Deadfall (6 page)

Vicki tried to drum up some empathy for Jessica but felt only numbness. “Had you and Brad been drinking?”

“He had a couple of beers. He wanted to quit. We talked about getting into some kind of recovery program.” She paused again to sip her hot chocolate.

“I'd like to believe that, Jess. I really would. You told Deputy Wyatt that you broke up with Brad and that he got angry.”

“That's true.”

“But Brad told me he was thinking about breaking up with you. He wanted to get straight, and you were dragging him down, wanting to go to parties and do drugs.”

Jessica set her cup beside her. “I don't expect you to believe me, Mrs. Gaynes, but I wasn't the one keeping Brad down. He did that to himself.”

“You're right. I don't believe you. Brad wanted more than anything to get back to his Christian values and back to church, but you didn't want to go.”

“You're right about that. I don't go to church, and I probably never will. But that isn't what we were fighting about.” Jessica tipped her head down.

“What were you fighting about?”

Jessica pursed her lips and scooted off the table. “What's the point in my even talking to you? You have your mind made up that I'm a bad influence on your precious son. Nothing I say is going to change that.” She left her cup on the table and headed for Brad's Subaru.

Vicki watched Jessica climb into the car and start the engine.

Was she leaving? Apparently not, she decided after a few minutes.

Maybe Jessica just needed to warm up. Humph. It would take a lot of heat to melt that cube of ice.

Vicki still couldn't understand why Jessica wasn't out with the rest of the searchers, even if she'd had a fight with Brad. Something was wrong with that girl. Vicki had heard Jessica's account of what had happened several times and was more convinced than ever that Jessica was not telling the truth.

6

V
ICKI HUGGED HERSELF, shivering from the damp cold as she listened intently for the hounds to start barking or howling. Four hours of wanting, hoping, and praying hadn't yielded the results she longed for. The hounds never howled. Besides freeway traffic, the waterfall, and the constant November rain, all she heard was the occasional crack of the police radio back at the command post.

The searchers drifted in and out now—getting food, warming up, and giving reports before heading out again.

After most of the searchers had gone back out, Wyatt invited Vicki and Jessica into the motor home for turkey sandwiches and coffee. Jessica declined, saying she wasn't hungry. Vicki thought it was probably because she didn't want to be in such close proximity to a police officer—or to her.

“Wish we had some good news, Mrs. Gaynes.” Deputy Wyatt gestured toward a booth and placed a paper plate with a sandwich and some grapes in front of her. “But there's been no sign of Brad.”

She glanced at her watch. Two o'clock. Todd and Rachael hadn't come back in yet. What was taking them so long?

“I haven't heard or seen the helicopter for a while,” Vicki said.

“They're still up there. The Pavehawk is scanning the forested areas now, and the Coast Guard chopper is working the river.”

Vicki nodded, taking a bite of the sandwich. “Thanks for lunch.”

“No problem.” Sam poured himself a cup of milk from the container in the fridge and offered her some. She shook her head.

“I've had too much coffee,” he said. “It's hard to hang around here and wait.”

“That's for sure.” The sandwich and coffee settled like a giant lump in Vicki's stomach and stayed there long after she'd finished eating. She and Sam talked for a while about the weather and the latest news happenings. He offered her a couple magazines from the rack in the motor home. She took an old copy of
Sunset
and scanned it, not really reading anything. Eventually, she tossed the magazine on the seat and went back outside, where she paced back and forth from the trailhead to the car, praying and going crazy with worry.

Finally, at four-thirty, she spotted Todd and Rachael coming down the trail.

She recognized Todd and Rachael's raincoats from a distance, even if her eyesight prohibited her from seeing their faces clearly.

The steady rain made it impossible to wear glasses; she tired of cleaning them and left them in the Ford hours ago. Even without her glasses, she could read Todd's grim expression as he got closer.
Still no sign of Brad.

Todd hugged her and draped an arm around her shoulders as he led her to the command post, where he opened a cooler and pulled out a bottle of water.

Rachael glared at the Subaru. “Jessica is responsible for this. I know it.”

“Let's not jump to conclusions.” Todd twisted open the lid to the water and handed it to his daughter; then he grabbed another for himself.

