The Body in the Woods

  Once they got there, Alexis followed Raina in. It was a big open room with lockers in the back. On one side was a line of people waiting to use the three computers. On the other side of the room, people were watching a movie on TV. In the middle was a pool table, its green felt matted and scarred from years of play. Everywhere people were curled up on couches or just the floor, trying to nap despite the noise.

  Raina wasn’t shy about asking people if they had seen Alexis’s mom, even those who looked sound asleep. Each time, Alexis handed over the photo. But no one recognized her, not even the staff workers, who presumably weren’t groggy from lack of sleep or previous ingestion of illicit substances.

  Finally Alexis leaned against the wall. Next to her a framed piece of paper read NO DRUGS, NO SEX, NO VIOLENCE. In the corner, three photographs were tacked on the wall. She moved closer.

  “Who are these people?” she asked Raina.

  “That’s the memorial wall.” She pointed at the first picture, which showed a black kid with high cheekbones. The photo had been enlarged over and over, so the face was composed of a series of dots like a piece of modern art. “He was hit by a car.” Raina’s finger moved to the next photo, a blond man with a blank face. “He was found dead in an alley, but I never did hear from what.” The third was a girl with crooked yellow bangs and crooked yellow teeth. “She died right on that couch over there. Heroin overdose. One of the staff tried to wake her up, and she was gone.” All the photos had messages scrawled on the edges. The girl had the most.

  It was bad enough that there was someone out there, killing girls like this one. It was worse that they were killing themselves.

  “I’m thinking there’s one more place we could look,” Raina said. “Hell.”

  “What?” Alexis took a step back.

  “It’s an underground parking lot. We call it Hell. It’s a good place to sleep, since so many people forget about it. If you go to the bottom level, there’s hardly ever anyone parked there.”

  “Then let’s go to Hell,” Alexis said.

  The parking lot on Fourth Avenue didn’t have an attendant, just a machine that took credit cards. They ducked under the yellow arm and then Alexis followed Raina, spiraling down, down, down. The bottom level held only a single car.

  Someone lay curled up on a bed of cardboard next to a Dumpster, with a coat pulled over the head. Alexis knew that coat! She had bought it for herself at Goodwill last year, but her mom had worn it more. Already relieved, Alexis bent down, lifted the edge, and raised it up.

  But the woman who started up on one elbow, cursing, was not her mom.

  CHAPTER 33

  MONDAY

  THE DEATH OF TIFFANY YEE

  As soon as the alarm on her tablet went off, Ruby rolled over and grabbed it. The tablet was one of three computers she owned. Four, if you counted her phone.

  Propping herself up on her pillow, she didn’t look at her texts or emails or Facebook, at least not at first. Ruby always checked the latest crime stories, starting in Portland, and then in the United States.

  Her first stop was KATU.com Since it was a Monday morning, there were lots of crime-related headlines. Even criminals must have more free time to get into trouble on weekends.

  WOMAN’S BODY FOUND IN COLUMBIA RIVER

  CAR THEFT SUSPECT TRACKED DOWN, BIT BY K9

  SUSPECTS SOUGHT IN WALMART THEFT RING

  PORTLAND GYM OWNER TURNS TABLES ON ATTACKER

  When Ruby clicked on the link for the body discovered in the river, it turned out that it had been found wearing a lifejacket, and an empty kayak was floating nearby. Probably an accidental death. And what interested Ruby were murders.

  She returned to the main page. Only then did she notice a smaller headline toward the bottom:

  RUNAWAY’S BODY FOUND IN MACLEAY PARK

  Ruby’s heart started to race. She knew that park. It was actually on the outer edge of Forest Park, a finger of green that started near downtown and then pointed into the West Hills. She clicked on the link.

  Authorities are seeking the public’s help in an investigation into the death of Tiffany Yee, a 16-year-old runaway whose body was discovered early Sunday morning in Macleay Park. Police call the girl’s death suspicious. Officers were dispatched about 8 a.m. to the park on the report of a dead body, said Sgt. Gene Paulson, spokesperson for the Portland Police Bureau.

