“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-”
“What’s that?” Wy turned her head, listening.
“What?” Bill moved forward a step, and cursed the apprehensive note in her voice. She was nervous. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been nervous. She couldn’t have said why she was now.
Into it floated a voice, high, thin, thready. “Elaine. Elaine the fair. Elaine the lovable. Elaine, the lily maid. Come out, Elaine. Come out.”
On the bed, Rebecca whimpered without waking, her legs pumping against the blankets.
“What the hell?” Moses said, and went to the door.
“No, wait-” Liam said.
But Moses was before him and pulled the door open. “There’s no one named Elaine in here, but come on in and get out of the snow!”
The door pushed open against him and a man stood there.
“Gun!” Liam shouted, and Moses dropped into form one second too late. The weapon fired, the noise of the shot deafening everyone in the cabin, and Moses, foot half raised in something Liam recognized as the beginning of Kick Horizontally, crumpled to the floor without a sound.
Bill made a sound low in her throat and moved forward.
“Hold it,” the man said.
She either ignored him or didn’t hear him, dropping to her knees next to the old man, who suddenly looked infinitely older, whose blood welled red from beneath the fingers pressed to his side.
The man had a brown, seamed face surrounded by a halo of tangled, dirty gray hair, hair repeated in the collar of his shirt and on the backs of the hands gripping the rifle. A Browning, Liam noted. A semi-automatic,.270 maybe, or a.30-06. What did one of those hold, four rounds? Three, in magnum. He looked Moses, at his wound. Not magnum. Three left, then.
“Uuiliriq,” Tim breathed. “It’s the Hairy Man, Mom.”
Amelia’s eyes were enormous in her small face.
Mad eyes looked at Liam, saw the weapon strapped to his side and raised his rifle. “Lose the gun, son.” The words sounded rusty with disuse.
Liam didn’t move.
With uncanny instinct, the man took two steps forward and jammed the barrel of the rifle beneath Wy’s chin. She rose swiftly to her feet, to stand on tiptoe. Her eyes were wide but she looked more angry than frightened. His Wy. His own Wy, nobody else’s. Liam felt an answering anger kindle inside him.
The smell of the man filled the cabin, woodsmoke, dead fish, dried blood, sweat. Later, Liam would think it was that smell more than anything that made him pull out his weapon and lay it on the floor.