Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (131 page)

I ground up some coffee beans, making sure to muffle the sound under a folded-over kitchen towel so as to not wake Kate, and then brewed up half a pot. I packed some things and wrote a quick note, leaving it on the table.

I poured the coffee into a large travel mug and headed out the door.

As I drove through the deserted streets of town to the highway, I thought about the dream. There was an urgency to it that was real. Like something had happened. A decision made, or a shift of energy or focus. Maybe Frazier was close to solving the case, on the killer’s tracks, maybe without even knowing it. Maybe the killer was sensing it and planning on leaving before they could get him.

Or something else. Maybe he was going to strike again.

I thought back on the sunset. It was as beautiful as it was confusing. There were so many things I didn’t understand.

I hoped that Emily could help me figure some of them out. I hoped I could find her again.

A jumbled feeling shook through me like the rock-hard shocks on the Jeep. It was a mix of fear, anxiety, and hope.

Hope for what, I wasn’t sure.

CHAPTER 39

When I made it over the pass and had reception again, I called Frazier from outside the McKenzie River Ranger Station. He didn’t answer, so I left my second phone message of the morning.

As I reached the outskirts of Eugene I got a text from him letting me know he could meet me at noon. I looked at the time on the car radio and saw that I still had a big chunk of the morning to kill. I pulled into a Safeway parking lot and went inside. Starbucks. Maybe one of their stale pastries too.

As I sat there sipping coffee, I thought again about the dream and how it might relate to actual places and events.

I didn’t recognize the particular forest. It didn’t seem to be anywhere I had been. Certainly not in my limited tour of Eugene.

And what about that coconut smell? My first guess was that it might have come from a shampoo or deodorant.

I also wondered about the red sunset of the night before. What was its significance? Emily disappeared near the end of the day. Was that how the sky looked when she was taken?

I then thought about the urgency I had felt in the dream. Like time was running out somehow. I was fairly sure Emily was dead. So it wasn’t her. Maybe it had to do with the next victim.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, I began to feel foolish. Why had I abandoned my job and all logic and rushed out here like my hair was on fire? I needed more than a coconut-scented dream and a red sunset.

I got back in the Jeep and headed over to the bridge, the first place I had seen the colored sky. I had nothing else to go on.

I parked in a small gravel lot across from the football stadium. I took the path through the trees that led to the river.

It was cool and dark beneath the limbs and leaves that blocked the sky. Again I was swallowed up by the creepiness of the place. There was something about these woods. And it couldn’t all be explained away by the general uneasy sensation produced by being surrounded by trees.

When I got to the bridge, I walked to the middle and stared down at the banks. It was quiet.

It was turning into a nice morning, with the clouds burning off and the sun and sky peeking through in uneven patches. The smell of a recent rain came up as I closed my eyes and inhaled the earthy, moist air.

I listened to the flow of the water. To an airplane overhead. To the sound of voices coming from people crossing the bridge.

But it wasn’t anything I heard that made my eyes suddenly fly open and caused my body to shiver.

It was the smell from the dream.

Floating up from somewhere below, blowing in the breeze.

Coconut.

I looked down but there was nothing there. The smell was getting fainter.

And then I saw something. Down to my right.

Movement, in the trees.

I raced down toward that end of the bridge and took a left onto a small footpath. The coconut scent was now completely gone, having been replaced by the smell of dead, moldy leaves and urine.

I slowed down to a jog but kept following the narrow trail, trying to avoid the prickly branches that snagged at my sweatshirt. Deeper and deeper into the woods I went. But after several minutes, I didn’t see anything, no movement, no fresh footprints. Whatever had been there was now gone, if there had even been something there in the first place.

I stopped and looked around again one last time. Nothing.

I started heading back.

And then it hit me again.

The smell, stronger than ever.

It was coming from somewhere behind me.

I followed it for a few hundred feet and came upon a small clearing.

There, toward one end, was a crudely-fashioned cross stuck into the ground.

I walked over to it slowly.

The dirt underneath it was soft, with no grass growing.

I gulped down hard.

CHAPTER 40

I opened my phone and saw that it was just past eleven. I called Frazier.

“I think I found something,” I said. “I think it might be a grave.”

I told him where I was.

“Okay, stay there, Abby,” he said. “We’re on our way. Try not to touch anything or walk around too much. In fact, stay as still as you can. We don’t want to contaminate the scene.”

“Got it.”

I looked down for my footprints, hoping I hadn’t already stepped in the wrong place.

After hanging up I noticed that the smell was gone again. But in its place was something new.

Dread.

Dread so real I could almost taste it.

At what was down there, beneath that cross, in the ground.

It wasn’t long before I heard voices and then saw Frazier coming down the path. Someone else was with him.

“Abby, I want you to meet Franklin Morales, my partner.”

Morales appeared to be in his late 20’s, with short, dark hair, sharp features and an easy smile. He was wearing a fitted suit and a thin tie, with his badge clipped to his belt.

“Hi,” I said.

“Good to meet you.” We shook hands. “Where is it?”

I pointed over to the far end of the clearing.

“It’s over there,” I said.

“What were you doing here?” Frazier said.

“Just following a hunch, I guess.”

“Okay, you stay here.”

The two men walked up to the overturned dirt. They quietly studied the area for a few minutes.

“What do you think?” Morales said.

Frazier didn’t answer right away.

“I don’t know,” he said, taking out a pen and pushing away some dead leaves. “It looks relatively recent. I don’t think this was here in the winter when we searched through this area.”

“It’s about the right size,” Morales said.

Frazier nodded slowly.

“I’m going to call it in,” he said, taking out his phone.