  Based on what the arriving officers saw, homicide detectives and criminal investigators were called to the scene, he said. Nearby residents said the park is generally quiet.

  The Roosevelt High School honors student reportedly ran away from home in early September. The school district will have mental health personnel on-site today for all students and staff.

  Detectives asked anyone who has information about Yee’s death or her whereabouts over the last eight weeks, or who has witnessed suspicious activity in the area, to contact the homicide department. There was no word on any possible suspects in the case.

  Tiffany Yee.

  With a sick certainty, Ruby knew that this girl was another victim of the same person who had killed Miranda and the girl found in Washington Park. The question was when had she been killed? If the autopsy said she had died before Friday evening, then Detective Harriman might still argue that Jay Adams had killed her, even though Macleay Park was nowhere near the marijuana patch Adams had supposedly killed Miranda Wyatt to protect. But if Tiffany Yee had died after that, Detective Harriman might consider that the same person could be responsible for all three deaths—and that maybe Adams hadn’t killed Miranda after all.

  As if in rebuttal, Ruby heard Detective Harriman’s voice in her head. “Serial killers have types. They don’t just go around killing anyone.”

  The frustrating thing was that he was right. One of the most basic tenets of how serial killers operated was that they almost always targeted victims of the same race as themselves. She thought of Ted Bundy, the guy who had killed dozens of girls in the 1970s. Nearly all of them had been white college students with long dark hair parted in the middle.

  But now there were three dead girls found in Portland parks. A black girl, possibly homeless, and still unidentified. A rich white girl who liked to pretend she was homeless. And now a runaway with a Chinese last name who was from a high school in one of Portland’s poorest neighborhoods.

  As Ruby got into the shower, she ran through possibilities. If there was just one killer, he had to have a reason for what he was doing. It had to make sense to him, even if it didn’t to anyone looking on from the outside. And that reason had drawn him to three very different girls.

  Alexis had seen the runner arguing with a girl who looked homeless. Maybe he was tired of the street kids who sometimes partied in Forest Park, who lit illegal bonfires and went off the paths, destroying delicate vegetation.

  Still, Ruby felt like she was missing something. Something beyond being homeless that might tie the three girls together.

  What if it wasn’t the runner at all? Maybe it was someone who worked with the homeless or volunteered with them. Someone in a position like that would certainly have easy access to victims. Or what if it was someone who was homeless, like the guy with the dreads? What reason had he had for being up there? Maybe he had talked Miranda into walking up that path and then come back down—alone.

  It could even be someone pretending to be a cop. The Hillside Stranglers had posed as undercover police officers and “arrested” prostitutes. In addition to tricking college girls by pretending to have a broken arm, Ted Bundy had also posed as a cop. And a serial killer in Florida had actually been a cop.

  Ruby was lost in thought when she came down to breakfast. Her parents were sitting on the couch. Together. Not sitting at the dining room table. Not eating breakfast. Not reading the paper.

  But her mom did have a section of the paper in her lap.

  “What’s wrong?” Ruby asked. Her parents liked their routines nearly as much as she did.

  Her mom held it up
. “Ruby. Why did you lie to us?”

  She realized it was the issue of the paper that had SAR’s photo in it. “What are you talking about?” The strangled tone of her voice gave her away.

  “What’s wrong is that you lied to us,” her mom said.

  Her dad shook his head. “We told you you had to quit SAR. Instead you went out and did the very thing that we most didn’t want you to do.”

  “Pam at the office told me she saw your photo in the paper, the paper you said you couldn’t find in the driveway.” Her mom shook it. “Which I found in your room while you were in the shower.”

  Ruby stuffed her fists in her pockets so she wouldn’t pick up one of her mom’s stupid owl figurines from the bookcase and smash it. “You were going through my room?” When she was getting dressed, she had noticed that her wastebasket had been moved, but she’d been too preoccupied to think about what it meant.

  “You are our child.” Her mom raised her chin. “Your safety is our responsibility.”

