"Okay," Page said, 'let us in."
The manager opened the door with his key and stood aside. The room was dark, but someone had left the bathroom light on and it cast a pale glow over the empty room. Page flipped the light switch and looked around the room. The bed was undisturbed. Gordon's tan valise lay open on a baggage stand next to the dresser.
Page walked into the bathroom. A toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste and makeup were set out on the bathroom counter. Page pulled back the shower curtain. A bottle of shampoo rested on a ledge. Page stepped out of the bathroom.
"She unpacked in here. There's a shampoo bottle in the bathtub. It's not a motel sample. Looks like she was planning to take a shower."
"Someone interrupted her," Highsmith said, pointing at a half-opened dresser drawer. Some of Gordon's clothes lay in it, while others remained in the valise.
"she had a briefcase with her when we talked at my place. Do you see it?"
The two men searched the room, but they did not find the briefcase.
"Look at this," Highsmith said. He was standing next to the night table.
Page looked at a notepad with the motel logo that was next to the phone.
"Looks like directions. An address."
"Let's not touch it. I want a lab tech to dust the room. Treat it as a crime scene, until we know better."
"There's no sign of a struggle."
"There wasn't any at the homes of the missing women, either."
Highsmith nodded. "I'll call from the manager's office, in case there are prints on the phone."
"Do you have any idea where this is?" Page asked, as he reread the notes on the' pad.
Highsmith's brow furrowed for a moment, then he frowned. "As a matter of fact, I do. Remember I told you about the houses Darius bulldozed?
This sounds like the address."
"What's there now?"
"A block-wide empty lot. As soon as the neighbors saw what Darius did, they went nuts. There have been protests, lawsuits. Darius went — ahead with construction anyway and had three units built, but someone torched them. Construction's been halted ever since."
"I don't like this. How would anyone know where Where Gordon was? I'm the one who suggested the Lakeview "She could have phoned someone."
"No. I asked the manager. There weren't any outgoing calls. Besides, she doesn't know anyone in Portland.
That's why she came to my place. She 'assumed the person who sent her the anonymous letter would meet her at the airport, but no one showed. A clipping about me and my address were in with the note. If she knew anyone else, she would have spent the night with them."
"Then someone must have followed her from the airport to your place and from your place here."
"That's possible."
"What if that person waited until she was in the room, then phoned Gordon and asked her to come to the construction site."
"Or came here and talked Gordon into going with him or took her by force."
"Gordon's a detective," Highsmith said. "I mean, you'd think she would have enough sense to be careful."
Page thought about Gordon. Her edge, the tension in her body.
"she's driven, Randy. Gordon told me she stayed a cop so she could track down Lake. She's been on this case for ten years and she dreams about it. Gordon's smart, but she might not be smart where this case is concerned.
The building site was larger than Page imagined. The houses Darius had destroyed were built along a bluff overlooking the Columbia River. The land included a steep wooded hill that angled down toward the water. A high, chain link fence surrounded the property. A "Darius Construction-Absolutely No Trespassing" sign was fastened to the fence.
Page and Highsmith huddled under their umbrellas, the collars of their raincoats turned up around their cheeks, and studied the padlock on the gate.
The moon was full, but storm clouds scudded across it with great frequency. The heavy rain made the night as dark as it would have been with no moon.
"What do you think?" Highsmith asked.
"Let's walk along the fence to see if there's another entrance. There's no sign she came in here."
"These are new shoes," Highsmith complained.
Page started off along the periphery without answering. The ground had been stripped bare of grass during construction. Page felt the mud oozing around his shoes.
He peered through the fence as he walked, occasionally shining his flashlight inside the site. Most of the land was empty and flat where the bulldozers had done their work.
"Al, bring your- light here," Highsmith shouted.
He was pointing at a section of fence that had been cut and folded back.
Page ran over. He turned away for a second and clutched his collar closer to his neck.
"Look at this," Page said. He was standing under an ancient oak tree pointing the flashlight beam toward the ground. Tire tracks had gouged out the ground where they were standing. The canopy formed by the leaves covered the tracks. Page and Highsmith followed them away from the fence.
"Someone drove off the road across the field in this mud," Page said.
"Not necessarily tonight, though."
The tracks stopped at the street and disappeared.
The rain would have washed away the mud from the asphalt.
"I think the driver backed up to the fence, Al.
There's no sign that he turned around."
"Why back up? Why drive over to the fence at all and risk getting stuck in the mud?"
"What's in the back of a car?"
Page nodded, imagining Nancy Gordon folded in the confined space of a car trunk.
"Let's go," he said, heading back toward the hole in the fence. In his heart, Page knew she was down there, buried in the soft earth.
Highsmith followed him through. As he ducked, he snagged his coat on a jagged piece of wire. By the time he freed himself, Page was well ahead, obscured by the darkness, only the wavering beam of the flashlight showing his location.
"Do you see any tracks?" Highsmith asked when he caught up.
"Look out!" Page cried, grabbing Highsmith by his coat. Highsmith pulled up. Page shone his light down.
They were on the edge of a deep pit that had been gouged out of the earth for a foundation. Muddy walls sloped down toward the bottom, which was lost in darkness. Suddenly the moon appeared, bathing the bottom of the pit in a pale glow. The uneven surface cast shadows over rocks and mounds of dirt.
"I'm going down," Page said, as he went over the rim. He edged along the wall of the pit sideways, leaning into the slope and digging in with the sides of his shoes.
Halfway down, he slipped to one knee and slid along the smooth mud, stopping his descent by grabbing a protruding root. The root had been severed by a bulldozer blade.
The end came free of the mud, but Page slowed enough to dig in and stop his slide.
"You okay?" Highsmith called into the wind.
"yeah. Randy, get down here. Someone's been digging recently."
Highsmith swore, then started edging down the slope. When he reached the bottom, Page was wandering slowly over the muddy ground, studying everything that entered the beam of his flashlight. The ground looked as if it had been turned over recently. He examined it as closely as he could in the dark.
The wind died suddenly and Page thought he heard a sound. Something slithering in the shadows just out of his line of sight. He tensed, trying to hear above the wind, peering helplessly into the darkness.
When he convinced himself he was the victim of his imagination, he turned around and shone the light near the base of a steel girder. Page straightened suddenly and took a step back, catching his heel on a timber half-concealed in the mud.
He stumbled and the flashlight fell, its I)earn fanning out over the rain-soaked earth, catching something white in the light. A rock or a paper cup. Page knelt quickly and recovered the flashlight. He walked over to the object and squatted next to it. His breath caught in his chest.