Man’s best friend, my ass.
After a furious chase followed by a pitched battle, Simon managed to pry the mallet out of the death grip of Jaws’s teeth.
Holding the now slimed and mangled tool while the puppy bounced like a furry spring, Simon imagined giving the dog just one good whack on his bone head. Not that he would, however tempting, but imagining it wasn’t a crime.
He pictured chirping cartoon birds circling the pup’s head, and little X’s in his eyes.
“If only,” he muttered.
He set the tool out of reach on the workbench, then looked around—again—at the scatter of toys and bones on the floor of his shop.
“Why are these no good? Why is that?” He picked up a Jaws-sized rope, offered it. “There, go destroy that.”
Seconds later, as Simon wiped off the abused mallet, the dog dropped the rope on his boot, then sat, tail thumping, head cocked, eyes bright with fun.
“Can’t you see I’m busy?” he demanded. “I don’t have time to play every five damn minutes. One of us has to make a living.”
Simon turned back to the standing wine cabinet—a thing of beauty, if he did say so himself—of wild cherry and ebony. He used wood glue to affix the last of the trim while the dog attacked his bootlaces. Struggling to focus on the work, Simon shook the dog off, picked up a clamp. Shook, glued, shook, clamped.
Jaws’s growls and happy yips mixed with the U2 he’d chosen as shop music for the morning.
He ran his fingers over the smooth, silky wood, nodded.
When he walked over to check the seams on a pair of rockers, he dragged the dog with him through the sawdust.
He supposed Jaws had conned him into playing after all.
He worked for nearly two hours, alternately dragging the dog, chasing him down, ordering himself to stop and walk the dog out to what he’d dubbed Shitville.
The break wasn’t so bad, he decided. It gave him a chance to clear his mind, to take in the mild air and the bright sun. He never tired of watching the way the light—sun or moon—played over the sound that formed his narrow link between the island’s saddlebags of land.
He liked standing on his rise and listening to the subtle and steady music of the water below, or sitting for a while on the porch of his shop and contemplating the thick forest that closed him in as the sound opened him out.
He’d moved to the island for a reason, after all.
For the solitude, the quiet, the air, the abundance of scenery.
Maybe, in some convoluted way, his mother had been right to foist a dog on him. It forced him to get outside—which was a big part of the purpose of relocating. Gave him a chance to look around, relax, get in tune with what moved around him. Air, water, trees, hills, rocks—all potential inspirations for a design.
Colors, shapes, textures, curves and angles.
This little chunk of land, the woods and the water, the rocky slope, the chip and chatter of birds instead of cars and people offered exactly what he’d been after.
He decided he’d build himself a sturdy bench for this spot, something rustic and organic. Teak, he thought, reclaimed if he could find it, with arms wide enough to hold a beer.
He turned back to his shop for paper to sketch ideas on and remembered the dog.
He called, annoyed the pup wasn’t sniffing around his feet as he seemed prone to do half the time so he ended up tripping over the damn dog or stepping on him.
He called again, then again. Cursing while a messy brew of annoyance, guilt and panic stirred up in his belly, Simon began the hunt.
He looked back in the shop to see if the dog had backtracked to wreak destruction, around the building, in the brush and shrubs while he called and whistled. He scanned the slope leading down to the water, and the skinny lane leading from the house to the road.
He looked under the shop porch, then hiked to the house to circle it, check under the porches there.
Not a sign.
He was a dog, for God’s sake, Simon told himself. He’d come back. He was a little dog, so how far could he go? Reassuring himself, he walked back to the shop where he’d last seen the damn troublemaker and started into the woods.
Now, with his interlude of peace shattered, the play of light and shadow, the sigh of wind, the tangled briars all seemed ominous.
Could a hawk or an owl snag a dog that size? he wondered. Once, he’d thought he spotted a bald eagle. But . . .
Sure, the pup was little, but he was solid.
Stopping, he took a breath to reassure himself he wasn’t panicked. Not in the least. Pissed off, that’s what he was. Seriously pissed off at having to waste the time and energy hunting for a stupid puppy he’d imagined braining with a mallet.
