“Do you see the mountains in front of you?”
“No,” she said, then more confidently, “no. No mountains. Just the horizon.”
“But the highway was in front of you.”
“Yes. I think so.”
He smiled at her. “That means you were on the west side of the highway.”
He stopped the car again on the shoulder and pored over the maps, employing his highlighter again. “We’re getting closer, Zo?.”
They followed the next three dirt roads. They led to dead ends—physically and mentally. No light-bulb flashes and no tin-roofed sheds.
They were losing the light. The sun was over the mountains. She had thought they would be back in Mammoth Lakes before nightfall, but they hadn’t even made it halfway.
Greening jammed on the brakes. The car slithered to a halt on the shoulder. An eighteen-wheeler leaned on its horn as it roared by.
Greening grabbed the map and spread it open. He ran his finger between places he’d marked and pointed across the road to a rough-looking track. A thick chain hung slack between a couple of rusted posts no more than a few feet high, preventing access. There was no signage advising anyone to keep out or indicating authorized access only. Anonymity was its only message.
“That track isn’t on this map.”
Zo? stared at the chain, then followed the trail with her gaze. “It doesn’t look familiar.”
“Let’s make sure.”
Their vehicle darted across the road and ground to a halt in front of the hanging chain. She jumped from the car to unhook it, but it was padlocked in place.
“It’s locked,” she called back to him.
“Take up the slack,” he yelled.
She grabbed the chain and pulled it as taut as she could. He eased his cruiser forward until the push bars on the car stretched the chain tight across them. She let go, and he let the Crown Vic roll, putting pressure on the barrier. He gassed the engine, and one of the posts popped out, dropping the chain to the ground.
Zo? jumped back into the car. “Not much of a security system.”
“It was never meant to be. Too much security draws attention. Not enough and everyone ignores it.”
Greening’s Crown Vic bounced and bumped over the rough road. It snaked left and right for a quarter of a mile before going into a gentle rise, which soon turned into a gentle descent. The trail kept going and going, running somewhat parallel to the mountains and the highway.
Zo? had an eerie feeling. There was no flashbulb this time, but the distance from the highway spooked her. It was the same feeling she’d had when she’d stepped from that shed. The feeling that she was isolated from the world. She looked over Greening’s shoulder at the flat landscape stretching out to the horizon. Is this it?
They rounded another curve and Greening took his foot off the gas. “Zo?, look.”
“Oh my God.”
The outbuildings were no longer there. Just the flattened remnants of what had been three structures, first crushed by force, then left to the elements to corrode and be hidden with dirt.
Zo? jumped from the car, before Greening brought it to a halt, and ran up to the remains. There were the tin roofs and the shattered windowpanes. The orientation was as she remembered it. It was possible these could be three other buildings, but the panicked way her heart was beating told her she wasn’t wrong. She turned to see Greening rushing toward her. She pointed to the ground she’d once been forced to stand on barefoot. “This is the place.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I think we’ve got something” was all Greening had said to bring in the cavalry.
Over a dozen Inyo sheriff deputies, detectives, and crime-scene officers covered the remains of the Tally Man’s kill site. Greg Solis from Mono County Sheriff’s Department was there. Zo? hadn’t seen him since her abduction. He didn’t look pleased to see her again. She knew why—jurisdictions. She might have been found in Mono County, but the Tally Man had done his work in Inyo County. No wonder they hadn’t found this place. Nobody was looking over the county line. She could play the blame game, but she was interested in only one thing: Were Holli and the other victims buried here?
In the failing light, the cops were staking out a perimeter around the remains of the three buildings and hurriedly erecting lights. Greening was deep in conversation with the sheriff and two other men no one had bothered to introduce her to. He had dumped her in his car like an inconvenient child, while he did his grown-up cop thing.
Watching them work, she wondered what they would find under the rubble. She hoped she wouldn’t get to see.
Greening broke away from his meeting and slipped into the driver’s seat. “OK, I’m going to have one of the deputies drive you back to the motel. I’m probably going to be here for another day, maybe two, but you’re free to go home.”
“Why are you sidelining me?”