Cold Lake (27 page)

6 Days Later…

Patterson squinted and gazed up at the sky, feeling the sun warm her face. The cotton ball clouds above hung motionless, painting the water below with dark circles of shade, and the breeze brought the smell of freshwater and the whir of distant motorboats.

She popped her eyes open and sucked in a breath, remembering the zip of the bullet as it had passed inches from her face.

Perched atop the cliff below Hannah and Rachel’s house, Patterson stood feet from where she had almost a week ago. She took a deep breath, reminding herself that night was over.

“That was depressing.”

Patterson turned around at the sound of Rachette’s voice. She was surprised to see him. “You got that right.”

Rachette stepped next to her, thumbing the sling on his right arm that hung over his formal khaki uniform top, which bulged at his right shoulder like he had a pillow stuffed underneath. 

Patterson knew there was a mass of gauze covering a line of staples, which covered internal scars from reconstructive surgery on his joint, a large divot in his clavicle bone, two shredded ligaments, and severe muscle trauma from the bullet that had hit him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” She asked.

Rachette tried to shrug, a move that make him bare his teeth in pain. “I got a ride up with Wilson after the funeral, since you ditched me.”

“I thought Wilson was taking you home. You should be in bed.”

Rachette ignored her and gazed into the distance. “Did you see Jack?”

“Yeah.”

It was an unnecessary question. Everyone had seen Jack at his mother’s funeral earlier that morning. It had been the saddest thing she’d ever seen in her life.

Patterson had felt no sense of closure with the lowering of Sarah Muller into the ground, and she had not shed so many tears since her grandmother’s death six years ago. But with her grandmother’s funeral, she had at least felt closure. Her family had been sad at that memorial service six years ago, but they had celebrated her life at the house later.
Grandma had lived a long, full life, and then she died.

The funeral earlier that morning had been the antithesis of that day.

Wolf’s son Jack had stood next to Sarah’s parents, never once lifting his gaze from his mother’s coffin, never once a tear escaping his eyes—a sight that had blown Patterson’s heart into a thousand pieces.

Wolf’s absence had been the elephant at the funeral, but it had been impossible for him to attend, because Wolf was in surgery at County Hospital, and when they were done with the third operation on his fractured hip, he would continue to be unconscious, recovering from a ruptured spleen, three broken vertebrae, and an assortment of ten other broken bones, ranging in severity from a cracked femur to a broken thumb. His absence was necessary, but it seemed to make the whole thing that much more difficult.

Then there had been Sarah’s parents. They had been a sniveling mess, and every time Patterson had looked at them during the funeral she’d broken down into a sniveling mess herself.
Sarah Muller had lived a short troubled life, and now she was dead.  

“Hey.” Rachette nudged her with his good arm.

Patterson looked up and wiped a fresh tear from her cheek.

“It’s gonna be all right.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Right.”

They turned around at the sound of an approaching car. “Looks like the Idaho boys are here.”

A Caprice Classic with a Boise Sheriff’s Department paint job crunched on the gravel into a tight spot between a swarm of five SCSD vehicles. The vehicle rocked to a stop and both doors opened.

A younger man climbed out of the driver’s seat, dressed in a dark brown uniform, and an older man dressed in civilian clothing pulled himself up with the passenger door.

Wilson was there to greet them and shook hands. They spoke for a few seconds and then Wilson pointed toward her and Rachette.

The younger, uniformed man, raised a hand, and though it was far away, he looked like he beamed an attractive smile from under a black ball cap that had a gold embroidered BSD on it.

Patterson raised a hand in a half wave. She had been speaking to Deputy Michelson from the Boise Sheriff’s Department for a few days now on the phone about the case. They had initially spoken that fateful night Sarah had been shot, and she’d since been in charge of working in tandem with the BSD in order to completely close the file on the Kiplings. To her surprise, just like a pen pal from Japan she once had in elementary school, she found she had connected on a deep level with the young deputy in Boise, Idaho.

Now, as he walked down the grass slope behind the older man, she was seeing Michelson for the first time. He was dressed in a gray uniform, and she could tell he was young, probably no more than five years her senior—fit, medium height, brown hair—and moved with sure feet.

The older man next to him was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows, and a trucker cap was laid askew on his head. He waddled with a limp, and when Michelson offered a helping hand he waved it away impatiently.

