“Hey, I am still technically a bachelor,” he protests. “As was emphasized by Dean and Xavier when they started talking about throwing me a bachelor party.”
He disappears into the kitchen, and I hear the coffeemaker fire up.
“Dean I can definitely see throwing a bachelor party,” I say. “Xavier, though, I have my doubts. He’ll probably come up with some sort of traditional ritual you have to do, and you’re going to end up dressed in a loin cloth bonding over hunks of meat cooked in an open fire or something.”
“You pretty much just described camping.”
“I’ve never worn a loin cloth while camping,” I say.
He comes in with a fresh cup of coffee for me and leans down to kiss my cheek as he hands it to me. “You’ve never been camping with me.”
“Well, bachelor party camping with Xavier would probably be a whole experience none of us are prepared for,” I say, lifting the mug to my lips for a sip off the rich, dark coffee.
“Actually, Xavier mentioned stripping,” Sam says.
I pause mid-sip and stare at him over the edge of the mug. Then it clicks.
“He was talking about furniture, wasn’t he?” I ask.
Sam smiles and nods. “A really lovely hutch.”
“Don’t get too crazy,” I say.
I take one more sip before putting the cup down and turning back to the computer.
“Have you narrowed it down any?” he asks.
“I found a few more cases that fit with some of the details, but none of them have all of them. Eric found one, too, but Dean said he hasn’t heard of anything like that. I keep going over them, trying to figure out if there are ways to make the pieces all fit together. It’s like I’m just not looking at it the right way. Something is right there, but it won’t materialize.”
“I’m going to order food, then you can tell me about them.”
He goes to the kitchen again, and I hear him taking the menu for our favorite Chinese take-out place out of the drawer that harbors all our restaurant menus. He orders our usual assortment and comes back into the room.
“I’m actually going to take a shower while we wait for the food,” I say. “Maybe it will help me think.”
“Want some company?”
I nod.
We emerge from the shower and I pull on one of my favorite sweatsuits just before the food arrives at the door. Just like every time we order Chinese food, all the containers get opened and spread out across the dining room table so we can mound up our plates with a little bit of everything. Chopsticks in hand, I fill up my plate and then go back for my computer. I set it up beside me so I can go over everything with Sam.
“This one, Grayson Palmer, thirty-five years old. Went out to test the new snowmobile he got for Christmas and didn’t come back. The snowmobile was found in a snowdrift with his shredded coat beside it. They never found him.”
“No angel,” Sam points out.
“Right. No angel, and his family realized he was missing pretty quickly because they knew he had gone out. Now this one, Mallory Taylor, fits a little better. She was twenty-nine when she went missing. She’d been having some trouble with her husband, so she went on vacation by herself for a few days. Everybody thought she had gone to her friend’s house, but they later found out she changed her mind and went to the little family cabin in the woods. They found her coat, gloves, and hat on the snow in front of the cabin. She had an angel tattooed on her back.”
“So, maybe the angel looked perfect to whoever took her, not to her?” Sam muses.
“It’s a possibility. But there’s no narrow road. It’s a cabin, but the road leading to it is fairly widely traveled, and it’s only when you get on the driveway to the cabin itself that it gets a little narrower, according to the map. But there’s definitely no such thing as a snowplow going anywhere near that cabin,” I say.
“This one actually happened not too far from U of A. Only about an hour. So, that would fit in with Julia and the location. Angeline Courtney. Eighteen years old. She told her friends and family she was helping a friend move, but never came back. When they talked about it, no one she knew could identify who it might have been. Her car never left her apartment. A man driving a truck down a back road close to a Christmas tree farm found bits of her coat and a plastic shopping bag with nothing but a receipt in it in the snow. Her name was on the receipt. The news articles say there were indications in the snow and the surrounding areas that she didn’t seem in distress and didn’t seem to be running.”
“Okay,” Sam frowns, “but no angel.”
“Her name was Angeline,” I say.
“Yes, I get that. And it’s conceivable that people called her Angel. But doesn’t the letter say the angel looked perfect? Even for something as convoluted as a fake letter to Santa isn’t going to get so philosophical as her referring to herself in the third person, by a nickname, while also turning herself into an object. The angel. And no capitalization.”
“You’re right,” I nod. “It’s a stretch. I just feel like I hit a wall with it. Like there’s no other direction to search.”
“It’s only been a day, Emma. We’ll keep looking. You have time,” he says.
“Do I? The letter says to hurry.”
“What does that mean? What’s going to happen if you don’t?”
“I don’t know. And that’s what worries me.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Thirteen years ago…
Carrying a full basket of laundry on her hip and a huge bottle of detergent in her hand, Julia walked out of her room and through the living area of the apartment. Lynn looked
