Authors: Lis Wiehl
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Thrillers, #General, #Christian, #Suspense, #ebook, #book
Nic felt her heart begin to race. She picked up her pace until she was almost running. “Did you touch it?”
“No. Thank goodness, no. I reached out and I almost did, but something stopped me at the last minute.”
“We’ll need to find out from the school who handled things there.” She hoped people hadn’t stopped, picked things up, examined them, put them back. That they had been more respectful. Like mourners. Not like people at a garage sale.
Twenty minutes later, she was in the Converses’ living room. “Valerie’s with Whitney at a movie,” Wayne said while Nic stared at the jumble that filled an old cardboard box. “We’re trying to take her mind off what’s happening.”
Inside the box, a brown stuffed bear leaned against a purple plush monkey and a green stuffed frog. They were surrounded by two dozen votive candles burned down to puddles of wax inside their glass enclosures, as well as a drawing of a dove, a ceramic angel, two smaller photographs of Katie, and other offerings.
“That’s it,” Wade said, pointing at a delicate silver chain with a teardrop-shaped purple amethyst tucked into a corner of the box. “It belonged to her mom.”
Nic doubted they could even get a partial off it, but she couldn’t take any chances, not with a case gone as cold as this one. “Do you have a pencil?”
“Why—?” And then he caught on and ran into the kitchen.
She could hear him rummaging through a drawer.
After he handed her the pencil, Nic managed to catch the tip in one of the links. She held up the long line of chain, with the stone set about a third of the way down. Wayne sucked in his breath. The clasp was still fastened, but one of the silver links had been snapped. It had been one thing to imagine that Katie had taken it off herself, or even that someone had demanded she hand it over. But this—this implied violence to Katie’s person.
Wayne’s face was white. “Some sicko put his hands around her neck and tore it off. And now he’s taunting us.”
“Look,” Nic said, “it still tells us something very important that we didn’t know before. Now we know that whatever happened to her, a person did it. Katie didn’t fall into a river or a manhole or something. Somebody took her.”
Clearly, they were looking at a kidnapping. Or more likely, a kidnapping and a murder.
Or, Nic thought to herself, were they? What if Katie had dropped out herself? And this was her clue. Her clue that she was still alive.
J
eff Lowe was running on the Wildwood Trail when he caught a glimpse of a dog ahead of him.
Limping.
“Here, boy,” he called, but it didn’t stop. Then the trail twisted, and he lost sight of the dog.
There was no one else around in Forest Park. Early January, cold rain slanting down—it wasn’t exactly a day to entice anyone outside. But Jeff Lowe had just moved to Portland, and he was getting to know the city the way he liked best—through the soles of his running shoes. He had grown up in a housing project in Cleveland, and the idea of a five-thousand-acre forest in the middle of a city amazed him.
There was no way to get lost on the Wildwood Trail—everything he had read said so. Still, Jeff Lowe was a city boy, and to him it felt like he had stepped into a fairy tale. Dark, thick trunks, furred with bright green moss, surrounded him. He had seen no one for forty-five minutes. The only sounds were the rain and his feet thudding and his breath echoing inside the hood of his jacket.
Catching a glimpse of the dog’s reddish-brown fur through the trees, he veered off the trail and into the emerald ferns and jade-colored rhododendrons. Even in January, everything was green here. He slowed to a walk, not wanting to scare the animal. Maybe he could coax it out of the underbrush. Grab it by the collar. It didn’t look that big. Maybe fifty, sixty pounds, with a low bushy tail. He had never owned a dog, and he didn’t know what breed it was. Some kind of German shepherd mix?
Jeff Lowe imagined calling the owner on his cell phone. Carrying the dog back to his car. In his imagination, it lay quietly in his arms, grateful for the attention. And he wrapped it in a towel and laid it on the passenger seat and then drove to the owner’s home, and she—of course it was a she, this was
his
daydream—she—
The dog burst out of the bushes ahead of him. It turned and looked at him over its shoulder.
Jeff Lowe thought several things at once.
The dog wasn’t a dog. It was a wolf or something.
With yellow eyes.
And with something pale in its mouth.
And that something was a woman’s hand.
November 17
S
o I’m not sure how to deal with my life right now.
