The Dying Hour (24 page)

M
ist hung over the eternal forest valleys.

It coiled around the foothills like a gargantuan serpent shedding its skin as Jason Wade’s Falcon cut deeper into the Canadian Rockies.

Time was working against him.

He was about one hundred miles northeast of Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho, where he’d spent the night and fifty bucks for a motel room with a sagging bed. He rose early to push on to Garrison, British Columbia.

The isolated mountain community of two thousand rose from the skeleton of a mining village that had wasted into a ghost town during the Depression. Artists resurrected it and over time Garrison evolved into a sanctuary for bohemians, hermits, misfits, and outcasts. It was also a haven for outlaw bikers, forgotten rock stars, strange sects, and bizarre cults.

Was this his link to the case?

Doubt had seized Jason yesterday when he entered Idaho. His car started making a strange noise and he began questioning if pursuing the bookstore lead was a huge mistake.

Was he on the right track? Or simply desperate?

He needed to check out the local address linked to the book. Because the book could be the link. He needed to lock on to this local address without anyone knowing why, and he needed to move fast.

He was wrestling with his dilemma as he pulled into Garrison.

Its business district was huddled amid a handful of blocks with the assorted amenities of most small towns, a bank, drugstore, bar, restaurants—
there’s Ida May’s
—a gas station, library, post office, car lot, art and gift boutiques, clothing and appliance stores. Jason found the bookstore at the edge of downtown.

A narrow, two-floor frontier-style building. It had a turn-of-the-last-century storefront facade with ornate wooden spindling framing a large wooden sash window. Hand-lettered on the glass were the words
TWIST OF FATE: RARE OCCULT & RELIGIOUS BOOKS
.

The transom bell chimed when he entered, the worn planks of the floor squeaked. The shop was darkened, most of its curtains drawn. Even in the overcast morning, it took several seconds for Jason’s eyes to adjust. The air smelled of musty old books that choked every inch of space. They were wedged into shelves, stacked floor to ceiling in teetering towers, they spilled from boxes and shot from the floor in island spires.

Jason spotted a cat dozing in a ray of dim light leaking from the half-drawn shade of the front door.

Then he noticed a small counter, and behind it a crown of fluffy white hair belonging to a man sitting near a computer reading a tattered copy of Marlowe’s
Faustus.

“Excuse me. I called yesterday inquiring about a book,
Reflections on the Ritual.
”

Soft blue eyes peered over bifocals at Jason.

“Ah yes, I remember you. How may I help?”

“Do you have any more copies?”

“I’m afraid not. I checked after we spoke. However, I can start a search for you. I know there’s a copy in Sydney, Australia. I’m quite certain I can locate others through our worldwide network.”

“As I recall, you’d mentioned that your last copy was sold to a man in Washington state?”

“Not quite correct.” The older man assessed Jason before he turned to his computer and began entering commands. “It went to Washington. The customer who bought it has a place here. And that customer bought a second copy of the book, a different edition.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have his address, the one here?”

“I believe I told you about our policy on privacy. We cannot release any specific personal details.”

“I understand.”

“I’d said the customer was local only to let you know that we could expedite contacting him to let him know about interest in a book he’d purchased and if he’d be interested in selling it. We provide that service for a small commission.”

“Yes, I know.”

The older man considered Jason.

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No, I’m from Washington.”

“I see. Shall I contact the customer on your behalf?”

“No. Hold on that, please. I’d need to think it over.”

The older man nodded then, watching Jason leave, grinned to himself. Collectors. An eccentric, eclectic bunch, no matter their age. Forget the oddballs on the Internet. This youngster drove up from Washington and couldn’t make up his mind on a book.

Moreover, the bookseller wondered, why the sudden interest in this book,
Reflections on the Ritual
? He did some further checking on the worldwide database for locating rare and antique books. He’d noticed a handful of new queries for it. Maybe he should try to get his hands on a few copies, he thought, before going back to
Faustus.

All right, forget the bookstore.

