The One That Got Away (20 page)

She felt the hairs on the back of her neck bristle. “You know how to make me happy.”

“I will be trying to push your buttons. I’m not going to apologize for it, because I think it’s important and I think you know that too.”

“As long as you’re willing to pay for my therapy sessions afterwards.”

“This is therapy. You should be paying me.”

His smile was back. It was such a simple thing, but it gave her confidence. He gave her confidence. Doing this alone scared her, and she knew she might buckle if it got too painful. With Greening here, there was someone to protect her and push her forward.

“OK, let’s get this show on the road,” he said. “Where did you park that night?”

“I don’t know.”

Greening drove the car slowly through the lot. “You’d been kicked out of the Smokehouse. You and Holli walked back to your car. Were you alone? Did someone stop you or ask you for a ride? Was someone waiting by your car?”

A flashbulb flared in the recesses of her mind. Her and Holli arm in arm, in the dark, laughing. Then the image faded back into the shadows.

“Did anyone follow you? The roofie would have been in your system and working at this point. You would have been feeling drunker than you should have. Tired. Dazed.”

Greening rejoined the road and headed north.

“You were in your car. Were you driving out of town—or was he? If he was, there would have been three of you in the car. Where were you sitting? In the driver’s seat? Shotgun? Or in the back?”

The flashbulb went off in her head again. The glare was brief, but the image was clear.

“How about Holli? Where was she?”

“Wait a second. Stop talking.”

He did, but kept driving.

“I was driving. Holli was next to me. He was in the back, bunched up because he was tall. Holli offered to swap places with him, but he said no. We were doing him a favor.”

She was astounded that she remembered something with such clarity after so much ambiguity and confusion. But in spite of the sharp image that had just come to her, the fog continued to hide what came next.

“So you picked him up?” Greening said with excitement in his voice.

“I don’t know. I guess so.”

“Did he ask you to drop him somewhere?”

She shook her head.

They reached Bishop’s city limits, and Greening kept on driving.

“OK, you’re driving on US 395. Holli’s sitting next to you. He’s in back. The Rohypnol has its teeth into you. You’re probably weaving on the road.” For emphasis, Greening let his squad car wander across the road before overcorrecting too far the other way. “He probably suggested that he drive.”

She clenched her mind tight, hoping for another flashbulb to go off. “Maybe.”

“He’s driving now. I think Holli is still in the front. You’re in back. You and he simply swapped positions.”

It sounded plausible, but it failed to ring true.

“You’ve been driving so long. It’s late and dark. You’re on roads you don’t know. It’s probably a relief to let him take over driving duties. Did you sit up or spread out across the backseat?”

Flashbulb
, she thought,
please show yourself
. Greening was doing such a great job of re-creating that night with nothing, and she, who had been there, couldn’t remember shit. She felt her heart rate gather speed and blood pressure rise with her increasing frustration. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. Damn it.”

“It’s OK, Zoë. Don’t let it get to you. I don’t need the whole picture. I just need enough pieces to assemble the puzzle. Help me find the corners.”

He was quiet for the next five minutes. She was too, letting the frustration bleed from her. She kept her gaze fixed on the road, allowing its never-ending view to clear her mind.

As before, Greening pulled off at every turn to follow every secluded road to its end.

“Tell me about his place. What did it look like? Did you hear any strange noises? Did it have a smell? Tell me what you remember.”

Abandoning Holli
, she thought.
That’s what I remember
. She bottled her guilt and pushed it to one side. She could always revisit it later. She always did.

“I woke up in a shack or a big toolshed with a tin roof. Ten feet by twenty, I think. It was full of junk and wasn’t new. The floor was bowed with age and the weight of all the crap in there.”

“Good. What else?”

She pictured herself naked, having just cut the cable ties binding her wrists and ankles. Reflexively, she rubbed her left wrist where the plastic had cut into her flesh. She was at the shed window, peering out, Holli’s screams thick in the air.

“There’s another crappy storage shed opposite the one I’m in. The workshop is to my right. That’s where he’s torturing Holli. It’s just as weather-beaten. The lights are on, but the windows are so grimy that the light is dulled.” She remembered looking through those small windows. “Stained glass.”

“Stained glass?”

“All those little, dirt-covered panes. It was like unholy stained glass on the devil’s church.”

Greening didn’t have an answer for that.

“OK, you escape from the shed. There’s another in front of you. The workshop with Holli and him is to your right. You’re naked. Hurt. Confused. It’s night. What else do you see, smell, hear, and taste?”

“Stars. Lights, I think, way off in the distance. I hear nothing. No car or truck noise. No planes overhead. No voices. I smell the night air—dry and dusty. I smell flowers or trees or something, but I don’t recognize them or see them. I don’t taste anything.”

“You’re barefoot. What are you standing on?”

“Dirt.”

“Just dirt. No concrete or asphalt?”

“No. Everything was dirt. The road was dirt. Just a track.”

Greening stopped the car and pulled out a couple of maps. He marked a couple of places and rejoined the highway.

He changed his tack. Instead of following every paved cross street, he explored all the fire trails and unpaved roads. The Crown Victoria wasn’t built for the loose and undulating surfaces. It struggled for grip and bottomed out on its suspension a number of times.

“OK, you’ve escaped from the shed, and you’re standing in the dirt outside,” Greening said.

She didn’t see the road ahead. She was back in the past. The cool night had been drying the sweat on her body after she’d escaped the oppressive heat of the shed.

“Yes,” she said.

“Do you see the mountains in front of you?”

“No,” she said, then more confidently, “no. No mountains. Just the horizon.”

“But the highway was in front of you.”

“Yes. I think so.”

He smiled at her. “That means you were on the west side of the highway.”

