The Body in the Woods

  So Ruby chose the third way.

  CHAPTER 45

  WEDNESDAY

  HE’S GOING TO KILL HER

  “Wait!” Nick heard Alexis calling out behind him. “Nick, wait up!” He ignored her. Even though he had never imagined ignoring Alexis, there was no time to wait. He had also never imagined seeing a man pull a knife on his friend.

  Nick had a combat knife at home, bought off eBay. Sometimes he practiced with it in his room, grunting and thrusting it into the air, but he could not imagine ever using it on a person. Let alone a slight red-haired girl.

  As he galloped up the hill, Nick held his phone up in front of him. It was hard to find the right button to push, not in the low light of the setting sun, not when he was running full tilt. He finally found the icon for the phone—almost tripping over a curb in the process—but when he pressed it, he didn’t get the keypad on the next screen, just some words in a box. He squinted. They read RETURN CALL.

  He pressed it, then held the phone to his ear, trying to quiet his breathing enough so he could hear.

  The phone rang just once. Then the detective grunted, “Harriman.”

  “He’s after Ruby,” Nick gasped. “He’s chasing her. I think he’s going to kill her.” He spoke in bursts, sucking air in between. He was still running flat out.

  “I do not have the patience for this. Who is this? Who’s after Ruby? Do you mean Ruby McClure?”

  “It’s Nick Walker. That birder guy, Becker”—Nick felt a fleeting sense of triumph at remembing the man’s name—“Becker’s chasing her. Into Forest Park. And he’s got a knife.”

  CHAPTER 46

  WEDNESDAY

  INTO THE SHADOWS

  With her hands outstretched, Ruby ran into the shadowy darkness under the trees. It was impossible to be completely quiet, so she concentrated on putting as much distance as she could between herself and Becker. Night was falling, and she hoped that her dark clothes would provide some camouflage. As she lurched between trees, branches slapped her cheeks, tore at her hair, and plucked at the sleeves of her coat. She stumbled over the ground ridged with roots.

  Ruby’s thoughts should have been urgent, but they felt as soft and worn as old corduroy. She was thinking too slowly. Moving too slowly. Her legs didn’t want to obey her. What had Becker put in that cocoa?

  In a mostly futile effort to avoid getting scratched, she held her hands in front of her face. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to keep hurtling forward, to ignore the little voice that told her to stop, to lie down, to give up.

  She had to keep moving. She didn’t have any choice. If she stopped, Becker would find her. He would find her and kill her. Just like he had killed those other girls.

  But why her? She certainly wasn’t Hispanic. Then a memory swam to the front of her mind. The clump of blond hair Nick had found on their evidence search. Now she realized that that hair had been cut, not pulled from Miranda Wyatt’s head. So Becker had killed a girl with black kinky hair, a blond girl, and a girl with straight black hair.

  And tonight he planned to add red hair to his collection. Her hair.

  But not if she could help it. Ruby just hoped she was managing to hold on to some sense of direction. That she was running parallel to the border of the park, not deeper and deeper into its heart.

  She didn’t know how long she had been running. Ten minutes? Twenty? It was getting harder to churn forward. Wet ferns washed her pants. Her legs felt numb. Ruby caught her toe on a rock and fell headlong. She landed so hard that it forced the air from her lungs. For a long moment she lay stunned, until finally something loosened and she was able to suck in some air. It hurt nearly as much going in as it had going out, but the next breath came easier.

  She was mentally yelling at herself to get to her feet when she realized she could hear—nothing. Nothing but the sounds of a nearby stream and faraway traffic. She held her breath. Still nothing.

  Had she lost him, then? Or—and the idea sparked a distant fear in her—maybe he was only a few paces away, regarding her? Deciding the best place to slip in the knife?

  Moving as quietly as possible, Ruby pushed herself up to her hands and knees. She turned her head from side to side, ignoring how everything seemed to ripple and shift. She was alone. She took a breath that sounded more like a sob.

  Now what? Ruby decided to count to a hundred before she got to her feet. One jelly bean, two jelly bean, three jelly bean. Every fresh bruise ached, every scratch stung.