  “I am not a child. I’m sixteen.” In some countries, she could be married by now. Even have a child or two of her own.

  Her dad held out his hand. “Give me your keys.”

  “What?”

  He enunciated every word. “You’re grounded. Give me your keys and your cell phone. You will go to school on the bus, and you will come directly back home on the bus, and that’s all you will do. And I will call SAR and tell them you have to pull out.”

  She stepped back, her hand going protectively to her pocket. “What? Why?”

  “We trusted you, Ruby.” Her dad shook his head. “We trusted you, and you lied to us.”

  “I’m sorry!” she yelled. “I’m sorry! Okay? I’m really sorry!” They couldn’t take SAR away from her. Especially now. Didn’t they know how important it was?

  “Ruby.” Her dad sighed. “You know that apologies don’t count if you shout them.”

  “I only went because it’s important. It might help the police catch a killer.”

  That was the wrong thing to say. She knew it as soon as she said it. “That’s it,” her mom said. “Your father is right. You’re obsessed with death. And it’s not healthy.”

  “What if I want to do this kind of stuff as a job?”

  “You’re sixteen years old,” her dad said. “You’re too young to know what you want. This is just an infatuation.”

  “We’ve signed you up for horseback riding lessons on Saturdays,” her mom said, pasting on a smile even Ruby could tell was fake. “You always said you wanted to do that.”

  Ruby tried to think of a persona she could adopt with them, some role she could play that would make them relent. Instead she found herself stamping her foot like a child.

  “It’s not fair!” she yelled.

  Her dad shook his head as he got up from the couch. “Life isn’t fair, Ruby. You of all people should have figured that out by now.”

  CHAPTER 34

  MONDAY

  THINGS CHANGE

  When Alexis woke up, she didn’t know where she was. She started to sit up but banged her head. Why was she so close to the ceiling? She realized she was on the top level of a bunk bed, one of two crammed into the small room. Only a few feet across from her, another girl was still asleep, one arm covering her eyes.

  And then it all came back to her. Last night, she and Raina had spent the night at this shelter. They had stayed up until lights-out, hoping her mom would come in—or that Alexis would at least hear news of her. The closest she had come was one woman who thought she might have seen her mom a few days earlier.

  It was like her mom had vanished.

  Or maybe, a part of Alexis worried, someone had already turned her mom into another body in the woods. Just waiting to be found.

  It had been hard enough to sleep with thoughts like that. And then when she had finally managed to drop off, the girl on the other bottom bunk had started tripping out, screaming that her wallet had been stolen by witches. The rest of them had huddled in their beds while the shelter workers tried to reason with the girl. They were finally reduced to just restraining her. Eventually an ambulance had been called and they had dragged the girl away, kicking and raging. Even once it was more or less quiet, Alexis hadn’t been able to get back to sleep.

  The door to their room opened. “Okay, girls, time to get up,” a woman with a long gray braid said. In the bunk below hers, Alexis heard Raina groan.

  Getting ready was a snap when you were already dressed. From one of the black plastic milk crates that doubled as cubbies, Alexis took her shoes and slipped them on, then picked up her coat and backpack. In her real life, she would be getting ready to go to school, but her real life was starting to feel as distant and surreal as one of the nightmares she’d had last night.

  “Ready?” Raina asked with a yawn.

  But in the main room, everyone was clustered in front of the memorial wall instead of the food. A new photo had joined the other three. A girl who looked Asian American, standing in this very same room.

  Raina sucked in her breath. “Oh my God—Tiff? What happened to Tiff?”

  “She’s dead,” another girl said bluntly. Her black hair was shaved down to bare scalp on one side. “Someone strangled her in a park.”

  “What?” A shock zipped down Alexis’s spine. “When? What park?”

  “Macleay. It’s not far from here. I guess they found her yesterday morning.”

  Another dead homeless girl. Anxiety bubbled in Alexis’s chest. A sour taste flooded the back of her tongue.

