Cold Lake (16 page)

Patterson watched with mounting impatience as Yates and Wolf shuffled into the small room.

“What the?” Yates said.

Wolf was pointing his own flashlight beam inside as he stood in the doorway, and then he stepped forward, freeing up space.

Patterson looked and saw that Rachette was standing still, not making any move to follow Wolf inside, which Patterson found deeply unnerving. Rachette was always right next to Wolf into any situation, and when he wasn’t next to him he was right on his heels.

Rachette held out a hand, his face expressionless.
After you.

There was a click and the light went on in the room. A string was bouncing and swinging in front of Patterson when she stepped in, and she held it steady and creased her forehead when she saw the wall.

A circular cluster of photographs was affixed at eye level, every one of them of Kimber Grey. They were tacked to the wall with what seemed to be a crazy purpose, tilted every which way, some on top of others, the whole of it resembling a multicolored moon made of photographs.

They were glossy color prints of Kimber chopping wood. Kimber milling around her boat. Kimber standing on her porch, looking directly into the lens of the camera, though from an impossible distance to be able to know she was being photographed.

Yates leaned close to one of the prints of Kimber standing naked inside of her yellow-illuminated window. “Can I keep this one?” he murmured, looking back at Rachette.

Rachette ignored him, not even cracking a smile.

Extremely unnerving.
Patterson cleared her throat. “Sir, Olin Heeter was an astronomy enthusiast?”

“Yeah.” Wolf was pressing his face close to the photos.

“Looks like he’s enthusiastic about the moon and Kimber Grey.” Yates stepped back, letting Rachette in for a look.

“Process that rifle,” Wolf said keeping his eyes on the photos.

Patterson turned around, wondering what he was talking about. She looked at the other walls. They were painted white drywall, void of any photos or paintings of any kind. A shelf stood against one of them, and on top was a midnight black bolt-action rifle on its side. On the shelves below it were numerous books: one on survival techniques, another about military history, The Art of War, at least a hundred hunting magazines, and several horror fiction novels. Acting as a bookend was a box of .308 Winchester rifle bullets, the cardboard cracked open showing the box was less than full.

“There’s blood on it,” Wolf said, keeping his nose to the photo wall.

Patterson nodded and looked at the rifle. “Yes. I see that … now.” There was a smear of blood on the stock, and on the trigger guard.

Wolf stepped back and put his hands on his hips. “There’s bloody gloves on the lowest shelf. These are all taken recently.”

Patterson frowned and bent down, saw the gloves, and then stood back up and turned toward Wolf.

His eyes were still glued to the photos.

When no one else spoke, Patterson asked, “Recently? How do you know that?”

Wolf shook his head. “It’s even more than that. Kimber. She has the same hair in all of these. Same length, same ponytail, with a strand flipping out on the side. She has the same outfit on in these. The same jeans and shoes, but some with her long sleeved shirt, others with the rain parka.” He pointed to some of the photos scattered in different spots. “The weather. Look here. It’s raining.” Wolf pointed to a few of the photographs that were zoomed out enough to see the surrounding forest, or Kimber’s cabin in the background. “You can see the wetness. And then … look at this.” Wolf pointed to the corner of a photo.

Patterson leaned forward and saw what he was talking about. There was a tiny droplet of water on the lens in the upper right corner, causing an unfocused blob of light refraction. It was in every single photo on the wall. “They were all taken on the same day?”

Wolf nodded. “Looks like it. And this is the outfit Kimber had on yesterday. When I came and talked to her. I think these were all taken yesterday. It was raining all day until the evening. These low light photos could have been taken through the fog, that’s why they look like they’re in the night. That’s why Kimber’s lights are on inside her house.” Wolf stepped back another step and exhaled.

“What the hell?” Yates asked no one in particular.

Wolf pushed past them and out of the room.

Patterson looked at Yates and Rachette for a second and then followed.

Wolf walked to the stairs and went up.

Patterson followed close, reaching the main floor a few steps behind him.

