by Kathi Daley
I nodded. “She was the single most important person in my life after my parents died. Not only did I love her deeply, I was totally dependent on her. She was my security, my foundation, my everything. When she died, I felt so lost. As if I’d been stranded at sea without a life vest and no idea how to get back to shore. I felt not only helpless but hopeless.”
He reached across the table and took my hand in his. “I’m sorry. I remember how really bad it was for you and I’m sorry it’s all come up again.”
“The thing is,” I continued, “in the brief moment when I shared the memory of Val’s last breaths with the killer, I experienced a similar feeling of despair and hopelessness coming from him. I’ve been trying to reconcile that with the suspects we’ve identified and they don’t make any sense.”
Landon frowned. “I see what you’re getting at. A random person wouldn’t have experienced those emotions at Val’s death. But if not those men, who?”
I slowly shook my head. “I have no idea. Other than Jake, I can’t think of a single person who would have reacted the way the killer did that night.”
Chapter 11
Wednesday, October 17
As was our normal Wednesday routine, Houston and I met for breakfast, then headed out for a training session with Kojak. We’d talked about skipping it this morning, given the circumstances, but the truth of the matter was, the investigation was at a bit of a standstill, and a few hours away from it might allow us to gain some perspective.
In terms of general obedience training, Kojak and Houston seemed to have mastered all the basics, including off-leash commands and hand signals. If we stopped now, Kojak and Houston would have a happy life together, but Houston wanted to explore advanced training options, and Kojak was a fast and willing learner, with as much potential as any dog I’d ever worked with.
“I think we both feel that while Kojak is an intelligent student, he doesn’t have the killer instinct required for a full-service police dog,” I said after we’d ordered our food.
“Right,” Houston responded.
“He has a good nose, so we might be able to train him to sniff out drugs or munitions, but my gut tells me that his real calling is search and rescue.”
Houston stirred sugar into his coffee. “Right again.”
“The training required for that is really just an extension of what we’ve already been doing, but the frequency with which we’ll need to work with him will increase somewhat. I suggest we meet two days a week, and I’ll show you some games and training exercises you can do on your own as well. It takes commitment, but I guess you know that.”
Houston nodded.
I took a sip of my coffee before I continued. “We’ve been playing hide and seek with him, but today we’ll try upping the stakes. I anticipated we were heading in this direction, so I’ve enlisted Landon’s help. He’ll hide in a predetermined place, and when we arrive at the start of the path he’ll travel, we’ll give Kojak his scent. It’ll be interesting to see what he can do with someone hiding so far away. He’s done well with finding the objects we’ve hidden during playtime, so I anticipate he’ll do well.”
“Are we going out to your place?” Houston asked.
“No. There are too many distractions there with the dogs and all. I talked to Landon about it, and he’s going to hide closer to his house. He wanted to go home to use his desktop computer this morning anyway. The key is to be supportive of Kojak’s efforts and to give him the time he needs to find his target. He’ll sense your tension if you become overly involved in the outcome, so it’s important to do your part as his handler but to detach a bit. If he gets into trouble, we’ll give him some help. We want him to be successful.”
I loved working with dogs in all capacities, but I really loved training a new S&R dog. Not only was it rewarding in its own right, but the team and the town would benefit from having another dog to help out. Houston and Kojak had already proven to be a good team who trusted each other and worked well together, so I had every confidence this would work out well.
We drove to Landon’s house after lunch. I’d called ahead, and he was hidden in the woods about a quarter mile away. He’d left a recently worn T-shirt to provide with his scent. I handed it to Houston and instructed him to give Kojak the scent and find Landon.
“This is Landon. Find Landon,” Houston said to Kojak, presenting him with the T-shirt as I looked on. I knew where Landon was, but I hadn’t told Houston. I didn’t want him to inadvertently offer clues that a smart dog like Kojak was sure to pick up.
Kojak had a couple of false starts, but after the T-shirt had been presented for the third time, Kojak picked up the scent and was off. We rewarded Kojak for positive movement toward the objective, and it didn’t take long at all for him to find Landon, sitting on a bench near a small lake where a lot of folks liked to fish in the summer and ice-skate in the winter.
“Good job, Kojak.” I gave the dog a full body rub. “And good job, Houston.” I turned to hug him.
“Hey, what about me?” Landon asked.
I hugged him as well. “You were the perfect body, except for the fact that you were sitting up reading and not laying down pretending to be injured, as we discussed.”
Landon shrugged. “You took a long time and I was bored. Besides, I wanted to go over the data I found this morning.”
“Something important to our case?” I asked.
“Maybe. Let’s go to the house and I’ll fill you in.”
I looked at Houston. “Can you come too?”
Houston clipped Kojak’s leash into place. “I have some time. Lead the way.”
Landon lived in a small, sparsely decorated cabin that screamed bachelor pad. Most of the tables, including the dining table, were cluttered with computers, monitors, external drives, and other techy stuff. At least the sofa was clear of clutter, which was where Landon suggested Houston and I have a seat.
