She went back to her bedroom, stopping first in the bathroom to get a drink of water. She glanced at the mirror and remembered the note she had taped to remind herself to call Willis. She looked on the floor, in the wastebasket, everywhere. The note was definitely on the mirror when she’d brushed her teeth, just before 10:00 PM.
Now she couldn’t find it anywhere.
19
.
Tommy Gunderson had a weakness for gadgets.
He didn’t just like them a little. He liked them a lot, and he had enough money to buy anything that caught his fancy, from the latest iPhone or digital e-book reader to an ice-fishing reel that had a built-in GPS to help locate the exact spot on the frozen lake where you drilled a hole and caught fish the last time you went ice fishing. He owned one of those, and he didn’t even ice fish. He couldn’t pass a Brookstone or a Sharper Image without picking up something, and the SkyMall catalogs he read on airplanes were the best part of any flight. When he’d decided to act on his childhood dream to become a private investigator, his first step was to take classes at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, but his second step was to go shopping.
He went to bed early but set his alarm to wake him shortly before moonset, 3:53 AM, knowing the task he had in mind was best accomplished in absolute darkness. He dressed quickly, donning black sweats and boots, a black hooded sweatshirt, and his Barbour raincoat with the multiple pockets he’d need to carry the gear he’d laid out on the kitchen table. His ATN PVS7 Generation 3 military-grade night vision goggles went in one pocket. His SureFire 10X Dominator flashlight, which emitted 60 lumens for normal purposes but switched to 500 lumens, like a Star Trek phaser set to stun if you needed to temporarily blind someone, went in another. His Iridium 9555 satellite phone, which gave him reception anywhere on earth, went in the vest pocket. His Garmin Nuvi 680 GPS transponder, to bookmark his path, went in a side pouch.
In a matte black canvas backpack he stowed away three spray bottles of aminophthalhydrazide, commercially known as Luminol, a chemical that could reveal, by a chemo-luminescent reaction visible to NVGs, the presence of blood in solutions as dilute as one part per million, even if it had been exposed to the elements for up to three years.
He threw the backpack over one shoulder and his White’s Spectra V3i metal detector, the best money could buy, over the other. He was about to leave when he thought twice and went to his top dresser drawer, where he kept his .45 Taurus 1911SS automatic. He moved the gun aside and found what he was looking for, the Boy Scout knife his father had given him when he’d become a Webelo. He put the knife in his pocket.
He checked his cell phone to see if he’d missed any calls from Dani. He’d been doing that a lot lately. She hadn’t called. He hoped she was sound asleep. He armed his security system and checked himself one more time in the mirror and grabbed the keys to the Jeep.
The night was pitch black, but he didn’t need light to see where he was going. He’d rambled and explored the woods of Bull’s Rock Hill and the shores of Lake Atticus since he was a boy. He never got lost. Maybe that was where he’d gotten his sense of direction. It was where he’d played hide-and-seek or flashlight tag, and where he’d hiked with his dad, bug jar in one hand and butterfly net in the other. It was where he’d learned to ride a bike and where, beginning in seventh grade, he had run the trails and bridle paths before and after school to get in shape for sports. His triumphant moment came when he ran all the way to the top of Bull’s Rock Hill without stopping. Eventually he ran the hill with ankle weights, then with ankle weights and a full weight vest, and finally, on a bet, he ran it carrying one of his teammates on his back, though by the time he reached the top, he was more staggering than running. He knew the way by daylight, and he knew it by moonlight, and he knew it when there was no moon at all and the path was difficult to find.
There were three routes to the top of the hill. The easiest was the southwestern approach along a gravel road and then a well-trodden path to the top. Next easiest was a footpath from the northwest that wound for about two miles through the woods. The most difficult route was a trail from the northeast that ultimately zigzagged up a steep incline via a series of switchbacks. The southern and southeastern faces of the hill, overlooking Lake Atticus, were too steep to be scaled except by rock climbers.
When Tommy tried to imagine somebody going to Bull’s Rock Hill to commit a crime, any crime, but in particular the gruesome murder he was hoping to help solve, he couldn’t imagine the perpetrator taking the first approach, where he’d be visible for much of the way. Nor could he imagine anyone taking the third, because it was too steep. So he parked his car on Keeler Street, at the gravel pull-off where the middle path began. The fact that the land was private property had never deterred the joggers and hikers and picnickers who used it, nor had The Pastures ever made a point of asking trespassers to stay away as long as they respected the lower reaches of the golf course itself.
At the head of the trail Tommy saw a trash can, and above it a sign that, in the beam of his flashlight, read No Littering. Someone with a black Magic Marker had altered the sign to read No Lettering. On a tree, another sign said All Dogs Must Be Leashed, beneath which someone had tacked a printout of a scruffy-looking brownish grinning mutt named Molly and the words LOST DOG / MUCH LOVED—13 YEARS OLD—PART TERRIER AND PART ??? IF FOUND, CALL 917-555-8746. A third sign said “Prevent Lyme Disease / These Woods Are Home to Deer Ticks.”
He worked slowly, sweeping the trail with his metal detector and spraying with Luminol, using his NVGs to search the grounds. According to Frank DeGidio, the police had already searched the trail in daylight but found nothing. Tommy had about three hours until sunup.
In the first mile he found an earring, forty-five cents, a man’s watch, and a silver filling from a tooth.
Halfway to the peak, he stopped.