“What else am I supposed to think? We've had an army of people out there all day combing every inch of those woods. He isn't there.” Rachael took a long sip of water.

“Maybe he just took off.” Todd tipped back his head, his Adam's apple moving up and down as he drank nearly half of the sixteen ounces of water. “He could be back at the cabin right now, wondering where everybody is.”

“Have you tried calling him?” Vicki asked hopefully.

Todd nodded. “Every hour. But he could have gotten a ride with one of the truckers. Maybe he decided to split for a while.” He nodded toward Jessica. “Maybe he wanted to get away from her.”

“He wouldn't do that without letting us know,” Vicki insisted.

“We don't know that.” Todd ran a hand through his wet hair, displacing his cap and knocking it to the ground. He stooped to snatch it up.

“Jessica said he'd been drinking.” Vicki's voice trembled with barely disguised anger.

“Maybe we should check out places he likes to go,” Rachael offered. “He could have gone up to Mount Hood or Bachelor to snowboard. With all this rain, there's bound to be new snow. You know how he likes to be out in that stuff.”

“We should check with his friends,” Todd said.

“I'll do that,” Rachael offered. “I need to get home anyway. Kip and I can make some calls and go to all Brad's haunts—ask if anyone has seen him. Like you said, he could have come down and seen that Jessica was gone and then hitched a ride into town.”

Vicki allowed herself to get caught up in their whirlwind of hope. She kissed her daughter good-bye and then grasped her husband's hand. Watching Rachael leave, she prayed they were right and that Brad was at home—or somewhere, safe and alive.

AT FOUR O'CLOCK, Mac's cell phone vibrated. He and Dana had been following the upper trail. Flipping open his cell, he answered, “Mac here.”

“Fun's over, Mac.” His partner, Kevin Bledsoe, sounded none too happy. “We got a twelve-forty-nine. Body was found by a real-estate assessor at the old Cazadero Mill on Faraday Road, east of Estacada. A guy was found in the old sawmill out here. Sawed in half.”

“You're kidding.” Mac glanced at Dana, who joined him on the trail.

“Wish I was.”

“Have you ID'd him?” Mac wondered briefly if the murder victim might be their missing guy, then dismissed the idea. No reason to make that kind of connection.

“Not yet. The assessor said it was a male. I'm en route—M.E. should be there within the half-hour. Where are you?”

“Wah-kella Falls area—about two miles from the top of the falls.”

“How soon can you get out here?”

Mac wished he'd taken his own car. He hated to pull Dana out of the search. “Hang on, Kevin.” He told Dana about the murder.

“You'll have to take me out there, or I'll try to catch a ride.”

Glancing at her watch, Dana said, “I'm with you.”

“We're on our way. Should be there within the hour.”

“We?” Mac could picture Kevin's raised eyebrow. “Don't tell me; let me guess. You're with Trooper Bennett.”

Mac grinned, not really minding the implication. “Yeah. You got a problem with that?”

“Not at all, partner. Just curious.” Kevin chuckled. “This one sounds pretty grisly, Mac. Dana might want to think twice about coming in on it.”

“I'll tell her.”

As he and Dana jogged down the trail, Mac's concerns about Bradley Gaynes returned, but he didn't voice them. He wanted to be wrong. He wanted Gaynes to walk out of the woods a few miles down the road. He wanted the girlfriend to be an innocent bystander. There was nothing thus far to indicate foul play, and he hoped it stayed that way.

“You think Brad might be the victim at the sawmill?” Dana asked after they had checked out with the command center and were pulling out of the parking lot. Her flushed cheeks, sparkling aquamarine eyes, and breathless voice made her more appealing than usual.

“Crossed my mind.” Mac pulled his gaze from hers.
Down, boy.
She's got a boyfriend and you—you're in limbo.
“Estacada isn't all that far away. They haven't ID'd him yet.”

“Guess we'll find out soon enough,” Dana said, merging into the freeway traffic.

“Are you familiar with the Cazadero Mill?” Mac asked.

