The Body in the Woods (24 page)

Becker pulled his right fist over his head and then hammered down, punching Nick in the shoulder.

At least it felt like a punch. But why was the knife no longer silver when Becker pulled back his hand? And why did Nick's chest and belly suddenly feel hot and wet? Then he looked down and saw the blood. So much blood. In the fading light, it looked almost black.

Nick dropped to his knees. He just needed a minute to figure things out.

While he was trying to make sense of it all, the ground suddenly rushed up to meet him.

CHAPTER 51

WEDNESDAY

THREE BODIES

At the edge of the clearing, Alexis stopped short. What she saw turned her bones to water.

Her two friends were sprawled on the forest floor. Ruby's fingers were curled against her throat, and Nick was covered with blood. Neither one was moving.

Becker was standing over them, his face a twisted mask of fury. He hadn't yet seen Alexis. He was concentrating on kicking Nick's head with one of his hiking boots.

He was pulling his leg back to do it again when Alexis darted up behind him and swung the heavy wooden handle of the rake she had snatched from a lawn. It hit Becker's head with a hollow, sickening crunch, making a sound like a cantaloupe falling off a kitchen table.

 

 

And that was how the police found Alexis Frost. Holding a rake like a baseball bat, with three bodies around her, blood spattered over the leaves, and tears running down her face.

CHAPTER 52

THE FOLLOWING WEDNESDAY

LIKE BIRDS

“You sure you're up for SAR tonight?” Alexis asked Nick as the three of them waited for Detective Harriman. It was the same interview room where she had picked out the photo of Jay Adams less than two weeks ago. As soon as investigators got a look inside Caleb Becker's house, he had been released. “Jon said it was okay if we missed class again.”

All three of them had missed last week's class, of course. About the time it began, Alexis was being interviewed by the police, and both Nick and Ruby were being rushed to the hospital. For that matter, so was Caleb Becker, although it was a different one and he had an armed police officer stationed outside his door.

Now Nick nodded. “I don't want to miss two weeks in a row. Besides, I'm doing good.” Then he winced and put his hand to his shoulder. He wore a button-down flannel shirt with the top three buttons undone to reveal layers and layers of gauze.

Was Alexis a terrible person for wondering if the wince and the bandages were a touch exaggerated? She probably was, given that just a week ago she had been convinced that Nick was dead.

Instead, after Becker had stabbed him, Nick had fainted. That part got left out of his version of events, and who was Alexis to contradict him? He had still rushed a serial killer empty-handed. He had still needed twenty-six stitches.

And Ruby? She claimed she had been playing dead to fool Becker. To Alexis's eyes, she had actually been pretty darn dead, or close to it. A week later, Ruby's voice was still hoarse from her bruised larynx. The red mark on her throat where the strap of the binoculars had dug into her was slowly fading.

“I still wish you had hit Becker's head hard enough to kill him,” Nick said now.

“I don't.” Alexis shivered. “I'd have to live with that forever.” If she had nightmares now, what would they be like if they featured a real-life dead man?

“In the army, they'd call that a righteous kill.”

“I don't care what anyone would call it. It would still be killing someone. I just wanted to knock him out, and that's what I did.” Although really Alexis hadn't been thinking about either knocking out Becker or killing him. She had just wanted everything to stop. To finally stop.

 

 

Alexis, Nick, and Ruby had spent the last few days talking to cops, being interviewed by Detective Harriman, and being alternately lectured and hugged by their parents. Alexis's mom cut out stories about them from the
Oregonian
and
USA Today
and pasted them into her scrapbooks. A few days later, Alexis, Nick, and Ruby had even been featured in
People
magazine. Each article was garbled in different ways. Even Alexis wasn't exactly sure what the truth was. She had a feeling it would take months to untangle. And maybe it would never be straightened out. Who could understand a man who had collected girls like birds?

In the past week, a few threads had been teased out.

