The Body in the Woods (10 page)

“How could that happen?” Alexis asked. “How could they be like two different people?”

“A lot of serial killers are sociopaths. They're born without empathy. They don't understand that other people have feelings, too. It's like they're born broken. Most of the time, they try to fit in, but if you've got something they want, you're about as important to them as the paper wrapper a hamburger comes in.”

CHAPTER 18

WEDNESDAY

THE SOUND OF HER LAST BREATH

The girl was sitting with her back against the kitchen door of a restaurant that had gone out of business. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, and she was resting her face on them, so that all he could see was the back of her head and the nape of her neck. At her feet was a piece of cardboard that read
ANYTHING HELPS.
Next to it was a paper cup from Starbucks with a few coins on the bottom.

It was her hair that had attracted his attention. Cut in a bob that showed off the long lines of her neck, it was black, thick, and straight. He imagined burying his nose right behind her ear. How he would inhale as he listened to the sound of her last breath.

A longing filled him. He turned and looked to the left and then to the right. No one out for a walk. Not even any cars passing by. It would be so very easy—

“Oh!” She lifted her head so fast that it thumped on the door behind her. Wincing, she looked at him suspiciously from eyes set off by black bangs cut square across.

She couldn't have been out on the streets long, not with how neatly trimmed those bangs still were. She was even younger than he had first thought when he had seen her from across the intersection. Fourteen, fifteen? How did a girl like this survive on the streets? Where did she eat? Was this really where she slept?

“Sorry if I startled you. I'm with Hope for the Homeless.” The group didn't exist, but he doubted she would be Googling it anytime soon. “Would you like a pair of gloves?” With his own gloved hands, he opened the white plastic Target bag. He had bought dozens of them for a dollar apiece. They came in a rainbow of colors, plus black-and-white stripes.

Her face opened up. “Oh, thank you. My hands get so cold.” She reached for a turquoise pair and slid the left one on. They were linked with a plastic tie, which she bit in half with straight white teeth.

“You're awfully young to be out here on your own,” he said. “It's not safe.” She didn't know the half of it.

She straightened her spine. “I can take care of myself.”

“But what if someone tried to hurt you? This street is deserted.”

“See that?” She pointed above her head. “That's a camera.”

It
was
. There was even a small sign just behind her head that he only now noticed. “Property under surveillance.”

As he looked at the camera with his face tipped back, every feature surely clearly visible, he felt sick. How many times had his image been caught by a camera affixed to a building? Had someone been watching him while he had been watching these girls?

“I always make sure I sleep under cameras to protect myself.” The girl lifted her chin. “This lady I met told me about it. She said that one time a guy lit her blanket on fire while she was sleeping, but it was all caught on camera.”

He thought but didn't say that the camera hadn't stopped the woman's blanket from being set on fire.

Since his face had already been captured by the camera, he looked at it more closely. Who had put it there? There were no government buildings on this block, and it wasn't angled to capture traffic. It must be privately owned, just meant to deter burglars. The more he examined it, the more it looked like an empty black camera-shaped box. No wires led to it, and it wasn't moving.

“But what if something bad did happen?” he asked. “Do you have a phone so you could call someone?”

She shook her head and dropped her gaze.

“Would you like one?” With his gloved hand, he took the phone out of his pocket and offered it to her.

She pulled off one of the gloves he had just given her and ran her finger across it, making a happy sound as it blinked to life. It was a prepaid cell phone, bought for cash at Walmart. And not just the cheapest phone, the kind you could only make phone calls with and that was all. No, with this phone you could go on the Web. You could listen to music. You could download apps.

And you would never notice that another hidden app was already loaded on it.

“It comes with a month of prepaid service.”

Her mouth thinned down to a line. “What do you want for it?”

She was wary now. Even at fourteen or so and not long on the streets, she knew there were trades. Knew that nothing was free.

“I just want you to think about calling your family. Or seeing if there is another place you can go. It's not good to be out here by yourself.”

If she took it, he would know exactly what she did with it. Who she called. Where she was.

Suddenly she thrust it back at him. “I can't take this.”

“Why not?” This was only the second time he had tried giving a homeless girl a phone. The first time it had disappeared into the girl's pocket so fast it had been like a conjuring trick.

“It's too valuable. I wouldn't feel right.”

“But we want to help girls like you.” The “we,” he thought, made it seem more legitimate.

“Thank you, but no.” She continued to hold it out until he took it.

Time for his back up plan. “I'm afraid I'm all out of food coupons, toothbrushes, and socks,” he said, as if he had ever had those things to begin with. “I still have lip balm. Would you like one?” He was confident she would say yes. She would still feel awkward about refusing the phone. Lip gloss was on the same level as cheap synthetic gloves, a gift small enough that it didn't demand anything in return.

“Oh, okay.” She nodded. “Sure.”

He dropped the black tube into her upturned palm.

And it really was lip balm. At least the top third of an inch was. It weighed just four grams more than a real ChapStick, but inside the tube was a GPS unit that would continuously broadcast its location until the tiny battery that powered it ran out. He had sealed it with a tiny piece of cello phone heated with a heat gun.

She uncapped the balm and ran it across her mouth, then offered him a shy smile with newly glossy lips. “Thank you!”

“You're welcome,” he said. “And have a good night. Stay safe.”

He didn't allow himself to grin until he had turned around and was walking away.

CHAPTER 19

WEDNESDAY

YOU'RE ONE OF THEM NOW

Alexis climbed the stairs to their apartment, so tired she could barely lift her feet. When she had signed up for Search and Rescue, she had thought it would be easy. Maybe even boring. Just putting one foot in front of the other. Helping the occasional lost hiker. Not learning how to read topo maps. Not finding dead people. Not flagging tiny white scattered bones. Even if Ruby was certain they had belonged to an animal.

