, which covered internal scars from reconstructive surgery on his joint, a large divot in his clavicle bone, two shredded ligaments, and severe muscle trauma from the bullet that had hit him.
“What the hell are you doing here?” She asked.
Rachette tried to shrug, a move that make him bare his teeth in pain. “I got a ride up with Wilson after the funeral, since you ditched me.”
“I thought Wilson was taking you home. You should be in bed.”
Rachette ignored her and gazed into the distance. “Did you see Jack?”
“Yeah.”
It was an unnecessary question. Everyone had seen Jack at his mother’s funeral earlier that morning. It had been the saddest thing she’d ever seen in her life.
Patterson had felt no sense of closure with the lowering of Sarah Muller into the ground, and she had not shed so many tears since her grandmother’s death six years ago. But with her grandmother’s funeral, she had at least felt closure. Her family had been sad at that memorial service six years ago, but they had celebrated her life at the house later. Grandma had lived a long, full life, and then she died.
The funeral earlier that morning had been the antithesis of that day.
Wolf’s son Jack had stood next to Sarah’s parents, never once lifting his gaze from his mother’s coffin, never once a tear escaping his eyes—a sight that had blown Patterson’s heart into a thousand pieces.
Wolf’s absence had been the elephant at the funeral, but it had been impossible for him to attend, because Wolf was in surgery at County Hospital, and when they were done with the third operation on his fractured hip, he would continue to be unconscious, recovering from a ruptured spleen, three broken vertebrae, and an assortment of ten other broken bones, ranging in severity from a cracked femur to a broken thumb. His absence was necessary, but it seemed to make the whole thing that much more difficult.
Then there had been Sarah’s parents. They had been a sniveling mess, and every time Patterson had looked at them during the funeral she’d broken down into a sniveling mess herself. Sarah Muller had lived a short troubled life, and now she was dead.
“Hey.” Rachette nudged her with his good arm.
Patterson looked up and wiped a fresh tear from her cheek.
“It’s gonna be all right.”
She nodded. “Yeah. Right.”
They turned around at the sound of an approaching car. “Looks like the Idaho boys are here.”
A Caprice Classic with a Boise Sheriff’s Department paint job crunched on the gravel into a tight spot between a swarm of five SCSD vehicles. The vehicle rocked to a stop and both doors opened.
A younger man climbed out of the driver’s seat, dressed in a dark brown uniform, and an older man dressed in civilian clothing pulled himself up with the passenger door.
Wilson was there to greet them and shook hands. They spoke for a few seconds and then Wilson pointed toward her and Rachette.
The younger, uniformed man, raised a hand, and though it was far away, he looked like he beamed an attractive smile from under a black ball cap that had a gold embroidered BSD on it.
Patterson raised a hand in a half wave. She had been speaking to Deputy Michelson from the Boise Sheriff’s Department for a few days now on the phone about the case. They had initially spoken that fateful night Sarah had been shot, and she’d since been in charge of working in tandem with the BSD in order to co
mpletely close the file on the Kiplings. To her surprise, just like a pen pal from Japan she once had in elementary school, she found she had connected on a deep level with the young deputy in Boise, Idaho.
Now, as he walked down the grass slope behind the older man, she was seeing Michelson for the first time. He was dressed in a gray uniform, and she could tell he was young, probably no more than five years her senior—fit, medium height, brown hair—and moved with sure feet.
The older man next to him was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows, and a trucker cap was laid askew on his head. He waddled with a limp, and when Michelson offered a helping hand he waved it away impatiently.
Michelson looked up at Patterson and smiled again, and it was enough to make her blush, which made her stomach twist with a pang of guilt about Scott. What the hell was she feeling?
She turned to Rachette, determined to change the subject in her head. “You hear anything about his surgery this morning?”
“Nope.” Rachette checked his wristwatch and began walking to meet their two guests. “He’s still in it right now. We should be there, damn it.”
Patterson nodded. “Don’t worry. We’ll go later today, all right? Maybe check you back in for God’s sake. You need to sit.”