Pretty much, today sucked. Or just lately . . . everything sucks.
I’m sick of everything right now. Everything & everyone, as a matter of fact. I’m angry, too. With the entire world. The way some people act, the choices I make & the things people do because “it’s complicated.” Well, news flash—I’m done. I’m done with feeling miserable over some-one who doesn’t seem to care anymore.
I’ve done enough for everyone else. I deserve to be happy. And I’m sick of crying my eyes out because I’ve been lied to. Because I cared too much for everyone else. Including that one person who doesn’t care enough back.
J
eff Lowe’s hands were shaking so badly that he had trouble pulling his cell phone from the pocket of his rain jacket. Finally, he yanked it free, flipped it open, and pressed 9-1-1. His eyes went back to the thing lying ten feet in front of him. At the angle it was right now, he could almost pretend it was a piece of trash.
The wolf or coyote or whatever the hell it was had looked at him for a long time with its yellow eyes before letting that thing fall from its mouth. Then it had turned and run off.
Leaving him alone with it. The thing that might be a piece of trash. Or a paper bag. Or some kind of strange flower or fruit that only grew on the floor of the Oregon forest.
Except that didn’t explain the pink nail polish.
The phone was still pressed to his head, but he couldn’t hear a thing.
Jeff pulled it away to look at the display.
NO SIGNAL.
His teeth were chattering. The woods were absolutely silent except for the rain, which was beginning to taper off.
Okay, if that thing was a hand—and he had to admit that it must be one—then where was the rest of it? The rest of the body it had come from?
The thought jolted him like an electric shock. Frantic, he spun in a circle, his eyes darting from rocks to roots to dripping ferns. The hand was already more than he could deal with. He couldn’t deal with a whole body. He couldn’t deal with some dead woman. What if she was cut up? What if she was all in pieces scattered around him?
And what was that noise? It ratcheted up his fear to the point it was nearly unbearable.
And then Jeff realized it was moaning—and that it was coming from him.
Jeff wanted to be inside. He wanted to be warm and dry and with nothing around him that wasn’t man-made. No wild animals, no dead people, no parts of dead people, no dark wet shadows under bushes. Everything clean and neat and tidy.
But first he had to tell the police what he had found. Let them take care of it. That was their job, to deal with the things that weren’t clean and neat and tidy.
About twenty feet behind him lay a clearing. He hurried over to it, holding his phone in front of him but taking frequent glances back at the hand, as if it were capable of scurrying off on its own. He lifted the phone up to the clear spot of sky. For a second, the display flickered. But even as he felt a surge of hope, it went back to reading
NO SIGNAL
.
Jeff had to get out of here. Get out of the woods. Get back to civilization so that he could call the police. But if he left, could he bring the police back here? To this exact same spot? What if he couldn’t find this place again? What if the animal came back for its lunch?
With dawning horror, Jeff realized there was only one solution.
He would have to take the hand with him.
A
llison got the news from Nicole. A hand had been found in Forest Park.
A woman’s hand.
The more time that had passed, the more Allison had known this was the only likely outcome. Katie dead, not off in some alternate universe. Not hidden away by Fairview. Not hitchhiking to San Francisco. Not wandering the streets of Seattle with no memory of how she got there or who she was. Forest Park was only a mile from Katie’s house, but it was five thousand acres, nearly all of it old-growth forest.
After checking Allison’s ID, a police officer waved her into the parking lot at the base of Forest Park. It was already nearly full. Nicole’s car was near the entrance. A mobile command post—which looked more like an extra-large RV or a tour bus—took up one corner of the lot. Allison nosed into a spot at the far end. Most of the cars in the lot belonged to the FBI.
Agents were clustered in small groups, all dressed alike in khaki cargo pants and blue long-sleeved shirts with yellow lettering on the back that read
FBI EVIDENCE RESPONSE TEAM
.
Allison knew that the entire sixteen-member ERT was always called out when there was a body scene.
Only so far there wasn’t a body. Just a hand.
Until now, Allison hadn’t realized how much she wanted one of her half-imagined alternatives for Katie to be true. She put one hand on her cross and the other on her belly and sent up a wordless prayer for Katie’s parents. Their hearts would be broken tonight. Allison knew that God still offered a peace that surpassed all understanding. She prayed that Wayne and Valerie could find that peace, at least in time.
