“The woman whose murder led to his capture? The one whose body was found near the airport. Yes, I suppose so.”
“Just a theory.”
“And now he has killed a woman here, and these two women in Oregon!” he said.
“Yes. The nurse and the receptionist.”
“Did they ever find . . . ?”
“The receptionist’s legs? No.”
After a long silence, he said, “He’s just getting started, isn’t he?”
“Maybe.”
He seemed more depressed than when I first arrived. I couldn’t bring myself to leave him in that frame of mind.
“Frank asked me to thank you for helping him to find me. You have my thanks, too, Phil. You took a risk doing that, and for no other reason than kindness.”
He looked at me with an expression so haunted, I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Do you really think of me that way — as someone who helped you?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m grateful to you. Not just for helping me to get out of there — you also probably saved Ben’s life. If he had spent many more hours up in those mountains without medical attention, the infection could have killed him. And the arrival of the helicopter probably frightened Parrish off before he had time to hunt me down in the forest. If you hadn’t helped Frank, he wouldn’t have found us so quickly.”
He looked back down at the map and said, “Thank you. I don’t know that I did so much, really — Frank and his friends made the real difference. He was so anxious about you that day, so determined to find you, that he risked trouble with his department by coming to see me. It would have been inhumane not to help in some small way.”
We talked a little more, but I still felt worried about him, so as I was leaving, I asked for his phone number. “I’d like to stay in touch, if you don’t mind,” I said. “Frank will want to talk to you, too.”
“I’d like to talk to him again. Especially now that we won’t be opponents in court.”
He wrote out the number and handed it to me. “Thanks for coming by, Irene.”
“I should have done it months ago,” I said. “It was . . . helpful to me to see you today.”
“For me, too,” he said. “Come by anytime.” He smiled and added, “I’m no longer such an expensive person to talk to — no billable hours.”
Outside his house, as I was getting into the van, I saw a green Honda Accord drive off. I could have sworn that Nick Parrish was driving it. I took a deep breath, started the van, and pulled away from the curb.
When I got home, for the first time since I had returned from the mountains, I took out my larger-scale topo map. Even though the features of the terrain were shown in finer detail than on Newly’s map, I wasn’t as upset by this view of the area as I had thought I would be. It made me a little nervous to see where I had marked off the cave, the coyote tree, the graves. But again, it was from a distance.
Considering distance, I realized I couldn’t see the ranger station on my map. I felt a knot tightening in my stomach. Distance. How did Parrish cover that distance?
It was a question I normally would have asked myself months ago, I realized. But for the last few months I had made a conscious effort to avoid all thought, all reference to what had happened during the week of May fourteenth. I helped Ben, I worked long hours, and exercised three large dogs. I did my best to end the day too exhausted to worry or dream. I tried to forget that I had ever boarded that plane.
Oh, it worked like a charm. I saw Nick Parrish leaping out at me everywhere I went. I had horrific nightmares about the meadow. I threw computers through glass walls.
And I didn’t ask questions I should have asked.
So I called Ben Sheridan. When I got him on the line, I asked him for J.C.’s phone number.
“I’ll give it to you,” he said, “but J.C.’s right here.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“Sure.”
I exchanged greetings with J.C., then asked, “How long did it take you to get to the meadow from the ranger station?”
“Driving?”
“You could drive the whole distance?”
“No. I took a dirt road — a mud road, at that point — part of the way, and hiked the rest. Let’s see, I left about an hour after dawn and got to the meadow in the early afternoon. It was foggy when I left; I drove as fast as I dared under those conditions, which was not all that fast.” He paused, then said, “I wasn’t really thinking very clearly that morning, Irene, so it’s hard for me to judge time. It seemed like forever. Once I reached the end of the road, I think I hiked for about four hours, but again, I’m not sure. Why do you ask?”
“I’ve just started wondering about a few things. You and Ben have dinner plans?”
“Not yet.”
“If Ben can stand our company again, why don’t you come over for dinner? I have a theory to talk over with you. Tell Ben to bring Bingle, too.”
They agreed to come over at seven. I called Frank.