  “People!” The woman with the braid clapped her hands. “I’m sorry, but we still have a schedule to keep. If you guys want breakfast, you need to eat now.”

  Slowly, people began to move to a table where pitchers of milk and juice and bins of cereal had been set out. There were two kinds—generic Cheerios and generic Wheaties—and when Alexis took a sip of her orange juice, it didn’t taste quite right. She and Raina found a seat at a table.

  “I can’t believe Tiff is dead.” Raina’s mouth twisted. “I just saw her a few days ago.”

  “What was she like?” Was this what it was like for Bran, asking people about their losses?

  “Sweet. Messed up.”

  “She’s the third one.”

  “Third what?” Raina asked.

  “Third homeless girl found strangled in a park.” Alexis found Miranda’s crumpled photo at the bottom of her backpack. “Did you know her? Because she was the second.”

  Raina put her hand to her chest. “Are you serious? I’ve seen her around downtown. Usually drunk or high. Sometimes begging for money and laughing about it afterward. But she wasn’t really homeless, you know.”

  “Maybe the killer didn’t know that.”

  Raina’s eyes went wide.

  “And there was a third girl, a black girl they found a few weeks ago in Washington Park. That’s another reason I have to find my mom. Because someone is killing homeless girls. And you’ve seen my mom—she’s only thirty-six, and she looks younger.”

  Around them, people started getting to their feet, picking up their things. The shelter was closing. While they were leaving, the workers told them to “Stay safe!” and cautioned them not to go anyplace with a stranger.

  “You really think it was a stranger?” Raina asked Alexis once they were out on the sidewalk.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m thinking it might have been one of us. Who else knows homeless people better than another homeless person? And if we drop out of sight, nobody asks any questions.”

  Raina was walking slowly, and Alexis matched her pace. “Maybe,” she said, thinking of the homeless guy they had met while they were searching for Bobby. But then she thought of the runner. “But maybe not. There’s this one guy I’ve seen in Forest Park. That’s where that Miranda girl’s body was found. He was running there with his dogs on the day she was killed, and he was carrying the dogs’ leashes in his pocket. And then a few days later, I
saw him on the bus mall, arguing with another girl who looked homeless.”

  Raina took a half step back. “What does he look like?”

  “Not like much of anything. Maybe five foot nine. Thin. Dark hair. Mid-thirties. He has these two dogs. Big ones. I’ve seen him once with the dogs and once without.” She looked at Raina. “Does that sound familiar?”

  The other girl shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t look people in the eye that much. Part of me is still embarrassed to be out here.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Alexis said, “So why are you out here? If it’s okay to ask.”

  “It’s okay.” Raina lifted one hand. “I had a big fight with my mom, and I ran away. Our house is too crowded. I have to share a room with three of my sisters, and there’s not enough money. But now I realize that I was stupid.”

  “Why don’t you go back?”

  Raina shrugged. “I’m proud. And”—she hesitated—“I’m afraid she’ll say no. It’s only been three months, but it feels like three years. The other night, one of the workers gave me a towel fresh out of the dryer for my shower.” Smiling, she hugged herself. “The feeling of wrapping up in a hot towel was amazing. I miss so many things I never thought twice about before.”

  “Like what?”

  Raina stopped so she could give the answer her full concentration. “Like everything. Like pillows, fuzzy blankets, stuffed animals, hot cocoa, my bed, clean socks, hair straighteners, and curling irons. Being able to do laundry whenever I want. It’s pretty useless to shower and then put on dirty clothes. Oh, and the edge of the bathtub so I can put my leg up and shave. Being able to sit down or lie down without people giving me dirty looks.”

  “Why don’t you try calling your mom?” Alexis ventured. “What’s the worst that could happen? Even if she said no, it wouldn’t be any worse than it is now.”

  “Oh, yes it would be,” Raina said fiercely. “If I don’t call, I can still have hope that she’ll say yes.” She raised her dark eyes to Alexis’s face. “And if she says no, then that’s it. That’s the end.”

  “But nothing’s ever really the end, though,” Alexis said. “Things change. Even people change.”