Jason started his car. Time for plan B. And he’d better hustle. He didn’t trust the bookstore guy to keep quiet about his interest in the book, not with the local aspect.

In a town this small, word would spread fast.

Jason pulled into Garrison Gas, a three-bay garage, grabbed a file folder from his bag, selected a page, and looked for help. This was a long shot. But at this point, everything was.

The busy station reeked of rubber and oil, echoed with compressors and the clink of steel tools dropped in the repair bays. He could hear Shania Twain’s voice echoing from a radio.

“Hello,” Jason called out.

“Yup.” A man in dirty coveralls wiping his hands on a rag waved Jason to the counter. The name patch over his heart said
Gyle.
He was tall, about Jason’s age. Hair tied in a ponytail. Forearms sleeved with tattoos. A Harley, death’s-head, wings, and flames.

“You guys here work on most of the vehicles from Garrison?”

“We work on all of them. We’re the only full-service garage around.”

“Ever work on this one?”

Jason showed him the older photos he got from Web sites, of Cull with an RV he used in the background. Jason had made an enlarged copy showing only the RV. Gyle studied it carefully.

“This looks familiar,” he said.

“Can you tell me who owns it?”

“Just wait a sec. Deek!”

A moment later a second man in grease-stained overalls joined Gyle. He bent over the counter and studied the picture. Then Deek looked at Jason.

“You a cop or something?”

“I’m a writer. I’m researching some local history, trying to locate the person around here who owns this RV. I need to get permission for some historical research on his property. I need to see the owner.”

Deek nodded.

“I worked on this thing.” He tapped a knuckle to the picture. “The owner drives it hard all over the place. Got a V-Eight, moves pretty good for its age and size. Got it used out of Seattle. From a charity, I think, from the paperwork on it. We had to certify it a while back for B.C. plates. Good torque for the mileage.”

“You know the owner?”

Deek scratched the stubble on his dirty cheek. “I know engines, I don’t know people. I don’t know this guy’s name, but his place is out by—do you know this area?”

Jason shook his head.

Deek tore a patch of paper from a white take-out bag from Ida’s, cursed until he found a ballpoint pen, and began drawing a map.

“Jeez,” Gyle said, “is it that place off Gallows Ridge, way out by Scarecrow and Roddy’s property?”

“Naw.” Deek kept drawing. “Farther than that. The one past Cushing. The last one out there.”

Gyle exchanged glances with Deek.

“The property next to McBride’s ranch?”

“Yup,” Gyle said.

Deek assessed Jason.

“Hell, nobody ever goes out there.”

“Why?” Jason asked.

Gyle stared at him.

“Most folks out that way keep to themselves and this guy here”—Gyle tapped a dirty grease-stained finger on the spot where Deek was completing his map—“they just don’t bother him at all.”

“Why’s that?”

“They just don’t. What people do out there is their own business. You know, the cops don’t even go out there, ain’t that right, Deek?”

“That’s right.”

He folded the makeshift map and handed it to Jason.

B
onnie Stillerman stared back at Detective Hank Stralla from the photograph he’d scanned into his computer at his desk in Bellingham.

The picture Jason Wade had given to him.

“This is our linchpin,” Stralla said over the phone to Price Canton, the Oregon detective with the unsolved murder tied to Roxanne Palmer’s ritual killing in the Rattlesnake Hills. “Look at her glasses.”

Canton was at the other end of the line in Klamath Falls studying his monitor.

“Red frames,” Stralla said. “Now look at the glass frame from your Jane Doe crime scene in Lost River. Red frame again. What do you think?”

“I’ll be damned.” Canton clicked repeatedly between the pictures. “Hot damn, I think you’re right.”

Stralla had e-mailed the photo to Canton and the other task force members, telling them to magnify the frames in both pictures, convincing them that the color, contours, and design were very similar, maybe even identical.

