The Body in the Woods

  It was her hair that had attracted his attention. Cut in a bob that showed off the long lines of her neck, it was black, thick, and straight. He imagined burying his nose right behind her ear. How he would inhale as he listened to the sound of her last breath.

  A longing filled him. He turned and looked to the left and then to the right. No one out for a walk. Not even any cars passing by. It would be so very easy—

  “Oh!” She lifted her head so fast that it thumped on the door behind her. Wincing, she looked at him suspiciously from eyes set off by black bangs cut square across.

  She couldn’t have been out on the streets long, not with how neatly trimmed those bangs still were. She was even younger than he first thought when he had seen her from across the intersection. Fourteen, fifteen? How did a girl like this survive on the streets? Where did she eat? Was this really where she slept?

  “Sorry if I startled you. I’m with Hope for the Homeless.” The group didn’t exist, but he doubted she would be Googling it anytime soon. “Would you like a pair of gloves?” With his own gloved hands, he opened the white plastic Target bag. He had bought dozens of them for a dollar apiece. They came in a rainbow of colors, plus black-and-white stripes.

  Her face opened up. “Oh, thank you. My hands get so cold.” She reached for a turquoise pair and slid the left one on. They were linked with a plastic tie, which she bit in half with straight white teeth.

  “You’re awfully young to be out here on your own,” he said. “It’s not safe.” She didn’t know the half of it.

  She straightened her spine. “I can take care of myself.”

  “But what if someone tried to hurt you? This street is deserted.”

  “See that?” She pointed above her head. “That’s a camera.”

  It was. There was even a small sign just behind her head that he only now noticed. “Property under surveillance.”

  As he looked at the camera with his face tipped back, every feature surely clearly visible, he felt sick. How many times had his image been caught by a camera affixed to a building? Had someone been watching him while he had been watching these girls?

  “I always make sure I sleep under cameras to protect myself.” The girl lifted her chin. “This lady I met told me about it. She said that one time a guy lit her blanket on fire while she was sleeping, but it was all caught on camera.”

  He thought but didn’t say that the camera hadn’t stopped the woman’s blanket from being set on fire.

  Since his face had already been captured by the camera, he looked at it more closely. Who had put it there? There were no government buildings on this block, and it wasn’t angled to capture traffic. It must be privately owned, just meant to deter burglars. The more he examined it, the more it looked like an empty black camera-shaped box. No wires led to it, and it wasn’t moving.

  “But what if something bad did happen?” he asked. “Do you have a phone so you could call someone?”

  She shook her head and dropped her gaze.

  “Would you like one?” With his gloved hand, he took the phone out of his pocket and offered it to her.

  She pulled off one of the gloves he had just given her and ran her finger across it, making a happy sound as it blinked to life. It was a prepaid cell phone, bought for cash at Walmart. And not just the cheapest phone, the kind you could only make phone calls with and that was all. No, with this phone you could go on the Web. You could listen to music. You could download apps.

  And you would never notice that another hidden app was already loaded on it.

  “It comes with a month of prepaid service.”

  Her mouth thinned down to a line. “What do you want for it?”

  She was wary now. Even at fourteen or so and not long on the streets, she knew there were trades. Knew that nothing was free.

  “I just want you to think about calling your family. Or seeing if there is another place you can go. It’s not good to be out here by yourself.”

  If she took it, he would know exactly what she did with it. Who she called. Where she was.

  Suddenly she thrust it back at him. “I can’t take this.”

  “Why not?” This was only the second time he had tried giving a homeless girl a phone. The first time it had disappeared into the girl’s pocket so fast it had been like a conjuring trick.

  “It’s too valuable. I wouldn’t feel right.”

  “But we want to help girls like you.” The “we,” he thought, made it seem more legitimate.

  “Thank you, but no.” She continued to hold it out until he took it.