“Pssh.” Rachette took a breath in his nose. “I’m all right. Howdy,” Rachette called out.
Deputy Michelson smiled wide with squinted blue eyes surrounded by a bloom of dark eyelashes.
Patterson returned the smile, and then she felt her face flush again. “Deputy Michelson,” she said with a nod.
“Patterson, I take it?”
She nodded.
Michelson’s hand was callused and warm, and he gripped firmly with a quick shake.
“And you must be Rachette. We heard about your injury.” Michelson shook Rachette’s left hand and shook his head with a sympathetic look.
“That’s a bitch, son.” The older man’s voice was gruff as he shook Rachette’s left hand and then shook Patterson’s. His eyes were glimmering slits beneath leathery folds.
“Sheriff Dudley. Nice to meet you,” Rachette said.
The man nodded and poked the underside of his trucker hat. “Used to be. Now you can call me Fred.”
Sheriff Dudley pointed past them. “Hell of a view up here.”
They twisted and looked at the lake, and Patterson exchanged a glance with Michelson.
“There’s quite a lot of activity up here.” Michelson turned around and motioned to the five SCSD vehicles parked in front of the house.
“We had a K-9 unit find Olin Heeter’s body yesterday,” Patterson said. “Buried in a fresh, shallow grave up the mountain. We have all available units checking the area now for more bodies.”
“You find anymore?” Sheriff Dudley asked.
Rachette shook his head. “Nope. But we’ve got some interesting stuff inside, that’s for sure. Or”—he pointed at his sling—“everyone else found a hell of a lot. I’ve been laid up in the hospital.”
Dudley squinted one eye and looked at Rachette, then he nodded at Patterson. “Why don’t you two give us the tour?”
Patterson gestured and they followed her around to the back of the house. Memories of that evening clawed at her with each step, and she had to steel her thoughts as she rounded the corner and faced an open door at the rear of the house.
Deputy Yates stood sentinel, stifling a yawn. He raised his clipboard. “Go ahead inside.”
“Thanks, Yates.” Rachette stepped aside and gestured for Patterson take the lead. Just like the two men from Idaho, she realized, Rachette had not yet seen the inside of this lower level of the house.
Patterson walked into a large rectangular room with a smooth concrete floor, which was lit bright with an uncovered bulb hanging from the ceiling. She walked halfway across the room to the left toward a doorway on the far wall and stopped at a yellow plastic evidence tent.
“This spot is blood, and the rest underneath it has been confirmed as blood,” she said, gesturing to the floor.
“My God,” Michelson said. “It’s huge.”
Fred Dudley pointed at the rust colored smear on the floor. “This the most recent?”
Patterson nodded. “Our ME did a DNA analysis on it, and it matched William Van Wyke’s profile, which was in CODIS from his Idaho Private Investigator’s license registration.”
Dudley pointed at the brown spot beneath the smear. It was a roughly circular shape with a diameter of at least ten feet. “This is where she killed I take it?”
“Looks that way. There’s a lot of old blood here, and check out that wall.” She pointed to the wall behind them and they all twisted.
There was an old workbench against a wall covered with pegboard, and hooks of various sizes hung from the holes.
“We’ve removed everything and put it into evidence, but when we came inside here, there was a razor-sharp machete, hunting knives, and a few filet knives. They all had traces of blood on them.”
Michelson shook his head. “And we heard you’ve identified three of the other bodies you recovered?”
“Yep. All runaways, all reported missing from their hometowns. All three were boys in their late teens, with one or both of their parents deceased, People figured they ran away. No evidence suggested foul play. The other four seem to fit the same mold, but we don’t have definitive ID’s. I’m not sure if we ever will.”
“Hitchhikers.” Michelson said softly, his eyes surveying the old blood.
“That’s what we’re thinking,” Patterson said. “It makes sense. Highway 734 down the valley is a good place to find them. Even today, a lot of them fit the same mold: late teens, early twenties, male, traveling solo.”
Dudley studied the ground and then pointed at the door on the far wall. “And what’s in there?”