Within an hour the task force had an emergency conference call to discuss the red-framed glasses, new information on Gideon Cull’s past and his connections to Karen Harding and Spokane. Forget the reverend’s recent heroics. As far as investigators on the task force were concerned, he hadn’t been cleared of anything yet because he was always unavailable for a police interview. Now that they had the glasses angle, Cull was no longer a potential suspect.

He was
the
suspect.

And while the glasses were a critical break, they proved nothing. Investigators had to confirm the whereabouts and welfare of Bonnie Stillerman. And they had to examine Cull’s time line and his links to Roxanne Palmer and Karen Harding. And since Harding hadn’t been located, they couldn’t rule out the possibility she was alive.

And if she was alive, every second counted.

When the call ended, the FBI, along with police in three states and some two dozen cities and counties, had joined the task force in a full-tilt drive on a lead arising from Jason Wade, a disgraced cub reporter at the
Seattle Mirror.

In Spokane, police executed warrants at Tumbler River College. They obtained Bonnie Stillerman’s old complaint against Cull and her reports of being “stalked on campus” by a man. They obtained her private files and medical information to check for next of kin and dental records for comparison with the few teeth found at the Lost River crime scene.

When two Spokane detectives showed up at the home of Stillerman’s former roommate, Diane Upshaw, all the color drained from her face.

“Yes, I still have boxes of her things I kept,” Upshaw told the grim-faced detectives who filled her living room. “Bonnie never sent for them.” Upshaw led the men to her attic, dabbing a tissue to her glistening eyes. “Call me crazy, but I always thought she’d call me one day. Bonnie was upset and sad in her life during that time. It hurt me that she never called—but what can you do? People have a right to their privacy.”

The detectives said little as Upshaw opened dustcovered boxes of her friend’s belongings, including a jewelry box. Among the items: a tiny gold rose that Diane recalled had fallen out of an arm of Bonnie’s glasses.

A call and photograph sent online to Price Canton in Klamath Falls confirmed it. An arm of the glasses found at the Oregon scene was also missing one of the ornate little roses.

The FBI and investigators in New Mexico could not locate any of Bonnie Stillerman’s relatives. Scrutinizing databases of motor vehicles, they found no renewal of her driver’s license out of Washington State to any state in the country. Her driver’s license had expired.

Banking and credit card activity ceased around the time Upshaw had last seen Stillerman in Spokane. Detectives confirmed that during that period, there was a conference on ancient religions in Klamath Falls, Oregon, which was about an hour’s drive from the wooded country near Lost River where Jane Doe’s remains were discovered.

Gideon Cull had attended the event.

An urgent, preliminary comparison of dental records indicated the Jane Doe found in Oregon’s Lost River region was Bonnie Stillerman. They began the process for DNA testing.

In Seattle, the FBI and the Seattle PD executed search warrants on Gideon Cull’s campus office in Seattle. At the college, acting on a heads-up from Morris Pitman, the Benton County coroner who’d autopsied Roxanne Palmer, federal agents gave special attention to Cull’s books.

Pitman’s research on the historical origins on the branding techniques found in the Palmer and Stillerman murders convinced him that the killer drew his inspiration from an ancient text.

“You’re looking for one, a specific title,” Pitman was telling the special agent leading the search over his cellphone. “It’s a slim volume entitled
Reflections on the Ritual.
”

While agents seized Cull’s computer, photos, files, journals, and several personal items, others traced white-gloved fingers along the spines jammed into the shelves of Cull’s groaning bookcases.

The lead agent stopped when he hit on
Reflections on the Ritual,
then described it over the phone to Pitman.

“That’s it!” Pitman said. “That’s the one!”

J
ason Wade held the map on the steering wheel between his thumbs after he left Garrison and drove deep into the mountain back roads.

The first landmark was the waterfall.

Majestic and breathtaking, he thought, passing it with a curtain of dust in his wake. Next, according to the mechanic’s scrawl on the take-out bag, would be, the Dead Forest.

He rolled along immense swaths of charred trees and gnarled stumps, the aftermath of a wildfire. Gradually, stands of dead trees gave way to thick healthy woods as the road ascended the vast slopes before disappearing into forests so dense they obscured the remaining light.