To one side of the path, where he sprayed the Luminol, he found a drop of blood, then smaller secondary drops in a splash pattern. He’d read about splatter paths in a few scholarly criminology papers and a chapter in a textbook, but he was no expert. He used his GPS to bookmark and cache the location. If he had to guess, it looked as if the blood had dropped from a height of perhaps two or three feet, ruling out—also only a guess—a kill by some bird of prey, a hawk or an owl swooping down on some unsuspecting vole or wood rat.
Taken alone, there was no way to give the blood droplets any meaning. He moved in a circle, spraying with Luminol and using the NVGs, looking for indications of any larger configurations.
Don’t be in a hurry
, he reminded himself.
Maybe Sherlock Holmes saw the whole story in an instant, but for the rest of us it takes time
.
He was thinking the first configuration of droplets was an isolated incident, when he found a second set showing splatter paths similar to the first.
He marked the spot again with his GPS, visualized a line from the first drop to the second, then projected where the line might lead, from the first to the second to a possible third. He walked the line and had gone another thirty yards when he came to the stump of a mountain ash, sawn off years ago during a forest service timber cull. As a kid he’d learned that ash stumps made great places to hide things because they tended to rot and turn hollow from the inside out. Usually they held stagnant water where mosquitoes bred. Expecting nothing, he sprayed the inside of the hollow stump.
It was full of blood.
Oddly, he found no splash or splatter paths on the surrounding ground. Instead, he noted a saturation along one side of the stump’s inner wall, from the top to the pool below. It was as if somebody had very carefully poured blood into the stump, making sure not to spill.
Why? Were they disposing of it? Trying to hide it?
He switched off his NVGs and used the flashlight at low illumination. The reservoir inside the stump was probably part rainwater by now. He took an eyedropper from the evidence collection kit he’d bought online from a police supply website and drew a sample, then marked the stump with both a cached GPS reading and a white evidence flag.
He returned to the trail. Sweeping and spraying as he went, he moved slowly up the hill to the crime scene and the bare granite promontory overlooking the lake. He could get no closer than fifty feet before he came to the area marked off with yellow police tape. He half expected to find a police officer there keeping watch, but he was alone. He considered stepping over the tape but remembered how Dani had cautioned him against contaminating witnesses. That probably went for crime scenes too. He respected the perimeter and stayed outside the circle.
Even so, there might be something the others had missed. In the movies it was always the most dogged detectives who solved the crimes. He moved slowly, working mainly with the metal detector. He found a rusted bolt, a penny, a BB from a BB gun, and a foil wrapper from a piece of gum.
As he circled, he looked back to the scene of the murder. He tried to picture two people, or three, four, eight, ten. What were they doing? Standing in a circle? In a line? In a random pattern? How were they killing her? Taking turns? Stabbing? Worse? One kid? Two? All of them? Were some looking away, afraid? Were some holding themselves at a distance? Was anyone hiding, perhaps, or even watching from the bushes, trying not to be seen?
Liam’s cell phone had been found in the weeds beneath a tree, Dani had said. Tommy found the closest tree and scanned the weeds around it.
Nothing.
He kept moving, measuring, trying to imagine what had happened and why. They were saying it was some kind of ritualistic killing. What did rituals do? What rituals were there? Weddings. Birthdays. Funerals. Rites of passage. Offerings. Transitions from one state to another.
Which was this?
He could probably rule out weddings and birthdays.
He stood beneath a maple tree, gazing toward the bare rock, the image of a sleeping bull lit by the beam of his flashlight. Had someone stood in this spot the night of the crime, with a view of the killing and the darkened countryside beyond?
He put the metal detector over his shoulder because it was getting heavy and turned toward the lake, then the woods. When he got a momentary false positive from the detector, he turned it off. Then he turned it on again. It wasn’t going to give him false positives, suspended in the air, resting on his shoulder. The dish had been pointing toward the trunk of the tree. He scanned the tree and heard another positive. There was something metal about six feet above the ground on the trunk.
He turned on his flashlight.
Felt with his hand.
Something.
He found a small nail, the kind used to hang lightweight picture frames, pounded into the rough bark of the tree at an angle. It appeared to be made of blued steel, not brass or aluminum. It was not rusted. It was new. It had been driven into the bark at an angle. Why at an angle? To hang something from it. Hang what?
A picture?
No.
A mirror?
A hammock?
A hammock for gerbils maybe. Why would gerbils want hammocks?
Concentrate, Tommy
.
Something had hung from it. Something on a strap. Something small enough not to pull the nail out.
Something electronic.
A camera.
Why?
To record the ritual.
Why?
To show it to somebody.
Who? Why?
Then he heard something behind him . . .
Tommy shut the flashlight off and turned. Nothing. He crouched down and moved from where he’d been standing, just in case someone had him in the sights of a rifle.
He waited.
He flipped the night vision goggles down. The electronically amplified starlight revealed an odd array of shadows and shapes. He was certain that he’d heard something.
Then he saw what appeared to be the outline of a man standing opposite him in the woods, in the shadows between two large trees, but unmistakable. The goggles gave him nothing more than the silhouette. He flipped them up, then found his flashlight and adjusted the setting from sixty to five hundred lumens. He aimed the flashlight at the place where the man was standing and pressed the button, the woods filling with light nearly as bright as a night baseball game.
There was no one there.
He searched the area to make sure. Nothing.