  Time for his backup plan. “I’m afraid I’m all out of food coupons, toothbrushes, and socks,” he said, as if he had ever had those things to begin with. “I still have lip balm. Would you like one?” He was confident she would say yes. She would still feel awkward about refusing the phone. Lip gloss was on the same level as cheap synthetic gloves, a gift small enough that it didn’t demand anything in return.

  “Oh, okay.” She nodded. “Sure.”

  He dropped the black tube into her upturned palm.

  And it really was lip balm. At least the top third of an inch was. It weighed just four grams more than a real ChapStick, but inside the tube was a GPS unit that would continuously broadcast its location until the tiny battery that powered it ran out. He had sealed it with a piece of cellophane heated with a heat gun.

  She uncapped the balm and ran it across her mouth, then offered him a shy smile with newly glossy lips. “Thank you!”

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “And have a good night. Stay safe.”

  He didn’t allow himself to grin until he had turned around and was walking away.

  CHAPTER 19

  WEDNESDAY

  YOU’RE ONE OF THEM NOW

  Alexis climbed the stairs to their apartment, so tired she could barely lift her feet. When she had signed up for Search and Rescue, she had thought it would be easy. Maybe even boring. Just putting one foot in front of the other. Helping the occasional lost hiker. Not learning how to read topo maps. Not finding dead people. Not flagging tiny white scattered bones. Even if Ruby was certain they had belonged to an animal.

  When Alexis opened the door, her mom was in the living room, a game of solitaire spread out on the coffee table. The TV was showing a Seinfeld rerun, the sound turned down to a murmur. This morning Alexis had made her mom a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It sat untouched next to her cards, the bread beginning to curl at the edges.

  “Why didn’t you eat your sandwich, Mom?”

  “Why were you so eager for me to eat it?” Her mom’s stare challenged her. “Did you crush up some of those pills and mix them in?”

  It was probably a good idea, like hiding a cat’s pill in a ball of tuna fish. “No, I didn’t,” Alexis answered honestly.

  “You’d tell me the same even if you were lying.” Maybe her mom’s brain was working better than Alexis thought.

  “Well, I’m not.” She moved toward the kitchen. “Here, I’ll make you a new sandwich, and you can watch while I do it.”

  “How do I know you didn’t just stir something into the peanut butter earlier?”

  Off her meds, her mom could get like this, sliding into paranoia. Alexis didn’t have the energy to deal with her. “Fine. Then don’t eat. I’m going to take a shower.”

  She had carried Bran’s card with her all day, occasionally reaching into her jeans pocket to rub the ball of her thumb over the top edge. Now before she could think too hard about it, she pulled it and her cell phone out, then typed his number into a text program.

  In the message line, Alexis typed, Hey B—Spent all day looking for evidence. Long day. Alexis.

  Looking at the clock at the top of the screen, she decided she would give him five minutes. If he didn’t respond, she would flip her phone closed and go take a shower.

  While she waited, she decided to see if she could find out more about the dead girl, Miranda Wyatt. Was Ruby right? Had Miranda been the vi
ctim of a serial killer? Someone who might kill again?

  But before Alexis could even go on Facebook, her phone chimed.

  Bran: Hey A, how are you doing? Did you sleep OK? B.

  Her hands were sweating. She wiped them on her pants legs before she typed her answer.

  Alexis: A few bad dreams. Up in the middle of night making choc chip cookies.

  As she hit the return key, she thought about how every word she had typed was true, but not the whole truth.

  Bran: Good choice! Let me know if you ever want to share.

  What was she doing? Bran would want her to share more than chocolate chip cookies. He’d want to know more about her life. And it was safer if she kept herself to herself.

  Alexis: I’ll let you know. Just wanted to update you. G2G.

  A fine tremor washed over her as she hit the END button. Trying not to think too much about what she had just done, Alexis slipped the old white MacBook from underneath the bed. It was her connection to the outside world. Her cell phone only allowed her to go on the company’s website, which just had links for sports, weather, and news, all of them excruciatingly slow, especially when you had to pay for every minute you used. Not having a cell phone that could go on the regular Internet was nearly as weird as saying you didn’t have a TV. Which sometimes they didn’t, depending on whether her mom had been gripped by one of her rages. Luckily everyone was swapping out their heavy TVs for flat screens, so in the last few years it had become easy to pick up a replacement for ten bucks or less. Their apartment came with basic cable offering a handful of stations. When you were living on your mom’s disability check and food stamps, you didn’t have a lot of choices.

