was trying to cover something up. A few dark spots stained the clay beside a nearby rock. We would need to test it, but I suspected those stains were Mindy’s blood.
He could have wrapped some webbing around her legs, maybe her calves. Outside of her jeans it wouldn’t have left ligature marks on her skin. Yeah, just tight enough to control her. She wouldn’t have been able to kick or fight back at all. She would be powerless. She would be his. All night long.
“You OK down there?” Lien-hua called.
“I’m good. Hang on.” I thought I saw something in the corner of the cave. I scanned the area with my flashlight.
A curl of yellow ribbon.
“He brought her here, Lien-hua. There’s water down here too. A pool. I’ll bet that’s where he washed off the body.”
Using the ascenders I worked my way back up the rope to the lip of the cave.
A couple minutes later I had the harness off and was packing up my gear. “We need to get back to the car, get some people up here to work this scene-wait a minute.”
“What?”
“Check your maps. See if this cave appears on any of them.”
She pulled out the maps, looked them over. “Nope. Nothing.” “It’s only known to the locals then. That narrows it down even more. So he knew this cave well enough to know he wouldn’t be disturbed here-that he could have all night to do whatever he wanted to her,” I said.
“And he knows how to rappel,” she said.
“Oh man.”
“What?”
I closed the top flap of my backpack and cinched it tight. “The climbing gym on Wall Street. Her car was found half a block away. They lead trips up into these mountains. Climbing and caving.”
“How do you know that?”
“I paid them a visit yesterday afternoon. Worked out for a while.” I hoisted the pack onto my shoulders. “C’mon. Let’s go.” I turned around, but Lien-hua had already started sprinting down the trail toward the car.
34
It wasn’t easy running with the backpack on, but thankfully I didn’t have to do it very long, plus it was all downhill. In less than fifteen minutes we’d made it to the trailhead.
I heaved off my pack and shoved it in the backseat of the car. I was still huffing from the run. “Yesterday afternoon… I had a few minutes… to walk around downtown… check out the places from the geo profile.” I pulled out the menus and business cards I’d stuffed into the car yesterday along with the brochure from the climbing gym. “I grabbed these.”
“You think our guy might work there?” she asked.
I handed her the brochure, pointed to the phone number. “See if you can reach them. See if… anyone was missing from work… the last couple days.”
I threw open the door and pulled out my computer while she tried her cell phone.
“No reception.”
By then I’d managed to catch my breath. “Well, let’s see if any of their climbing guides were at Mindy’s crime scene. Hold that brochure up here, to the computer.”
Using my laptop’s built-in video chatting camera, I snapped a picture of each of the twelve staff members, then pasted the photos into the face recognition program I’d had installed for my work with the National Law Enforcement amp; Corrections Technology Center in Denver.
I pulled up the photos and video footage from Mindy’s crime scene, and the computer began sorting through the footage, zeroing in on one face after another, calculating, evaluating. A moment later the computer beeped and highlighted a man’s face showing a 91 percent probability of a positive match.
“There he is,” whispered Lien-hua, pointing to the screen. “The guy in the baseball cap.”
“I don’t believe it. He wore that cap at the mall too.”
“Joseph Grolin,” she said.
“Thinks he’s a real tough guy.” In his climbing guide photo he had a cocky smile and a stubbly beard a few shades darker than his shoulder-length blond hair. Late twenties, early thirties. He wore sunglasses. According to the bio beneath his picture, he worked as a rock-climbing instructor part-time and wrote for MountainQuest magazine for his day job. He’d been their outdoor editor for the last four years. Special interests: scuba diving, Native American lore, downhill skiing.
Native American lore.
Lien-hua pointed to the bottom of the brochure. It read: “All our guides are highly trained and certified as Wilderness First Responders.”
“The stab wounds,” I said. “A First Responder would know just how deep to make them. And how to suture them up.”
She pulled out her cell phone again. “C’mon, work. Work!”
“Try this one.” I threw Dante’s phone to her as I rounded the car and hopped into the driver’s side.
“Nothing,” I heard her say. “I can’t believe he was there in the meadow the whole time. Watching us study the body.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He likes to watch. C’mon.” I fired up the engine. “It’s possible Jolene Parker is still alive.”
35
We flew down the mountain, nearly careening off the road twice as I took a couple curves too fast.
“Careful,” said Lien-hua. “You kill us, and we’ll never catch him.”
She tried the phone again. Still no coverage.
Asheville lay ten miles ahead of us.
I screeched the tires as I rounded another tight mountain curve.
“Easy, Pat. I want to get this guy as much as you do. But let’s do it in one piece.”
“Yeah.” I eased off the gas a little. “OK, sorry.”
She shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like this guy. Indian legends, kidnappings, cross- contamination, he’s got it all thought out.” She tried her cell phone again. Still nothing.
“Betrayal,” I said.
“What?”
“The missing motive,” I said. “It’s betrayal, isn’t it?”
“Nope. You betray someone because of desire, and you respond to betrayal with anger. Try again.” She set her phone down. No use dialing until we got into flatter territory.
“Curiosity?”
“That’s a form of desire-you desire to know what that crime feels like or how it will affect you.”
I paused. I was running out of ideas. I thought about saying honor or vanity, but they were forms of desire too. Even duty and integrity are desires-the desire to please, the desire to be virtuous. “Hmm. Remorse?” I said.
“Just another name for guilt.”
I shook my head. This was harder than I thought. Maybe if I tried thinking like a profiler, I could do it.
On second thought… we all have our limits.
Lien-hua punched the number into the phone I’d borrowed from Sheriff Wallace. “Finally,” she muttered and then immediately launched into an explanation of everything we knew so far about Grolin. I could tell she was
