The next day Liam returned to the perfect little cabin in the perfect little canyon. They disinterred the bodies, one beneath each of the wooden markers. There were no years carved into the markers, only the name and the line of verse, repeated twelve times, barely legible on the earlier markers, crisp and clean around the edges on the more recent ones.
They found a small arsenal in a concealed locker in the crawl space beneath the cabin, one that appeared to have been acquired along with the victims. The BAR Hairy Man (the killer was resisting all attempts at identification) was carrying at Old Man had been registered three years before in Cheryl Montgomery’s name. A twenty-two pistol was eventually proved to have been the weapon that killed Opal Nunapitchuk; later another of the victims’ parents identified it as having belonged to the victim’s grandmother, who had given it to her granddaughter on her twenty-first birthday. There was a Winchester Field Model 16339 shotgun, and Teddy Engebretsen and John Kvichak were released into the relieved arms of their families.
When they had the bodies loaded and were ascending once again into the air, Liam looked his last on the cabin, now engulfed in flames. He glanced at the woman sitting beside him, who had insisted on accompanying them that day. He had protested, but Wy had said, “She earned it, Liam. Let her go.”
Rebecca had started the fire herself, on the floor in the middle of the cabin with a Firestarter log and a match. The wood, seasoned over thirty years, spread fast and burned hot, reaching up with greedy fingers to engulf first the walls and then the roof. He supposed he should have stopped her doing it, but he hadn’t, and it was beginning to rain anyway, a gentle pattering on the bracken. A heavy gray layer of clouds building between the surrounding peaks promised more on the way.
None of them, in fact, had tried to stop her. They stood behind her, almost at attention, an honor guard, watching the flames lick across the floor, catch at the walls, crawl to the ceiling.
“Are you all right?” he said to her as the helicopter hovered over the canyon.
She looked at him. “I want to go home now.”
“You heard the lady,” he said over his headset.
The helicopter put its nose down and skidded across the sky toward Newenham.
Once during the flight he saw her looking out the window. “Easier than covering the same distance on foot,” he said.
She looked at him, but she said nothing.
He put her on the jet to town that afternoon, foiling Jo’s attempt to talk to her. “She’s been through enough, Jo. Leave her alone.”
“I will,” Jo said, “but the jackals will be waiting at the gate in Anchorage.”
They were; Liam and Wy watched it on television that evening, pictures of Rebecca Hanover shoving her way through a crowd of people with cameras and lights.WOMAN ESCAPES SERIAL KILLER BY TREK THROUGH BUSH, screamed the next day’s headlines, and subsequent issues were given over to the stories of all the victims, including baby pictures, high school pictures, prom pictures and wedding pictures. Grieving parents and spouses were interviewed; Lyle Montgomery was photographed walking up to the door of Rebecca’s friend Nina’s house. He was the only person unknown to her who was permitted inside. He stayed half an hour and came out again, walking swiftly to his car, getting in and driving off at once, refusing to speak or even to look at the people calling his name. Still, the camera showed the tears rolling down his cheeks quite clearly.
The door remained locked thereafter, the shades drawn. Nina Stewart was photographed carrying groceries inside and the trash to the curb.Hard Copy snatched the bag one step ahead of the garbage truck Tuesday morning and had the extreme bad taste to open it on camera that evening, thus proving to an avidly watching public that Rebecca Hanover had been spared the additional trauma of pregnancy, if not the humiliation of having the news trumpeted on sixty-four channels. The next time someone pointed a camera at Nina, she flipped them off. That was aired, too, with a small blurred circle covering the offending digit.
The medical examiner’s reports started coming in, and the circus moved to the second act. Most of the victims had had their necks snapped, and when Liam thought of those strong, hairy fingers closing around his own throat he wasn’t surprised. “A quick death, anyway,” he said to Prince.
“I’m sure that was a comfort to the victims,” she said dispassionately. She wasn’t much interested. She’d had her fifteen minutes of fame when Liam told her to take the interview with Maria Downey. The camera loved her, and shortly thereafter Liam’s boss, Lieutenant John Dillinger Barton, called and offered her a job as the department spokesman. She had turned him down, saying only, “I’m not done racking up the cleared cases in Newenham yet. I’m not ready to spend my days talking to the press.”
Much was made of how this serial killer had spread his victims out over the years. Lieutenant Barton was interviewed on Channel 2 News, and he managed to restrain his natural talent for profanity long enough to point out that Alaska’s only other serial killer had been in action for fifteen years. Alaska was big enough to hide a serial killer’s activities for a long time. The next day, the spokesman for the Alaska state troopers went on the air to apologize for Barton’s remarks, and to say that he had not intended to extend an invitation to serial killers to set up shop in the Alaskan Bush. “Nope,” said Prince, “not my kind of job.”
Nine of the twelve women were identified. Three of them had been pregnant at the time of their death. “Didn’t want to share,” Prince said when this was discovered.
After three weeks the story died down, only to spring back to life when the killer was identified. It hadn’t been easy. His cabin was on national park land. He’d had no permit and had built it on his own, so they hadn’t been able to identify him through a title or bank paperwork. He had no friends, no family stepped forward, he didn’t get mail, so it was something of a coup when a clerk in the Anchorage Police Department, after slogging doggedly through a mountain of retired paperwork, found a dusty file fallen behind a filing cabinet with the name Clayton Gheen on it. The clerk ran the fingerprints in the file, and came up with a match.
Clayton Gheen had a record going back to the time he was thirteen years old, mostly B &E and petty theft. There had also been two incidences of assault in the fourth degree. Neither girl had come forward to testify, and he’d walked on both charges.
“Abuse in his background?” Liam asked Prince as she was scanning the report, faxed from the Fairbanks post.
She shook her head. “If his father beat on him, it was never reported.”
“And his mother just took off.”
She nodded. “Doesn’t automatically make him a serial killer, though.”
Liam thought of his own mother, walking out when he was six months old. “No. What does?”
Prince looked up, surprised at the question, because Liam Campbell wasn’t in the habit of asking questions which couldn’t be answered. “When we have the answer to that, we’ll put in for a raise.”
“Works for me.”
But he thought about it, off and on, for a long time afterward. He had distributed the contents of the pitiful little trophy chest Rebecca had found to the grieving families. One pair of the earrings, a ring and the crystal choker remained unclaimed, as did three of the bodies. Lost souls, lost to their families, lost to themselves, lost to him.
In 1975 Gheen had gone to work for BP in the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, working construction, and had moved to Anchorage. His record was blank after that until 1979, when he’d been arrested for aggravated assault. This woman had testified, and he had been due in court in Anchorage for sentencing in May of that year. He never showed. A bench warrant was issued for his arrest, but he’d never been found to be served.