You just don’t want her to be dead.
So sue me.
Untouched by my inner dialogue, Phoebe says, “People don’t usually vanish after joining a group; they want to remain where they can access it, get that validation. Again, Heaven’s Gate was an exception — the founders and their followers did seem to disappear for a while but were later discovered to be living a transient lifestyle, off the grid. That was before they settled in California and committed mass suicide.”
“This person is the leader of the group. And the group is still around.”
“Then it makes even less sense. As I said, cult leaders crave adulation. They want to surround themselves with people who support their grandiosity. They can’t do that by leaving their followers behind.”
I shake my head. “After hearing this, I don’t think the group qualifies as a cult. It seems benign, if unorthodox.”
“Then maybe your missing person is just trying to escape the pressure. People often have unrealistic expectations of their spiritual leaders, and are offended and outraged when they prove to be all too human.”
Yes. Escape the pressure. Leave everything behind to become someone else. Or maybe to escape the person you had become.
We talk about what might be early indications and warning signs of an emerging cult, but I think this is a dead end. None of it seems to connect to the pastor’s disappearance.
Someone knocks on the door of the office. Link’s voice comes through, slightly muffled by the barrier. “Are you ladies done?”
Phoebe glances at me before rising to open the door. “I think so. Is something the matter?”
He seems distracted, frowning. “I heard something on the scanner.”
“What’s that?”
“They’ve just found a body in the river. Down by the Cannery Pier Hotel.”
My attention narrows to a laser focus. Link’s troubled face fills my vision.
“No! Do they know who it is?” Phoebe flicks her dismayed gaze to me. She suspects, as I do, and the possibility distresses her. Not just the cool, clinical psychologist, then. I like her better for it.
“It’s a woman. At this point, no one knows her identity.”
But I’m afraid that I know, and my chest seems to fill with icy water.
I make my excuses to the Rutherfords, jump in my car and rush down to the docks. All the time my heart is on overdrive, and my muscles clamp my bones like steel shackles. I’m like the tin man of Oz before the oil can.
The Cannery Pier Hotel is three stories, barn red with beige accents and a standing seam metal roof. It has a kind of industrial chic. The building and parking lot are actually located beyond the bank on the river itself, supported on a forest of pilings and accessible by a built up causeway on a foundation of boulders, almost like a jetty. A small crowd mills about on the macadam of the causeway. Some have sought refuge under the carport that shelters a small fishing boat — a bow picker, according to the informative placard. Two men in wetsuits are debriefing with the square bulk of Detective Olafson and a gawky blonde woman sporting a sheriff’s badge. An ambulance is parked nearby, and the attendants are unloading a gurney.
Some uniformed patrol officers are starting to shoo people away. I’ve made it just in time.
I give the law enforcement a wide berth and join the group beside the bow picker on display. A female reporter and a male photographer, both with lanyards from the Astorian newspaper are talking to a young couple who are as pale as the sheets that drape the gurney.
“I still can’t believe it’s a body,” the man is saying. “I thought it was a mannequin.”
“Until the seagull landed on it, and started pecking.” The woman closes her eyes and presses a hand to her mouth.
The reporter turns to the photographer. “See if you can get a picture of the remains. I know the pilings might be in the way. Do your best. Also, take some general shots. And when the divers go in, get some images of the recovery.”
The photographer nods and goes to the edge of the parking lot. He kneels and begins clicking away.
The reporter notices me. “Are you with the police?”
“Not exactly. But I’m involved in an investigation that might tie into this incident.”
“How so?”
“I’m afraid I can’t comment at this time. Don’t interrupt your interview on my account.”
She frowns, but apparently doesn’t want to leave the couple until she’s wrung them dry of details. Meanwhile, I’m watching the men in wetsuits. They’ve picked their way over the boulders that edge the causeway, and wade in among the pilings. And now, I can see what they are heading for. A bundle of clothes, floating. A mass of long dark hair that resembles a clot of seaweed. It does look unreal, like an inflatable doll or an oversized puppet. But I’ve encountered enough corpses to know one when I see it.
As the men in the water secure the body between them and work to bring it to shore, I feel the now-familiar frisson, and know without a sliver of doubt that the remains must be those of Victoria Harkness.
That evening, the local radio news has more details. Standing at the windows of my empty house, looking out over the river as a squall spits rain against the roof and siding and tangles the branches of the tree next door, I listen with a kind of resigned anxiety.
“Earlier today, a vacationing couple staying at the Cannery Pier Hotel spotted human remains floating face-down in one of the piling fields along the shore. The pilings are all that is left of the huge cannery industry that once thrived along the Columbia before the devastating 1922 fire.
“The remains were recovered by the Clatsop County Sheriff’s search and rescue team, but there was no hope of resuscitation or rescue. According to the EMT’s, the body is that of a white woman who has most likely been dead
