The Body in the Woods

  “What was that? What’s on my phone that I don’t know about?”

  “Nothing that hurt you.” His expression was pleasant. Benign. “Just a little tracker, that’s all.”

  It took Tiffany a moment to figure out what he meant. Why were her thoughts so muddy? So muddled?

  “Wait … you’ve been tracking me?”

  “I’m interested in homeless girls. Where they go during the day, where they congregate, where they sleep.”

  “I’m not ‘girls.’ I’m me.”

  “Yes, but you’re still part of a larger class.”

  “You could just ask, you know?” Tiffany tried to look haughty, but her face didn’t feel like it was entirely within her control.

  He tilted his head, regarding her calmly. “But would you tell me the truth? Always?”

  “No. Because it’s none of your business.” Tiffany refused to let another person own her. She chose what she let other people see, other people know, other people touch.

  “Right. Which is why I slipped a little piece of software into your phone. So I could see where you go, where you sleep. Your habits, diurnal and nocturnal. And don’t worry, it’s gone. I just deleted it.”

  “Okay,” Tiffany said, not sure if it was. Not sure what to say. She held out her hand again.

  He stood up and gave her the phone with one hand. With the other, he slipped a cord around her neck and stepped behind her.

  Tiffany didn’t even have time to be surprised.

  CHAPTER 29

  SUNDAY

  HIS NEXT VICTIM

  Ruby’s parents had thought she was spending the night with Alexis. It was even sort of true.

  “I’m glad you guys can still be friends,” her mom had said.

  Ruby hadn’t met her eyes, but then again, Ruby hardly looked anyone straight in the eye. She was playing the role of Good Daughter, obedient, dutiful, grateful.

  Now it was 6:47 A.M., and after hiking all night, nearly everyone in the SAR van was asleep. Even Jon was out, slumped against the front passenger side window. From the back seat where she was between Alexis and Nick, Ruby was keeping an eye on Chris’s driving. He seemed to still have appropriate reflexes. But at sixty-five miles an hour, things could go south very fast. To soothe herself, she ran her finger up and down the seam of her Gore-Tex hiking pants.

  She had thought Alexis was asleep too, but then the other girl spoke in a whisper. “I saw that they arrested that guy. The one we identified.”

  “And they had our pictures in the paper,” Nick whispered from the other side of Ruby.

  Their three heads were now so close together that Ruby could smell their breaths. She was chewing Japanese sour-melon-flavored gum, so she hoped hers smelled better than theirs did.

  “What if it wasn’t him?” she asked.

  “Who else would it be?” Alexis screwed up her face. “We know he was there, and we know he had a reason to kill her.”

  “And remember how nervous he seemed?” Nick added.

  “I’m not saying he wasn’t growing pot,” Ruby whispered. “That could explain the nervousness. But killing a girl, that’s a very different kind of crime.”

  She had tried to picture it. Miranda hiking up the trail, somehow finding the marijuana plants. Maybe she had heard Adams talking to someone and followed the sound of his voice. And then at some point, something had gone terribly wrong, and he had slipped the cord of that duffel bag around her neck, pulling it tighter and tighter while she dug her fingers into her own flesh, trying to escape.

  “I did find out something weird about Miranda today.” Alexis looked at the time on her phone and let out a little bark of a laugh. “I guess I mean yesterday.”

  “What?” Ruby’s heartbeat quickened.

  “I heard that she was an oogle.”

  “What’s an oogle?” Nick whispered.

  “Kids who like to pretend they’re homeless.”

  “Homeless?” Ruby forgot to keep her voice down. Alexis frowned, but no one else in the van stirred. Only Chris glanced in the rearview mirror and then back at the freeway.

  “Then that makes two.” She straightened up. “Just like the girl in Washington Park I told you about. Detective Harriman said she didn’t have anything in common with Miranda Wyatt. But if you’re right, that means there are two dead homeless girls.”

  “But she only pretended she was homeless,” Alexis said.

  Ruby’s mind was whirling with possibilities. In her gut, she knew this was more than a coincidence. “A killer might not be able to tell the difference between a real homeless girl and one who’s pretending.”