Back on the main floor, Wolf twisted, searching for something and then walked to another door. With his rubber-gloved fingers he twisted the knob and looked inside.

The other side of the door was dark, but she saw a gleaming car bumper and smelled motor oil, and then Wolf flicked on a light switch, revealing a two-car garage.

One side of the garage was filled with dusty equipment: a riding lawn mower, a four-wheeler, and various gardening tools hanging on the wall. Parked on the other side was an older looking Chevy pickup truck.

“That’s Heeter’s truck,” Yates said behind them. “Those are his plates.”

Wolf studied the truck for a few seconds and nodded. “It’s clean. Not any dust on it.”

“So it hasn’t been parked here long?” Patterson asked.

“I’d say no. Let’s search it.”

Wolf turned to the door and stepped around Patterson to go back inside

She watched him go into the kitchen dining area and pull back the drapes, unveiling another sliding glass door that led onto the deck outside. Abandoning the garage door and letting it click shut, she walked after Wolf again.

With a whoosh, Wolf pulled open the door, letting in a flow of cool, fresh air smelling like lake water and pine trees, and then he walked out.

There was a blue tarp tented at shoulder height. Wolf grabbed it and lifted it off, revealing a telescope that reflected the surroundings off its silver cylinders, knobs, and mounts. Wolf peered at the lens and nodded. “There’s a single water mark on the lens.”

Wolf looked closely at the eyepiece portion of the telescope and pointed. “This is an adaptor to attach a camera lens, for taking photos through the telescope.”

“What a perv,” Yates said.

Patterson watched Rachette. He was taking everything in in perfect silence, and Patterson wanted to punch him in the face for it. She got the point. She’d betrayed him, and he was hurt. But in her defense, Rachette had betrayed her first. Or at least she had been led to think so at the time. And that was
if
Rachette was even telling the truth about the floozy with a bag full of drugs. Screw him.

Patterson turned and Wolf and Yates were looking at her.

“What?” She asked.

Wolf gestured to the cloudless sky. “I asked if you knew anything about celestial coordinates?”

She raised her eyebrows. “That’s a big no.”

Wolf walked to the railing of the deck and looked down to the lake. “See how we can’t see the diver boats out there?”

Patterson looked down at the shimmering water below. She could only see one Sheriff’s Department boat. There were still another two or three boats out there as far as she knew. The divers were supposedly doing another series of dives today just to make sure they hadn’t missed any more bodies. The Sheriff’s boat they looked at held a northern perimeter line, like a floating crime scene tape, keeping water skiers and fishermen out of the area. 

“Yeah, I see. No diver boats. They’re behind the trees on that rise.” she said.

“My father and Burton spoke to Olin Heeter, and Heeter said he’d seen something suspicious on the lake, the night of the 6th. Two nights after Nick Pollard’s disappearance.”

Patterson nodded. “Okay. And …”

“Yates, please get the report packet from my car.”

Yates nodded and bolted inside.

Wolf leaned on the railing. “So, because of Heeter’s interview, my dad and Burton spent a few days out on the lake with sonar and dive equipment. Looking in the exact spot that Heeter said he’d seen activity.”

Thumping and jingling keys approached, and Yates re-appeared , packet in hand.

Wolf leafed to a page and read, “…the night of July 6, at eleven thirty p.m., Olin Heeter saw Parker Grey’s boat go out in the water and stop. Olin says he got a clear view of the boat, because it happened to stop in the stripe reflection of the full moon, which he was photographing that night. He saw (through his own eyes, not the telescope—the telescope was pointed at the moon) a splash, and then he heard the splash, and then the boat headed toward Parker Grey’s property.”

Wolf lowered the packet and looked back out at the water.

Rachette stepped forward. “So what?”

“So the bodies we’re pulling out of the water are out of sight from here. If Grey had dumped a body where we’re finding them, Heeter wouldn’t have seen a thing.”

They stood in silence.

Patterson spoke first. “So there’s another dump site? Is that what you’re saying?”

