“Just move me out of your way if I’m in it,” he said, ruffled.
She wasn’t listening, staring instead at the map on Wy’s wall. “Okay,” she said, scribbling. One sticky note with a name and a date went on the map at Nenevok Creek, another at Kagati Lake, a third at Weary River. “All right. Who else?”
“I worked backwards, most recent reported disappearances first. Cheryl Montgomery disappeared right off of Four Lake two years ago. She was an experienced backwoodsman, too, someone you wouldn’t think of getting lost.”
Jo inspected the face smiling up at her from the monitor. “She’s lovely.”
“Yeah. And lost.”
“Okay.” A fourth sticky note at Four Lake. “Who else?”
“In 1992, Brandi-with ani -Whitaker was mushing the Kuskokwim 500. She disappeared along with her whole team. Everybody figured they’d fallen into a lead. There wasn’t much fuss; she didn’t have much family and she wasn’t that good a musher.”
A fifth sticky note went up. “Next?”
“In 1991, Ruby Nunapitchuk. Then back four years, and Kristen Anderson goes missing. Fisherman’s wife, out of Koggiling. She was alone at fish camp. When her husband came to pick her up, she was gone. Salmon on the drying racks, but the fire had been cold for at least a day. Again, there is no hint of foul play in the case file. They had a good reputation in Koggiling. Three kids, sober, well liked.”
A sixth sticky note.
“And then as far back as I’ve been so far, 1986, Paulette Gustafson.”
“Same year as Whitaker?”
“Yeah.”
Then it hit her. “Gustafson?”
“Yeah?”
“As in former state senator Ted Gustafson?”
“Yeah.”
“Wy mentioned him. He’s on her mail route. The diabetic.”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t believe she stayed missing for long.”
“She still is, despite what looks like a full-scale search effort from everyone from the Alaska state troopers to the FBI.”
“The FBI?”
He shrugged. “There are references made to them; I haven’t tracked them down yet.”
“What was she doing here?”
“Visiting high school friends. She was a bit of a rounder, it sounds like. She and a group of her old high school buddies drove up to the One Lake campground, had from what all accounts say was one hell of a party, and when everybody woke up three days later to pack up and go home, Paulette Gustafson was missing.”
“They never found her.”
“Nope.”
A seventh sticky note. Jo stood back and stared at the map, festooned now with what she considered to be entirely too many little yellow flags. “Seven in, what, twelve years?”
“Thirteen. And this is only so far as we know, remember. Only what has made it into the trooper data bank.”
Behind them, Bridget toted up some impossible score and pegged out, and suffered Luke’s mock displeasure with a complacent air.
Jo took a deep, careful breath. “You mean-”
“I mean there might be more,” he said bluntly. “How many little villages out there who never call the troopers if they can possibly help it? How many kids drown in the river without anybody ever knowing, with their people chalking it up to Maniilaq or whatever malevolent spirit happens to be flitting through at that time of year? A lot of these folks haven’t made it into the twentieth century yet, Jo, never mind the twenty-first.”
She stared at the map, her skin cold. “Seven women, all young, all disappeared within sixty miles of one another, all within the space of thirteen years.” She looked at him. “How can no one have noticed?”
He shook his head. “None of them are related. Half of them are from Anchorage. Four, five of them were engaging in high-risk activities, hunting, canoeing, mushing. You’re a reporter, Jo, you’ve written enough stories about this kind of thing, you know it happens.”
She pointed, one at a time. “Paulette Gustafson, 1986. Same year, Kristen Anderson. A five-year gap between her and Ruby Nunapitchuk in 1991. A year after her, Brandi Whitaker. Two years after Brandi, Stella Silverthorne. Three years after Stella, Cheryl Montgomery.”
“And now, two years later, Rebecca Hanover.”
They stared at the map in silence for a moment. The shuffle of cards and the murmur of voices behind them seemed very far away.
She looked at him, her eyes glittering. “Seven times is a serial killer, Jim. We need to talk to Liam.”
He looked past her out the window. “Right about now, he should be busting up the party at Old Man Creek. If Wy managed to get them down without wrecking the plane.”
Jo didn’t even bristle. “Then let’s go see Prince.”
Old Man Creek, September 6
“Where’s Tim?” Wy shoved past Liam into the cabin. Tim was sitting at the table, across from Amelia, one hand full of cards, his mouth open as he stared up at Wy. She felt a sense of overwhelming relief sweep over her, a relaxation of a thrumming, all-consuming tension she didn’t even know she had been experiencing. She didn’t miss a step, she walked straight to him and pulled him up into her arms. “Oh, Tim,” she said, rocking him a little. “Oh, Tim.”
He squirmed in her embrace. “Mom, c’mon.” He slanted a sideways look at the girl across the table.
Liam’s eyes went to the woman lying in the bunk. “Who is that?” he said sharply.
She didn’t stir, but Bill snapped, “Keep your voice down.”
“Who is it?”
“We don’t know. She staggered in here about four hours ago and passed out.”
Liam nudged Wy. “Is that her?”
She tore her eyes from Tim and walked over to the bunk to look down into the woman’s face. “Yes. This is Rebecca Hanover.”
“Is that her name?” Bill said.
“Is she armed?” Liam said.
Moses surveyed him with an irritated expression. “ ‘Is she armed?’ She’s damn near dead, is what she is.”
“Her husband is dead. Murdered. Blasted away with a shotgun.”
They all looked at Rebecca Hanover. Her eyes moved restlessly beneath closed lids. Her skin was waxen, her hair tangled with twigs and pine needles. She whimpered a little, stirred, one hand half raised in a protective gesture. They could see the broken nails, the dried blood and dirt beneath them. One shoulder was bandaged. She subsided again into an uneasy sleep.
“Sanctuary,” Tim said.
Everyone turned to look at him. He flushed. “That’s what she said. It’s the only thing she said after we got her into the bed. ‘Sanctuary.’ ”
“What’s that mean?” Amelia said.
“In olden times,” Tim said, “people who were being chased could run into a church and the cops couldn’t get them. Sanctuary. I read about it in a book once,” he added.
“Oh.” Amelia had never read anything that hadn’t been assigned as homework. “Could bad guys run into the church, too?”
Tim looked at Bill. “Yes,” she said. “Bad guys could run into the church, too.”
Amelia looked at Rebecca Hanover, and with the devastating single-mindedness of the young said, “So just because they ask for sanctuary doesn’t mean they didn’t do it.”
Liam started forward, hand out to wake Rebecca Hanover. Moses got in his way. “I’ve got to talk to her, Moses,” Liam said.
“No you don’t,” Moses said. “She didn’t kill anybody.”
The voices tell you so? Liam wanted to say. “At the very least,” he said, “she’s a material witness to the death of her husband. I have to talk to her. Let me wake her up.”
“She’ll wake up in her own good time,” Moses said flatly. “And no,” he said pointedly, “they didn’t. They haven’t been real mouthy on this trip.”
Liam cleared his throat and couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Standoff.
“No one is going anywhere in this pea soup anyway,” Bill said practically, defusing the tension. “You’ll have plenty of time to wait for her to wake up. She’s not going anywhere. Amelia, make some more coffee. Tim, get down two more mugs. Are you hungry? How about a tuna fish sandwich? I’ll just-”