  “Wait a second. Can we go back to the beginning?” Nick asked. “What was that word you said again? And why would anyone want to pretend to be homeless?”

  “I guess real homeless people call kids who pretend they’re homeless ‘oogles.’” Alexis shrugged. “As for why, I don’t really get it. Maybe she was bored. Maybe she thought it was cool. Or maybe she was just trying to make some money panhandling. Have you guys seen her Facebook page?”

  “I tried,” Ruby said, remembering her frustration, “but I couldn’t see more than that she had a Facebook account.”

  “Me too,” Nick agreed.

  “I could see more because a couple of kids who go to my school used to go to hers, so we have some mutual ‘friends.’” Alexis made air quotes. “Alder Grove is basically a school for rich kids who aren’t doing that well. They don’t give grades, and it’s pretty much impossible to get kicked out, because then they would lose your tuition payments. So Miranda might have been able to hang out downtown in the middle of the day, pretending to be homeless, and the school might not even have told her parents she wasn’t in class.”

  “So what was on her Facebook page?” Ruby asked, her pulse quickening.

  “My phone can’t go on Facebook.” Alexis held out her hand. “Give me your phone and I’ll show you.”

  Ruby dug it out of her pocket and handed it over. Alexis typed and clicked and finally handed it back. Nick looked over Ruby’s shoulder. He sucked in his breath when she clicked on a photo of the dead girl in black bra and panties, her hands raised in what might be a gang signal. The next picture showed Miranda standing in an abandoned house, garbage on the floor, tags on the wall, a brown bottle of some sort of liquor tilted to her lips. At least in this photo she had all her clothes on. Ruby scrolled through photo after photo, but like Nick, she couldn’t understand why it would appeal to anyone. It all looked dirty and stupid and pointless.

  “But why would she be in Forest Park?” Ruby focused on Miranda’s slack face. She remembered the wind rustling through the leaves, the birds calling, the light slanting between the trunks. “A girl like Miranda Wyatt would never go to Forest Park on her own.”

  Nick shook his head. “She might not have been the kind of girl to go on hikes, but she so looks like the kind of girl who might be interested in scoring some free weed.”

  “And be willing to walk three or four miles to steal it?” Alexis countered. “When it’s sold all over downtown and probably at her school?”

  “And if she stole the pot, wouldn’t the newspaper have said so?” Ruby asked, remembering the article. “All it said was that they thought she must have stumbled over the marijuana grow. But it has to have been pretty well hidden, since it sounds like it’s been there a long time and no one else has found it.”

  “Maybe somebody showed her the way?” Nick said.

  “But who would do that except that Jay Adams guy?” Ruby said. “And why would he show it to her and then strangle her? It doesn’t make sense. And if he really killed her because she stumbled over it, it seems like he would have done it right at the grow. Why do it by the trail where her body was more likely to be found? And just think, there were no drag marks, no signs of a struggle. Nothing but that one footprint by her.” Ruby bit her lip, resisting the urge to complain again.

  “Maybe Adams carried her,” Nick said. “He’s a b
ig guy, remember?”

  Alexis had fallen silent, had not even seemed to be following their last few exchanges. Now she sat forward, her voice suddenly urgent. “So, Ruby, do you really think there’s someone out there killing homeless girls? Someone else?”

  “It’s certainly indicative of a pattern.” And serial killers were all about patterns.

  “Because you know that guy we saw with the two dogs? The one who was running?”

  Nick smiled at the mention of the dogs, but Ruby grew more alert. “Yes?”

  “I saw him yesterday, downtown at the bus mall. And he was arguing with this one girl with black hair and tattoos on her face. I don’t know for sure, but she looked homeless.”

  Ruby went absolutely still, remembering the leash in the runner’s pocket. Remembering the red furrow around the dead girl’s neck.

  “Whoa,” Nick said. “We should talk to Harriman.”

  Ruby shook her head. “I’ve tried talking to him. As far as he’s concerned, he’s got the right guy. And just because Alexis saw the runner arguing with some homeless girl downtown, that’s not going to be enough to change his mind. We’re going to have to bring him proof.”