  When she reached twenty-three jelly bean, a sound cut through the stillness. To her left, someone was crashing through the underbrush, but it sounded at least a block away.

  Ruby had done it! She had lost Becker. She got to her feet and started to move as quietly as she could in the opposite direction. The sounds also seemed to be moving farther away.

  Her heart lightening, Ruby rounded a big fir tree.

  And realized how wrong she had been.

  CHAPTER 47

  WEDNESDAY

  ALIVE TO HIS FINGERTIPS

  When Ruby had first darted off, rabbited into the woods, a red rage had filled Becker. How dare she defy him? How dare she run off?

  The other girls hadn’t caused him any trouble. They had been unsuspecting. The first death had surprised even him.

  So he had cursed when he had been forced to chase after Ruby. But as Becker pushed his way through brambles and bushes, he became aware of how strongly his heart was beating in his chest. Then he paused to listen for Ruby, to look for signs of her passing. As he sucked in a breath of sweet air, he realized he was alive to his fingertips. All his senses were working together to track her down.

  This was, he realized, even better than those other times. What kind of challenge had they offered, really?

  He wasn’t the type of man who would buy a trip to one of those game farms where you shot unsuspecting exotic animals from twenty feet away as they placidly grazed. No. Man was meant to be a hunter. To match wits with his prey. The surrender was then all the more satisfying for the struggle.

  He made himself move deliberately, rationally. Ruby was younger and fitter, but the GHB had leveled the playing field by affecting her thinking and coordination. And, of course, she still had the tracker on her. He took out his phone and found Ruby’s tiny moving dot. And then he cut around and got in front of her.

  Ah, and here she came now. Blundering right toward him. He flipped the knife closed and slipped it into his pocket. He would use it later.

  But not just yet.

  CHAPTER 48

  WEDNESDAY

  ONLY GOT WORSE

  Legs churning, Alexis was desperately trying to keep up with Nick, but she kept falling farther behind. He was already way ahead. His legs were a blur, and he seemed undaunted by the steepness of the hill. Alexis felt like she was dying. Her knees hurt, her thighs burned, and there was a stabbing pain in her side that only got worse with each rasping breath.

  And what was going to happen when they caught up to Becker and Ruby? How exactly were they supposed to save her, let alone protect themselves? Neither she nor Nick had anything resembling a weapon. Her Leatherman multipurpose tool was in her SAR backpack on her bedroom floor. Even if she’d had it, its tiny knife would have been dwarfed by Becker’s, which had glinted in the light of the rising moon.

  Becker’s knife was scary enough. What if he had a gun?

  What they needed, Alexis thought, was something they could use to hold him at bay. To hurt him, if need be. As she hurried up the hill—it was no longer quite a run; Alexis simply couldn’t manage more than a sort of lurching trot—she scanned the yards she was passing, looking for something useful she could grab. Her frantic gaze found a ceramic pig on a porch, a loose brick on the sidewalk, a yellow recycling bin in a driveway, a hose coiled on a lawn, and a rose-covered wooden trellis against a house. She tried to imagine converting each into something she could use to hurt or even kill Becker. Tried—and failed.

  Nick must have be
en thinking the same thing, because ahead of her he suddenly veered to the left and grabbed a rock as big as a cantaloupe from a garden. Clutching the rock to his chest, he disappeared into Forest Park.

  CHAPTER 49

  WEDNESDAY

  TIME TO LET GO

  Ruby rounded a fir tree, pushed her way through a blackberry bush, and entered a small clearing—where she came face-to-face with Becker.

  He was holding his binoculars clasped to his chest. This did not seem terribly ominous.

  Until he lunged forward and looped the strap around the back of her neck, jerking her forward.

  His hands were fisted around the cord, which let the loose binoculars thump painfully against her ribs. The strap sawed into the back of her neck. Becker’s face was only a few inches from hers. His breath was sour and rotten. He was close enough that she could knee him. But before Ruby could even complete the thought, he stepped behind her, the strap sliding sideways around her neck. Then he pulled it even tighter.

