“That’s it,” Wade said, pointing at a delicate silver chain with a teardrop-shaped purple amethyst tucked into a corner of the box. “It belonged to her mom.”
Nic doubted they could even get a partial off it, but she couldn’t take any chances, not with a case gone as cold as this one. “Do you have a pencil?”
“Why—?” And then he caught on and ran into the kitchen.
She could hear him rummaging through a drawer.
After he handed her the pencil, Nic managed to catch the tip in one of the links. She held up the long line of chain, with the stone set about a third of the way down. Wayne sucked in his breath. The clasp was still fastened, but one of the silver links had been snapped. It had been one thing to imagine that Katie had taken it off herself, or even that someone had demanded she hand it over. But this—this implied violence to Katie’s person.
Wayne’s face was white. “Some sicko put his hands around her neck and tore it off. And now he’s taunting us.”
“Look,” Nic said, “it still tells us something very important that we didn’t know before. Now we know that whatever happened to her, a person did it. Katie didn’t fall into a river or a manhole or something. Somebody took her.”
Clearly, they were looking at a kidnapping. Or more likely, a kidnapping and a murder.
Or, Nic thought to herself, were they? What if Katie had dropped out herself? And this was her clue. Her clue that she was still alive.
FOREST PARK
January 4
Jeff Lowe was running on the Wildwood Trail when he caught a glimpse of a dog ahead of him.
Limping.
“Here, boy,” he called, but it didn’t stop. Then the trail twisted, and he lost sight of the dog.
There was no one else around in Forest Park. Early January, cold rain slanting down—it wasn’t exactly a day to entice anyone outside. But Jeff Lowe had just moved to Portland, and he was getting to know the city the way he liked best—through the soles of his running shoes. He had grown up in a housing project in Cleveland, and the idea of a five-thousand-acre forest in the middle of a city amazed him.
There was no way to get lost on the Wildwood Trail—everything he had read said so. Still, Jeff Lowe was a city boy, and to him it felt like he had stepped into a fairy tale. Dark, thick trunks, furred with bright green moss, surrounded him. He had seen no one for forty-five minutes. The only sounds were the rain and his feet thudding and his breath echoing inside the hood of his jacket.
Catching a glimpse of the dog’s reddish-brown fur through the trees, he veered off the trail and into the emerald ferns and jade-colored rhododendrons. Even in January, everything was green here. He slowed to a walk, not wanting to scare the animal. Maybe he could coax it out of the underbrush. Grab it by the collar. It didn’t look that big. Maybe fifty, sixty pounds, with a low bushy tail. He had never owned a dog, and he didn’t know what breed it was. Some kind of German shepherd mix?
Jeff Lowe imagined calling the owner on his cell phone. Carrying the dog back to his car. In his imagination, it lay quietly in his arms, grateful for the attention. And he wrapped it in a towel and laid it on the passenger seat and then drove to the owner’s home, and she—of course it was a she, this was his daydream—she—
The dog burst out of the bushes ahead of him. It turned and looked at him over its shoulder.
Jeff Lowe thought several things at once.
The dog wasn’t a dog. It was a wolf or something.
With yellow eyes.
And with something pale in its mouth.
And that something was a woman’s hand.
MYSPACE.COM/THEDCPAGE
Fed Up
November 17
So I’m not sure how to deal with my life right now.
Pretty much, today sucked. Or just lately . . . everything sucks.
I’m sick of everything right now. Everything & everyone, as a matter of fact. I’m angry, too. With the entire world. The way some people act, the choices I make & the things people do because “it’s complicated.” Well, news flash—I’m done. I’m done with feeling miserable over some-one who doesn’t seem to care anymore.
I’ve done enough for everyone else. I deserve to be happy. And I’m sick of crying my eyes out because I’ve been lied to. Because I cared too much for everyone else. Including that one person who doesn’t care enough back.
FOREST PARK
January 4
Jeff Lowe’s hands were shaking so badly that he had trouble pulling his cell phone from the pocket of his rain jacket. Finally, he yanked it free, flipped it open, and pressed 9-1-1. His eyes went back to the thing lying ten feet in front of him. At the angle it was right now, he could almost pretend it was a piece of trash.
The wolf or coyote or whatever the hell it was had looked at him for a long time with its yellow eyes before letting that thing fall from its mouth. Then it had turned and run off.
Leaving him alone with it. The thing that might be a piece of trash. Or a paper bag. Or some kind of strange flower or fruit that only grew on the floor of the Oregon forest.