Michelson looked up at Patterson and smiled again, and it was enough to make her blush, which made her stomach twist with a pang of guilt about Scott. What the hell was she feeling?

She turned to Rachette, determined to change the subject in her head. “You hear anything about his surgery this morning?”

“Nope.” Rachette checked his wristwatch and began walking to meet their two guests. “He’s still in it right now. We should be there, damn it.”

Patterson nodded. “Don’t worry. We’ll go later today, all right? Maybe check you back in for God’s sake. You need to sit.”

“Pssh.” Rachette took a breath in his nose. “I’m all right. Howdy,” Rachette called out.

Deputy Michelson smiled wide with squinted blue eyes surrounded by a bloom of dark eyelashes. 

Patterson returned the smile, and then she felt her face flush again. “Deputy Michelson,” she said with a nod.

“Patterson, I take it?”

She nodded.

Michelson’s hand was callused and warm, and he gripped firmly with a quick shake.

“And you must be Rachette. We heard about your injury.” Michelson shook Rachette’s left hand and shook his head with a sympathetic look.

“That’s a bitch, son.” The older man’s voice was gruff as he shook Rachette’s left hand and then shook Patterson’s. His eyes were glimmering slits beneath leathery folds.

“Sheriff Dudley. Nice to meet you,” Rachette said.

The man nodded and poked the underside of his trucker hat. “Used to be. Now you can call me Fred.”

Sheriff Dudley pointed past them. “Hell of a view up here.”

They twisted and looked at the lake, and Patterson exchanged a glance with Michelson.

“There’s quite a lot of activity up here.” Michelson turned around and motioned to the five SCSD vehicles parked in front of the house.

“We had a K-9 unit find Olin Heeter’s body yesterday,” Patterson said. “Buried in a fresh, shallow grave up the mountain. We have all available units checking the area now for more bodies.”

“You find anymore?” Sheriff Dudley asked.

Rachette shook his head. “Nope. But we’ve got some interesting stuff inside, that’s for sure. Or”—he pointed at his sling—“everyone else found a hell of a lot. I’ve been laid up in the hospital.”

Dudley squinted one eye and looked at Rachette, then he nodded at Patterson. “Why don’t you two give us the tour?”

Patterson gestured and they followed her around to the back of the house. Memories of that evening clawed at her with each step, and she had to steel her thoughts as she rounded the corner and faced an open door at the rear of the house.

Deputy Yates stood sentinel, stifling a yawn. He raised his clipboard. “Go ahead inside.”

“Thanks, Yates.” Rachette stepped aside and gestured for Patterson take the lead. Just like the two men from Idaho, she realized, Rachette had not yet seen the inside of this lower level of the house.

Patterson walked into a large rectangular room with a smooth concrete floor, which was lit bright with an uncovered bulb hanging from the ceiling. She walked halfway across the room to the left toward a doorway on the far wall and stopped at a yellow plastic evidence tent.

“This spot is blood, and the rest underneath it has been confirmed as blood,” she said, gesturing to the floor.

“My God,” Michelson said. “It’s huge.”

Fred Dudley pointed at the rust colored smear on the floor. “This the most recent?”

Patterson nodded. “Our ME did a DNA analysis on it, and it matched William Van Wyke’s profile, which was in CODIS from his Idaho Private Investigator’s license registration.”

Dudley pointed at the brown spot beneath the smear. It was a roughly circular shape with a diameter of at least ten feet. “This is where she killed I take it?”

“Looks that way. There’s a lot of old blood here, and check out that wall.” She pointed to the wall behind them and they all twisted.

There was an old workbench against a wall covered with pegboard, and hooks of various sizes hung from the holes.

“We’ve removed everything and put it into evidence, but when we came inside here, there was a razor-sharp machete, hunting knives, and a few filet knives. They all had traces of blood on them.”

Michelson shook his head. “And we heard you’ve identified three of the other bodies you recovered?”

“Yep. All runaways, all reported missing from their hometowns. All three were boys in their late teens, with one or both of their parents deceased, People figured they ran away. No evidence suggested foul play. The other four seem to fit the same mold, but we don’t have definitive ID’s. I’m not sure if we ever will.”

“Hitchhikers.” Michelson said softly, his eyes surveying the old blood.

