Max made the turn and cat-footed the big vehicle cautiously over the old logging bridge. It was a single lane with no guardrails. The water was not far below.
“I don’t like the look of the river,” he said. “It’s running high. If this downpour doesn’t let up, the water could be over the top of the bridge in a few more hours. We aren’t going to stay very long at the Briggses’. We don’t want to get caught up here in the mountains tonight.”
“If Detective Briggs has any hard information for us, I doubt it will take him long to provide it.”
On the far side of the bridge, Max turned off onto a steep graveled road that was gouged with potholes.
“You get the feeling that maybe Briggs’s career in law enforcement made him a tad paranoid?” Charlotte asked. “I mean, he couldn’t have chosen a more out-of-the-way location for his retirement home.”
“One thing’s for sure, no one is going to sneak up on him—not using this road,” Max said. “He’d hear a vehicle coming long before it arrived.”
A few more twists in the old logging road brought them to a small clearing. There was a large cabin with a front porch set in the center. Two vehicles—a relatively new pickup and an equally new, mud-spattered SUV— were parked near the cabin.
The front door opened just as Max brought his vehicle to a halt in the clearing. A big, burly, bearded man appeared on the front porch. His thinning gray hair was pulled back in a low ponytail. He was dressed in a faded plaid flannel shirt, baggy jeans and scuffed work boots.
Max opened the console, removed the holstered gun and strapped it around his waist. He pulled on his slouchy sports coat to cover the weapon.
Charlotte looked startled.
“You brought a gun?” she said.
“Just a precaution. By all accounts, Briggs has been living off the grid for a while now. That can do things to the mind.”
“Oh. I never considered that he might be a little crazy.”
“Don’t know that he is.”
He reached into the backseat for his waterproof windbreaker and then angled the baseball cap down over his eyes.
“Ready?” he said.
“Yes.”
“One more thing. Be polite, but don’t eat or drink anything that’s offered.”
“What?”
“This case involves drugs. We’re not taking any chances.”
Charlotte gave him a strange look. Probably thinks I’m borderline paranoid. Hell, maybe he was.
But Charlotte merely nodded. “Okay.”
She pulled up the hood of her anorak and opened her door.
He climbed out from behind the wheel and jogged around the front of the SUV. Together he and Charlotte hurried toward the shelter of the porch.
“Detective Briggs?” Max said.
“Retired. Call me Egan. You must be Cutler. Sorry about the weather. Hell of a day for a drive up into these mountains. Didn’t know the storm was going to turn bad like this. It’s gonna catch a lot of folks by surprise.”
The voice matched the man: deep, booming and infused with an authority that, in Max’s experience, was common to those who’d had a long career in law enforcement.
“Max Cutler,” Max said. “This is Charlotte Sawyer.”
“I’m Jocelyn Pruett’s stepsister,” Charlotte said. She lowered the hood of her jacket. “We appreciate your taking the time to talk with us today, sir.”
“Yeah, well, not like I had anything else planned this afternoon,” Egan said. “Not with this weather. Figured you two were damn serious about talking to me if you were willing to drive all the way up here. Come on inside. My wife is making coffee.”
CHAPTER 22
“Let me get this straight,” Egan said. “You think that the death of this Louise Flint might be connected to that old rape case at Loring College?”
“At this point it’s just one more angle I’m trying to check out,” Max said. “Ms. Sawyer is assisting me because her stepsister is unavailable.”
Egan frowned. “Something happened to Ms. Pruett?”
Thank goodness she had prepared for this question, Charlotte thought. Max had been very clear right from the start that they were not going to give away any more information than was absolutely necessary in the course of the interview. But he hadn’t been convinced that she would be able to lie well enough to fool a former cop, so he had made her practice a few things on the drive from Seattle.
“No, she’s fine,” Charlotte said. She was proud of the cool, calm manner in which the words came out. “But she’s away on an extended retreat for a month. I can’t get in touch with her, so I’m here in her stead. I know she’ll want to be informed about any developments.”
“Yeah, well, just to clarify, I never really doubted your stepsister’s story of the rape,” Egan said. He leaned back in the big easy chair and propped his booted ankles on a needlepoint hassock that looked handmade. “I could see that she’d been terrified and there was definitely a bloody nick on the side of her throat. She said that was where the assailant had held the tip of the knife.”
Charlotte was very careful not to look at Max. She was afraid that if she did, she would reveal her rage. She remembered all too well Jocelyn’s furious, anguished description of how the detective in charge of the case had insinuated again and again that the rape had been consensual—just some adventurous sex that had gotten out of hand.
“Did the Loring Police Department’s investigation produce any leads?” Max asked.
He sounded so easygoing and professional, Charlotte thought. Like he believed everything Briggs said.
Her damp anorak was hanging from a wall hook near the front door. Max’s windbreaker was next to it. He was still wearing his ill-fitting sports coat. He kept it fastened to conceal his gun.
