Clark is familiar with his victims in some way. He sees them, he knows their routines. He has opportunity to watch them and wait until they’re vulnerable.
I type these factors into MAAT, converting them to code. Familiarity with the victim would imply that he has a chance to see most of them more than once. Knowing their routine means he has some idea of their circuit—their own work and social patterns. Vulnerability is coded for by looking for when he could be alone with them in a professional situation—like being a taxi driver or a mailman.
It takes MAAT a fraction of a second to come back with a high-probability suggestion that chills me. Under those criteria, the likeliest occupation for Clark is highway patrolman.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
REALITY CHECK
It’s a wonderful theory and would explain so much. Yet it only works in the limited reality that I programmed into MAAT. Clark would have to be close to sixty now. There aren’t any Montana State troopers out on the road that old.
He might be senior law enforcement, but that seems doubtful. I’m not sure if he would want to risk the background checks that go with that. I’m not ruling it out entirely, but putting that under the maybe category.
I’m getting stir-crazy and decide to go for a drive. It’s risky going out on the road. But so is hunting a serial killer.
In the back of my mind, something tells me I need to start where this began. I do a U-turn and head toward Filmount County, where Juniper was murdered.
That was the last location I can place Clark. He was there the night Juniper got murdered.
Something brought the two together. Had he been watching her for days? Was it an impulse?
As I drive into the night, I assess the other patterns MAAT created when I inputted known serial killers. A strikingly obvious fact came to the surface, something I should have considered earlier.
MAAT saw three distinct killing patterns. There was the wide-ranging type like Ted Bundy, who had a cross-country murder spree. He was a drifter and moved often from place to place. Even still, he sometimes stayed too long and attracted attention—to the point of getting arrested, only to escape and keep killing.
Drifters like Bundy aren’t very cautious. They rely on law enforcement not catching up with them before they move on.
Clark isn’t a drifter. He frequents the same areas over many years. Killers who stay in one place are able to do this if they’re invisible, somebody in the community you wouldn’t suspect, and if the bulk of their victims are socially ignored: hookers, drug addicts, the homeless.
Really prolific killers who stay in one place either prey upon one group exclusively, such as prostitutes, or have elaborate means of concealing their crimes.
Jeffrey Dahmer lived in a poor neighborhood, and his victims were largely young male homosexuals who were separated from their families.
For over two decades, the Grim Sleeper, a Los Angeles serial killer named Lonnie David Franklin Jr., murdered mostly African American prostitutes with drug problems.
John Wayne Gacy broke this mold, preying on victims from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds. Some were young men that worked for his construction company; others were gay men he picked up cruising and took back to his house to kill.
Both the Grim Sleeper and John Wayne Gacy were well known in their communities, which had the paradoxical effect of contributing to their invisibility. Even as people were disappearing or being abducted, sometimes literally in front of their houses, they remained above suspicion.
One recurring theme in these cases is that the culprits were people the police spoke to early on. Bundy was stopped multiple times. Police returned a teenage Laotian victim to Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment, afraid to interfere in what they thought was a lovers’ quarrel. The parents of one of Gacy’s victims called the police more than a hundred times, imploring them to investigate him further after their son disappeared in connection with Gacy. They didn’t. Three years later, the boy was one of twenty-seven victims found buried under Gacy’s home.
It’s extremely likely that Clark has already spoken to the authorities in some capacity, either as a witness or someone ruled out as a suspect.
Given the fact that nobody even acknowledges that there is a serial killer operating in Montana, it’s possible that the parents of some missing girl have pointed to Clark but have been ignored.
I’m missing something . . .
Something important.
I need to go back to basics.
When they thought Juniper was murdered by a human, before the bear nonsense, they had two suspects: me and the mechanic, Bryson.
They discounted both of us readily. I know why they did in my case, but what about Bryson?
Did he have some airtight alibi? Or did they not do their due diligence?
Bryson seemed pretty fit. I remember him to be in his late fifties, close to Clark’s age.
This is too much. I take the next exit and pull into the parking lot of a defunct gas station ten miles away from Filmount County.
I look up the property records for Bryson’s repair shop and get his full name. Philip Joseph Bryson. A background check reveals that he’s had the shop for twenty years. He’s married to his second wife, and he has a mother still living in Missoula. He also has two sisters.
Damn. If only.
He can’t be Clark.
It doesn’t mean he couldn’t be the killer, but it would throw out the window everything that led me to Lane and the cars.
The cars.
The goddamn cars . . .
Juniper’s car was at Bryson’s service station getting repaired. That’s why she was taking walks through the woods.
Jesus Christ.
Juniper’s killer wasn’t someone who saw her in town or just walking along the road.
He saw her car at Bryson’s.
He knew she was stranded.
She talked to him. Bryson might even know him.
The cars at the Lane farm . . . why are they important still?
FUCK.
I understand the pattern now!
I know what Clark is. He’s everywhere. He’s invisible. He can do what he does in plain sight and nobody would ever give it a second thought.
Christ, I have to warn Jillian and Gus.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
STALKER
All the lights are on in Jillian’s house, but she’s not answering her phone. I tried calling Gus as well but only got his voice mail. I try to tell myself that it’s because they don’t recognize my burner phone number. I pray that’s why.
I almost called into 911 to warn them but decided against it when I realized that, at most, they’d send a patrol car by. And if Clark is watching the house, this might make him suspicious.
At best, the police might stick around for a few hours and watch her place, but if he wants to get to her, he will. There’s no way Hudson Creek will put in the kind of manpower necessary without more credible evidence. Even then, I don’t know how much faith I have in Whitmyer.
My fear is that they know Joshua Lee Clark personally and will laugh off my suggestion of what he truly is without more evidence. To make sure they don’t ignore him, I have to yell his name far and wide, as loudly as I can. But first, I have to make sure Jillian and Gus are safe. It’s a dangerous gamble.
I park down the block from her house, a two-bedroom home across the street from some wood-covered property. This is what scares me. A man like Clark could hide in there like a sniper and never be found.
The street is quiet. Jillian’s car is in her driveway. Nobody else has their car on the street.
The woods make me nervous. I’m afraid he might be in there watching. So I decide to take the long way around and approach her house from the back, cutting through the neighbor’s property and her backyard.
This part of the street is quiet, too. Somewhere in the distance a dog barks, but there isn’t anyone stirring.
The whole house is brightly lit. I crouch behind a bush next to a woodpile and watch for a moment, waiting to see if she’s up and about. Her porch light is on; so are the kitchen and dining room lights.
After five minutes of no movement, I decide to give her phone a call again.
It rings five times, then goes to voice mail.