We searched the Steak & Ale, but I already knew we weren’t going to find Agnes inside. Most likely she was somewhere in the woods on the other side of the street; I could feel it gnawing in my gut. First Madeline had claimed that she saw a dead body in the woods and now this.
But people didn’t just disappear in Ticonderoga Falls.
Something was wrong here. I had a strong desire to call Joe Wimbledon; as loony as the guy was, he still had a handle on the local folklore and customs.
I stood outside the pub, hands on my hips, staring into the bramble of Sierra currant and bush chinquapin and lodgepole pine across the highway. Right now the pines whispered, branches taunting and swaying— You won’t find her. You’ll never find her.
I wasn’t about to be spooked by a thirty-acre canyon covered with seventy-foot trees.
“I’m hiking in the woods,” I told Rodriguez.
“Right behind you.”
As soon as I got across the two-lane highway I saw a spot where the shrubs had been pushed aside. Two sets of footprints in the mud and snow led down into the darkness of a steep ravine. “Here,” I said pointing so she could see, then I led the way down the rugged path. Whoever had been down here hadn’t tried to cover their tracks, almost as if they didn’t care. Or maybe they wanted to be caught. Criminals did that sometimes, led a merry chase, secretly hoping someone would stop them and put an end to the madness.
We didn’t get cases like this very often up here, but I’d seen plenty back in L.A. Bodies found in Dumpsters, babies in garbage bags, people tossed out like litter. That was the reason why I had moved up here. I had needed to reconnect, to stop seeing people as victims. Or murderers.
Meanwhile, the wind tossed the trees about, making them creak and moan as it swept through the canyon. Then it broke overhead in a long pitiful wail.
“Creepy,” Rodriguez muttered. “Wish that awful wind would stop.”
“Me too,” I admitted.
The narrow path leading into the ravine turned at a sharp angle, then turned again. Neither of us could see what was up ahead, not through the wild tangle of branches and undergrowth; our flashlights transformed the black night into shades of violet and blue. The mist still clung to the lowlands and it began to roll toward us, billowy clouds that ate up the landscape, that stopped our beams from exposing anything until we were right on top of it. Rodriguez sensed it before I did. She laid a hand on my arm, held me still.
“You smell that?” she asked.
I nodded. I didn’t want to admit it, but there was something dead up ahead. A fresh kill. I’d done enough hunting to recognize the stench.
“Be careful,” I said. There was a chance that whoever kidnapped Agnes might still be down here in the gulley. I gestured for us to spread out. Now our lights overlapped, crisscrossed.
“Agnes?” I called her name. “Agnes, you out here?”
My words echoed across the canyon, returned empty and hollow.
The smell of death got stronger as the trail leveled out onto an old dried-up riverbed. I heard something moving up ahead, scratching and snarling. I pulled out my weapon and motioned for Rodriguez to do the same.
“Agnes!” One last shout as we continued to move forward through the shifting white gloom, reality changing with every step. First a fallen log, then an outcropping of rock that jutted into the riverbed, finally a mound of leaves and twigs driven here by the recent rains.
Up ahead, something yipped and howled.
I flashed the light and it reflected back in four sets of glowing eyes.
Coyotes.
I fired a shot in the air.
Blood dripped from their jaws. The closest one stared at me, head lowered. Then it turned and loped away, revealing a small pack behind it. About six coyotes total. In a second, the pack scattered.
That was when we both saw a body, curled on its side in a nest of leaves and bramble.
It was Agnes. Dead. I approached, swept her from head to foot with the white light. Aside from the recent carnage by the coyotes, this was almost exactly what Madeline had described, back on the Ponderosa Trail. Agnes’s body was flat.
Like all of her life had been mysteriously drained out.
Chapter 67
Outsiders
Maddie:
Joe Wimbledon’s front door hung open, the tide of cold air unending and time seemed to hold still. Finally, Ash stepped into the room and the front door closed on its own. In an instant, the heat returned, the curtains fluttered and a soft sigh moved through the living room and into the hallway, as if the house itself was glad to have him here. I watched him, couldn’t stop watching him. It was as if no one existed but him right now.
He sat in an overstuffed chair.
Maybe human. Maybe not.
Pale skin, chin-length unruly black hair. Ash—the name fit him perfectly. What didn’t fit was the way my heart skipped a beat when he entered the room or the way I forgot to breathe until he looked at me.