by Rick Mofina
“Lee!”
She jumps to the ledge. “Let her go! You can’t have her!”
“Guess what I’m going to do.”
Holding her, he inches to the ledge, letting her toes brush the rock.
He is laughing.
“God, please! Let Rachel go. Please!” She pounds on his arms. Futile. They are so strong.
“Think you’re all better than us, like you just walk on air, my daddy says.”
“Lee!” Her sister is terrified. “Please!”
He is at the ledge. A sheer drop of five hundred, maybe six hundred, feet.
“Guess what I’m going to do.”
Slowly, he extends his arms.
“No! Oh--Lee!”
Slowly, he holds Rachel over the cliff, chuckling as she tries in vain to reach it with her toes. Gasping, breathless, sobbing.
“Please!”
Rocky Mountain winds are curling through the ranges, shooting up. The earth below is a dizzying drop.
She is stretching to reach Rachel’s wrist, but his arms are longer.
“Lee! Oh, please! Oh, please!”
“Guess what I’m going to do. I’m going to see if she can walk on air!”
“Noooo!”
“But you help me, big sister.”
Suddenly, Hood releases one of Rachel’s wrists.
“You get her now, big sister. You save her now! Unless she can walk on air.” He laughs.
She reaches for Rachel’s free, flailing hand, brushing it, touching it in time to feel it slipping from hers as Hood releases his grip.
Rachel is suspended for an instant.
Their eyes meet. Rachel, horrified, terrified. Knowing. Face is contorted with fear. “No, Sun Ray.” Hand brushing hers, a feathery touch so fast, Rachel’s head lifting.
Falling. “NOOOOOOO!” Her screams rising to the heavens as she plummets.
“Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!”
She cannot breathe, cannot think. Horror is hammering her senses. Pounding.
Laughing. Hood is laughing.
“Guess she can’t walk on air and she can’t fly. No better than anybody.”
His brown teeth turn to her.
“How about you, big sister?”
She scurries up the ledge, sobbing, gasping; his laughter chases her as she runs and runs and runs from the monster.
Running all of her life.
Running from her sister’s falling eyes, the death brush of her little hand stained with mountain flowers and the powder of butterfly wings. The last touch, the last look of horror. “Watch over your little sister.”
“I’m not scared anymore, Lee.”
Running all of her life.
Free-falling from the horror that destroyed her family; now feeling a measure of comfort from an FBI agent investigating the suspected homicide of her daughter.
THIRTY-NINE
Paige and Kobee ran for high country, scrambling along treacherous ridges, ledges. Dipping into forests only to gain elevation or traverse a difficult section.
It was the only way to stay ahead of the thing chasing them. The only tactic keeping her alive. She continued moving as fast as she could for much of the day. The grunting thing never emerged. She stopped to examine Kobee’s wound. Did the thing do that? She tore a strip from a shirt in her pack, bandaging him with it. Far off, she heard the helicopters. At times she waved, but they always missed her. Paige forced herself to keep moving.
Oh God, I am so hungry.
So afraid.
Please help me! Somebody!
When Paige stopped to eat one of her granola bars, she began crying and could not stop.
Does it hurt to die?
Paige whispered weakly. “Mommy, please help me.”
Kobee licked her salty tears. She shared some of her food with him.
“Don’t worry. I’ll look after you, puppy.”
Paige moved on, but later as the sun began dropping, fatigue, exposure, and fear continued taking their toll.
Got to keep moving. Climb higher and maybe they’ll find me.
She believed it was safer at higher levels.
It gave her the advantage of distance to see what might be ahead, waiting for her, or behind, gaining on her.
As dusk approached, Paige sensed that it was going to rain again. It was clouding up, getting colder. She began thinking of searching or trying to build a shelter as she continued ascending a rocky region.
Earlier in the day, she frequently spotted deer and big horn sheep. It gave her comfort seeing harmless forms of life keeping her company.
But as she worked her way up the harsh slopes of this region deep in the Devil’s Grasp, the deer and sheep became scarce.