  “And how exactly are we going to do that?” Nick asked.

  The answer had already popped into Ruby’s head. “My dad’s a runner. He runs the same route at the same time every night. From what I’ve seen, a lot of runners are that way. And those two dogs must need to be exercised every day. If we went back to the same spot at the same time on the same day of the week as when we first met him, I think there’s a good chance we would see him again.”

  Nick nodded. “And then we could ask him a few questions.”

  “And how’s that going to work?” Alexis said in a tone even Ruby could tell was sarcastic. “You’re going to say, ‘Are you the serial killer?’ and he’s going to say, ‘Why, yes, I am!’ I don’t think so.”

  Ruby felt like she had when she realized Alexis was trying to keep her distance. If she liked somebody, she knew she tended to latch on like a crab and not let go. But when they both first joined SAR, Alexis had made Ruby feel not so lonely. They had sat together at every class, slept side by side every training weekend. Ruby was convinced she had found someone who would be her friend forever. Someone who could help her mix with normal people. Alexis had encouraged Ruby to tell stories, had merged her gracefully into other people’s conversations. Around Alexis, Ruby was no longer the weird girl hiding in the back of the room. Instead, Ruby had begun to turn into the part she was playing: Best Friend.

  But then Alexis had begun to pull away, and Ruby had no idea why.

  “We could follow him,” Ruby managed to say evenly. “Get his license plate number or his address. Once we know that, we can go online. There’s websites you can go to that will give you all kinds of information for twenty-five or thirty bucks. Once we have a name and an address and maybe some criminal history on him, then I think Detective Harriman will listen to us.”

  “I don’t know.…” Alexis’s voice trailed off. But at least she didn’t rule out the idea altogether.

  “We should go there this afternoon and scope it out,” Nick said. “Then we’ll know where to hide on Tuesday.”

  “I can’t,” Alexis said. “There’s something I have to do.” She didn’t elaborate. Ruby wondered if she was lying, then told herself that wasn’t what was important here. Not anymore.

  “Then Nick and I will go,” Ruby said decisively. “We have to do something. Because if the cops are wrong, then right now this guy is out looking for his next victim.”

  CHAPTER 30

  SUNDAY

  ONLY AIR

  The phone woke Alexis. She snatched it up from where she had plugged it in next to her bed.

  “Mom?” She had said the same thing yesterday afternoon, only it had turned out to be Mitchell telling her about the call-out.

  “Alexis?” a guy said. Not Mitchell.

  And then it clicked. Bran. Alexis put her free hand on her chest and willed her heart to slow. “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “Did I wake you up?”

  “Don’t worry. I had to get up anyway because the phone was ringing.”

  Bran groaned. “Pretty lame joke. You sound like my grandfather.”

  “It’s the best I can do after getting”—Alexis looked at the clock—“four hours of sleep. SAR pulled a lost hiker out of the Gorge last night, and we didn’t get back until this morning.”

  Alexis hadn’t given much thought to what it would actually be like. How it would feel to locate someone who was lost. To save somebody.

  But this morning a crying George Hines had hugged her in the parking lot, even though she hadn’t even been on the team that found him. As he wetly mumbled thanks into her ear, it had hit her that SAR really saved lives. It wasn’t like it had been on the training weekends, endless tramping around, pretending to find someone who was lost. Walking and walking and walking, trudging past one tree that pretty much looked the same as the next. No, this had been the real thing. If Search and Rescue hadn’t been there, it was possible George Hines would have died.

  Finding Miranda’s body had been awful. Looking for evidence that would lead to her killer had been both tedious and a terrible reminder of the reality of her death.

  But last night Alexis and the others had been a team, trained and ready to save. When she had felt the wet press of George’s cheek against her own, she had realized it was all worth it: the boredom and the cold and all the math you had to use to figure out exactly where you were. They had saved a man’s life.

