Heart of Ice

Chapter Twenty-seven

Lewiston, Idaho

Nothing much ever happened in that remote patch of Idaho. But that day was to be different.

Every morning for the past decade or so, Leroy Evans pulled a cowboy hat over a stocking cap and saddled up his old bay mare, named Screamin’ Demon, to survey the security of the fence that ran the boundary of his eighty-two-acre ranch just east of Lewiston, Idaho. Neighbors four miles away had crossed their German shepherds with wolves for some goddamn stupid reason. Ever since then, a pack ran free in the fields looking to wreak havoc and make a meal out of someone’s livestock.

Leroy had raised sheep and cattle to great success, and had even dabbled in ostriches and emus. The mammoth birds were a complete bust—their low-fat meat and supple leather never really caught on with butchers or mass-market shoe manufacturers. He had kept only about fifty of the birds, and gathered their eggs for a fellow who etched them with tribal designs that didn’t mean a darn thing but were hot sellers at craft shows.

It was cold that morning. Icy. Most mornings that time of year were. Leroy went east first, so he could catch the slight warmth of the rising sun on his face as it tripped over the Sawtooth Range. About ten minutes into his ride, at the point where his property hit the main highway, he stopped Screamin’ Demon.

Strange place for an O egg, he thought, as he dismounted, then bent down to pick it up. Something wasn’t quite right. He pushed back some bunched-up dead ryegrass with the toe of his range-scarred boots.

“Hey!” he said, loud enough to echo.

It wasn’t an ostrich egg. At least, none that he’d ever seen had long strands of dark hair attached.

“Come on, SD,” he said as he jumped back on her. “We got a call to make.”

Leroy Evans didn’t know it, but he’d found the skull of Tiffany Anne Jacobs.

The Idaho state crime lab in Boise made a quick study of the teeth and the dental work of two missing persons from that region. Tiffany Jacobs had lost a back molar when she cracked a tooth on a corn nut when she was fourteen. She had a dental implant to replace the tooth. The silver post gleamed under the lights of the lab.

Crime scene tape flapped in the wind as the sun went down on the day of the discovery of Tiffany Jacobs’s skull, two ribs and a femur. Cops and crime scene investigators from Lewiston PD and the Idaho State Police canvassed the area, hoping to find more.

“Body must have been dragged around by coyotes or a pack of those ornery wolf-dog hybrids,” one of the investigators said as he returned to his car. “She might have been dumped out here. Or she could have been dumped a mile from here and dragged. Damn coyotes are pretty strong.”

From a vantage point on the highway, a TV camera focused its lens on the ongoing investigation. News reports had already leaked the discovery of the missing young woman.

A sorority sister still at Cascade called Jenna with the news. It hit her like a hard swung sap to the stomach. The truth of what happened to Tiffany had finally come; it was ugly and final. She was still processing the information when her mother came home.

“Did you hear the news?” Jenna said, not waiting a split second for Emily to shed her heavy woolen coat and set her purse down on the foyer table.

Emily wondered if Mitch Crawford had made another plea for the cops to back off. “What news?”

Jenna started to cry. “Oh, Mom! They found Tiff’s body in Lewiston. Mom, she’s dead.”

Emily knew about Tiffany’s disappearance, of course. But she’d almost half believed that she’d run off with someone. It was the story given by an old boyfriend, one usually not believed. Emily knew that Jenna and Tiffany were not particularly close. Even so, the information was devastating.

“I’m so sorry, honey. I hadn’t heard,” she said, wrapping her daughter in her arms. “That’s forty miles from the university.”

Jenna gulped a breath. “I know. She’d been there all the while.”

Emily could feel Jenna relax a little, comforted by her touch, as always. “I’m so sorry, honey.”

“Mom, I sort of hoped…You know, I hoped that she’d just come back. That she’d played a trick on us or maybe was just being a flake.”

Emily, still holding Jenna, stepped back and looked in her daughter’s eyes. “Is there anything I can do for you? I don’t really know Mrs. Jacobs, but I could call her.”

“No, that’s OK, Mom. I’ll do that. I’ll find out when the funeral is. Can you keep an eye on the investigation? I don’t want to be the last to know if the killer is one of the boys we know from the frats.”

“I’ll phone the Lewiston PD now,” Emily said.

This was a friend of her daughter’s, and while they were not close, it was a tragic outcome. She piled her coat on the sofa and started for the bedroom. There were few secrets between mother and daughter, but such a call warranted some privacy. She dialed Lewiston PD, explained who she was and that her daughter knew the girl. A young woman working in investigations said she’d let her know if anything broke with the case.

“We’re still figuring out jurisdiction issues. Not sure if we’re the crime scene or the police on the other side of the river in Washington should handle.”

“Thanks.”

“Sheriff Kenyon, I will tell you that it’ll probably take one of those TV forensic docs to give us the cause of death on this one. I’m told not much was left of her. Lots of animal activity.”

Emily hung up, feeling the discouragement of the young woman’s words take over. Cause of death was crucial to determining the who of a murder case. If she’d been shot, it might have been random, a stranger. If she’d been stabbed, it more than likely could have been someone she knew. Same with strangulation. Murders of the close kind were almost always personal.

Done by someone who knew the victim or selected them for a purpose.

A bag of bones would tell few tales.

More than a thousand miles away, a man logged on to his computer and typed into a search engine the words TIFFANY + JACOBS. The quest was a nightly ritual, one he’d undertaken since he dumped her body in a ditch in Idaho.

For the past weeks, there had been nothing new. Just the forty-some news accounts about the missing sorority sister from Cascade University. There were some photos showing the beautiful young woman, some of her parents, some shots of the campus. Until that particular night, the man wondered if she’d ever be found.

And I didn’t even try very hard to hide the bitch, he thought.

On that particular evening, there was some news. The number of articles about Tiffany Jacobs had suddenly doubled.

Missing Coed’s Body Found

A Lewiston rancher found the remains of what police have confirmed as the body of Tiffany Anne Jacobs, 21, in a field near his home yesterday morning, Idaho State Police reported.

Exact cause of death has yet to be determined, although the manner of death has been classified as a homicide.

“I’m sorry to be the one to bring bad news to the young girl’s family. I wish I hadn’t found her,” said rancher Leroy Evans, 66. “I sure hope they catch the guy who did this.”

The Idaho State Police crime lab in Boise has processed the evidence. Identification was made with dental records.

A person of interest—a 25-year-old man from Washington State—had been questioned, and then released. CSIs at his apartment produced five plastic bags of evidence.

“We still need the public to help us,” said a spokesperson for the ISP. “If you have any information on Tiffany’s case, please give us a call.”

A woman’s voice called from another part of the house. “Dinner’s ready! Everybody wash up and come to the table.”

The man at the computer shut down the computer and grinned. He had information on Tiffany’s murder, all right, but he wasn’t going to give any of it to the police. He hoped that the twenty-five-year-old nameless man would be named soon—as a suspect. It was always nice when the police found someone to blame. They’d done it before and, he hoped, they’d do it again.

“Coming, honey!” he called out. A nice dinner sounded so good.