He was uneasy about the region’s reputation as the refuge of misfits. Once again, his doubts assailed him. What the hell was he doing here? Did he really believe a screwup rookie reporter was actually on the trail of a killer? Maybe he was reacting to his failures. To this place, which was creeping him out. Maybe he should turn his Falcon around and go home.

And call his old man about going back to the brewery.

Something brown blurred directly in front of him.

Big fear-filled eyes met his.

It happened too fast for his circuits to react. Before his brain issued the order to lift his foot from the gas to stomp the brake, before he could form the cognitive command to swerve, he heard and felt the
thud.

A thin ribbon of blood streaked over his windshield.

His stomach clenched. He’d hit a deer. Nicked its hindquarter. It trotted down the road and vanished into the trees. He gripped the wheel and took several deep breaths before studying his map and continuing on, telling himself he didn’t believe in omens.

This was stupid.

Grow up.

Check out this property, then get the hell back to Seattle.

Less than half an hour and some nineteen miles later, he stopped. The road had dead-ended. Nothing ahead but trees, more trees, and an abandoned logging trail. He was lost. He studied the map as time ticked by. Obviously, he’d gone too far. He turned the Falcon around, made note of the odometer, then examined the shoulder as he retraced his path. He’d gone about two miles before metal captured a sunbeam.

He stopped at a weatherworn gate almost invisible in the scrub and undergrowth. A small sign fastened to it said:
KEEP OUT: PRIVATE
.

A chain looped several times around the latch and the gatepost. It was secured with two steel locks. Beyond the gate, a dirt road meandered through the dark forest until it vanished. Nothing else was visible.

He leaned against his car. Other than the birds, all was quiet. He glanced down the road.

Nothing.

His pulse quickened.

You’re at the edge of the world. Make the call. Trespass and investigate. Or go back to Seattle with your tail between your legs. Is there a story here? Or only more trouble? Come on, what’s the plan?

Locate Cull. Respectfully request an interview to set the record straight. If Cull wasn’t here, or if he’d been wrong with his suspicions, apologize, drive home. That was the plan. End of story.

He eased his Falcon away from the entrance, down the road to a soft shoulder and small grassy patch where he could hide it from view. He switched on his cell phone and, as expected, the roaming light indicated service here was erratic. Just the same, he took the phone and walked back to the property where he climbed the gate.

Trespassing was a huge risk. His stomach fluttered as he walked along the dirt road into the property. It went on, meandering for a great distance before he crested a small hill and spotted a structure.

A house.

A ramshackle wooden bungalow with weatherworn clapboard peeling from its crooked walls. Its roof blistered where shingles were missing. Garbage and an eviscerated stove and washer rose like headstones from the ravaged yard. The grass around it was worn and dotted with coils of animal excrement smelling like a backed-up sewer. Then came the buzz of flies as he climbed the rickety steps to the door and knocked.

No sound. No sign of life inside. The door was unlocked. He opened it a crack.

“Hello!” he called.

No response. He turned to the outbuildings near the house, a garage or stable and a couple of small sheds. He rounded the house toward them and froze.

An RV.

Parked at the side of the house.

Oh, Jesus.

On the back was a decal of a Canada goose in flight. One of its wings was broken off.

This is the RV!

Jason’s pulse pounded.
Oh, Christ.
He started shaking.
Do something.
He pulled out his notebook, took down the plate, began making notes.
Not here! Get out of sight!
Three paths led from the house in different directions into the forest.

Get out of sight. Find a place to think, maybe make a call.
Trotting, he checked his phone. No service. Damn. He hurried down the nearest path, stopping at times to listen, peer through the branches, and make careful notes and sketch a map. He broke branches in strategic places so he could find his way back, his mind racing as he moved on.

This had to be the place.

Then he remembered the mechanics’ warning about staying away, how police never came out here.

He stepped into the bush to hide, write more notes, and think. He could go back to the RV and house and try to take pictures with his phone, but he had less than a quarter of battery power. He should’ve charged the thing before he rushed from Seattle.

