“What did Art say to you when he was first arrested?” Stride asked.
“That he didn’t do it.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Sure. He was a son of a bitch, but he was my dad. I didn’t want to think that he could be such a monster.”
“After the trial was over, did you ever wonder?” Stride asked.
“Wonder what?”
“Whether Art really did it.”
There was no answer behind him. Stride took a few more steps, then turned around. Chris had stopped where he was. It was hard to interpret the look on his face. Anger. Disbelief. Confusion.
“What the hell are you saying?” Chris asked.
“I’m not saying anything.”
“Art killed those women. You said so. The county attorney said so. The jury said so.”
“I know.”
“How could he be innocent? The women died here. They were all connected to Art. You found evidence in our house. You told me it didn’t point any other way.”
“That’s all true.”
Stride started walking again. Eventually, he heard the slushy footsteps of Chris catching up with him. They didn’t talk more as he pushed through the trees that grew across the trail. He stopped at the fringe of the clearing as the ruined cabin came into view. Chris stood beside him, and they both stared at it like it was a monument to bad history. Stride watched and listened. The cabin was deserted.
“Did you come out here much as a kid?” Stride asked.
“To the cabin? Not very often. It was pretty rustic. I remember the spiders and the wasp nests. It scared me to sleep here, so I didn’t like it. Art was a hunter. Me, not so much. I didn’t really see the point.”
Stride knew Chris was cold and wanted to leave. The man danced on his feet impatiently, and his nose ran.
“How did you write the script for Aimee’s scenes?” Stride asked in a low voice.
“What do you mean?”
“How did you make it convincing? We didn’t release much information to the public.”
“You released transcripts of the audiotapes,” Chris said.
“But that’s all we did. Nothing else. What the women said on the tapes was coached. It wasn’t really them talking. I was just wondering how you got inside their heads for the movie.”
“Well, that’s what writers do. We put ourselves inside someone else’s life.”
Stride nodded. “There was something strange in Aimee’s message on the tape. She used your words.”
“My words?”
“She took it straight from the film script. Do you have any idea why she would do that?”
“No.”
“Serena thinks she was sending us some kind of message,” Stride said.
“I don’t know what it could be. Aimee’s an actor. Actors memorize lines. If she was under pressure, maybe that’s all she could think to say.”
“You said Aimee liked to improvise. After the first take, she almost never stuck to the script.”
“That’s true.”
“So I wonder why she would go back to your original words right now.”
“I can’t explain it, Lieutenant.”
Stride nodded. “Okay. That’s fine. You can leave now if you want, Chris. You look like you’re freezing.”
“I am.”
Chris turned around and hiked at a fast pace back into the woods, which swallowed him up quickly and left Stride alone. He waited until he couldn’t hear or see Chris at all, then made his way into the small clearing. The evidence of trespassers was everywhere. In the daylight, he could see the black scorch marks where the walls had burned and the open mouth of the caved-in roof. He walked all the way up to the front of the cabin, where he could see inside.
There had been a cage there eleven years ago. A box.
Not now. Now it was empty. He was in the wrong place.
But whoever took Aimee had expected him to come here. There was a fallen beam from the roof immediately inside the cabin, and someone had spray-painted a message in red across the timber.
It was the same message that had come with each dead body.
Serena arrived at Lori Fulkerson’s house while Lori was turning her Yaris off the gravel road into her yard. Both women got out into the cascading snow. Serena met Lori at the sagging wooden steps that led up to the storm door. Inside the house, her Yorkshire terrier jumped and pawed at the glass.
“Ms. Fulkerson, do you have a minute?” Serena asked.
“I have all day,” she replied. “The store closed because of the storm.”
Lori opened the door and scooped her dog off the floor. Serena followed the woman into the tiny, cluttered living room and had to sit on top of newspapers again. Lori sank into her recliner with the dog in her lap. The house was cold. Snow plastered over the windows made the interior dark and gloomy.
“What’s going on?” Lori asked.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen the news reports, but Aimee Bowe is missing.”
“Missing? What do you mean?”
“Her disappearance seems to be a replay of what happened to Art’s victims.”
“Art’s dead,” Lori said. “How could that be?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. I was wondering if you’d noticed any unusual activity around your house or in the neighborhood.”
“Do you think I’m in danger?” Lori asked.
“I don’t know. I hope not, but we’re not taking any chances. You’re one of only a handful of people with a direct connection to what happened back then. I’m going to ask a police officer to stay on the road outside and keep an eye on your house while we’re investigating. There’s probably no danger to you, but until we understand the threat, I’d rather be safe.”
“I have a dog,” Lori said.
Serena smiled. The Yorkie in Lori’s lap wasn’t two feet long from nose to tail. “And he does look ferocious, but I’d still like to have an officer close by.”
Lori shrugged. “Okay.”
“I know this is difficult, and I’m sure you went through it many times eleven years ago, but I was hoping you could tell me a little more about what you remember from your experience.”
“Inside the box? I already told Aimee more than I’ve ever told anyone else.”
“I meant the abduction itself. Were you conscious? Did you see or hear anything?”
“No. I was sleeping when he hit me in the head. I woke up in the box.”
“So you never actually saw Art Leipold?”
Lori’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What are you saying?”
“It’s just a question.”
“No, I didn’t see him,” she replied.
“When you made the audiotape, how did you know what to say?” Serena asked.
“There was a voice. He said if I wanted to be rescued, I had to beg for it. I had to ask to be saved. He told me the name I had to use. Jonathan Stride. He said he was the only man who could rescue me.”
“Did you recognize the voice? Did it sound familiar? Art was on television. His voice must have been pretty distinctive.”
“The voice was disguised,” Lori said. “Muffled. Whiny. He didn’t want me to recognize it.”
“Did you have some kind of connection with Art? The three earlier victims had all intersected with him at one point or another. I was wondering if that was true of you, too.”
Lori nodded. “I helped him on special orders for parts. He was a car collector. He was in the store a lot.”
“Did he pay any special attention to you?”
“I didn’t think so at the time, but I guess I was wrong. I’d only been back in town for a few months at that point. He used to ask me a lot of questions about growing up here and what it was like to move away and come back. I just figured he was making small talk.”
“What about Art’s son, Chris? Did you ever meet him?”