When Alexis opened the door, her mom was in the living room, a game of solitaire spread out on the coffee table. The TV was showing a
Seinfeld
rerun, the sound turned down to a murmur. This morning Alexis had made her mom a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It sat untouched next to her cards, the bread beginning to curl at the edges.

“Why didn't you eat your sandwich, Mom?”

“Why were you so eager for me to eat it?” Her mom's stare challenged her. “Did you crush up some of those pills and mix them in?”

It was probably a good idea, like hiding a cat's pill in a ball of tuna fish. “No, I didn't,” Alexis answered honestly.

“You'd tell me the same even if you were lying.” Maybe her mom's brain was working better than Alexis thought.

“Well, I'm not.” She moved toward the kitchen. “Here, I'll make you a new sandwich, and you can watch while I do it.”

“How do I know you didn't just stir something into the peanut butter earlier?”

Off her meds, her mom could get like this, sliding into paranoia. Alexis didn't have the energy to deal with her. “Fine. Then don't eat. I'm going to take a shower.”

She had carried Bran's card with her all day, occasionally reaching into her jeans pocket to rub the ball of her thumb over the top edge. Now before she could think too hard about it, she pulled it and her cell phone out, then typed his number into a text program.

In the message line, Alexis typed,
Hey B—Spent all day looking for evidence. Long day. Alexis.

Looking at the clock at the top of the screen, she decided she would give him five minutes. If he didn't respond, she would flip her phone closed and go take a shower.

While she waited, she decided to see if she could find out more about the dead girl, Miranda Wyatt. Was Ruby right? Had Miranda been the victim of a serial killer? Someone who might kill again?

But before Alexis could even go on Facebook, her phone chimed.

Bran:
Hey A, how are you doing? Did you sleep OK? B.

Her hands were sweating. She wiped them on her pants legs before she typed her answer.

Alexis:
A few bad dreams. Up in the middle of night making choc chip cookies.

As she hit the return key, she thought about how every word she had typed was true, but not the whole truth.

Bran:
Good choice! Let me know if you ever want to share.

What was she doing? Bran would want her to share more than chocolate chip cookies. He'd want to know more about her life. And it was safer if she kept herself to herself.

Alexis:
I'll let you know. Just wanted to update you. G2G.

A fine tremor washed over her as she hit the End button. Trying not to think too much about what she had just done, Alexis slipped the old white MacBook from underneath the bed. It was her connection to the outside world. Her cell phone only allowed her to go the company's website, which just had links for sports, weather, and news, all of them excruciatingly slow, especially when you had to pay for every minute you used. Not having a cell phone that could go on the regular Internet was nearly as weird as saying you didn't have a TV. Which sometimes they didn't, depending on whether her mom had been gripped by one of her rages. Luckily everyone was swapping out their heavy TVs for flat screens, so in the last few years it had become easy to pick up a replacement for ten bucks or less. Their apartment came with basic cable offering a handful of stations. When you were living on your mom's disability check and food stamps, you didn't have a lot of choices.

The MacBook was six years old, a gift from one of her babysitting clients, and you had to know just where to touch the trackpad. Still, with it and the neighbor's borrowed Wi-Fi, Alexis could go on Facebook, Tumblr, and Pinterest, and could even research school papers.

On Facebook, she clicked around until she found Miranda. In her profile photo, she was sitting in what looked like a backyard at dusk. On her forehead, a circlet of white flowers. With a grin, she looked off to one side, her cigarette trailing silvery smoke in the night air.

Luckily, Miranda and Alexis had two friends in common, which meant Alexis could go deeper into her page. Of course, “friends” was a loose word on Facebook. In real life, no one had 579 friends. Not close ones, anyway. Despite her couple hundred friends on Facebook, Alexis didn't have even one close friend in real life.

Today, Miranda's friends had left a string of messages.

Mir everyone loves you so much.

We are all in shock. We just can't believe you won't come back to us with that crazy grin.

Mir—our hearts are broken without you.

I loved you, Miranda. Should have told you that when you could hear me. But it's still true.

Yesterday morning, Miranda's friends had thought they had all the time in the world to tell her things. Yesterday, Miranda had been just one of thousands of high school girls in Portland. Now no one could talk to her and everyone would talk about her.

Alexis clicked around on Miranda's Facebook page. She had attended Alder Grove, a private alternative school that Alexis knew was for kids who were on the verge of dropping out and whose parents had lots of money.

Then she clicked on the button for Miranda's photos, and her mouth fell open. Photo after photo of Miranda looking wasted, hanging out with people who looked sketch, in places that looked trashed, with broken furniture and tagged walls.

In the first photo, she was outside, just as she was in her profile picture. Only this time she posed in a black bra and panties, arms crossed just above her pierced belly button, flashing deuces. She was a pretty girl, but not so pretty standing amid a pile of black trash bags on a street someplace, her feet bare, her grin stupid, her eyes dead.

Miranda was clearly a risk taker. Maybe Ruby was right. Maybe she had done something to bring herself to the attention of a serial killer. Alexis closed up her laptop and was still mulling it over as she walked through the living room on her way to take a shower.

When she saw Alexis, her mom leaned closer and whispered, “What are they saying?” Then she pasted on an enormous fake smile and said, “Don't worry. There's no reason to be afraid.”

Alexis's stomach dropped. “What are you talking about?”

“Shhh!” Her mom's eyes darted to the TV set, where Jerry was sitting in the coffee shop talking to Elaine, Kramer, and George. The sound was turned too low to hear more than murmurs. “Them. The watchers. What are they saying?”

“Mom, they're on TV. It's not real. That show's, like, twenty years old. The actors are saying whatever the script told them to say two decades ago.” Reality and her mom had clearly parted company. “And they're not watching us.”