Caleb Becker was a software engineer who didn't have any close friends. Just acquaintances who were also birders. A year earlier, he had volunteered with a wildlife biologist who was trapping birds and fitting them with tracking devices. The biologist had told Detective Harriman that Becker even wrote a computer program to better follow the bird's movements. Later, he had used a version of the same program to track homeless girls.

No one was exactly sure when or why he had moved on from birds to girls, but his church had provided volunteers for a soup kitchen once a month, and other volunteers remembered his curiosity about the homeless people they served.

The door to the interview room opened, and Detective Harriman walked in. If anything, he looked even more wrinkled and tired than usual. He was lugging a cardboard banker's box, which he plopped with a sigh in the middle of the table. Then he took a seat.

His face reddened as he looked at them each in turn. “I have to apologize to you guys. You were right about it not being Jay Adams. I should have listened to you.”

While Alexis murmured acceptance and Nick nodded, Ruby said bluntly, “You've been doing your job for a long time. Maybe you've gotten stuck in a rut.”

Alexis pressed her lips together so she wouldn't burst out laughing.

The muscles in Harriman's jaw flexed as if he was biting his tongue. Hard. He took a deep breath and then said, “Becker still isn't talking to us. We're hoping you three can help fill in some of the blanks.”

They all nodded.

“We do know some things, and we're guessing on some others. Like we believe the three girls who have been found are the only ones he killed.”

“How do you know that?” Ruby demanded.

“Because in his house we found three clippings of hair tied with ribbon. And they match the known victims.”

“That must have been what Nick found at the evidence search,” Ruby said. “Some of the hair he clipped off Miranda's head.”

“That's right.”

Alexis exhaled in relief. With luck, that meant there weren't any more bodies lying under trees in secluded green spaces. Waiting for SAR to gather up their bones. She had been so worried about Raina, but Alexis had finally learned that she had returned to her family.

“Another reason we believe there were only three victims is that we found photos of the three girls—taken after they were dead—in Caleb Becker's den.” Across from Alexis, Nick made a face. “We also found numerous photos of birds and framed displays of feathers.”

“Those are illegal,” Ruby said.

“I'm sure after killing three people, Becker was really worried about the Migrant Bird Act,” Nick said.

“Migratory,” Ruby corrected, and for once Alexis found herself smiling instead of gritting her teeth. Ruby might be weird, but she was their kind of weird.

Harriman took the lid off the box, then reached in and brought out a small blue notebook. It had been slipped into a plastic bag, opened to a page in the middle so that you could see both sides. He pushed it toward them. They all leaned forward. At the top was printed
A Birding Journal
. The handwriting was small and crabbed, but Alexis persevered until it became clear.

SPECIES NAME

Homeless, also known as street people, hobos, bums, drifters.

INDIVIDUAL SPECIMEN

Tiffany Yee, aged 17.

Alexis could read only a few lines before her gorge rose. She put her hand over mouth and closed her eyes. In her mind, though, she could still see the sketch on the opposite page. It was nearly unrecognizable, not much more than a stick figure. But still, it was clearly not a bird.

“Alexis found that notebook on the day we found the body,” Ruby said. “And then Becker came up and asked for it back.”

“You told me it was a birding notebook,” Alexis said from behind the shelter of her hand. “I even saw a drawing like that, but I just remember thinking he was a really bad artist.” She hadn't even disagreed with Ruby. If she had, then maybe Tiffany Yee would still be alive. “We just found it and gave it back to him.”

“We believe the notebook fell out of his pocket when he killed Miranda Wyatt,” Harriman said. “We think he gave her GHB in alcohol, just as he gave it to Ruby in cocoa, and then walked with her into the park.”

“I smelled it!” Ruby exclaimed. “When I leaned over her, she kind of smelled like my dad does when he has a drink after dinner.”

Harriman nodded. “GHB makes people compliant. Maybe he pulled the same trick on Miranda that he did on you, Ruby, and told her they were going to see a spotted owl. Whatever ruse he used, we recovered DNA from four individuals on the strap of his binoculars: Ruby's, Miranda's, Tiffany's, and the girl who was found in Washington Park. And we now know that girl's name. It's DeShaundra Young. She was a runaway from San Diego. We think she's the first one he killed.”

