The Body Finder

CHAPTER 17

VIOLET STAYED AWAKE FOR MOST OF THE NIGHT, thinking over and over again about what had happened. She wanted to remember every tiny detail, capturing it forever in her memory so that she could recall it again at a moment’s notice.

Jay had kissed her.

Finally.

And not just any kiss. It wasn’t one of the sisterly kisses of their childhood. There was nothing childlike about it. He had finally closed that chasm that had been growing between them since the end of the summer.

Finally.

Violet could hardly stand it. She was excited…elated…electrified all at once.

But along with those feelings came the others, the insecurities and the doubts. The questions of what his sudden appearance last night really meant. What the kiss really meant.

They hadn’t talked about it at all during the ride home. They didn’t talk about anything; the charged silence between them seemed to speak volumes. But there were no repeat performances, even as he walked her up to the door to make sure that she got inside safely. He hadn’t held her hand or even touched her again. And now, in the morning’s light, she couldn’t help but wonder if he had simply been overwhelmed by relief that she was safe, that he had saved her before Grady had gone too far. Had he merely been reacting to a sudden surge of adrenaline…kissing her on impulse, without thinking it through?

She hoped not. She prayed not.

She pushed those negative thoughts away, remembering instead the feel of his soft lips against hers. And the heat of his body pressed, heart to heart, with her own.

By morning she was both exhausted and exhilarated.

She finally gave up chasing sleep and peeled herself from the rumpled warmth of her bed at just after seven o’clock. She could smell the rich scent of coffee brewing from downstairs and felt drawn to it.

Her mom was in the kitchen by herself. She didn’t say anything about Violet coming home last night.

Violet looked around, a little surprised. Her dad was usually the early riser; it was her mom who could sleep until nearly noon. “Did Dad go to work already?” Violet asked, knowing that he often went to the office on Saturdays to catch up on his work without the weekday commotion.

Her mom looked haggard and weary, and she pulled her steaming mug closer to her, hugging her hands around it as if drawing strength from its warmth. “No,” her voice croaked, and then she cleared her throat and tried again. “No, your uncle Stephen picked him up about a half hour ago.”

Violet hesitated only briefly as she reached into the cupboard for one of the mismatched coffee mugs that littered the shelf. She found her favorite one, a faded ceramic mug with a garish picture of the Golden Gate Bridge splashed across it. Her parents had brought it home from a vacation before she was born, and she found the time-crackled paint charming. “Why?” she asked as she filled her own mug and reached into the fridge for the vanilla-flavored creamer. She was generous with it, turning her coffee a pale, milky tan.

When her mother didn’t answer right away, Violet turned toward her to see what was the matter. “What is it?”

Her mom sighed, looking suddenly older…and worn out. She shook her head for several seconds before speaking, but she couldn’t avoid it forever. “Another girl.” Her voice cracked with quiet frustration. “From Buckley. From White River, Violet.”

Violet hovered where she was, half standing, half sitting, in the chair beside her mom at the kitchen table. “Who?” was all she could manage, too stunned by the news to move.

“Mackenzie Sherwin. She’s a little younger than you.”

Violet froze. That name. She knew that name.

“Is she a friend of yours?” her mom asked, placing her own chilled hand over Violet’s as Violet sank like a stone into the chair. “She was at a party last night, and then no one saw her again. Do you know who she is?” she asked again.

There was no point in lying. Even if they weren’t bound to discover the truth about where she’d gone last night, which they definitely were, this was no time for lies.

“I saw her last night,” Violet admitted, raising her eyes to meet her mom’s. “I was at the same party.”

Violet watched the looks that played across her mother’s face, from the dawning flash of anger as she realized that Violet had lied to her about where she’d been, to the fleeting panic that it could have been her own daughter, to relief. And, finally, to acceptance. She must have decided, like Violet had about the lying, that this wasn’t the time for reprimands. Although Violet knew that it would come…later.

“There’s a search party. They’re combing the woods to look for the girl. They can’t rule out the possibility that she just wandered away in the night and got lost. The reports coming in are that she was drinking pretty heavily.”

Violet thought about Mackenzie Sherwin. She could picture the younger girl who had thrown up in the bushes and then spent the rest of the night wandering in and out of the party with her own vomit drying in her hair. She could barely walk upright when Violet had last seen her.

“What if she’s not lost?” Violet asked, hating the question even as it poisoned her lips.

“They can’t rule that out either. They have every cop in the area looking for evidence, while half the city is combing the woods around the Hildebrands’ house looking for that poor girl.” Her mom squeezed Violet’s hand before letting it go. “Since you were there, your uncle Stephen might want to talk to you.”

“I’ll get dressed and go over there,” Violet decided.

Her mom looked up, as if surprised by the declaration. “No, Vi. I think you should stay here today…” She didn’t finish her thought, but Violet could hear the unspoken words that hung in the air…where it’s safe.

She thought about holing up in the house again, watching the clock and waiting, not doing anything productive, and she just couldn’t take it. And then she wondered if she would sense anything when she got there…a new echo maybe. She pushed away the troubling thought.