As I stood there, different emotions surged up inside me. If Emily Ross was dead, there was no point in putting off finding her body. If she was buried down there, they needed to know. A positive identification needed to be made. Her parents needed to be told. Evidence had to be collected, evidence that might lead back to the killer. Things could move forward. This discovery could be a domino that put the police on the road to finally solving the case, to saving other lives.

And that was a good thing.

But at the same time, I couldn’t help wanting to run away and never know the terrible truth that might be buried under that soil.

CHAPTER 41

Morales went back to the car to get some police tape while Frazier and I stood guard. I could see his energy was darker now, spinning around him like a waterless whirlpool high above the rest of him. I knew he was thinking that it was Emily buried there, that the cruel, dark moment he had been dreading for months had finally touched down, reaching out to him through the warmth of a late August morning and showing him again the meanness of this world.

“The forensics team will be here soon,” he said. “They’re very thorough. It will take some time before we know anything.”

I nodded.

“There’s no point in you waiting around here, Abby. In fact, it would probably be better if you weren’t here. They’ll want to know the circumstances, how you came to find this spot. I know this isn’t your first time around the block. You know how they can be. We can trust Morales, he’s a good man. But I think it best that we keep the circle small.”

“I understand.”

“I’ll try to break free this afternoon so we can go over some things. Oh, I wanted to tell you that one of our people of interest seems to now have a large hole in his alibi.”

“Which one?”

“Do you remember the, uh, the barista who was harassing Emily? He was picked up a few days ago for something unrelated, a burglary. We also found drugs on him. But it got me to thinking about him, and having nothing better to do, well, I looked into his alibi again.”

“Is he the one you said was in Seattle at the time?”

“Yes, supposedly he was attending a conference there with two other employees, which his supervisor later confirmed when we interviewed him last January. But I went back and checked again to see what time his flight arrived in Eugene that day.

“The airline originally told us 6:43 p.m. That doesn’t fit into the timeline. In all likelihood, Emily was gone by then. So far, so good for Korman. But now it turns out that for some reason, and don’t ask me what that reason is, the airline gave us the correct time, but it was
Eastern
Daylight Standard Time. So here in Eugene it was actually 3:43, not 6:43.

“He was here in Eugene, Abby. At the time Emily went missing. He was here. But he’s sticking to his story. He says he asks all the pretty girls out. And that he gets rejected about a hundred times a day. He says everyone knows it’s all good-natured fun and that he doesn’t mean anything by it. His co-workers back up his claim that he’s some wannabe Don Juan. But it doesn’t mean he didn’t act on his urges and that he didn’t go too far.”

Frazier’s energy moved slowly in gray waves around that black hole in his side.

I saw a couple of uniformed cops heading our way followed by some tech-looking guys lugging cases. I said goodbye to Frazier, walking in the opposite direction. After a few feet, I turned around and looked back at him while he spoke to them.

And that’s when I saw her. Again for just the briefest of moments.

Like a butterfly, fluttering in the wind, there one second and then gone.

The ghost of Emily Ross, standing beside Frazier as he pointed to her gravesite.

CHAPTER 42

As I drove away, I thought about Emily’s family. They might finally have closure. But I wondered if they really wanted it.

Would you ever want to know that your child has been brutally murdered and thrown in a hole in the ground? Would you ever want someone to knock on your door or call you on the phone and say, “Your daughter’s dead. We found her body. Or what was left of it anyway. Maybe if we’re extremely lucky, the killer left behind a clue that will help us catch him.”

They would never hear her say, “I’m coming home” or “Happy Birthday” or “I’m getting married” or “You’re going to be a grandmother.”

Instead they could now have a funeral.

Closure.

Maybe it was just something people said. Some made-up word counselors used to feel useful.

When someone you love dies, it feels like you’ve died too. Nothing eases the pain. Nothing makes it better. The days bleed into one another with no rhyme or reason and it feels like the heartache will go on forever. And then at some point you start trying to remember the times you shared. Trying to picture and hold them in your memory when it was good. That’s the best you can hope for. The pain is still there, will always be there, but hopefully it hasn’t consumed you.

Maybe that was closure.

I parked the Jeep near Hayward Field. My phone rang.

“Abby,” Frazier said. “With everything that’s going on I forgot to let you know that your stay over at the Best Western is taken care of. They’ll be expecting you.”

“Thanks. I’m glad you called. Listen, it happened again. I saw her again. Emily. Next to you while you were talking to those officers.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Just for a second, maybe not even that long. Like last time. I thought you should know.”

I thought back on one of the first ghosts I had seen. The woman had been murdered and her body dumped in the Deschutes River. I saw her watching from a nearby cliff as the divers brought up her body.

“Sometimes it’s like that,” I said. “They want to be found.”

Again, he was quiet.

“Thanks for telling me,” he finally said. “I’ll call you.”

CHAPTER 43

After I checked in, I called Ty and left a message, letting him know where I was.

My phone rang a few minutes later.

“Hey, Kate. I was just about to call you.”

“I was surprised you left so early this morning,” she said. “And even more surprised that I somehow slept through it. What’s going on?”

I filled her in, including the part about finding the grave.

“I’m sorry, Abby. It’s kind of a no-win situation, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s like you want to find out but then you don’t.”

“That’s what I was thinking too.”

“That’s pretty amazing how you found that grave by following a smell,” she said.

“I guess so. That’s kind of a first for me.”

“So what do you think the connection is?”

I had been wondering about that very thing myself, but had no real theories.

“I honestly don’t know what to think. It could have been Emily’s ghost trying to communicate with me. But I don’t know. How are things over there?”

“I’m taking your sad friend out to brunch,” she said.

“Did he tell you about the show being cancelled?”