“That’s what we’re thinking,” Patterson said. “It makes sense. Highway 734 down the valley is a good place to find them. Even today, a lot of them fit the same mold: late teens, early twenties, male, traveling solo.”

Dudley studied the ground and then pointed at the door on the far wall. “And what’s in there?”

Patterson walked over and pushed on the door. The bottom scraped along the top of high pile carpet, revealing a room with a couch, an old television, and a wood coffee table. Paintings of mountain scenery hung on the wood paneled walls, and to the right was a stairway that led up to the second floor.

Dudley, Michelson, and Rachette craned their necks to see past her.

“Just a normal basement,” Michelson said.

“Minus the fact it’s next to a killing room,” Sheriff Dudley said, turning around and walking back to the bloodstain. “William Van Wyke, eh?”

“Yeah.” Patterson stepped next to him and looked down at the brown area. It thoroughly creeped her out every time she looked at this spot, and she was glad to be doing so with so much company this time. “A kill that definitely doesn’t fit the mold. You know him?”

Sheriff Dudley and Michelson exchanged a glance.

“Yeah,” Dudley said. “I do. Let’s get the hell out of here and we’ll talk about it.”

Patterson led them out onto the back lawn and by the deep breaths it was clear everyone was glad to be back outside.

Dudley stopped and put his hands on his hips. “Let’s see. Where do I begin?”

“Why don’t you start with the cat?” Michelson said.

“The cat?” Patterson asked.

Michelson nodded and looked at Dudley.

The old man leaned his head back and closed his eyes against the sun. “Twenty five years ago, I was a police officer in McCall, Idaho. McCall’s a resort town a couple hours north of Boise. There’s Payette Lake right there, and McCall is a town on the south side of the lake.

“Anyway, back then, during the summer, we got a call from a family. They had found their pet cat in the woods. Decapitated, gutted from asshole to neck.”

Patterson and Rachette exchanged sidelong glances. 

“I was first on the scene, and I was shown the animal by one Mrs. Katherine Kipling.” Dudley dragged his words. “This was the Kipling’s cat, you see?”

Patterson nodded.

“We were concerned, naturally, and so were Mr. and Mrs. Kipling. Anyone who could commit such an act to a household pet was borderline homicidal to humans. Hell, everyone knows what the textbooks say. So for two weeks we were on edge. My partner and I spent more than a few days and nights out there in the woods. But … we never saw anything unusual. Never had any leads, and the interest in the incident just sort of faded away.

“Until a few weeks later. The Kipling’s neighbors, about a mile away, had a teenaged son named Reggie. One morning a woman was walking her dog, and the dog ran ahead and into the woods. By the time she caught up with it, he was found licking something on the ground. She came up and saw it was the neighbor kid Reggie, his head severed almost clean off, just barely held on by some muscle in back.” Dudley paused and rubbed the back of his neck. “Cut from pubic bone up to his chest. Guts spilling out. And his eyes had been stabbed, along with the rest of his body, multiple times.”

Patterson shivered.

“Well, needless to say, we were all freaked the hell out and on a manhunt after that. The news spread quickly, and the whole town was hysterical. Everyone was afraid of one another. Nobody went out after dark. We were working around the clock, but coming up empty on leads. If we saw anyone out after dark we would bring them in for questioning. You were the unluckiest soul alive if we caught you hitchhiking near McCall that week. We were using that interrogation room a lot for a few days.

“Then a week later, after the kid’s body was found, the Kipling’ house caught fire in the middle of the night, and that’s when all hell broke loose again. The fire burned hot, and there was nothing firefighters could do to save the structure. They had to stand back and watch it burn, along with a few acres of the surrounding woods.

“When it finally burned itself out, investigators determined there were accelerants used, a whole lot of them, clear arson, and we assumed the worst for the family. When we ended up not finding any bodily remains inside, then we were beyond puzzled. Even stranger, the two family cars had still been in the garage.”

Dudley exhaled and pulled his trucker hat off, revealing a shiny dome. He rubbed his hand over it and put the hat back on. “Nothin’. Couldn’t find the Kiplings. Dustin Kipling was kind of a big shot around town with his statewide boat dealerships and all—‘Kipling Boats’—and news travelled fast around the area about their disappearance. It was all the rave for a while on the news channels.

