Full Tilt

24

Rampart, New York

Three blocks from the town hall, Kate and Raney shared a booth in Sally’s Diner.

Kate was anxious to read the old clipping from Denver, but her deadline was looming. She needed to file her story, and she was hungry.

While waiting for their food, they set up their laptops. Raney selected and adjusted images he’d shot at the news conference. Kate inserted an earpiece, plucked key quotes from her recorder, consulted her notes and wrote, her keyboard clicking softly as she tuned out the noise around her.

By the time the waitress set their burgers down-“My, you two are busy bees”-Kate was well into her story, stopping at each paragraph to take a bite. When she’d finished she’d filed seven hundred clean, solid words to Newslead, just under the deadline.

Raney was on the phone to the photo desk in New York. While he talked, Kate went to her email and the Colorado article. It was from the Denver Star-Times, a community weekly that had ceased publication nearly ten years ago. It was a short item:

Police Probe Possible Denver Link to Missing Canadian Girl

By Will Goodsill

Denver detectives are investigating a possible local link to a ten-year-old Canadian girl who recently went missing from a truck stop in Alberta, Canada.

Tara Dawn Mae vanished last week from the Grand Horizon Plaza, along the Trans-Canada Highway at Brooks, Alberta, about 100 miles east of Calgary.

Canadian authorities gave Colorado law enforcement officials a list of partial license plates and descriptions of vehicles that were in the area at the time, with a request to verify them in relation to the Canadian case.

“We’re running them down where we can, eliminating possibilities. A few are promising leads, but it’s a needle-in-a-haystack thing,” a police source told the Star-Times.

A stamp-sized photo of Tara Dawn accompanied the article.

Kate reread the piece, drawn to the quote “A few are promising leads.” Which few? What happened to them? Who was the source? Did Carl Nelson ever live in Denver?

I need to follow this, but it’s going to take time.

Raney ended his call, then snapped his laptop shut.

“Ready to go, Kate?” He signaled the waitress for the checks.

A few minutes later, Raney pulled onto Knox Lane and rolled by Nelson’s modest ranch-style bungalow with its tidy yard.

The situation was different from when Kate was last here. The entire property was sealed with yellow tape and Rampart officers had been posted to keep people out. The street was sprinkled with news vehicles. Nelson’s neighbors were giving doorstep and sidewalk interviews, their faces etched with concern. Some held their children close.

Kate and Raney approached a man and woman in their thirties, who’d just finished talking to a TV crew on the sidewalk, two doors down from Nelson’s house. The couple, Neil and Belinda Wilcox, agreed to have their picture taken and to talk about their missing neighbor.

“It shocks you to the core.” Belinda cupped her hand to her cheek and stared at Nelson’s house. “It’s frightening. We had him in our home once.”

“Really?” Kate took out her notebook. “Tell me about that?”

“Well, it sounds cliché,” Neil started, “but Nelson kept to himself. He was a hermit.”

“Yeah,” Belinda added. “With his long hair and beard, he looked like one.”

“Yeah, well, one day in winter,” Neil continued, “he was clearing his driveway and I’d run out of gas for my snowblower. I asked him if I could borrow some. Well, I got telling him how my computer didn’t work and he volunteered to fix it. It took him about two minutes, the guy’s a genius.”

“Another time,” Belinda recalled, “I saw that he had like a ton of groceries in the back of his truck. I asked him if he was feeding an army, because we knew he lived alone. He was kind of startled and said he was donating a lot to a soup kitchen in Ogdensburg.”

The Wilcoxes remembered little else that was noteworthy. Raney indicated an older man and woman across the street, walking a golden retriever, and they went to them.

Doris Stitz was a retired schoolteacher, and her husband, Harvey, was a retired mechanic. They lived at the corner of the street.

“We came down to see what all this fuss was today,” Harvey said.

“We’ve been following the story in the news,” Doris said. “And it’s just getting worse and worse. It’s so awful. You never expect this kind of thing in our quiet little town.”

“Did you ever meet Nelson?”

“Once,” Harvey said. “He seemed friendly enough, but it felt like it was forced. You got a sense that he wanted to be left alone.”

“How so?”

“Just an air about him. It was last year. Boone, here, got off his leash and chased a squirrel into Nelson’s backyard. I rang his doorbell and asked if I could go get my dog. Nelson just gave off this icy air, like he didn’t appreciate being bothered, or want anybody on his property. Then he said I could go get Boone. I didn’t notice anything back there. It was all very well kept, very neat. On my way out with Boone, Nelson looked at my ball cap, asked if I was a Broncos’ fan. I said damn straight I am, then Nelson smiled and that was it.”

“The Denver Broncos, the NFL football team?” Kate made a quick note.

“Yes.”

“Did Nelson ever say if he lived in Denver?”

“Heck no, that was the extent of our conversation,” Harvey said. “I don’t think that guy ever really talked with anyone.”

During the drive to the Syracuse airport, Kate updated her story. Along the way she called Grace, who was happy she’d be home later that night.

“Did you get me a present?”

“Sure did.”

“What is it?”

“A surprise.”

Kate then used the drive time to continue looking into the Denver Star-Times story. She needed to talk to Will Goodsill, the reporter. Maybe Goodsill could get in touch with his source, prompt him on what became of the “promising leads.”

Online she found scores of listings for Goodsill across the country, a few in Denver, none for a Will Goodsill. She started making calls and leaving messages, knowing it was a long shot. The story was fifteen years old. Memories fade, people move and people die.

After Raney dropped Kate off at the airport she checked her bag, went through security and on to pre-boarding. At her gate, TV screens suspended throughout the area, were dialed to news networks with pictures of Carl Nelson flashing across them.

The Rampart case had exploded into a national story.

Again, Kate met the cold eyes that glared from the face of a fully bearded man with wild hair, in his forties.

Carl Nelson.

Is this the last face my sister saw?

This was her enemy.

If you killed my sister, then I’ll find you. I swear to God, I’ll find you.

Before boarding, Kate downloaded every fresh news story she could find so she could go through them during the flight.

On the plane, Kate studied the news reports. The TV items carried pictures of Nelson, accompanied by the pool images of the razed barn and investigators in white coveralls sifting the earth for human remains in a remote corner of the isolated property.

Network graphic headlines called the case:

Horror in Upstate NY

NY Body Farm

Hunt for a Monster

All day long Kate had struggled to push one supreme fear out of her mind, but now it hit her full force, the old agony tearing at her with renewed ferocity. She turned from the laptop to her window. Somewhere down there were either the ashes of her sister’s prison or the remnants of her grave.

Oh, God, I don’t know if I can do this.

Kate turned back to her monitor to see it filled with Carl Nelson’s face glowering at her above the new headline:

Face of Evil: Who Is Carl Nelson?