  Now Bran said, “Really? Way to go! I love trauma intervention, and what we do is really important, but we’re always just going to be picking up the pieces.” He took a breath. “Anyway, I wanted to check in and see how you were doing. To see if you were sleeping any better than you were the other night. Only it turns out that by calling you, I’ve actually caused the problem I was worried about.”

  “It is a bit ironic,” Alexis agreed teasingly. She sat up, even though every bit of her longed to stretch out again, pull the covers over her head to block out the daylight, and fall back asleep.

  He echoed her thoughts. “I should let you get back to sleep.”

  “No. I need to get up.” As she spoke, Alexis heaved herself to her feet. “There’s things I’ve got to do today.” Not her homework, although some buried part of her knew she really did need to tackle it. But the most important thing was finding her mom.

  “Then can I buy you a cup of coffee to help you wake up? And to make up for the sleep I made you miss?”

  She never should have texted him. It was better to keep people at arm’s length. Alexis opened her mouth to say no.

  “That would be great.”

  * * *

  When she walked into Perk Up, Bran was already there. Mara leaned over the counter and said in a low voice, “Have you found your mom yet, honey?”

  Alexis froze. Had Bran heard? But he had his back to them, seemingly engrossed by the pastry case.

  “No. Not yet.” She gave Mara a strained smile and hoped that the other woman got that she didn’t want to talk about it.

  Mara made them both sixteen-ounce lattes in tall clear glasses. Alexis’s was topped with a heart made of foam, Bran’s with a leaf. And after some discussion with both Alexis and Mara, Bran also got a cranberry-walnut scone and a croissant filled with chocolate. As soon as they sat down, he split both of them and slid her halves over on a napkin. Alexis noticed he gave her the largest of each.

  She took a deep breath. “So did you call me because of TIP? Is this something you’re supposed to do?”

  He looked down at his coffee. “It’s not exactly in the manual, no.” His eyes flicked back up to her. “So why did that lady ask about your mom?”

  It was like nearing the bottom of a dark staircase and not knowing if there was one more step. If Alexis put her foot out, would she meet firm ground or only air?

  “If I tell you
something, do you have to report it to anyone?”

  Bran held her gaze with his stormy gray eyes. “If it’s about hurting yourself or someone else, then yes. Other than that, no.”

  “It’s not anything like that,” Alexis said. For a distracted moment, she wondered just how bad TIP got. “It’s my mom. I don’t know where she is.”

  “What do you mean? Do you think something happened to her?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m worried it might have.”

  “Do you think someone hurt her?” His brows drew together. “Or that she’s been in an accident?”

  “I don’t know enough to know.” Her sigh was so deep and long it felt like it came from the soles of her feet. “I guess anything’s possible.”

  “Where’s the last place you know she was for sure?”

  “Our apartment. We were arguing Wednesday night, and she ran out.” In her memory, she heard the sound of the slamming door. “Only she never came back.”

  “Have you called her cell phone?”

  “She left it behind.” Alexis remembered the horror she had felt when she called it and heard it ringing underneath the coffee table.

  “How about her friends or people she works with? Have they heard from her?”

  Alexis hesitated and then said in a rush, “To be honest, she doesn’t have those, either. She hasn’t worked in a long time.”

  “Do you have any guess as to where she might be?”

  “I don’t know. Downtown, maybe? See, my mom is, um, sort of”—she forced herself to say it—“mentally ill.” It felt painful but good, like throwing up after suffering for hours from a queasy stomach. “She’s on meds, but they don’t work that well, and she doesn’t like the way they make her feel. So sometimes she stops taking them.”

  His expression didn’t change. “What kind of mentally ill?”

  “I’ve never really been told, but I think she’s bipolar. All I know is that when she’s off her meds, she’s either nonstop or she’s not moving. Like she would always read to me at night when I was little. That’s normal, right? You read until the kid gets sleepy and then you’re done. Only that’s not how it worked with my mom when she wasn’t taking her meds. I’d be closing my eyes, and she’d be poking me and telling me I had to look at the pictures, asking me to sound out the words. She’d be pouting because I kept falling asleep. And there can be days when she doesn’t seem to sleep at all.”