Christ.
He bellowed the dog’s name—and finally heard the answering yips. Yips, Simon determined, as the nerves banging in his gut settled down, that didn’t sound remotely scared or remorseful but full of wild joy.
“Goddamn it,” he muttered but, determined to be cagey, tried for the same happy tone in his call. “Come on, Jaws, you little bastard. Here, boy, you demon from hell.”
He quickened his steps toward the sound of puppy pleasure until he heard the rustling in the brush.
The pup emerged, filthy, and manfully dragging what appeared to be the decaying corpse of a very large bird.
And he’d actually worried a very large bird would get the dog? What a joke.
“Jesus Christ, put that thing down. I mean it.”
Jaws growled playfully, eyes alight, and dragged his find backward.
“Here! Now! Come!”
Jaws responded by hauling the corpse over, sitting and offering it. “What the hell am I supposed to do with that?” Judging the timing, Simon grabbed the dog and booted what was left of the bird back into the brush. Jaws wiggled, struggling for freedom.
“This isn’t a game of fet—Don’t say the f word. On the other hand, f**k, f**k, f**k!” He held the dog aloft. The stench was unspeakable.
“What did you do, roll in it? For God’s sake, why?”
With no other choice, Simon tucked the odorous dog firmly under his arm and, breathing through his teeth, hiked back to the house.
On the way back he considered and dismissed hosing the dog off. No way a hosing would combat the smell—even if he could keep the dog still long enough. He considered a bath, wished he had a galvanized tub—and shackles. An indoor bath gave him visions of a flooded bathroom.
On his porch he managed to take off his boots while Jaws bathed his face in loving, death-smell kisses. He tossed his wallet on a table when he went inside and straight up to the shower.
When he’d closed them both in, Simon stripped down to boxers, ignoring the dog while Jaws attacked jeans and shirt. Then he turned on the spray.
“Deal with it,” Simon suggested when Jaws bashed into the tile, then the glass door in a bid to escape.
Teeth set, Simon picked up the soap.
THEY WERE LATE. Fiona checked the time again, shrugged and continued to fill a pot with pansies and trails of vinca. She’d simply have to train Simon to respect her schedule, but for the moment having the luxury of a bit of gardening satisfied her. Her dogs snoozed nearby, and she had a rocking mix on her iPod.
If her new students didn’t show, she’d get the second planter done, then maybe take her boys for a little hide-and-seek in the woods.
The day, sunny and mild, all blue skies and pretty breezes, was meant to be enjoyed.
She studied her work, fluffed petals, then started the second pot.
She spotted the truck.
“That’s Simon,” she said when her dogs rose. “Simon and Jaws.” And went back to her pansies.
She continued to plant as man and dog got out of the truck, as her dogs greeted them—as man waded through the dogs. And took her time placing the next cell pack of pansies, precisely.
When Simon tapped her shoulder, she pulled out her earbuds. “Sorry, did you say something?”
“We’re probably late.”
“Uh-huh.” She patted dirt.
“There were circumstances.”
“The world’s full of them.”
“We had a large share of the world’s circumstances, but the biggest involved the dead bird.”
“Oh?” Fiona glanced over at the puppy, now engaged in fierce tug-of-war with Bogart. “Did he get a bird?”
“Something else got the bird, days ago from the look—and smell—of it.”
“Ah.” She nodded and, deciding to take pity, pulled off her gloves. “Did he bring it to you?”
“Eventually. After he rolled in it for a while.”
“How’d he handle the bath?”
“We had a shower.”
“Really?” She swallowed back the laugh since he didn’t look inclined to appreciate it. “How’d that work out?”
“After he stopped trying to butt his way through the shower door and eat the soap, okay. Actually, he liked it. We may have found a shaky foot-hold of mutual ground.”
“It’s a start. What did you do with the corpse?”
“The bird?” He stared at her, wondering why the hell she’d care. “I kicked it back in the brush. I had my hands full with the dog.”