“Their disappearance, along with the news of the murder out in the woods brought a few people of interest into our station, and things got more complicated, or
clearer
I guess, now that we have hindsight.

“The first visitor was a man named Doctor Lewis, a psychiatrist from Bend, Oregon, who was an old college friend of Dustin Kipling. Doctor Lewis told us Dustin Kipling had come into his office a couple days before their disappearance, looking for a prescription for anti-psychotic meds. When Dr. Lewis asked why he needed them, Dustin Kipling told him a story confessing how he had killed their house cat, and how he was scared of what he may do next. Dr. Lewis was extremely concerned, but stopped short of detaining his old friend and putting him under psychiatric watch, which was within his power. Instead he wrote him the prescription with the caveat that Dustin come back and see him regularly.”

Dudley looked at Rachette and then Patterson. “When we heard about this after the family’s disappearance, our running theory was Dustin Kipling had murdered the neighbors’ kid and fled with his family. Perhaps he’d even taken the family under duress.

“And then a second person came into our station—the child counselor at the twin daughters’ middle school. This counselor was talking about how she thought one of the daughters, Hannah, was highly unstable. She told us about Hannah attacking a boy with a baseball bat earlier that year. Vicious stuff, and she was even expelled from school, but no formal charges were filed. And there were two other incidents of fights she’d gotten in before that were particularly violent, so said the counselor.”

Patterson nodded. “Yeah. We saw that in the BSD report.”

Dudley nodded. “We figured like-father-like-daughter. There was no way a teenaged girl could do the horrific things done to that boy, we thought.” He shook his head and glanced at the door behind them.

“And what about William Van Wyke?” Rachette asked. “Why is an Idaho P.I.’s blood smeared inside this house, while his charred remains are inside a Mercedes SUV in the next county?”

Dudley nodded and held up a finger. “We had a third visitor. A Nevada casino owner, who told us he’d seen Dustin Kipling a few days before. In fact, he’d seen Dustin
one
day before the Kiplings and his family’s disappearance. It turned out Dustin Kipling had sold his entire business to this businessman from Nevada for cash at an extreme discount. Three million dollars in cash to be precise, which was apparently pennies on the dollar for what all those boat dealerships and all the inventory inside ’em were worth.

“This casino-owner wanted to make sure he was in the clear as far as we were concerned. And it turned out he was. His story checked out. Kipling came to him with the deal, insisting it be all cash. We could find no connection with this man to Kipling and his family other than purchasing the boat business at a fire-sale price. No pun intended.”

“And Van Wyke?” Patterson pressed.

“Van Wyke had apparently brokered the business deal. He was present and signed the business transfer agreement the lawyers had drawn up as a witness. His payment for facilitating the deal was the deed to Dustin Kipling’s lakefront property in McCall.”

Rachette frowned. “The property that burned down?”

Dudley nodded. “The property that burned down.”

“So,” Patterson narrowed her eyes in thought, “Kipling burned down the property before Van Wyke could have it? Why?”

Dudley raised an eyebrow. “I might have a good explanation for that now that we know the truth about Hannah and Rachel. Twenty-five years ago we found some forensic evidence at the teenage boy’s murder scene, some skin under the nails, and a few hairs that we could never match to anyone. It was public knowledge that we’d found these two pieces of evidence. When the Kiplings disappeared, we scoured Dustin Kipling’s offices for matching hair and DNA, and found a few usable samples, but there was no match. That process alone took over a month. Tracking down samples for Katherine Kipling? We never found any usable hair or skin samples for her. The two daughters Hannah or Rachel? By the time we were done testing Dustin’s samples, we were stumped on where to get any usable samples for Hannah or Rachel. Maybe that was Dustin Kipling’s plan all along with burning the house—to destroy any and all forensic evidence of his family, make it as hard for us as possible.”

Patterson nodded. “That makes sense. Everything Dustin Kipling did was for the well-being of his daughters. That’s why they were here in the first place. But you could have gone to the girls’ middle school, right? Checked their lockers for a forensic match?”

Dudley shrugged. “A month later those lockers had been cleaned and disinfected inside, and different students were using them.”