  The MacBook was six years old, a gift from one of her babysitting clients, and you had to know just where to touch the trackpad. Still, with it and the neighbor’s borrowed Wi-Fi, Alexis could go on Facebook, Tumblr, and Pinterest, and could even research school papers.

  On Facebook, she clicked around until she found Miranda. In her profile photo, she was sitting in what looked like a backyard at dusk. On her forehead, a circlet of white flowers. With a grin, she looked off to one side, her cigarette trailing silvery smoke in the night air.

  Luckily, Miranda and Alexis had two friends in common, which meant Alexis could go deeper into her page. Of course, “friends” was a loose word on Facebook. In real life, no one had 579 friends. Not close ones, anyway. Despite her couple hundred friends on Facebook, Alexis didn’t have even one close friend in real life.

  Today, Miranda’s friends had left a string of messages.

  Mir everyone loves you so much.

  We are all in shock. We just can’t believe you won’t come back to us with that crazy grin.

  Mir—our hearts are broken without you.

  I loved you, Miranda. Should have told you that when you could hear me. But it’s still true.

  Yesterday morning, Miranda’s friends had thought they had all the time in the world to tell her things. Yesterday, Miranda had been just one of thousands of high school girls in Portland. Now no one could talk to her and everyone would talk about her.

  Alexis clicked around on Miranda’s Facebook page. She had attended Alder Grove, a private alternative school that Alexis knew was for kids who were on the verge of dropping out and whose parents had lots of money.

  Then she clicked on the button for Miranda’s photos, and her mouth fell open. Photo after photo of Miranda looking wasted, hanging out with people who looked sketch, in places that looked trashed, with broken furniture and tagged walls.

  In the first photo, she was outside, just as she was in her profile picture. Only this time she posed in a black bra and panties, arms crossed just above her pierced belly button, flashing deuces. She was a pretty girl, but not so pretty standing amid a pile of black trash bags on a street someplace, her feet bare, her grin stupid, her eyes dead.

  Miranda was clearly a risk taker. Maybe Ruby was right. Maybe she had done something to bring herself to the attention of a serial killer. Alexis closed her laptop and was still mulling it over as she walked through the living room on her way to take a shower.

  When she saw Alexis, her mom leaned closer and whispered, “What are they saying?” Then she pasted on an enormous fake smile and said, “Don’t worry. There’s no reason to be afraid.”

  Alexis’s stomach dropped. “What are you talking about?”

  “Shh!” Her mom’s eyes darted to the TV set, where Jerry was sitting in the coffee shop talking to Elaine, Kramer, and George. The sound was turned too low to hear more than murmurs. “Them. The watchers. What are they saying?”

  “Mom, they’re on TV. It’s not real. That show’s, like, twenty years old. The actors are saying whatever the script told them to say two decades ago.” Reality and her mom had clearly parted company. “And they’re not watching us.”

  Her mom shook her head, still keeping her voice low. “They are. You just can’t see it. They’re sneaky, the watchers. They like to keep you off guard.” She stood up. “I can’t stay here. Not while they’re watching our every move.”

  “Mom, they’re not watching.” Alexis went over to the TV set and pushed the power button until the picture blinked off. “There. Now they’re gone. Okay?”

  “You just can’t see them.” Her mom’s eyes narrowed. “They’re still there. They’re still watching.”

  With a grunt, Alexis heaved the TV so that it faced the wall. “Okay. Now they can’t see anything. Just the wall.”

  “They’ve gotten to you.” Her mom’s mouth turned down at the corners. Her eyes were full of betrayal. “You’re one of them now.”

  She grabbed her mom’s arm, thin as a stick under her sweater. “Mom, it’s okay, I’m not one of them. Mom!”