“You’d better bag it and dispose of it. Otherwise, he’s going to find it again first chance he gets.”
“Great. Perfect.”
“Smells are a dog’s crack. He did what instinct told him to do.” And the human, she decided, had done just as he should—except call and tell her he’d be late. “Given the circumstances, I’ll give you the full session. Did you do your homework?”
“Yeah, yeah. Yes,” he corrected when Fiona raised an eyebrow. “He’ll sit on command—almost every time. He’ll come on command when he damn well feels like it. Since we were here last, he’s tried or succeeded in eating a TV remote, a pillow, an entire roll of toilet paper, part of a stair tread, most of a bag of barbecue potato chips, two chairs and a mallet. And before you ask, yes, I corrected and replaced. He doesn’t give a damn.”
“Learn to puppy-proof,” she advised with no particular sympathy. “Jaws!” Fiona clapped her hands to get his attention, held them out in invitation and smiled. “Come. Jaws, come!”
He bounded over to scrabble at her knees. “Good dog!” She pulled a treat out of her pocket. “What a good dog.”
“Bullshit.”
“There’s that positive attitude and reinforcement!”
“You don’t live with him,” Simon muttered.
“True enough.” Deliberately, she set her trowel on the steps. “Sit.” Jaws obeyed and accepted another treat, more praise, more rubs.
And she watched his eyes shift over to the trowel.
When she set her hands on her knees, he struck, fast as a whiplash, and with the trowel in his teeth raced away.
“Don’t chase him.” Fiona grabbed Simon’s hand as he turned. “He’ll only run and make it a game. Bogart, bring me the rope.”
She sat where she was, the rope in her hand, and called Jaws. He raced forward, then away again.
“See, he’s trying to bait us into it. We respond, go after him, he’s won the round.”
“It seems to me if he eats your tool, he’s won.”
“It’s old, but in any case, he doesn’t know he’s won unless we play. We don’t play. Jaws! Come!” She pulled another treat out of her pocket. After a brief debate, the pup loped back to her.
“This is not yours.” She pried his mouth open, took the trowel, shook her head. “Not yours. This is yours.” And passed him the rope.
She set the trowel down again, and again he lunged for it. This time, Fiona slapped her hand on it, shook her head. “Not yours. This is yours.”
She repeated the process, endlessly patient, schooling Simon along the way. “Try not to say no too often. You should reserve it for when you need or want him to stop instantly. When it’s important. There, see, he’s lost interest in the trowel. We won’t play. But we’ll play with the rope. Grab the other end, give him a little game of tug.”
Simon sat beside her, used the rope to pull the dog in, gave it slack, tugged side to side. “Maybe I’m just not cut out for a dog.”
Willing to give some sympathy now, she patted Simon’s knee. “This from a man who takes showers with his puppy?”
“It was necessary.”
“It was clever, efficient and inventive.” And they both smelled of soap and . . . sawdust, she realized. Very nice. “He’ll learn. You’ll both learn. How about the housebreaking?”
“Actually, that’s working.”
“Well, there you go. You’ve both learned how to handle that, and he sits on command.”
“And wanders into the forest to roll in dead bird, eats my universal remote.”
“Simon, you’re such a Pollyanna.”
He sent her a narrow stare and only made her laugh. “You’re making progress. Work on training him to come, every time you call. Every time. It’s essential. We’ll work on some leash training, then give him a refresher on coming.”
As she rose, she saw the cruiser heading down her lane. “It’s a good time to teach him not to run toward a car—and not to jump on a visitor. Keep him controlled, talk to him.”
She waved and waited for Davey to pull up and get out of the car. “Hi, Davey.”
“Fee. Hi, guys, how’s it going?” He bent to rub black, yellow and brown fur. “Sorry, Fee, I didn’t know you had a lesson going.”
“No problem. This is Simon Doyle and Jaws. Deputy Englewood.”