Take it easy.

He’d explore the property, get back to Garrison, and tell the police. Get them to call Stralla. That was good. Carefully Jason resumed traveling along the path, his senses heightened for smells, sounds, sights. He eyed something small and white on the ground.

A human tooth.

All of his saliva dried.

He bent down and picked up two more.

Ahead he saw a hill, shaded in a meadow. It looked like some kind of ritual place as he climbed it, noticing a series of large bumps. Anthills. Then he saw objects rising about two feet from the earth.

Small handmade wooden crosses.

He counted nine.

Each at the head of an earthen mound. God Almighty, this was a graveyard. Jason’s scalp tingled, his head snapped around. He stepped back into the cover of the forest, and stopped dead in his tracks.

Was that someone’s voice? He strained to listen. There it was again. He moved toward it, branches pulling at his shirt as he hurried in the direction, stopping to listen again and sharpen his bearings.

He was getting closer. He heard it again as he came to a moss-covered hill thick with underbrush. It was muffled, weak, but he was closer now. It was a human cry. A woman, pleading.

“Help me. Pleeeaaaase.”

Jason hurried faster now until he fell to the soft grass. His leg had caught the edge of a metal pipe jutting a foot from the ground. The voice was echoing from it.
Underground!
The pipe looked like a ventilation tube, the kind for a bathroom.

“Help me.”

“I’m here. I can hear you.”

“Oh God! Please help me. My name’s Karen Harding—”

Karen Harding!

“He’s insane. He’s murdered people. I saw him! God! Please get me out of here.”

Jason’s skin numbed. The blood in his ears pounded. She was trapped. He tried to think.

“Karen, I’m going to help you but you must be quiet!”

He heard her struggling to stifle her sobs.

“Are you a police officer?”

“No, I’m Jason Wade, a reporter from Seattle.”

“Please help me, Jason, please hurry.”

“How did he put you in the ground?”

“There’s a door with locks. Two doors. Hurry, God, please! Help me!”

First he had to get help. He reached for his phone. It might’ve been because he was on the hill, slightly elevated, or that the metal pipe nearby acted like a booster antenna, or that he’d whispered a prayer, but his roam light flickered.

His fingers shook as he punched 911.

His service was good for all of the United States and Canada, but his call didn’t connect.
Damn it. Try again.
He tried the very next number that came into his head. His body trembled as static crackled over the air, his heart swelling when the call connected, rang through to—

Voice mail.
Damn it.

Jason left a frantic message, tried calling 911 again. It didn’t work. He hung up just as Karen screamed for help. He scrambled down the hill and worked his way through the choking undergrowth, finding the door; small, fortified, and nearly invisible in the earth and scrub.

It was built from railroad ties, and had triple locks.

He searched the area, grabbing a grapefruit-sized rock, smashing it against the locks. The steel split the rock. He searched in vain for another, then climbed back to the pipe.

“Karen, I have to get my tire iron to work on the locks. It’s in my car, I’ll be right back.”

“No! No! God, please don’t leave me! Please, Jason!”

“It’s the only way. I’ve called for help. I’m not leaving you. I’ll be back with tools to pry the locks but you have to be quiet.”

Her sobs echoing from the pipe abruptly stopped.

His heart hammered against his ribs as he raced along the path, his heavy breathing filling the silence. This couldn’t be happening. He was drunk. Or he was dreaming. Branches slapped at his face, snagged his pants and shirt. Heavy scents of pine and cedar mingled with the stench wafting from the main house of the property.

Man, it was all true.

He’d found Karen Harding.

Alive.

He had to get her free. It was a long trip back to his car. He had a tire iron. That would work and—Why were his feet in the air? Why was he choking? Something around his neck. A steel chain solid against his throat jerking him against a human body behind him. Someone strong, grunting, choking him with the steel chain so he couldn’t breathe. He was on the hard ground, the sky above him blurring.

The light blocked by a darkness that swallowed him.