The interior of the cabin was a real-life version of what designers liked to call rustic. The sturdy wooden dining table looked handmade. So did the drapes and the area rug. Genuine logs, not gas, burned in the fireplace. Lanterns were scattered around the room, an indication that the occupants of the cabin were accustomed to losing their power during storms.
There was a television that was hooked up to a satellite dish, and a landline phone, but Charlotte did not see any signs of cell phones or computers. The Briggses were doing their best to live off the grid without cutting all ties to the outside world.
The only indications that the Briggses had once lived a more conventional life were the framed photos on the mantel. One showed a much younger Egan Briggs dressed in a policeman’s uniform. He was smiling proudly and he had his arm draped possessively around his wife, Roxanne. Her long blond hair was blowing in the wind and she looked very pretty. She also looked a lot younger than her husband.
The other two photos were pictures of a handsome youth—a son, Charlotte decided. The first picture showed him dressed in a high school graduation gown. He was smiling a big, can’t-wait-to-take-on-the-future grin.
The second picture was a snapshot that showed the same young man a few years later. He lounged against the railing on the porch of the cabin and he was no longer smiling. There was something sullen about the way his shoulders were hunched. He looked as if he was angry at having been forced to pose for the picture. Or maybe just angry at the world, Charlotte thought.
“Nothing solid,” Egan said in response to Max’s question. “Seem to recall that there were a couple of popular theories at the time. No offense, Ms. Sawyer, but one of those notions was that Jocelyn Pruett was involved in some nasty sex games that had gotten too rough for her.”
Charlotte gripped the arm of her chair. “My stepsister has never been into bondage games.”
She was aware that Max was sending her a warning look, but she couldn’t help it. Someone had to stand up for Jocelyn, who was not there to defend herself.
Egan exhaled a heavy sigh. “
Like I said, I believed Ms. Pruett. But no one else did. According to the people we talked to at the time, she had a reputation for being what you might call high-spirited. Adventurous.”
Charlotte shook her head. “She wasn’t into that kind of adventure.”
Roxanne Briggs appeared from the small kitchen. She was still tall, but the lushly rounded figure she’d possessed when she posed for the photo on the mantel had thickened over time. Somewhere along the line she had adopted an earth mother vibe. She wore a long, flowing caftan-style dress that was decorated with brilliant splashes of color. Her blond hair was just starting to turn gray. It hung in a single heavy braid down her back.
She watched Charlotte with somber, unreadable eyes and extended a wooden tray that held two steaming mugs.
“Coffee?” she asked in a whispery voice that did not seem to go with her size and stature.
It was, Charlotte reflected, the first word Roxanne had spoken since acknowledging the introductions with a nod of her head a short time earlier.
“Yes, thank you,” Charlotte said.
She took one of the mugs.
“Cream and sugar?” Roxanne asked.
“No, thanks,” Charlotte said.
Roxanne offered the other mug to Max.
“Thanks,” he said. He took the coffee. “No cream or sugar.”
Roxanne put the empty tray on the hand-carved chunk of polished wood that served as a coffee table. She sank down onto an overstuffed sofa.
Max turned back to Egan. “You said there were two major theories of the crime. What was the second one?”
“I ruled out the BDSM angle because I figured that if Ms. Pruett was into that scene she probably would have known her attacker.”
“He blindfolded her,” Charlotte said. “He put a bag over her head and threatened to choke her.”
“I know, but still, if she’d been having regular sex with him, it seemed like there would have been something about him that she would have recognized. Also, if there had been a sex club like that operating on the campus, I’m pretty sure I would have turned up someone who knew something about it. Loring College was small at the time and the town was not exactly a big city. Still isn’t, come to that.”
“You’re right,” Max said. “It would have been hard to keep a BDSM club completely secret.”
Egan nodded. “That’s why, in the end, I went with the second theory—that Ms. Pruett was the victim of a serial rapist who protected himself by moving from campus to campus.”
Charlotte started to open her mouth to tell him that Jocelyn had always been sure that her attacker was someone who knew the campus well. But Max flashed her a quick, silencing look. This time she heeded the order.
He looked down into his coffee for a few beats, as if he was mulling over the information that Egan had provided. When he raised his eyes, his expression was unreadable.
“You’re sure it couldn’t have been someone local?” he asked.
“Trust me, we looked into that possibility very thoroughly,” Egan said. “Talked to a lot of students, male and female. Also talked to several members of the faculty and staff. To this day I’m convinced that whoever attacked Jocelyn Pruett moved on. If he hasn’t been picked up on some other charge by now, he’s probably still at it.”
“Guys like that don’t quit,” Max said.
Egan shook his head. “Nope.”
Charlotte tightened her grip on the mug. “My sister believes that she was stalked before she was assaulted. The rapist seemed to know her routine. He struck at the one place on the path where she would be most vulnerable. Doesn’t that indicate that it was someone who knew the campus well?”