Wonder where they all went.
The few she did spot seemed to be moving downward in the opposite direction of her ascension.
Why?
Finally, with little light remaining, Paige chose a spot atop jagged zone of high cliffs, which was dotted with forests. The ledges overlooked a sweeping valley from several hundred feet up.
Paige began building a lean-to shelter, using some spruce boughs against a large fallen tree. She used some as a floor, to soften the hard, rocky ground. She crawled in, hugging Kobee for comfort and warmth. Meanwhile, hunger and exhaustion battled within her.
Thoughts of a huge pizza with ham, tons of cheese, spicy sauce, pineapples, taunted her. As the night neared, she slipped into sleep.
A large branch cracked.
What is that?
Paige was fully alert. Pulse racing with fear.
A horrible, foul smell filled her nostrils.
It was back!
Kobee whimpered softly.
“Shhh.”
Like her first night.
Ohgodpleasehelpme!
Snorting. She heard guttural snorting. Then a woofing, popping sound. More branches snapping.
It was so close. She heard paw pads, slapping on rock; claws, scraping near her. Panting. Growling.
It brushed by her in the twilight.
A massive wall of fur, stinking fur, matted with excrement.
A bear. A giant bear. So close she could touch it.
Paige went numb.
She was going to die.
She prayed. Mommy. Daddy.
A massive claw swept the branches away; fur brushed against her, Paige shut her eyes. The second swat sent her hurling across the ledge top, rolling like a rag doll toward a yawning crevasse.
Paige opened her mouth to scream, hearing the beast charging and snarling. Its claws scratched across the rock, driving an unstoppable, unconquerable, carnivorous force as old as time toward her.
Mommy, Daddy, please save me…. Please, oh please, don’t let it hurt!
FORTY
In the pre-dawn light deep in Search Sector 23, a vast slope of lodgepole forest blistered by rock cliffs and fissures, excitement awakened Lola.
The three-year-old Belgian shepherd’s wagging tail was brushing the interior of the green nylon pup tent as she worked to rouse Todd Taylor, her nineteen-year-old handler. Nuzzling, panting and licking his ear to no avail. Taylor groaned, pulling his goose-down sleeping bag over his head. He was exhausted. Lola persisted.
“Just a few more minutes, girl.”
Taylor pulled her into the warm sleeping bag with him and listened to her heartbeat. It was racing, stirring him to the sudden realization she had detected something.
“OK, OK. Take it easy.”
He sat up, shivering, in the frigid morning air. He quickly pulled a sweatshirt over his T-shirt, then whipped on his fluorescent yellow windbreaker, which bore the words TALON COUNTY SEARCH AND RESCUE, COLORADO. The volunteer group was one of the first out-of-state agencies to arrive. Taylor, a college freshman from Boulder, was studying to be a paramedic. Lola was regarded by SAR people across America as one of the best scent-trackers in the field.
“Coffee,” Taylor moaned, pouring a cup from his thermos.
Sippin
g it cleared his drowsiness. He faced the dreadful fact it had rained again in the night. Cripes. Theirs was one of the most remote eastern search zones, and between sunrise and sundown yesterday, they grid-swept it twice. Taylor kneaded Lola’s neck. He never ceased to marvel at the ability of tracking dogs to locate people, or traces of them.
Humans constantly give off streams of scents that flow into the air like vaporous clouds, emissions originating from the bacteria in the millions of cells in hair, skin, blood, urine, sweat, saliva, which the body replaces each second. The process produces a distinct human odor that trained scent dogs like Lola can detect. But Taylor knew the success of the so-called probability of detection all depended on scores of variables, like the dog’s health, wind conditions, time of day, air quality and density.
Taylor hustled, pulling on his jeans and boots. Lola had picked up something and would bolt the instant he opened the tent. But he had to take care of business fast; afterward, they would go.
“You stay, girl! Sit!”
Lola yelped, but sat. Her tail wagged her impatience as Taylor crawled out to relieve himself by a tree. Quickly, he slipped on his lighter pack, affixed a fresh battery to his radio, clamped a peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich in his mouth, gave Lola a dog biscuit, opened the tent.