Wolf nodded, and then pointed at the packet. “It’s right here. My dad wrote some coordinates in the margins . They’re celestial coordinates. The exact location of the moon on July 6
th
, twenty-two years ago, at 11:30 p.m..” Wolf turned to Rachette and Yates. “Let’s get Lorber and his crew up here. You guys stay and give him any help he needs.”

Rachette and Yates nodded.

“And me?” Patterson asked.

Wolf handed her the packet and then pointed an arm into the sky above the lake. “Figure out exactly where that moon was, and let’s get the sonar guys in the boat looking there.”

“Okay, wait. Who says Olin Heeter could even identify the boat as Parker Grey’s from this distance? It says his telescope was pointing at the moon.”

Wolf looked out at the lake and pointed. “It’s a coincidence, and one my father was willing to invest five days of his life diving into the water to check out. So it’s good enough for me.”

She swallowed and nodded.

Wolf gave her a quick smile before he followed Rachette and Yates. “Figure out where that moon was.”

“Is that …”—she looked at the telescope and then the lake—“even possible?”

“For you? Yeah.”

“Wait,” she called after him. “I need a computer. Internet.”

Wolf kept walking. “Check and see if Heeter has one. If not, call the station and work with Tammy.”

“There’s no cell service up here!”

Wolf was gone.

A landline phone hung on the wall next to her. She plucked it off the cradle and heard a dial tone

She hung up and stared at the telescope through the sliding glass door.

“Fine,” she said to no one.

Kimber Grey answered her door in a wet towel.

Wolf couldn’t help but glance down the length of her body, and then he couldn’t help but think about her naked body underneath, the image of it still fresh in his mind from seeing the picture twenty minutes ago.

“Sorry.” Wolf averted his eyes. “I just need to ask you a few questions.”

“Please,” she opened the door wide, “come in. I’m just getting dressed. You can wait in the living room.”

Before Wolf could say
No, I’ll just wait out front,
she was already gone and the door was swinging open.

He stepped inside and shut the door, turning just in time to see Kimber’s naked backside for an instant as it disappeared into the hallway and out of sight.

Wolf wondered how imperative it was for Kimber to pull her towel off and dry her hair an instant before she was back into the privacy of her own room.

He took a breath and stepped toward a bookshelf and studied the contents, cutting off any angle for a further view into the hallway.

Leaning forward, he looked at a washed out color picture of Kimber and her family. Her mother and father were standing arm in arm, Kimber next to them, all genuine smiles in the throes of laughter. They stood in front of a lake on a sandy beach, pine trees in the background. Kimber was young in the picture, no more than eight years old, with sun bleached pigtails and a black void for front teeth.

Wolf saw the door to the room was open to his left, and he walked toward it and peered inside. Though he could only see the edge of the twin bed from his angle, it was clear that the sheets were tousled, like it had been slept in.

“What are you guys doing up at Mr. Heeter’s?” Kimber’s voice came from down the hall.

Wolf cleared his throat. “That’s what I’m here about. When exactly is the last time you saw Olin—”

Kimber walked in front of him and leaned on the wall between him and the room. She was fully clothed now in jeans and a button up shirt.

“What happened to you?”

Wolf pulled his eyebrows together.

She pointed down. “Your leg?”

He looked down at the bloodstain on his thigh. “Oh. Swimming accident.”

She looked confused.

“When’s the last time you saw Olin Heeter?” Wolf asked.

She shrugged and brought her towel back up to her damp hair and walked out of sight back down the hall. “I don’t know. A couple weeks ago? He comes and goes a lot. I don’t remember him coming up this weekend, though. He usually comes up on the weekends.”

Her footsteps came closer and she stepped around the corner again. “He’ll do that until winter hits, then he winterizes his place and stays away until the next spring. Sometimes he stays for longer than the weekend. Doesn’t have anything to go home to, with his wife being dead. Not sure why he even goes home, actually.”