“What did you find?” I asked.
“First off, I’ve run Zane Hudson through every database I could think of. I found data that suggests he’s from a wealthy family who enrolled him in a series of boarding schools, most of which he managed to get kicked out of within a couple of years.”
“So he had a history of being a troublemaker,” I said.
“He did. And while I’ve found information about his life prior to running away, I haven’t been able to find a single thing on him after the report his parents filed. It makes sense that a minor on the run would stay under the radar, but I can’t think of any reason for him to keep a low profile once he became an adult. My guess is that he did die in the fire after he and Vern were separated. If he had lived, it seems he would have resurfaced somewhere.”
“And the whole Zane-was-bitten-by-a-zombie thing?” I asked.
Landon shrugged. “It might have been another Zane, or even a hallucination. By all accounts, Walter Ryan had a serious breakdown as a result of his experience. I spent some time trying to track him down, and after a lot of starts and stops, I found out Walter Ryan was Peter Walter Ryan, and he was committed to a mental health facility shortly after he was released from the hospital following the rescue. I’m waiting for confirmation from a source of mine, but it appears he might have committed suicide two years after.”
“Which leaves us with Paul Gentry,” I said. I looked at Houston. “Any luck tracking him down?”
“I’m afraid not. I’ve been by his place again and again, and there hasn’t been a trace of him. I spoke to his neighbors again, and they all agree he hasn’t been around in over a week. It’s still possible he went hunting and hasn’t yet returned, but this extended absence brings up some red flags for me.”
I considered what I knew about Paul. Sure, he’d undergone a horrific experience, watching his friend die, but I didn’t see it as something that had scared him for life. He was now the only active name on the list, but I just wasn’t feeling it. All along, I’d been sure the key to solving this was to figure out how the kil
ler was connected to Val.
“Maybe we need to take another look at the guys who haven’t made it to the list and been cleared,” I suggested. “We went through the rescue log and picked out a handful that took place in the six months or so before Val’s death; maybe we need to look at rescues in the six months before that.”
“I wonder if the failed-rescue angle is hanging us up,” Houston offered. “Yes, it seems like the killer is intentionally choosing first responders as his targets, which made us think he’d been traumatized by a failed rescue, but what if his motive is something else entirely?”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Love, money, a personal vendetta. There are a lot of motives out there; the trick is to narrow in on the right one.”
“But how would the search-and-rescue team and the volunteer fire department play into a scenario based on a motive like that? The people who responded were totally different. Where’s the link?”
“It seems to me you’re the link,” Houston said.
Houston could be right. The killer had called me to make sure I’d have a front-row seat at the fire, and he’d sent me a photo from each murder scene.
“Okay, say that getting my attention is the motivation for everything that’s going on. How can we figure out why this lunatic is fixated on me?”
“Before the landslide on the mountain, did anything unusual occur?” Houston asked. “Did you notice someone following you? Receive telephone hang-ups? Get any odd or alarming mail?”
I shook my head. “No. Nothing. The first thing to happen was the explosion. The next strange thing were the footprints in the snow, though I didn’t notice them until after the explosion.”
“And after that?” Houston asked.
I thought about it. “I guess the next thing was the photo delivered to the shelter. After that was the fire at the lumber mill and the phone call alerting me to it, followed by the photo of me there.”
“Has anything happened since that?” Houston asked.
“Not really,” I answered. “We had the rescue of the little boy, which led us to the injured mama bear and cub. I guess it was odd that someone shot the mama bear and then just left her there to die. A hunter would have taken his kill, and a random person who might have shot the bear in self-defense would most likely have reported the incident.”
“And we didn’t hear anything during the rescue, so the bear must have been shot at some point before we arrived at the scene,” Landon said. “Now that I think about it, that almost seemed staged.”
I frowned. “Yeah. It was odd that such a young child had wandered so far away from his family. I almost feel like the mama bear was shot in order to render her unconscious, or maybe the bear was tranquilized and then shot, and once the mama was no longer a danger, the child was brought to the spot where we found him with the cub. Of course, the child didn’t say a word about anyone else being with him.”
“It is strange the cub wasn’t afraid of the child,” Landon said. “His mama had just been shot; you would think he would be terrified of anyone who wandered too close to where he was most likely hiding.”
“Maybe I’ll follow up with the family to see if they have anything to add to what we already know,” Houston suggested.
We spoke for a while longer before Houston received a call about a break-in and had to leave. I wanted to stop by the shelter to see what was happening with the new bear cage, so I arranged to meet Landon back at my cabin later that afternoon. When I arrived at the shelter I was treated to my first surprise of the day.
“You finished it,” I applauded.
“Jake said to get it done as quickly as possible,” one of the volunteers responded. “We asked everyone Jake had rounded up to bring a friend, so we got it done in half the time.”
“That’s wonderful. This is going to be perfect. I need to call Kelly. She’s anxious to get the mama and baby transferred to this sturdier cage.” I scanned the room filled with friends and neighbors. “Thanks, all of you. So much.”
