“So, Donovan,” Parrish said when they had climbed down from the cave, “you have tracking experience. Where did she go?”
He had expected this, and answered honestly, pointing out trampled foliage that would have been obvious to anyone. He was not especially comfortable having Parrish and Kai at his back, but as he suspected would happen, after about half an hour of following him, Parrish insisted on taking the lead.
“Kai, you’ll be behind Donovan. Keep your weapon out. Don’t take your eyes off him.”
Donovan watched Kai for the slightest sign of rebellion. He had been encouraged by Kai’s earlier anger with Parrish, but now he saw a look come into his eyes that put an end to any hope that his half brother might be turned away from worshiping Parrish.
“And Donovan,” Parrish said, “give your gun to Kai.”
If this was going to escalate to a pat-down, Donovan thought, now would be the moment to go for broke. He didn’t hide his wariness but handed over the automatic. Parrish watched him, then said, “I think I’ll also ask you to leave the backpack here. I don’t want to take the time to search it now, but I also don’t want to find out you’ve provided yourself with an extra weapon.”
Donovan opened his mouth as if to protest, then closed it. He shrugged and took off the pack, leaning it against a tree.
Parrish smiled. “All right, let’s get going. She can’t be too much farther ahead of us.”
FORTY-EIGHT
Frank had the maps with him.
Topo maps, creased and worn, maps he had thought of throwing away a dozen times or more. But once they had guided him to where he had found Irene, Ben, and Bingle, and brought them home.
Travis and Jack and Frank’s own dogs had been with him then, too. Along with Stinger Dalton, a pilot who had later taught Travis to fly. Stinger was in Hawaii this week and would undoubtedly be pissed off that he had missed being part of this second hunt.
They had laid the maps out at Stinger’s place and marked them up based on what they knew from various reports about where Parrish might have taken a group of searchers. Stinger had helped Frank to reason out where Parrish was most likely to be. The maps still bore those markings.
Even though he had not since been back to the area they flew over now, Frank thought he could have found it in his sleep. It had been, after all, a place of waking nightmares.
Frank looked down on the pristine expanse of white below him and saw it as he had seen it that day in May, a bloodied field covered with the remains of his colleagues and, as he had at first feared, perhaps his wife’s as well. He shook himself. She had not died there. She was not, he told himself fiercely, dead now.
He glanced over and saw that Ben was looking pale. As hard as this was for Frank, it had to be a thousand times worse for Ben. “You okay?” he asked over his headset.
Ben shook his head no but kept staring down at the meadow.
The last time they had been here, Ben’s closest friend had been murdered. Ben had left on a stretcher, airlifted in this helicopter.
The vista below was beautiful and serene.
Everything changes, Frank thought, and forced his mind back to the present.
Travis brought the helicopter as low as he could without allowing its downwash to disturb the snow. Even studying the meadow with field glasses, Frank could see no signs of human tracks.
They had already looked in another meadow, one Parrish had also been known to use. They had even explored the ridge between the two meadows. Travis had set the big Sikorsky down there, not far from where it had rested once before. They had trudged through the snow, looking for any sign that Parrish had come back here, even hiked up to a shallow cave, one of the places Irene had told Frank about after she was rescued. But the cave was clearly long-abandoned. Other than stretching their legs and giving the dogs a chance to get some exercise, nothing had been gained.
Travis’s voice came over the headset. “Pappy just contacted me,” he said, referring to the dispatcher at their home base. “Looks like that storm is slightly ahead of schedule.”
“Do we need to go back?”
“Not yet, but we probably only have another hour or so before we should either go back or put her down and wait it out. She can fly in rain and is designed to survive a lightning strike, but that can still lead to dangerous amounts of damage. I don’t want to risk it.”
“I don’t want anyone to have to rescue us,” Frank said.
“Do what you need to do.” They had all been patient with him, Frank thought. Good about keeping him distracted during the long flight up here. And it was beginning to look as if he had guessed wrong about where Parrish was going. He had thought of this area as Parrish’s comfort zone, but nothing said Parrish would stay true to that now, especially once it had been discovered. In Parrish’s view, the recovery of remains from this meadow was undoubtedly a desecration of his work.
“Wasn’t there a place he used as an airstrip?” Travis said.
“Yes,” Ben said. “We started out from there… the last time. We hiked up here from there.”
“Would it still be there?” Jack asked.
“Yes,” Frank said. “It belongs to the Forest Service. They use it to land fire crews-he just took advantage of it.” He looked it up on the map, then gave Travis the coordinates.
“Okay. Let’s head back that way and check it out. We can look from there, and if I need to land until the storm’s over, it might do the trick.”
They reached the airstrip. It was in a long, narrow valley, at a lower elevation than the meadows, and was free from snow. They let the dogs out again while Frank studied the maps.
Parrish had often flown his victims here in a small plane. That had been part of his M.O. Most killers who used the mountains for dumping grounds stayed close to roads-bodies are heavy, and it’s difficult to carry them far or bury them deep. Hiking any distance involves risking control over the victim, as well as hazarding being seen by others. Parrish took that gamble, sadistically forcing his victims to hike with him and to dig their own graves.
But this time, Parrish had come here in a car, not a plane. He knew the roads-including rough dirt roads and roads open only for use by the U.S. Forest Service. He had escaped from these mountains on just such roads.
And he wasn’t alone. He had at least two helpers with him. But were his sons used to being in the outdoors?
If he was here, Parrish hadn’t arrived by plane, and he couldn’t have reached this airstrip by car. What places, near his old killing grounds, could he reach by car?
Frank searched the maps for roads that were accessible by a car initially traveling from the south. A great many, but far fewer coming into this part of the wilderness. Fewer still anywhere near this airstrip. He included fire roads and roads that would be officially closed to the public by now. He spotted one, not all that far away.
He saw Travis standing on a slight rise, staring toward the north.
Frank called to him. When he came over, Frank said, “Take a look at this map. How long would it take us to reach this road?”
Travis studied the map, then pointed toward the area of sky he had been watching. “See those clouds? I’m concerned about that storm. I know you don’t want to hear this, and I don’t even want to be saying it, but it might be better to just sit tight and let it blow over. Let me see what I can find out about it, because it’s definitely going to affect what we can safely do.”
He went into the helicopter. Frank followed him, and the others, seeing them, returned, loading up the dogs and strapping them into their special safety harnesses.
The Sikorsky S-58T was a giant, over fifteen feet high and about forty-five feet long. It had been fitted with turbine engines and auxiliary fuel tanks. It could hold eighteen passengers, but the interior had been altered so that now-in addition to a crew of two in the cockpit, which was a separate area high above the cargo area-the cargo area had seats for ten passengers and carried two stretchers.