“So she was a girl,” Ruby said. “Not a woman?”

Harriman's face reddened. “She was eighteen. But she'd already had her wisdom teeth out.”

“But why did he kill her? That DeShaundra?” Nick asked. “Why did he kill any of them?”

“It's possible the first death was an accident,” Harriman said. “Maybe he was trying to get her to look at a bird through the binoculars and she resisted or argued or wasn't sufficiently impressed. For some people, killing causes an incredible high. And after that, the only way to get that high is to do it again.”

Alexis felt sick. When she had believed Becker was dead, all she had felt was horror at what she had done. She couldn't imagine looking forward to doing it again.

“He also had dozens of loose photos of girls,” Harriman added. “Live girls, not dead ones. All of them with different colors and types of hair. Because of that and the clippings, we believe it was hair color he used to pick his victims, not skin color. So you got it right, Ruby. Mostly.”

“But not right enough,” Ruby said. “He told me that in humans, females had the most interesting plumage. I should have figured it out then.”

Alexis realized she wasn't the only one feeling guilty.

Harriman reached into the box again. “So, Ruby, these are the photos we have of you. Do you know when they were taken?” Harriman slid them over, each in a plastic sleeve. Alexis didn't recognize the pictures as coming from any specific event, but Ruby and Nick did.

“It's from the day we met him in Forest Park,” Ruby said. He must have taken some photos of us before we saw him.”

“He's the one who told us about the swifts,” Nick added.

“He also seems to have put some kind of tracker on other girls and on you, Ruby.” Harriman said. “We found printouts showing your location at various times. They started on Sunday.”

“That explains how he found me in Forest Park,” Ruby said. “Nick and I talked to him on Sunday, but I don't—” She turned to Nick. “Wait, do you remember how he lost his balance and had to grab on to me for support?” She dumped the contents of her coat pockets onto the table—car keys and more gum wrappers than Alexis had ever seen in one place. Harriman was telling her to wait, but before he had finished speaking, she was pulling something from a small compartment in her backpack.

“What's this?” Ruby said. “It's not mine.”

“Put it down!” Harriman ordered, and Ruby let it fall onto the table. “We might still be able to get prints.” Using the edge of a file folder, he scooted it away from her.

“Do you really need to worry about that?” Alexis asked. “After all, you found this guy with Nick's blood on his knife and his binoculars still wrapped around Ruby's neck. And both of them can testify as to what he did to them.”

“You ever heard that expression: put another nail in the coffin?” Detective Harriman smiled grimly. “I want as many nails as possible.”

CHAPTER 53

WEDNESDAY

SYMMETRICAL

By the time Ruby and the others were done talking to Detective Harriman, there wasn't enough time to go home before they were due at the sheriff's office for class. After pooling their money—well, it was mostly Ruby's money, but she didn't mind—they bought dinner at a nearby McDonald's.

Ruby ordered what she always did at McDonald's: a Filet-O-Fish, an empty cup for water, and a large order of fries. Now she was methodically eating her fries, consuming each one in three bites, no more and no less, and dipping them into ketchup before each bite.

“You're like a machine,” Nick observed.

Distracted by the sight of her own reflection in the window behind him, Ruby didn't answer. She always wondered how she looked to others. Red hair, pale skin, big blue eyes. Was she pretty? About all she could tell was that she was symmetrical.

“She's just being logical,” Alexis said. “Right, Ruby?”

“I like patterns,” Ruby said.

“If it weren't for your patterns”—Alexis raised her paper cup like she was toasting Ruby—“the cops would never have caught Becker.”

“That only happened because you guys believed me.” Ruby next said what she normally only thought. “Most people just think I'm weird.”

“Well, you are,” Nick said. “But so are me and Alexis. And who said being weird is a bad thing?” Putting his hand to his mouth, he only half smothered a burp. “The three of us are like what you said. About what Becker wanted.”