  “Get away from me!” Her mom scooted backward. “I know who you are!” Her eyes were panicky, twitching like a scared rabbit’s. Alexis grabbed her again, but her mom wrenched free and ran for the door.

  By the time Alexis made it to the hall, the door was slamming shut at the bottom of the stairs.

  CHAPTER 20

  THURSDAY

  WHEN SHE WAS FINALLY STILL

  The OREGONIAN lay waiting for him on the otherwise empty old oak table. He set the plate down in front of it. The cobalt blue Fiestaware held three over-easy eggs, lightly salted and peppered. He’d bought the cage-free eggs at the farmers’ market. Because they came from a variety of breeds, each shell had been a different color, one creamy white, one brick colored, and one blue-green. Inside, they were all the same, with yolks an orange-yellow to rival a summer sun.

  Picking up his fork, he flipped past news from the Middle East, past flooding, past celebrities, past football. He cared about none of it. But on the front page of the Metro section he found what he was looking for. A story about the girl. Her full name was Miranda Wyatt.

  Setting the side of his fork against a yolk, he slowly increased the pressure until it dimpled and then broke and ran, coating the tines with sticky yellow liquid. Eating in quick bites, he read the article.

  Until now, he had known only the girl’s first name. But she was his; she would always be his. Her name was ultimately unimportant. He still had the data he had gathered about her. Unlike many of the homeless girls he had met, she hadn’t spent her nights downtown, but in the West Hills near an upscale grocery store. She had told him about digging through the store’s Dumpsters to find something to eat, and then bedding down behind them on pieces of cardboard.

  The section of her blond hair that he had cut away with his pocketknife was now in his office, tied with a green velvet ribbon. He could touch it anytime he wanted to remember her brief struggle against the inevitable. He could look at the photo he had snapped of her when she was finally still.

  In the newspaper’s photo, which appeared to have come from a high school yearbook, the girl looked so different. Her hair was tucked behind her ears, not hanging in her eyes. The only piercings he could see were in her ears.

&
nbsp; And now she was gone, and it was time to move on to something new. Something different.

  Someone different.

  The article was short, taking up far fewer column inches than the two photos—one of the girl, the other of a search team—that accompanied it. He remembered when newspapers had been substantial. Thick with pages, with words, with ideas. Now the paper was about as weighty as a Star magazine. You could even be illiterate and still enjoy the pictures.

  He skimmed through the details of her life, frowning a little. She was well liked, she was survived by her parents and an older brother, and she went to a high school whose name he had never heard.

  A high school in Portland. That gave him pause. Miranda had said she was a runaway, but the paper said she was a student at this school, which was described as “alternative.” Maybe it catered to homeless students.

  Had she been lying to him? Or were her parents lying to the newspaper?

  Or did it really matter? He had begun to think that his little experiment was too narrow. That he needed to broaden it.

  He was about to turn the page when a milk-pale face among the line of searchers caught his attention. It was that girl who had captivated him. He read the caption. Her name was Ruby McClure. Ruby. What a perfect name. She was like a rare and precious jewel. The photo was black-and-white, so her hair looked undistinguished, but he remembered its rich red color.

  He slipped his plate into the dishwasher and then went into his office. So far, he had distributed eight GPS trackers, retrieving one after it was no longer needed. Each tracker reported its location every fifteen minutes. Once he sent them out into the world, he could look up the trackers online, either at home or on his phone.

  On his computer, he checked the current location of all his girls. It looked something like an air traffic control screen, only the blinking green dots represented homeless girls in downtown Portland. If he hovered over a dot, it would tell him the number he had assigned to the girl carrying it.

  It would be easy enough to buy Ruby’s home address online, but how could he find a way to track her? If he followed her and engineered a meeting, she would certainly have her own phone. And he didn’t think she would take lip balm from him. Even if she had been homeless, he didn’t think she was the type who would take anything at all. So he would have to find a way to hide it in her belongings without her noticing.