“Go find it, girl.”
Lola yelped, leading Taylor at a trot deep through the forest they had gridded early yesterday. He knew they were skirting the edge of a grizzly’s feeding zone. He double-checked his pack for his bear spray and bell.
During a search for a lost woman in the Rockies in Colorado, he had startled a sow. Miraculously, he backed away without a scratch, although he trembled uncontrollably for the rest of the day. The next morning, he and Lola found the woman, or what was left of her. The grizzly had disemboweled her. One of her arms was missing. The woman, a tourist from Germany, was the mother of a little boy and little girl. Taylor cried that night. Rangers tracked and killed the bear. Lola was now moving faster, leading him out of the forest to the rocky edge.
“Whoa!”
The ledge was a sheer drop of several hundred feet, a shocker to come upon without warning from the forest.
“Dead end, girl.”
Lola yipped back. Panting, assuming her posture that said, This is it, Todd. I’ve found it. Then she sneezed. Taylor surveyed the rocky stretch of ledge, beautiful against the brilliant, rising sun.
“But there’s nothing here.”
Lola barked, giving an indication it was somewhere along the rugged cliff top.
“Hey, careful!”
The entire ledge was fissured with crevasses, some no wider than six inches, some a foot or two. But they were deep, plunging treacherously into darkness. Lola was panting, tail wagging at one. At the surface, it ran about twenty feet from the edge into the forest, a gash in the rock maybe twenty inches wide that descended into a dark eternity.
Lola stood steadfast at one point along the crevasse and yelped as Taylor realized its mouth was big enough to swallow a child. He dropped to his knees next to his dog.
“Hello!” Taylor called into the crevasse.
Silence.
For the next three minutes, he called, lying flat on the rock, listening for the faintest sound of life. Nothing. Suddenly, Taylor’s blood turned cold. Nearly touching his nose were a few threads of fabric, like something torn from a shirt. Next to it, quivering in the wind, a few strands of hair. Some blood droplets. Taylor reached for his radio.
The FBI evidence team had trouble finding a safe place to put down their helicopter. The winds at the altitude of Sector 23 were rocking the aircraft. Eventually, they found a spot some two hundred yards from Taylor’s detect point and humped it in.
“Something’s down there,” Taylor said. “Lola’s going nuts up here.”
“You hear anything?” an agent asked Taylor.
“Nothing.”
Powerful flashlights were aimed down the hole; long aluminum poles were extended, prodding the depths for any indication of life. Nothing.
More experts arrived within minutes.
SAR people worked one side of the opening with the aim of rescuing a victim, while FBI technicians meticulously studied the evidence at the surface. Using tweezers and a powerful magnifying glass, a technician was confident the strands of hair were similar to Paige Baker’s. They began tapping at the rock to remove blood droplets. Preliminary on-scene testing indicated the trace was human. The fabric was cotton. White. Material and color were consistent with the socks Paige was wearing when she vanished. Everything was photographed and recorded. The area was regarded as a restricted federal crime scene.
Agent Frank Zander arrived. “What have we got here?”
Agent William Horn, one of the FBI’s senior evidence people, explained the blood, hair and fabric at the mouth of the crevasse.
“It doesn’t look good, Frank.”
“She down there?”
“At this point, odds are she is.”
“How soon before you can confirm?”
“Don’t know. The opening is too narrow and tight for us to drop a rescuer or tech down there. We’re flying in some small fiber-optics cameras, listening devices. Looks like this thing stretches to the bottom, four hundred feet, maybe more. We need an exceptional length of fiber for the camera, we’re waking up a high-tech firm in California. We’ll need some time, Frank.”
Zander nodded.
“This is your scene, Bill, and my investigation. Nobody who is here now is permitted to leave. All radio contact goes through you to me. It’s all need-to-know. Nobody talks to anybody until it is determined exactly what we have here. It is critical now that nothing leaks from here. Critical.”