“Yeah. The sawmill went out of business a little over a year ago. The owners left it as is, hoping to sell it, but nothing so far. There's still thousands of dollars in equipment in the building with a razor cyclone fence around it, but like any abandoned property, after a while it starts looking attractive to the bad guys. Some creeps were dealing drugs out of it for a while. We closed them down.”

“Right. I heard about that.” Mac glanced at her. “Maybe they started back up again.”

She shrugged.

“Kevin said a real-estate assessor found the body. Makes me wonder how well the security guys are doing their job.”

“I think it's one of those agencies that checks in once a shift. If the bad guys knew the routine, they could stay under the radar.”

Mac shifted in his seat. “Kevin said you might want to stay out of the foray on this one. It's pretty gruesome.”

Dana bit her lower lip. “Aren't they all?”

“Yeah, but this guy was sawed in half.”

Dana sucked in a sharp breath and gave Mac a quick glance.

“Sawed in half!”

“Don't know if it's postmortem or notou sure you want to see it?” Mac raised an eyebrow, already knowing the answer.

“Not really, but yes. If you don't mind me tagging along.”

Mac shrugged, “It's your time, Dana.”

Dana cut through Gresham on Highway 26, then down to Highway 224 from the town of Sandy, turning off onto Faraday Road toward the condemned Cazadero Mill on the Clackamas River. They pulled off the road, parking between a Clackamas County Sheriff 's SUV and an OSP Cruiser. Mac noted that the medical examiner's truck was there, as well as the Ford pickup belonging to the crime lab. The Camry probably belonged to the reporting party. It was hemmed in by two official vehicles, which in all likelihood belonged to the original responding officers.

Yellow crime-scene tape had been set in place over one hundred yards from the mill's entrance. Mac recognized Kevin's influence there.
“An outer perimeter to a crime scene can never be too
big.”
Mac could almost hear Kevin's deep voice.
“Start big, and you
can always make it smaller. Start small, and if you need to go bigger,
you're in trouble.”

Mac and Dana logged into the crime scene, waiting to make eye contact with Kevin before walking to the front entrance of the mill to avoid disturbing the evidence.

“Watch your step.” Kevin peered at them over his clipboard.

“Follow the yellow-brick road.”

“Follow the what?” Dana asked Mac.

Mac chuckled as he pulled some rubber shoe covers from the trunk. “That yellow strip of crime-scene tape on the ground.” Mac pointed to the four-inch-wide yellow plastic tape that ran from the parking lot to the mill entrance, where Kevin was standing with the chief medical examiner, Dr. Kristen Thorpe. With her usual getup and short, spiked burgundy hair, the M.E. was hard to miss. He smiled remembering the first time he'd seen her. He couldn't stop staring at her, and she'd fixed his curiosity good by accusing him of flirting.

“Humph. Looks like someone needs to tie their crime-scene tape a little better.” Dana nodded toward the tape.

“Well, that's Kevin's yellow-brick road. He wants us to walk the same path to the mill entrance, which I assume he already searched for evidence. If we walk on the tape, it should be a safe path into the building so we don't disturb anything. Here, put these rubber booties over your boots so we don't leave any shoe prints in the sawdust. I think Kevin secretly likes seizing shoes for evidence from emergency personnel, especially firemen.”

“Why does he take their shoes?” Dana asked, slipping the large rubber slip-ons over her small boots.

“If he finds shoe prints in the crime scene, he has to compare all the shoes that emergency personnel wore into the scene. It's a process of elimination. Sometimes they don't ever get their shoes back; they just sit in evidence for years if no suspect is arrested.”

“Yikes. I just paid a hundred and sixty dollars for this pair. I'd rather keep them, so thanks for the rubber covers. They look like the boots my mother made me wear to the bus stop when I was a kid, except for the smooth soles.”

“Perfect for not leaving prints. Here, wrap some duct tape around the top so they stay on your feet. We can just throw them away when we are done. I go through a lot of them.” Mac tossed Dana a roll of tape.

When Dana finished securing the rubber covers to her boots, they walked the tape to the entrance.

“Sorry I'm so late, partner,” Mac said. “We got here as fast as we could.”

“No problem.” Kevin looked pale, and Mac noticed a line of perspiration on his upper lip. Mac had never seen Kevin get sick at a crime scene.