“Right, you bought the Daubs’ place a few months back. Nice to meet you.” Davey nodded at Simon, then crouched to greet the puppy. “Hey, little fella. I don’t want to interrupt,” he said as he scratched and rubbed the exuberant Jaws. “I can wait until you’re done.”
“It’s okay. Simon, why don’t you get the leash, do a little solo work on heeling? I’ll be right there. Is there a problem, Davey?” she murmured when Simon walked to his truck.
“Why don’t we take a little walk ourselves?”
“Okay, now you’re scaring me. Did something happen? Syl?”
“Syl’s fine, far as I know.” But Davey put a hand on her shoulder, steered her into a walk toward the side of the house. “We got some news today, and the sheriff thought, since we go back, I should come talk to you about it.”
“About what?”
“A woman went missing mid-January back in California. Sacramento area. Went out for a jog one morning and didn’t come back. They found her about a week later in Eldorado National Forest, shallow grave. An anonymous tip gave them the basic direction.”
She swallowed the flutter in her throat and said nothing.
“Ten days ago, another woman went out for a morning run in Eureka, California.”
“Where did they find her?”
“Trinity National Forest. The first woman, she was nineteen. The second was twenty. College students. Outgoing, athletic, single. Both had part-time jobs. The first worked as a bartender, the second in a bookstore. They both were taken down with a stun gun, then bound with nylon rope, gagged with duct tape. Both were strangled with a red scarf left on the body.”
She couldn’t feel the flutters now, not when her body had gone numb. “And tied in a bow.”
“Yeah, and tied in a bow.”
Fiona pressed a hand to her heart, felt it pounding. “Perry’s in prison. He’s still in prison.”
“He’s never getting out, Fee. He’s locked up, locked down.”
“It’s a copycat.”
“It’s more than that.” He reached out, gave her shoulders a rub. “It’s more than that, Fee. There are details the Perry investigation didn’t release, like how Perry took a lock of hair from his victims and wrote a number on the back of their right hand.”
Already the numbness was wearing off. She wanted it back, wanted it to block this sickness roiling in her belly. “He told someone, or one of the investigators did—someone in the crime lab or the medical examiner’s office.”
Davey kept his eyes on hers, his hands on her shoulders. “Has to be. They’re going to track that down.”
“Don’t treat me like an idiot, Davey. Any of dozens of people could’ve passed that information on. It’s been nearly eight years since . . .”
“I know. I’m sorry, Fee. I want you to know the cops are all over this. We wanted you to be informed, and it’s likely the media’s going to make the connection pretty quick. They might poke at you about it.”
“I can handle the press. Greg’s family?”
“They’re being notified, too. I know this is hard for you, Fee, but I don’t want you to worry. They’ll get him. And as bad as it is, this ass**le’s sticking to Perry’s pattern. Young college girls. You’re not twenty anymore.”
“No.” She bore down to keep her voice steady. “But I’m the only one who got away.”
SIMON DIDN’T HAVE TO HEAR the conversation to know something was wrong. Bad news or trouble, maybe both. He couldn’t see why Fiona would want anyone around—especially when the anyone was the next thing to a stranger.
He considered loading the dog back in the truck and taking off. It would be rude, but he didn’t particularly mind rude.
But it also seemed downright cold, and that he did mind.
He’d just wait until the deputy left, let the woman make whatever excuses suited her, then escape. Nobody lost face.
Plus, miracle of miracles, he was actually getting Jaws to heel about thirty percent of the time. Even the pup’s cooperation stemming from having the other dogs stroll along, stop on command, didn’t negate success.
So he could go home flush from that, get a little more work done, then have a beer.
Take the dead bird out of the equation and it added up to a pretty good day.
When the cruiser headed out, he expected Fiona to wander over, make those excuses, then go handle whatever needed handling.
Instead, she stood where she was for several minutes, just staring out at the road. Then she walked back to the porch steps, sat. And sat.
So he’d make the excuses, Simon decided. Easy enough. Just remembered something I have to do. Dog’s coming along, blah, blah, see you.
He crossed toward her, pleased it only took a couple of tugs to have the pup fall in line. And as he approached, he saw she was dead white, and the hands clutched on her knees trembled lightly.