“I’d like to get all the footage you have available on that Wi-Fi camera up there.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Okay. Sure. I don’t have much, though. The video is loaded onto an external hard drive every seventy-two hours, and then I go over it and erase it to leave room for the next seventy-two hours, or the whole thing shuts down.”

Wolf stared at her for a few seconds.

“What?” She asked.

“How much footage do you have now?”

She shrugged. “A couple hours? I just did the memory dump earlier when I got home.”

Wolf nodded. “Okay. I’d like to see it.”

She nodded back. “Okay. I’ll get it.” She disappeared into the back rooms again.

Wolf twisted slowly on his heels, taking in the rest of the space. There were paintings on the wall depicting mountain wildlife scenes: deer, elk, and bear foraging for food in different settings. The paintings were dusty, and by the looks of the line of dust and lint against the wall on the floor Wolf guessed she rarely cleaned.

She returned holding out a memory stick. “Here you go.”

Wolf took it. “Did you check the footage before you erased it?”

“Yeah.”

“Was there anything?”

She shrugged. “Just a lot of you coming and going.”

Wolf eyed her for a second and nodded. “Thanks. I’d like you to come back into town tonight, where we can more easily keep an eye on you. With cell service being shoddy up here, and our radio relays not reaching, it would be better.”

“Keeping an eye on me, eh?”

Wolf shrugged. “What we found up at Olin Heeter’s house suggests it may be dangerous for you up here at the moment.”

Kimber frowned. “Really?”

Wolf nodded.

She pulled back her wet mass of brown hair and lifted it off her shoulders, twisting it into some sort of knot. She stepped into
The Room
with fast steps and pulled the sheets all the way back and off, piling them on the floor.

Wolf watched. “You use that room?”

“I take naps in here.” She walked out with a wad of sheets and back out of sight down the hall. “What are you doing tonight?” She asked.

Wolf frowned to himself and didn’t answer. He walked back to the bookshelf and looked at the picture in front of a row of worn paperbacks.

Once again she appeared at the wall and leaned against it.

He saw her studying him from his peripheral. “I like this picture. Where was it taken?”

Stepping close, she moved silently and put her hand on the small of his back. “Oh, that? I think in Tennessee. Near the commune.”

“Oh yeah. The hippy commune. Must have been a fun time growing up there.”

She pulled back and folded her arms.

Wolf looked at her. “I’m just saying it’s an interesting way to grow up, is all. How many people were living there?”

She stared for another few seconds and then seemed to relax. “Lots. It was the biggest commune in the world at one time.”

Wolf nodded, looking at the pine trees in the background of the photo. “I’m not too familiar with geography east of Colorado. What is that, the Appalachian mountains?”

“I think so. I don’t remember when that was taken.”

Wolf nodded.

“You want some tea?” She walked away toward the kitchen.

“No thanks.”

Wolf set down the picture and looked at his watch. 2:45. He calculated he’d be back into the office at 3:30 pm if he left now, which would give him a couple of hours before the meeting with Senator Chama, a meeting that was making him more nervous than he was used to being on the job. And what if Senator Chama wanted to talk about the pension? The development projects of the resort village base? The future budget concerns of the bigger, consolidated Office of the Sheriff in the next four years?

Suddenly the urge to read through Margaret’s packet sitting in his desk drawer trumped any and all work he had to do otherwise. Rachette, Wilson, Yates, and Patterson, even if some of them weren’t speaking to one another, could handle Heeter’s.

“Sheriff?”

Wolf looked at Kimber standing in the kitchen doorway.

“You okay?”

Wolf nodded. “Yes. Listen, I think it’s a bad idea for you to stay here tonight. I’d like you to come down to Rocky Points, where we can keep an eye on you.”

“I tell you what. You meet me for a drink and I’ll do it. I’m sick of sitting in that hotel room and watching shit TV.” She blushed and pulled her hair behind her ear. “So?”

“All right. Eight O’clock, I’ll meet you at The Pony Tavern. You know it?”

She nodded and opened the front door. “Okay then. Sounds good.”