Egan gave her a sorrowful look. “It indicates that someone studied the campus, but it doesn’t indicate that he stalked your sister. It’s more likely he simply chose his victim at random. Any girl who came down that path that night was a potential target. Jocelyn Pruett was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Charlotte started to argue, but Max set his coffee mug aside with just enough force to get her attention. She closed her mouth. This was his area of expertise, she thought. Let the man do his job.
“There are some distinctive elements in the case,” he said. “Getting a feel for the territory, the attack from behind, the bag over the head and the use of a knife suggest a carefully thought-out plan. This guy is into strategy.”
Egan grunted. “Assuming that’s the way it happened.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Charlotte demanded.
He gave her a sympathetic look. “The thing is that people who are subject to serious violence and trauma often have difficulty remembering the details of the events exactly as they occurred.”
Charlotte kept her mouth shut, but it wasn’t easy.
Egan turned back to Max. “I agree with you. Assuming Ms. Pruett did remember the details correctly, the attacker had a plan. And he would have used it again and again because it worked. But there were no more reports like that on the campus or in the town of Loring. Believe me, I kept an eye out for any assault that was even remotely similar. Nothing came to my attention. That’s why I think he moved on.”
“What about assaults elsewhere in the region?” Max asked.
“I examined the rape reports from campuses around the Pacific Northwest for a while,” Egan said. He propped his elbows on the arms of the chair and put his fingertips together. “There were two more that year that could have been a match. Both took place on other college campuses. Both involved blindfolds and knives.”
“Was anyone caught?” Charlotte asked.
“No, unfortunately.” Egan’s jaw tensed. “I followed up, but no one was ever arrested. There were never any viable suspects. Like I said, if the person who attacked those other two women was the same man who assaulted Jocelyn Pruett, then he was smart enough to move from campus to campus. For a time I even thought I might be able to track him, but the trail went ice-cold after the second report. There were no more assaults using the same MO.”
“But you don’t think he quit, do you?” Max said.
Egan shook his head. “No. But like I said, it’s possible he was arrested on some other charge and is doing time. Hell, it’s also possible that he moved out of the state. He could be clear across the country by now. There’s no good way to track those kinds of crimes when large distances are involved.”
“No,” Max said, “there isn’t.”
A strange hush settled on the interior of the cabin. Charlotte was suddenly aware of the muffled clash of the wind chimes on the front porch. The wind was picking up again. She looked at Roxanne Briggs. The woman seemed frozen in place, staring at Max.
It was Egan who broke the spell. He peered out the window.
“Weather’s taking another turn,” he said. “You might want to think about getting down off this mountain before things get too bad.”
Roxanne stirred. “They haven’t even finished their coffee, Egan.”
Egan frowned and looked as if he was about to say something, but, as if on cue, the lights flickered and went out. The cabin was plunged into an early twilight.
Roxanne flinched and then got to her feet. “There goes the electricity.”
Egan groaned and heaved himself up out of the chair. “Business as usual during a storm, I’m afraid. We always lose power. Well, that’s why they invented generators.”
“I’ll light the lanterns,” Roxanne said.
She moved across the small space to the dining room table and struck a match. Light flared in a glass storm lantern.
“I’ll go crank up the generator.” Egan looked at Max again. “Take it easy driving back down the mountain. The rains have been heavy all week. Rivers and streams are running high. We frequently get a few landslides and downed trees in a storm like this. Once in a while a bridge washes out.”
&n
bsp; “Right.” Max was on his feet. “Thanks for the information. We’ll be on our way.”
Charlotte set her untouched coffee aside and stood. Roxanne handed her jacket to her without a word. Max shrugged into his windbreaker and yanked his cap down over his eyes.
“One more thing before we take off,” he said to Egan. “Has anyone else contacted you recently about that old rape case?”
“No,” Egan said. “You two are the first people to ask about it in years. Why?”
“Just curious,” Max said. He handed Egan a card. “If you think of anything else, I’d appreciate it if you would give me a call.”
“Will do,” Egan said. He opened the front door. “Do me a favor, keep me in the loop. I’d really like to know if your investigation goes anywhere. After all these years it would be nice to get some answers.”
“I’ll be in touch,” Max said. He looked at Charlotte. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
She moved out onto the sheltered porch. Max followed.
She hurried down the steps. The wind chimes crashed and clanged, creating a dark, unnerving music. The rain was letting up, but the wind was growing stronger. The atmosphere was stirring with a violent energy. She was very glad they were leaving.
She went quickly toward the SUV. Max moved ahead of her. She knew he was going to open the passenger-side door for her.
“I’ll get it,” she said.
She waved him off, got the door open and jumped up into the seat.
Max loped around the front of the vehicle, climbed in behind the wheel and fired up the engine. He paused long enough to shrug out of his windbreaker and sports coat. She noticed that he did not unbuckle the gun belt.
She removed her anorak and put it neatly on the floor of the rear compartment to dry.
Max put the SUV in gear and drove cautiously down the steep, graveled driveway.
Charlotte looked back at the darkened cabin.
Roxanne Briggs, illuminated by the glow of the lantern, was at the window, watching them drive away.