He stopped the car again on the shoulder and pored over the maps, employing his highlighter again. “We’re getting closer, Zoë.”

They followed the next three dirt roads. They led to dead ends—physically and mentally. No light-bulb flashes and no tin-roofed sheds.

They were losing the light. The sun was over the mountains. She had thought they would be back in Mammoth Lakes before nightfall, but they hadn’t even made it halfway.

Greening jammed on the brakes. The car slithered to a halt on the shoulder. An eighteen-wheeler leaned on its horn as it roared by.

Greening grabbed the map and spread it open. He ran his finger between places he’d marked and pointed across the road to a rough-looking track. A thick chain hung slack between a couple of rusted posts no more than a few feet high, preventing access. There was no signage advising anyone to keep out or indicating authorized access only. Anonymity was its only message.

“That track isn’t on this map.”

Zoë stared at the chain, then followed the trail with her gaze. “It doesn’t look familiar.”

“Let’s make sure.”

Their vehicle darted across the road and ground to a halt in front of the hanging chain. She jumped from the car to unhook it, but it was padlocked in place.

“It’s locked,” she called back to him.

“Take up the slack,” he yelled.

She grabbed the chain and pulled it as taut as she could. He eased his cruiser forward until the push bars on the car stretched the chain tight across them. She let go, and he let the Crown Vic roll, putting pressure on the barrier. He gassed the engine, and one of the posts popped out, dropping the chain to the ground.

Zoë jumped back into the car. “Not much of a security system.”

“It was never meant to be. Too much security draws attention. Not enough and everyone ignores it.”

Greening’s Crown Vic bounced and bumped over the rough road. It snaked left and right for a quarter of a mile before going into a gentle rise, which soon turned into a gentle descent. The trail kept going and going, running somewhat parallel to the mountains and the highway.

Zoë had an eerie feeling. There was no flashbulb this time, but the distance from the highway spooked her. It was the same feeling she’d had when she’d stepped from that shed. The feeling that she was isolated from the world. She looked over Greening’s shoulder at the flat landscape stretching out to the horizon.
Is this it?

They rounded another curve and Greening took his foot off the gas. “Zoë, look.”

“Oh my God.”

The outbuildings were no longer there. Just the flattened remnants of what had been three structures, first crushed by force, then left to the elements to corrode and be hidden with dirt.

Zoë jumped from the car, before Greening brought it to a halt, and ran up to the remains. There were the tin roofs and the shattered windowpanes. The orientation was as she remembered it. It was possible these could be three other buildings, but the panicked way her heart was beating told her she wasn’t wrong. She turned to see Greening rushing toward her. She pointed to the ground she’d once been forced to stand on barefoot. “This is the place.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“I think we’ve got something” was all Greening had said to bring in the cavalry.

Over a dozen Inyo sheriff deputies, detectives, and crime-scene officers covered the remains of the Tally Man’s kill site. Greg Solis from Mono County Sheriff’s Department was there. Zoë hadn’t seen him since her abduction. He didn’t look pleased to see her again. She knew why—jurisdictions. She might have been found in Mono County, but the Tally Man had done his work in Inyo County. No wonder they hadn’t found this place. Nobody was looking over the county line. She could play the blame game, but she was interested in only one thing: Were Holli and the other victims buried here?

In the failing light, the cops were staking out a perimeter around the remains of the three buildings and hurriedly erecting lights. Greening was deep in conversation with the sheriff and two other men no one had bothered to introduce her to. He had dumped her in his car like an inconvenient child, while he did his grown-up cop thing.

Watching them work, she wondered what they would find under the rubble. She hoped she wouldn’t get to see.

Greening broke away from his meeting and slipped into the driver’s seat. “OK, I’m going to have one of the deputies drive you back to the motel. I’m probably going to be here for another day, maybe two, but you’re free to go home.”

“Why are you sidelining me?”

“Zoë, please. You know you can’t be involved. You’re a witness.”

And a suspect
, she thought. More than a couple of the deputies had given her sideways looks. After all, these were the guys who’d first blown her off as a wasted party girl, then someone who’d offed her friend.

“Look, I don’t get to decide. It’s their jurisdiction. Their crime scene. I’m just an observer.”

“But you’re staying.”

“Just because there’s crossover between our cases. That’s all. They’re probably going to kick me out of here in a little while. If you’re going to stick around tonight, I’ll catch up with you in a couple of hours, and I’ll update you with what I can.”

She wouldn’t stay. She had a long drive ahead of her, but if she left now, she’d be home before midnight. Besides, Greening was putting up the big blue wall that kept noncops out.

“I think I’ll go home. Can you at least tell me what’s going on?”

“Procedure. They’re going to button the scene down tonight and start picking this place apart tomorrow. They’re bringing in some special equipment to help examine the area.”

“For what?”

Greening’s expression turned guarded. She knew what they’d be looking for. She looked over at the deputies working the scene.

“Do you think she’s buried out there? That maybe they’re all buried out there?”

“I don’t know. They’ll search the area with ground-penetrating radar and bring out the dogs.”

She appreciated his omission of the term
cadaver dogs
. “I hope you find them.”

Greening said nothing for a long moment. “I do too. I’ll get you that ride.”

He climbed out of the car and rustled up a uniform to drive her back to Mammoth Lakes. When he approached with the officer in tow, she got out to meet them.

“Deputy Beatty here will drive you back to the motel. I’ll be in touch tomorrow. The Mono Sheriff’s may need another statement from you, but they’ll probably have you give it back in San Francisco.”

She listened to the blah-blah-blah and pat-on-the-head talk. Greening must have picked up on her mood, because he took her hand.

“Zoë, don’t feel you’re being excluded. You helped today. We’re one step closer to finding this guy because of you.”