Crap.
With walking casually away no longer an option, he scooped up the puppy before Jaws could try to leap into her lap.
“Bad news,” he said.
“What?”
“The deputy brought bad news. Is Sylvia all right?”
“Yes. It’s not about Sylvia.”
Her dogs, sensing her mood, clustered around her. The big yellow Lab rested his head on her knee.
“Ah . . . we should . . .”
He watched her struggle to pull herself out of whatever hole she’d fallen into.
“We should work on sit and stay.”
“Not today.”
She looked up at him then, but he couldn’t translate what clouded her eyes. Grief ? Fear? Shock?
“No,” she agreed, “not today. Sorry.”
“No problem. I’ll see you next time.”
“Simon.” She drew a breath as he hesitated. “Would you mind . . . Could you stay for a while?”
He wanted to say no—wished he had it in him to say no. Maybe he’d have found it in him if it hadn’t been so obvious it was as hard for her to ask as for him to agree.
“All right.”
“Why don’t you let him run awhile. The big guys’ll watch him. Play,” she said as Simon unclipped the leash. “Stay close. Close,” she repeated, stroking fur. “Watch Jaws, go play.”
They whined a little, and each glanced back at her as they started into the yard.
“They know I’m upset. They’d rather stay until I’m not. You’d rather go.”
He sat beside her. “Yeah. I’m not much good at this kind of thing.”
“Not much good’s better than no good.”
“Okay. I guess you want to tell me the bad news.”
“I guess I do. It’ll get around the island anyway.”
Still, for a few moments she said nothing at all, then seemed to gather herself.
“Several years ago there was a series of abduction murders. Young women, ranging from eighteen to twenty-three. They were all college students, twelve of them over a three-year period. California, Nevada, Oregon, New Mexico, Washington state were either abduction sites or burial sites—or both.”
It rang a bell somewhere, dimly, but he said nothing.
“They were all the same type—not physically, as he crossed races and coloring, but basic body types and all college students, athletic, outdoorsy, outgoing. He’d stalk them for weeks once he’d chosen a target. Sometimes longer. Meticulous, patient, he’d record their routines, habits, wardrobe, friends, family, schedules. He used a tape recorder and kept a notebook. All of them either jogged or hiked or biked routinely. Habitually.”
She drew another breath and made him think of someone preparing to execute a surface dive in murky water.
“He preferred women who went out alone, early morning or dusk. He approached from the opposite direction—just another jogger, another hiker. And when he closed in, he used a stun gun to take them down. While they were incapacitated, he carried them to his car. He had the trunk lined with plastic so there’d be no trace on the bodies, and no trace of them in the trunk.”
“Thorough,” Simon said, thinking out loud.
“Yes. Very.” She continued briskly, without inflection, like a woman giving a report she knew by rote. “He bound them with nylon cord, gagged them with duct tape, then gave them a mild sedative to keep them under, keep them quiet. He’d drive to a national park. He’d already have the spot picked out. While the search went on for her, in the area she’d been abducted, he was hours away, forcing this groggy, terrified woman to walk, through the dark, off the trail.”
Now her voice hitched, a quick tremble as she linked her fingers together in her lap and stared straight ahead. “He dug the grave first—not too deep. He wanted them to be found. He liked them to watch him dig so he tied them to a tree. They couldn’t beg, couldn’t even ask him why because he kept them gagged the entire time. He didn’t rape them or torture them, physically. Or beat them or mutilate them. He just took out the red scarf and, while they were bound and gagged, unable to defend themselves, strangled them. He tied it in a bow when he was finished, and buried them.”
“The Red Scarf Killer. That’s what the press called him,” Simon commented. “I remember this. They caught him after he shot some cop.”
“Greg Norwood. The cop was Greg Norwood, and his dog, his K-9 partner, Kong.”
The words throbbed in the air between them like an open wound.
“You knew him.”