Horn nodded.
Before Zander returned to the command center, he looked at the FBI evidence technicians in their hooded jumpsuits with gloves. They glowed in the dawn against the backdrop of the sky and mountains as they worked silently on what Zander believed was the grave of Paige Baker.
FORTY-ONE
A nation away from the FBI’s secret investigation at the crevasse of Sector 23 in Montana, a constable with the Ontario Provincial Police was ending her night shift east of Toronto, patrolling RV campsites near the Sandbanks Provincial Park.
The waters of Lake Ontario lapped against the vast sand beaches as she cross-checked license plates with the tourist alert sheet on her clipboard. She locked on to a California tag for Meyers, knocked on the door of their thirty-foot motor home, informing Willa Meyers to call the San Francisco Police Department right away. “A family emergency.”
An SFPD dispatcher took her call at approximately 4:00 A.M. Pacific Time. She paged Inspector Linda Turgeon, who was sleeping but had the call patched to her home. Turgeon told Willa Meyers what had happened in Montana.
“My dear Lord, no!” Willa was horrified, explaining that she and Huck had no idea their niece was lost in the Rocky Mountains.
“We purposely avoided the news because of Isaiah Hood’s impending execution,” Willa said; then she told Turgeon about Lee’s secret family history. “We wanted them to join us in Canada. It was a delicate family matter. Lee was receiving counseling. Doug didn’t even know everything. We wanted to get Lee as far away from the hood case as possible at the time of the execution. We didn’t know they had returned there.”
Willa told Turgeon that when a San Francisco reporter recently reached them asking questions about Emily’s past, she figured it was somehow related to Hood’s execution, not to Paige.
Turgeon consoled Willa, then called Sydowski, catching him on his way out of his room in the Sky Forest Vista Inn near Kalispell. He took extensive notes as Turgeon enlightened him.
Now, Sydowski was finishing his third coffee watching the sun climb as Zander’s chopper returned from Sector 23 to the helipad near the command center. The two men talked near a stand of spruce behind a fire crew dorm.
“I think we found her, Walter.”
“Alive?”
>
“No. Blood, hair and clothing fragments at the mouth of a narrow and deep rock fissure, just under two miles from the campsite.”
“You confirm her body is there?”
“No. It’s going to take a few hours to get some equipment up there. No one, absolutely no one, knows what we’ve got there.”
“I’ve got an update on Emily Baker,” Sydowski said. “SFPD contacted Emily’s aunt. Emily is the sister of Rachel Ross, the child murdered in Glacier twenty-two years again by Isaiah Hood, the guy who is going to be executed.”
Zander was dumbfounded.
“Why didn’t we know this from the outset?” He shook his head. “That happened in the same region. The Bureau, or Montana, should have known.”
“Turns out Emily was Natalie Ross at the time. Natalie’s mother changed her name shortly after the tragedy. As you know, Natalie Ross was the witness, the only witness, who saw Hood kill her sister. Her testimony helped seal his death warrant.” He filled Zander in on the rest of the story. “Emily would never speak of her past. Began undergoing counseling for it as Hood’s execution date loomed.”
Zander stared into the sunlight piercing the spruce.
“Damn, Walt. What do you make of it?”
“In my time, I’ve seen them all. The devil told me to do it, the voices told me, my dog told me. I’ve had the most upstanding people, finest-looking people, look me straight in the eye and say they had to kill their infant child because God told them it was the Antichrist. But--”
Zander looked at Sydowski. “But what?”
“To me, the pieces here just don’t quite fit.”
“I think they do. It’s just a matter of which category. Just a matter of time, Walt. Look at everything we’ve got so far. The ax, the T-shirt, his hand, her past, his temper, the girl’s corpse. I think we’ve got them beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“I don’t. Not yet. It is still largely circumstantial.”
“What about the mother’s background, her history?”
“I see it as a reason for their strange behavior.”
“I see it as damning.”
“Frank, you have no linchpin to bring it all together. Nothing physical, irrefutable.”