Michelson cleared his throat. “We think Van Wyke must have heard about the bodies being pulled up from the lake here and put two and two together. He came over here looking for Dustin Kipling, perhaps looking for revenge against him for burning down the house and getting snubbed on payment. Our preliminary look into Van Wyke shows the guy is involved with some shady people with some of his business dealings.” Michelson shrugged. “When Van Wyke got here, he must have met up with Hannah.”

Rachette blew air out of his nose. “And met up with a few bullets, and some gasoline and a match.”

Dudley eyed Rachette and nodded. “When I saw the story on the news, I knew we’d finally found Dustin Kipling. The M.O. of the killer, with the heads severed and everything, was too perfect a match. Van Wyke must have seen the same stories and thought the same thing.”

“What about the second body found burned in his car?” Rachette asked.

Michelson nodded. “We think that’s a man named Darnell Dawkins. He’s been Van Wyke’s personal assistant, or something akin to that, for the last three years. Our department can’t find him, and it seems nobody has seen him in the last week up in Boise.”

They stood in silence for a few moments.

“Have you talked to Rachel Kipling about any of this?” Michelson asked.

All eyes fell on Patterson. “She’s been mute for six days. Won’t talk to anyone. But we’ll keep at it, that’s for sure.”

“Where is she?” Michelson asked.

“Our county hospital under lockdown, recovering from a fractured skull. She’ll be put away for a long time when all is said and done.”

They stood quiet and then Michelson shook his head in exasperation. “And she’s not talking? Not giving any explanation about any of it?”  

Rachette scoffed. “You think there’s a good reason behind it all? They were both crazy, and that’s that.”

Dudley and Michelson looked at Rachette, and then his shoulder, and nodded respectfully.

Patterson cleared her throat, breaking the silence. “As you probably heard, we found Katherine Kipling in the lake as well, dropped in a different place than the other bodies. The neighbor, Olin Heeter, saw Hannah and her sister dump their mother’s corpse overboard all those years ago. We think they must have known how Olin Heeter reported what he’d seen to our sheriff’s office, but they’d left him alone all these years until now.

“Whatever the reason they, or Hannah, were killing these boys and dumping them in the lake, it looks like it all came to a head with the Kipling family after Nick Pollard’s murder, and the girls had to get rid of their mother and father.

“Things went cold for SCSD for twenty-two years, and then when we started pulling up those corpses last week, it looks like they were thrust into crisis mode. They killed the neighbor, Heeter, planted some pictures to make him look crazy and throw us off their scent, then they killed Van Wyke and this Darnell Dawkins”—she shook her head—“I think Deputy Rachette puts it succinctly: they were crazy.”

“And they were cornered,” Dudley said. “Not a good combination.”

They stood in silence for a few seconds and Patterson held up her hand toward the side of the house. “Shall we?”

Slowly they walked to the side of the house, and Michelson stepped next to Patterson. “What about the Sheriff’s wife?”

Patterson and Rachette exchanged a glance.

She exhaled. “
Ex
-wife.  And as of yet, we can’t connect Hannah or Rachel Kipling to those two murders. And of course, Rachel’s not talking to anyone...”

Patterson let her sentence die. She didn't feel right exposing details about the violent crime that had caused endless whispering and speculation among the locals, and who knew how much pain to Jack, and to Wolf, and to Sarah’s family.

At the very least, the department had a responsibility to keep it in the SCSD family, didn't they?

"Yeah," Rachette piped up, breaking her thoughts.  "Something is totally off about Carter and Sarah being together in the first place. And why in Rocky Points? It makes no sense to me. Supposedly that guy was a gay interior designer from Aspen, so why’s he here? Because he and Sarah worked together in the past? Margaret said she didn’t know anything about him coming into town, and if it was for one of Sarah’s real estate deals, Margaret would have been in the know.” He looked over at Patterson. “And if Carter was gay, why was he putting his hand on her leg that night, like you said? If you ask me…”

Patterson took two quick strides to Rachette and stomped her heel on his foot.

“Ah, Christ! What the hell are you…” Rachette read Patterson’s death glare and shut his mouth.

She shook her head and walked, leaving the men following silently behind her.

Reaching Michelson’s Caprice Classic, she turned, hoping the red in her face had dissipated.

Michelson eyed her kindly and broke the silence. “I hope we’ve been able to shed some light. I’ll give you guys whatever you need at your station, and I’ll need everything you have to bring back to my department.”

Patterson nodded. “Of course. I’ll see to it.”