Except that didn’t explain the pink nail polish.
The phone was still pressed to his head, but he couldn’t hear a thing.
Jeff pulled it away to look at the display.
NO SIGNAL.
His teeth were chattering. The woods were absolutely silent except for the rain, which was beginning to taper off.
Okay, if that thing was a hand—and he had to admit that it must be one—then where was the rest of it? The rest of the body it had come from?
The thought jolted him like an electric shock. Frantic, he spun in a circle, his eyes darting from rocks to roots to dripping ferns. The hand was already more than he could deal with. He couldn’t deal with a whole body. He couldn’t deal with some dead woman. What if she was cut up? What if she was all in pieces scattered around him?
And what was that noise? It ratcheted up his fear to the point it was nearly unbearable.
And then Jeff realized it was moaning—and that it was coming from him.
Jeff wanted to be inside. He wanted to be warm and dry and with nothing around him that wasn’t man-made. No wild animals, no dead people, no parts of dead people, no dark wet shadows under bushes. Everything clean and neat and tidy.
But first he had to tell the police what he had found. Let them take care of it. That was their job, to deal with the things that weren’t clean and neat and tidy.
About twenty feet behind him lay a clearing. He hurried over to it, holding his phone in front of him but taking frequent glances back at the hand, as if it were capable of scurrying off on its own. He lifted the phone up to the clear spot of sky. For a second, the display flickered. But even as he felt a surge of hope, it went back to reading NO SIGNAL.
Jeff had to get out of here. Get out of the woods. Get back to civilization so that he could call the police. But if he left, could he bring the police back here? To this exact same spot? What if he couldn’t find this place again? What if the animal came back for its lunch?
With dawning horror, Jeff realized there was only one solution.
He would have to take the hand with him.
FOREST PARK
January 4
Allison got the news from Nicole. A hand had been found in Forest Park.
A woman’s hand.
The more time that had passed, the more Allison had known this was the only likely outcome. Katie dead, not off in some alternate universe. Not hidden away by Fairview. Not hitchhiking to San Francisco. Not wandering the streets of Seattle with no memory of how she got there or who she was. Forest Park was only a mile from Katie’s house, but it was five thousand acres, nearly all of it old-growth forest.
After checking Allison’s ID, a police officer waved her into the parking lot at the base of Forest Park. It was already nearly full. Nicole’s car was near the entrance. A mobile command post—which looked more like an extra-large RV or a tour bus—took up one corner of the lot. Allison nosed into a spot at the far end. Most of the cars in the lot belonged to the FBI.
Agents were clustered in small groups, all dressed alike in khaki cargo pants and blue long-sleeved shirts with yellow lettering on the back that read FBI EVIDENCE RESPONSE TEAM. Allison knew that the entire sixteen-member ERT was always called out when there was a body scene.
Only so far there wasn’t a body. Just a hand.
Until now, Allison hadn’t realized how much she wanted one of her half-imagined alternatives for Katie to be true. She put one hand on her cross and the other on her belly and sent up a wordless prayer for Katie’s parents. Their hearts would be broken tonight. Allison knew that God still offered a peace that surpassed all understanding. She prayed that Wayne and Valerie could find that peace, at least in time.
Finally, Allison sighed and got out of her car, her eyes on the towering centuries-old cedars and Douglas firs that covered the hills ahead of her. Katie must be somewhere up there, but it wasn’t surprising she hadn’t been found until now. There were parts of Forest Park where no one ventured, isolated and inaccessible areas that held bobcats, elk, great blue herons, and black-tailed deer. There were even reports of black bear sightings.
As she looked up, a slight breeze rattled the last of the season’s brittle leaves from the hardwoods scattered among the evergreens. With a little imagination, this could be the forest of a thousand fairy tales. A fairy-tale forest where evil lurked and witches lured young girls. Where wolves hunted their prey.
“Hey, girlfriend,” Nicole said from behind her. “You look lost in thought.”
Allison turned. “Just feeling a little sad. I knew this was how it would end, but I still kind of hoped it wouldn’t, you know?”
“You and me both. Once we locate the body and get some idea of what happened, I’ll have to tell the Converses.”