“Perry laid in wait for them. Greg had a place, a nice little weekend place near Lake Sammamish. He liked to take Kong there, work on his training. Once a month, just the two of them. Boy-bonding, he called it.”
She laid her hands on her knees, a casual gesture, but he saw the way her fingers dug in.
“He shot Greg first, and maybe that was his mistake. He put two bullets in Kong, but Kong kept coming. That’s what they reconstructed, and that’s what Perry said happened, trading confessions, information, details against the threat of the death penalty when he knew he’d lose the trial. Kong tore Perry up pretty good before he died. Perry was strong, and he managed to get back to his car, even drove a few miles before he passed out, wrecked. Anyway, they got him. Greg, he was strong, too. He lived two days. That was in September. September twelfth. We were going to be married the following June.”
Useless words, Simon thought, but they had to be said. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too. He staked Greg out for months, maybe longer. Meticulous, patient. He killed him to pay me back. See, I was supposed to be his number thirteen, but I got away.”
She closed her eyes briefly. “I want a drink. Do you want a drink?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
When she rose and went in, he debated going with her, and decided maybe she needed a little time to pull it together.
He remembered bits and pieces of the story. Remembered now there’d been a girl who escaped, and who gave the FBI a description of the man who abducted her.
Years ago, he thought now, and tried to think what he’d been doing when the story had been hot.
He just hadn’t paid that much attention, he thought now. He’d been, what, about twenty-five? He’d just moved to Seattle and had been trying to build a reputation, make a living. And his father had that cancer scare about that time. That had eclipsed everything else.
She came out with a couple glasses of white wine.
“It’s an Aussie chardonnay. All I’ve got, apparently.”
“It’s fine.” He took the glass, and they sat in silence, watching the heap of dogs who’d decided to take a nap. “Do you want to tell me how you got away?”
“Luck, on the heels of stupidity. I shouldn’t have been out alone that morning on that jogging path. I should’ve known better. My uncle’s a cop, and I was already seeing Greg, and they’d both made a point of telling me not to run without a partner. But I couldn’t get one who’d keep up with me. Track star,” she added with a ghost of a smile.
“You’ve got the legs for it.”
“Yeah. Lucky me. I didn’t listen to them. Perry hadn’t crossed over to Washington at that point, and there hadn’t been an abduction for months. You never think it’s going to be you. You especially never think that when you’re twenty. I went out for my run. I liked to go early, then hit the coffee shop. It was a crappy day, gloomy, rainy, but I loved running in the rain. This was early November, the year before Greg died. I had a second, just a second when I saw him. So ordinary-looking, so pleasant, but I had that click. I had a panic button on my key chain. I even reached for it, but it was too late. I felt that shock of pain, then nothing works.”
She had to stop a moment, had to breathe. “Nothing works,” she repeated. “Pain, shock, then numb, useless. I felt sick when I came to in the trunk. It was dark, and I felt the movement, the sound of the tires on the road. Can’t scream, can’t kick, can hardly move.”
She stopped, breathed it out, took a slow sip of wine. “I cried awhile because he was going to kill me and I couldn’t stop him. He was going to kill me because I wanted to take a morning run by myself. I thought about my family, and Greg, my friends, my life. I stopped crying and got mad. I hadn’t done anything to deserve this.”
She stopped again, drank again while the breeze whispered through the pines. “And I had to pee. That was humiliating, and as stupid as it is, the thought that I’d pee my pants before he killed me just revved me up. So I’m fighting that, sort of squirming around, and I felt the lump in my pocket. I had a hidden pocket in my jogging pants—one of those inside-the-back deals. Greg had given me this little Swiss Army knife.” She reached in the pocket of her jeans, pulled it out.
“Tiny little knife, cute little scissors, mini nail file. A girl knife.” She closed her hand around it. “It saved my life. He’d taken my keys, the coffee money I had zipped in my jacket pocket, but he hadn’t thought of the inner pocket in the pants. Couldn’t know it was there, I guess. My hands were tied behind my back. I could just reach it. I think I was most scared then, when I managed to get the knife, when I started to think maybe, maybe there was a way out.”