“Happy to lend a hand,” one of the men said.
After I checked with Kelly to confirm the mama bear was healthy enough to transfer, I called Houston and Landon to ask if they could help with the process. Houston’s truck had a large bed, so the plan was to sedate the mama and transport her in the bed of the truck while using a large dog crate for the cub. We risked the well-being of both bears every time we moved them, interrupting whatever level of comfort they’d developed, but having them in the sturdier cage was an absolute must; the mama bear was healing a lot more quickly than any of us imagined she would.
Once the transfer was complete, Kelly hung out until the anesthesia she’d given the mama wore off completely. While she didn’t anticipate an adverse reaction, you could never be too careful when it came to sedation. While we were waiting for mama to wake up fully, we chatted about the Halloween party Jake had been planning to have at the bar.
“Do you know if he’s still going ahead with it?” Kelly asked. “A lot has happened since he put up the flyers.”
“He hasn’t said anything about it lately, but I suspect he will. Wyatt is leaving the hospital today, and the team is getting together tonight to have a memorial for Austin. If I know Jake, he’ll mourn for his friend and then move on.”
“I guess that’s all anyone can ever do,” Kelly said.
“We suspect the killer might be someone who’s suffered a great loss but hasn’t been able to move on. You’ve lived here a long time. Does anyone like that come to mind?”
“A lot of people die prematurely due to accidents or poor judgment every year. Almost every one of those deaths brings with it grief that must be suffered through by those who are left behind. But to hang on to your grief to the extent you suspect?” Kelly shook her head. “No. I really can’t think of anyone.” Kelly bit her lower lip. “Well, except maybe for Liam Byrne. I feel so bad for that poor man. First his only son wandered off and died up there on the mountain before the team could find him. Then his wife decided it was his fault her boy was gone because Liam was supposed to be watching him during the fishing trip they’d taken. When she took their daughters and moved to Portland, I thought he might fade away completely. So much loss for one heart to take. I heard he hasn’t seen those girls since they left.”
The death of Liam’s son had been a tragedy that had affected the entire community. And while I agreed he’d turned into a shell of a man who rarely spoke to anyone after his son’s death, he hadn’t been around back when Val had died, so in my mind he couldn’t be the killer. But maybe someone like him. Someone who’d lost a child. The loss of a child could very well rob a person of their soul.
Chapter 12
Landon and I walked the dogs and saw to the animals before we headed to Neverland. We both had the feeling that once the team got together and began sharing memories of Austin, the memorial might very well extend late into the evening. Better to have the animals taken care of than to feel hurried to get back. As we strolled with my pack, I shared my thoughts after speaking to Kelly, as well as the idea that, while I agreed Liam Byrne seemed to be living with enough pain to make him a real suspect, it couldn’t be him because he hadn’t been in Rescue when Val died.
“I’m going to say something,” Landon began with a tone of hesitation in his voice. “You probably won’t agree with me, but I want you to really think about what I have to say. I also want you to promise not to get mad.”
I scowled. “I can’t promise not to get mad when I don’t know what you’re going to say.”
“Okay, I guess that’s fair. What I really mean is that I’d like you to hear me out before you decide whether you’re mad.”
I glanced ahead to make sure all seven of the dogs were in my line of sight. “Okay. What’s on your mind?”
“A lot of what we’ve done in terms of identifying suspects is predicated on the memory you shared of Val’s death with the killer.”
“That’s right.”
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sp; Landon stepped over a fallen log. “I wasn’t there when Austin died, but I can imagine it was very intense.”
“It was.”
“I believe you connected with the killer in the split second before he set off the dynamite. Your connection with him is probably the reason Jake and Wyatt are still alive.”
“Continuing to agree,” I said.
“And in that instant you not only shared the man’s pain but a memory.”
I stopped walking. “We both know all this. Get to the point.”
“Is it possible, even one percent possible, that the memory you think you shared with him was just your memory of the most painful moment of your life getting tangled up with the pain this man was channeling into his act of destruction?”
I started to disagree.
“Remember,” Landon added, “I’d like you to take a minute to consider this. I’m not saying your interpretation of your experience is in any way flawed, but is there even a one in a hundred chance that the killer wasn’t with Val when she died?”
As promised, I took a minute to think. I was sure I’d experienced a memory—his memory—but when he asked if there was even a one percent chance my memory had become tangled with the killer’s grief, I had to admit there was perhaps that much. I said as much to Landon, though I qualified my admission with the fact that a 1 percent possibility was very, very small.
I guess he must have thought our conversation was going all right, because he went on. “Thirteen years ago, on the night Val died, you were able to connect with her in her final moments.”
“Yes. It was the first time I’d ever connected with anyone. Before that, I hadn’t even known it was possible.”
“In that moment you were able to experience what Val was feeling and thinking.”
I wiped a tear from the corner of my eye. “She felt my presence. She knew I loved her. She was sad and frightened, but she was at peace.”