  As the cord slipped around her neck, Ruby raised her left hand. She managed to hook two fingers between it and her neck just before it tightened across the front of her throat. The cord dug into her skin, pressing against her windpipe, squeezing her arteries and veins. Far from helping, her own knuckles were being forced against her throat, only increasing the pressure. She was making sounds she had never heard anyone make before, barking coughs and desperate gurgles. The sounds scared her as much as anything. They sounded like they were coming from someone who was dying.

  With her free hand, Ruby frantically groped over her right shoulder, trying to find Becker’s face. If only she could pull his hair, yank his nose, gouge his eyes! Anything so that she could take a breath. Take a breath and stop making those awful sounds.

  Her scrabbling hand found nothing. In an effort to gain an inch or two, she arched her back and went up on her toes. Her lungs screamed silently for air as the cord sawed deeper into her neck.

  Then Ruby’s fingertips skimmed the skin of his cheek, brushed the edge of his shoulder. He grunted in surprise.

  Yes! If she could just make him loosen his grip. She had to breathe. Her lungs were hollow with need.

  But with one of his heavy hiking boots, Becker viciously kicked her calves. Pain shot from her Achilles tendons to the base of her spine. He kicked again. Ruby’s cry of agony was stillborn, choked off along with her air.

  He was, she realized, trying to knock her off her feet. If he succeeded, she would add her own weight to his. Dead weight, Ruby thought, as the strap sliced into her fingers, into her throat. She would be dead weight.

  Her vision spun like water swirling down a drain.

  “That’s it,” Becker murmured into Ruby’s ear as her struggle began to slow. “That’s it, Ruby. Let go.”

  She stopped fighting. Stopped trying to breathe.

  “It’s time to let go now,” he whispered. So gently. He kissed her temple.

  Her vision tilted. The moon spun in the sky. The world darkened, then dwindled to nothing.

  Ruby’s knees sagged. Everything went black.

  CHAPTER 50

  WEDNESDAY

  CRY OUT IN HORROR

  Nick sprinted up the trail, running as fast as he ever had in his life. At what he thought was the same spot where he had seen Ruby and Becker disappear, he plunged into the woods. He ran flat out for a few minutes, branches slashing at him, then stopped to listen, trying to hold his breath. There. A noise. To his left.

  He darted forward, but when he stopped again a minute later, he heard nothing. Nothing. His heart was a bird trapped in the cage of his ribs. Where was Ruby? Was he too late? Had Becker already found her? Found her and killed her?

  There—did Nick hear noises to his right? He started running again, somehow managing to keep to his feet even when he tripped over a root. And then he heard it. Someone was choking and coughing. The sound let him know both that Ruby was alive and that she wouldn’t be for long.

  He found them in a little clearing. But Ruby was on the ground. On the ground and unmoving, her face slack. Holding the knife, Becker was leaning over her body. Nick cried out in horror.

  The older man spun around. In his hand, the wicked-looking knife glinted silver. When he saw Nick, the corners of his mouth lifted, but it wasn’t a smile. It was a thing he did with his mouth.

  With a banshee yell, Nick threw the heavy rock right at Becker’s head.

  And watched the other man duck. The rock sailed over his shoulder and thudded harmlessly on the ground.

  Leaving Nick with nothing but empty hands.

  He closed them into fists and leapt forward, swinging wildly at Becker, trying to drive him away from Ruby.

  Becker pulled his right fist over his head and then hammered down, punching Nick in the shoulder.

  At least it felt like a punch. But why was the knife no longer silver when Becker pulled back his hand? And why did Nick’s chest and belly suddenly feel hot and wet? Then he looked down and saw the blood. So much blood. In the fading light, it looked almost black.

  Nick dropped to his knees. He just needed a minute to figure things out.

  While he was trying to make sense of it all, the ground suddenly rushed up to meet him.

  CHAPTER 51

  WEDNESDAY

  THREE BODIES

  At the edge of the clearing, Alexis stopped short. What she saw turned her bones to water.