Patterson walked over and pushed on the door. The bottom scraped along the top of high pile carpet, revealing a room with a couch, an old television, and a wood coffee table. Paintings of mountain scenery hung on the wood paneled walls, and to the right was a stairway that led up to the second floor.
Dudley, Michelson, and Rachette craned their necks to see past her.
“Just a normal basement,” Michelson said.
“Minus the fact it’s next to a killing room,” Sheriff Dudley said, turning around and walking back to the bloodstain. “William Van Wyke, eh?”
“Yeah.” Patterson stepped next to him and looked down at the brown area. It thoroughly creeped her out every time she looked at this spot, and she was glad to be doing so with so much company this time. “A kill that definitely doesn’t fit the mold. You know him?”
Sheriff Dudley and Michelson exchanged a glance.
“Yeah,” Dudley said. “I do. Let’s get the hell out of here and we’ll talk about it.”
Chapter 58
Patterson led them out onto the back lawn and by the deep breaths it was clear everyone was glad to be back outside.
Dudley stopped and put his hands on his hips. “Let’s see. Where do I begin?”
“Why don’t you start with the cat?” Michelson said.
“The cat?” Patterson asked.
Michelson nodded and looked at Dudley.
The old man leaned his head back and closed his eyes against the sun. “Twenty five years ago, I was a police officer in McCall, Idaho. McCall’s a resort town a couple hours north of Boise. There’s Payette Lake right there, and McCall is a town on the south side of the lake.
“Anyway, back then, during the summer, we got a call from a family. They had found their pet cat in the woods. Decapitated, gutted from asshole to neck.”
Patterson and Rachette exchanged sidelong glances.
“I was first on the scene, and I was shown the animal by one Mrs. Katherine Kipling.” Dudley dragged his words. “This was the Kipling’s cat, you see?”
Patterson nodded.
“We were concerned, naturally, and so were Mr. and Mrs. Kipling. Anyone w
ho could commit such an act to a household pet was borderline homicidal to humans. Hell, everyone knows what the textbooks say. So for two weeks we were on edge. My partner and I spent more than a few days and nights out there in the woods. But … we never saw anything unusual. Never had any leads, and the interest in the incident just sort of faded away.
“Until a few weeks later. The Kipling’s neighbors, about a mile away, had a teenaged son named Reggie. One morning a woman was walking her dog, and the dog ran ahead and into the woods. By the time she caught up with it, he was found licking something on the ground. She came up and saw it was the neighbor kid Reggie, his head severed almost clean off, just barely held on by some muscle in back.” Dudley paused and rubbed the back of his neck. “Cut from pubic bone up to his chest. Guts spilling out. And his eyes had been stabbed, along with the rest of his body, multiple times.”
Patterson shivered.
“Well, needless to say, we were all freaked the hell out and on a manhunt after that. The news spread quickly, and the whole town was hysterical. Everyone was afraid of one another. Nobody went out after dark. We were working around the clock, but coming up empty on leads. If we saw anyone out after dark we would bring them in for questioning. You were the unluckiest soul alive if we caught you hitchhiking near McCall that week. We were using that interrogation room a lot for a few days.
“Then a week later, after the kid’s body was found, the Kipling’ house caught fire in the middle of the night, and that’s when all hell broke loose again. The fire burned hot, and there was nothing firefighters could do to save the structure. They had to stand back and watch it burn, along with a few acres of the surrounding woods.
“When it finally burned itself out, investigators determined there were accelerants used, a whole lot of them, clear arson, and we assumed the worst for the family. When we ended up not finding any bodily remains inside, then we were beyond puzzled. Even stranger, the two family cars had still been in the garage.”
Dudley exhaled and pulled his trucker hat off, revealing a shiny dome. He rubbed his hand over it and put the hat back on. “Nothin’. Couldn’t find the Kiplings. Dustin Kipling was kind of a big shot around town with his statewide boat dealerships and all—‘Kipling Boats’—and news travelled fast around the area about their disappearance. It was all the rave for a while on the news channels.