“Can I see it?” When she offered it, Simon opened it, studied the knife in the bright afternoon sun. Half as long as his thumb, he thought. “You cut through the nylon cord with this?”
“Cut, sawed, hacked. It took me forever just to get it open, or it seemed like it, and a lifetime to saw through the rope. I had to cut through the one around my ankles because I couldn’t loosen the knot. First I was terrified he’d stop the car before I’d finished, then I was terrified he’d never stop that f**king car. But he did. He did, and he got out whistling a tune. I’ll never forget that sound.”
He thought of it—a girl, trapped, terrified, very likely bloody where the cords had cut into her. And armed with a knife barely more lethal than a thumbtack.
“I put the duct tape back over my mouth.”
She said it so calmly now, so matter-of-factly that he turned his head to stare at her.
“And I wound the rope around my ankles, put my hands behind my back. I closed my eyes. When he opened the trunk, he kept right on whistling.
“He leaned in, tapped my cheek to bring me around. And I stuck that little knife in him. I’d hoped for the eye, but I missed and got him in the face. Still it surprised him, hurt him enough to give me a second. I rammed my fist into his face and swung my legs around and kicked. Not as hard as I wanted because the rope got tangled some, but hard enough to knock him back so I could get out. The shovel was right there, where he’d dropped it when I stabbed him. I grabbed it and I slammed it against his head—a couple of times. I got his keys. I’m still a little blurry on all of it—shock, adrenaline, they said—but I got in the car and floored it.”
“You knocked him out and drove away,” Simon murmured, stunned and fascinated.
“I didn’t know where I was, where I was going, and I’m lucky I didn’t kill myself, but I drove like a bat out of hell. There was a lodge, a hotel—I saw the lights. He’d taken me into the Olympic National Forest. They called the rangers, and the rangers called in the FBI and so on and so on. He got away, but I gave them a description. They had the car, his name, his address. Or the one he had on record. And still, he eluded them for nearly a year. Until he shot Greg and Kong, and Kong stopped him. Kong gave his life to stop him.”
She took the knife back, slipped it into her pocket.
“You seem like a fairly smart woman,” Simon commented after a few moments. “So you know that what you did saved other women. The bastard’s put away, right?”
“Multiple and consecutive life terms. They made the deal after I testified, after he realized he’d be convicted for Greg, for me, and he’d face the death penalty.”
“Why’d they deal?”
“For confessions on Greg, on me, on the other twelve victims, for the whereabouts of his notebooks, his tapes, for closure for the families of the murdered women. For answers. And the certainty he’d never get out.”
She nodded as if to a question in her head. “I always thought it was the right thing to do. It gave me, strangely enough, relief to hear him go through all of it, step by step, and to know he’d pay for it, for all of it, for a very, very long time. I wanted to put it behind me, close the door. My father died just nine weeks later. So suddenly, so unexpectedly, and the bottom dropped out again.”
She rubbed her hands over her face. “Horrible times. I came out to stay with Syl for a few weeks, a couple months, I thought, but I realized I didn’t want to go back. I needed to start over, and I wanted to start over here. So I did, and most of the time that door stays closed.”
“What opened it today?”
“Davey came to tell me someone is using Perry’s pattern, including details that weren’t released to the public. There’ve been two so far. In California. It’s started again.”
Questions circled in his head, but he didn’t ask them. She was done, he thought. Purged what she’d needed to purge for now.
“Rough on you. Brings it all back, makes it now instead of then.”
Again she closed her eyes, and her whole body seemed to relax. “Yes. Yes, exactly. God, maybe it’s stupid, but it really helps to have someone say that. To have someone get that. So thanks.”
She laid a hand on his knee, a brief connection. “I have to go in, make some calls.”
“Okay.” He handed her the glass. “Thanks for the drink.”
“You earned it.”
Simon walked over to pick up the puppy, who immediately started bathing his face as if they’d been parted for a decade.
As he drove away, he glanced back to see Fiona going inside, closely followed by her dogs.