  Her two friends were sprawled on the forest floor. Ruby’s fingers were curled against her throat, and Nick was covered with blood. Neither one was moving.

  Becker was standing over them, his face a twisted mask of fury. He hadn’t yet seen Alexis. He was concentrating on kicking Nick’s head with one of his hiking boots.

  He was pulling his leg back to do it again when Alexis darted up behind him and swung the heavy wooden handle of the rake she had snatched from a lawn. It hit Becker’s head with a hollow, sickening crunch, making a sound like a melon falling off a kitchen table.

  * * *

  And that was how the police found Alexis Frost. Holding a rake like a baseball bat, with three bodies around her, blood spattered over the leaves, and tears running down her face.

  CHAPTER 52

  THE FOLLOWING WEDNESDAY

  LIKE BIRDS

  “You sure you’re up for SAR tonight?” Alexis asked Nick as the three of them waited for Detective Harriman. It was the same interview room where she had picked out the photo of Jay Adams less than two weeks ago. As soon as investigators got a look inside Caleb Becker’s house, Adams had been released. “Jon said it was okay if we missed class again.”

  All three of them had missed last week’s class, of course. About the time it began, Alexis was being interviewed by the police, and both Nick and Ruby were being rushed to the hospital. For that matter, so was Caleb Becker, although it was a different one and he had a police officer stationed outside his door.

  Now Nick nodded. “I don’t want to miss two weeks in a row. Besides, I’m doing good.” Then he winced and put his hand to his shoulder. He wore a button-down flannel shirt with the top three buttons undone to reveal layers and layers of gauze.

  Was Alexis a terrible person for wondering if the wince and the bandages were a touch exaggerated? She probably was, given that just a week ago she had been convinced that Nick was dead.

  Instead, after Becker had stabbed him, Nick had fainted. That part got left out of his version of events, and who was Alexis to contradict him? He had still rushed a serial killer empty-handed. He had still needed twenty-six stitches.

  And Ruby? She claimed she had been playing dead to fool Becker. To Alexis’s eyes, she had actually been pretty darn dead, or close to it. A week later, Ruby’s voice was still hoarse from her bruised larynx. The red mark on her throat where the strap of the binoculars had dug into her was slowly fading.

  “I still wish you had hit Becker’s head hard enough to kill him,” Nick said now.

  “I don’t.” Alexis shivered.
“I’d have to live with that forever.” If she had nightmares now, what would they be like if they featured a real-life dead man?

  “In the army, they’d call that a righteous kill.”

  “I don’t care what anyone would call it. It would still be killing someone. I just wanted to knock him out, and that’s what I did.” Although really Alexis hadn’t been thinking about either knocking out Becker or killing him. She had just wanted everything to stop. To finally stop.

  * * *

  Alexis, Nick, and Ruby had spent the last few days talking to cops, being interviewed by Detective Harriman, and being alternately lectured and hugged by their parents. Alexis’s mom cut out stories about them from the Oregonian and USA Today and pasted them into her scrapbooks. A few days later, Alexis, Nick, and Ruby had even been featured in People magazine. Each article was garbled in different ways. Even Alexis wasn’t exactly sure what the truth was. She had a feeling it would take months to untangle. And maybe it would never be straightened out. Who could understand a man who had collected girls like birds?

  In the past week, a few threads had been teased out.

  Caleb Becker was a software engineer who didn’t have any close friends. Just acquaintances who were also birders. A year earlier, he had volunteered with a wildlife biologist who was trapping birds and fitting them with tracking devices. The biologist had told Detective Harriman that Becker even wrote a computer program to better follow the birds’ movements. Later, he had used a version of the same program to track homeless girls.

  No one was exactly sure when or why he had moved on from birds to girls, but his church had provided volunteers for a soup kitchen once a month, and other volunteers remembered his curiosity about the homeless people they served.

  The door to the interview room opened, and Detective Harriman walked in. If anything, he looked even more wrinkled and tired than usual. He was lugging a cardboard banker’s box, which he plopped with a sigh in the middle of the table. Then he took a seat.