“You know who it is. What you should be asking is why it took me so long to call.”
“Cliff.”
“Bingo.”
She clutched the sheets tighter, bringing them closer around her body. “How did you get this number?” Her cell was unlisted, private. Very few people had access to it, and that was the way she liked it. She certainly didn’t share it with her audience.
“You’re not the only one who can do research.”
“Call me again and I’ll report you,” she said, her voice strong and unwavering, belying how spooked she was.
“For making a phone call? What’s my crime?” As rough as his voice was, it was also smooth like a radio announcer’s. Nat thought she’d heard it somewhere before. Maybe if she kept him on the line, she’d remember where.
“Stalking.”
He laughed. “I’m hardly stalking you, Ms. McPherson. If I were, I’d be outside your bedroom window right now.” Waiting a beat, long enough for her arms to break out in goose bumps, he said, “Don’t worry; I’m not.”
She swallowed around the lump that had formed in her throat. “Email and phone calls count as stalking too.”
“I’m not a stalker. I’m a fan. Do you have so few you can’t recognize them?”
“I wouldn’t call you a fan, Cliff.” Remembering some of his harshest criticisms, her face flushed. “You’re a troll. A spiteful, petty troll with too much time on his hands.”
“Now, is that any way to talk to the fan who gave you the best idea of your career?”
“You hardly gave me the idea. I’ve been interested in the Dyatlov Pass incident for years.”
“Is that a fact? Why didn’t you do something about it before, then? Why did you wait for me to goad you?”
His audacity brought her to the brink of trembling rage. Who did this asshole think he was? Did he actually believe he had power over her? Andrew was right—this guy was a creep, and nothing more. “No one goaded me into this expedition. Do you have any clue about the amount of preparation, not to mention money, something like this takes? I would never go to this kind of trouble because someone double-dog dared me. I’m not twelve years old.”
He laughed again. “Having trouble sharing the credit? That’s fine. I understand.”
“Don’t call me again, Cliff.”
“Hang up if you want. I just thought you might want to speak with someone intimately connected with the case.”
“And who would that be?” She was exhausted and irritated beyond belief, but her innate curiosity always got the better of her. She was like a cat that way.
“Me.”
“Right. You are connected to the Dyatlov case.”
“From the hostility in your tone, it’s obvious you don’t believe me, but I assure you I am. Why else would I be so insistent? I have a personal stake in this.”
This guy was unbelievable. Not only a stalker, but mentally unstable as well. Fantastic. “Forgive me for saying so, Cliff, but you don’t sound Russian.”
“After the death of my great-aunt, my family was so traumatized they emigrated to America. I grew up on US soil, just as you did.”
So he didn’t know she was Canadian, an immigrant herself. At least there were limitations to his stalking prowess. “Oh yeah? And who was your aunt?”
“Lyudmila Dubinina.”
Nat shivered. It was a lot colder in her room all of a sudden. “You’re Lyudmila’s great-nephew?”
“That I am.”
“I find that incredibly difficult to believe.” But wasn’t a part of her already believing it?
“What reason would I have to lie? I told you, I have a stake in this.”
She was impressed in spite of herself. Even with the never-ending fascination surrounding the case, few people could name any of the skiers beyond Igor Dyatlov, and many didn’t know his first name. Then again, if pretending to be Lyudmila’s nephew were Cliff’s shtick, he would have done his research.
“If that’s true, why didn’t you say so? Why the nasty emails? Why not introduce yourself and say you wanted me to look into your great-aunt’s death, like a normal person would?”
“Because you needed a push. Over the years, you’ve grown lazy, apathetic. If I’d asked for your help, you would have made a few phone calls, maybe, talked about it on your cast, but you would never have gone to the pass. Forgive my crudeness, Ms. McPherson, but someone needed to light a fire under your ass.”
“If Lyudmila were really your aunt, I’m sure she wouldn’t approve of your harassing a woman.”
“My aunt was a strong woman. She would have understood that sometimes the end justifies the means.”
“Assuming I believe you, and I’m not saying I do, what do you think happened to her?”
“That’s an easy question to answer. She was murdered before I was born.”
“Murdered. You don’t believe the avalanche theory, I take it.”
Cliff chuckled. “No, I don’t. I also don’t believe that ridiculous infrasound theory or paradoxical undressing, either.”
“What do you believe?”
“As I’ve said, my aunt was an incredibly strong woman. She was also an experienced skier. She’d been exploring and camping on those mountains since she was a girl. There’s no way she would have set up camp in the path of an avalanche, Ms. McPherson. This was murder.”
Of the nine dead hikers, Nat had always felt the closest connection to Lyudmila, probably because the woman had suffered the most. She’d also been the youngest member of the group, only twenty-one years old.
While the rest of the skiers’ bodies had been discovered in February, the same month they went missing, poor Lyudmila and her three hapless friends had to wait until May, when searchers finally found their remains buried under twelve feet of snow.
Whoever had found her must have been traumatized for life. Lyudmila’s eyes, part of her lips, and a piece of her skull were missing, her nose was broken and flattened, and she had severe head injuries. Four of her ribs were broken on her right side and seven on the left side. Her chest was fractured. She’d suffered a massive hemorrhage in her heart’s right atrium, and her left thigh was badly bruised. The doctor who’d examined her body said an unknown compelling force had caused Lyudmila’s trauma, explaining that the power required for such damage was akin to a car hitting her.
But that was hardly the worst of it.
Her tongue and the muscles from inside her mouth were missing. The amount of blood in her stomach suggested the tissue had been removed while she was still alive.
“My aunt had defensive wounds on her hands. Before she died, she fought for her life. This wasn’t something that happened to her after death. She was conscious when something ripped her tongue out and tortured her. She was aware.”
Wincing at the terrible image of what the young woman must have suffered, Nat mentioned the same quandary Andrew had voiced for months. “This happened almost sixty years ago. What do you expect me to find?”
“There’s something on that mountain. Something that killed my aunt and her friends, and it isn’t human. The doctor who examined the bodies admitted no human has the strength to kill this way.”
That much was true. She’d read detailed translations of the original autopsy reports. A high level of radiation had been found on some of the bodies. There were so many things that were puzzling about this case.
“What makes you think whatever it is will still be there?”
“I can’t explain why I feel the way I do. Call it a hunch, call it intuition, call it my aunt’s spirit guiding me from beyond the grave. But I believe, without a doubt, that you are the one to find out what happened to her. Don’t let me down.”