Finally, Allison sighed and got out of her car, her eyes on the towering centuries-old cedars and Douglas firs that covered the hills ahead of her. Katie must be somewhere up there, but it wasn’t surprising she hadn’t been found until now. There were parts of Forest Park where no one ventured, isolated and inaccessible areas that held bobcats, elk, great blue herons, and black-tailed deer. There were even reports of black bear sightings.
As she looked up, a slight breeze rattled the last of the season’s brittle leaves from the hardwoods scattered among the evergreens. With a little imagination, this could be the forest of a thousand fairy tales. A fairy-tale forest where evil lurked and witches lured young girls. Where wolves hunted their prey.
“Hey, girlfriend,” Nicole said from behind her. “You look lost in thought.”
Allison turned. “Just feeling a little sad. I knew this was how it would end, but I still kind of hoped it wouldn’t, you know?”
“You and me both. Once we locate the body and get some idea of what happened, I’ll have to tell the Converses.”
Allison looked past Nicole at a man in his early twenties who was leaning against the back bumper of the mobile command post. He was wearing workout gear but no jacket, even though the temperature felt like it was dropping below freezing.
She jerked her chin in his direction. “Is that the guy who found it?”
The young man clutched a paper cup, the steam rising in the air. A dark gray blanket was wrapped around his shoulders, but Allison could hear his teeth chattering thirty feet away.
“The citizen’s pretty upset,” Nicole said. “He’s not certain where he was on the trail when he found the hand. Or maybe I should say where he was when he found the coyote that found the hand. Unfortunately, he didn’t leave it there. Since he was having trouble getting a cell signal, he wrapped it up in his jacket and brought it back here.”
“And you’re sure it’s a woman’s hand?”
“It’s smaller, with no calluses, no age spots—and it’s got pink nail polish. The only missing person we have that matches it is Katie. A couple of the fingertips are intact. If we’re lucky she scratched whoever did this.”
Allison’s stomach rose up and pressed against the bottom of her throat. “So was it cut off? Is this a dismemberment?” With difficulty she managed to swallow, bile bitter on her tongue.
“No. The medical examiner has already said that it looks consistent with animal predation. Now our goal is to find the body as fast as we can and get the crime scene roped off. All we need is to have the media show up and muck up the evidence worse than it’s already going to be.” Nicole looked past Allison. “That’s why we brought in a cadaver dog.”
A plump woman in her midfifties was coming out of the mobile command post. A tan dog with dark ears and a muzzle scrambled down the steps behind her. They walked over to a man Allison recognized as Leif Larson, the ERT team leader. He was solidly built, over six-foot-two, with reddish-blonde hair that always reminded Allison of a Viking. He was a quiet man who kept his own counsel, but when he said something it was worth listening to.
Allison followed Nicole over to the two of them, and Nicole introduced her to Belinda, the trainer.
“German shepherd?” Allison hazarded. She hadn’t grown up around dogs.
“Belgian Malinois,” Belinda said with pride. “AKC registered. And certified cadaver dog.”
She leaned down to stroke the dog’s head. It whined, low and eager.
“Most dogs can only stick with an odor on the ground. So for a tracking dog to find your missing young lady, she would have to have walked up here on her own power, leaving traces on the bushes and the ground. But Toby’s different. Cadaver dogs can scent in the air, too. So if that girl’s body is up here, no matter how she got here, Toby will find her. Even if someone carried her or brought her by car.” She stroked the dog again. “Are your people ready?” she asked Leif.
“Yeah. We want to be able to find her while there is still some light.”
Belinda leaned over and unclipped the leash. “Find, Toby. Find!”
With an eager whine, Toby raced up the path. In a few seconds he was out of sight.
“How do we know when he’s found something?” Allison asked.
“You’ll hear it.” Belinda tucked the leash into her jacket pocket. “The more excited his bark, the stronger the odor. Cadaver dogs are like good hunting dogs. A big bird excites the dog more than a small one. And for a cadaver dog, a good strong smell is more exciting than a weak one. Dogs are honest. They can’t contain their excitement if the smell’s really good.”