“No, Mom. I’m gonna go talk to Uncle Stephen. Maybe something I saw, anything, can help them find her.” She was surprised by her own conviction, but she knew she hadn’t yet convinced her mother, who was still wrestling with her own silent fears. “Don’t worry, Dad’s there. I won’t do anything without his permission.”

Violet waited for her mom to say something, holding her breath and willing her mother to agree to let her go.

When she did finally speak, her words were unsteady and filled with defeated fatigue. “I’d feel better if Jay was going with you,” she said.

Me too, Violet thought without giving her words voice. Me too.

Violet wasn’t sure what she’d expected to find when she turned down the road toward the house where she and her friends had partied just the night before. She had assumed there would be small groups moving around the area, calling out to the lost girl in hopes of finding her, misplaced among the thick stands of tall trees that practically overcrowded and dwarfed the few homes in the area.

But it wasn’t just a few Good Samaritans helping a missing neighbor. This was a full-on search-and-rescue operation. It had the feel of organized chaos, with emphasis on the organized part.

Violet had to park her car much farther away than anyone had the night before, when they were just a bunch of teenagers converging on the semi-isolated house. And people were still arriving behind her. While ahead of her, emergency vehicles, both police and fire, hovered around the entrance to the forests that lay beyond.

Men and women, young and old, volunteers and professionals, all dressed in brightly colored vests, many of them carrying walkie-talkies, moved in smaller groups in all directions, efficiently combing the endless landscape with deliberate order. It was like nothing she had ever seen before. They were like a swarming sea of fluorescent vests, bobbing and shifting in steady progression.

Violet made a quick scan of the area as she walked toward the mass of people, to see if she could spot her father or her uncle in the throng of rescue workers. But if they were there, they were lost among the crowd.

She approached what seemed to be the central hub of activity. Groups grew larger as more people arrived, waiting to be told what they could do to help. She recognized some of the people among them, parents of her friends, neighbors, people who worked at stores in the area, and even one of the teachers from her school.

A woman was passing out the neon-colored vests, while another was taking down the names of the volunteers and organizing them into search teams, each with a leader who was assigned a walkie-talkie. A man with a bullhorn was shouting out orders about where to check in and instructions on how to proceed once they got started. Everyone was handed a black-and-white flyer with a picture of the missing girl, and Violet was glad to replace the mental image she had of the stumbling, incoherent girl from the night before with this smiling photo.

She waited with a crowd of people who were hanging around one of the many uniformed police officers; she was hoping he might be able to tell her where she could find her uncle. Other people shouted out questions all around her.

How long has she been missing?

Was this where she was last seen?

Do they think the killer might have taken her?

Do they expect to find her alive?

Violet tried to push her way to the front of the gathering, to get the officer’s attention, but it was like swimming upstream, and she found herself making backward progress instead as she was squeezed toward the rear of the group. She didn’t want to yell out and draw attention to herself, so eventually she just pried herself free from those looking for answers.

She wondered if coming here had been a mistake. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so adamant about trying to help. But she felt guilty, riddled with a sense of at least some degree of responsibility for being among those who had last seen the girl…and one who hadn’t bothered helping her when she’d so obviously been in need.

She drifted around, feeling a little like a wayward snowflake caught in a breeze, finally landing near the cluster of volunteers who were busy checking in.

“Are you already assigned to a team?”

Violet looked up, caught off guard by the woman passing out vests. “No,” she answered, thinking to tell the woman that she wasn’t planning to join the search but never quite finding the words.

The woman handed Violet a vest and another woman assigned her to a team. She was introduced, only briefly, to her team leader, a man who was probably in his late fifties or early sixties. His gray hair was cut high and tight, army style, and he looked like he’d done a tour or two in some branch of the military. He handled his walkie-talkie like a seasoned veteran.

Surprisingly to Violet, however, especially since he gave the air of a man who had seen some action in his day, she sensed nothing at all from the über-militant team leader. John Richter carried none of the imprints of death she would have expected.

Maybe he wasn’t so tough after all. Or maybe he’d just been lucky.

The no-nonsense team captain took the lead, reading the coordinates on the map he held and piloting them to the area they’d been assigned to search, which was circled in red Sharpie. There were five other members of her team, two women and three men. Violet didn’t know anyone in her grouping, and she didn’t really care. That way she didn’t feel the need to make polite chitchat.

The farther they walked, passing other teams as they scoured the area, and moving deeper and deeper into the damp, darkening woods, the more ominous it all began to feel. Violet wasn’t afraid, but she was definitely troubled by what they were doing out here. She had the foreboding sense that this was an effort in futility, that they were out here simply to rule out the possibility that Mackenzie had wandered away from the party and had gotten turned around among the trees…when it seemed so obvious to Violet, and probably to almost everyone around her too, what had really happened to her schoolmate.

He had gotten her.

Violet could hear the others, in all directions, calling out Mackenzie’s name. They passed a few men who were carrying long wooden poles that looked like unpainted broom handles, and she could only imagine what they were meant to prod or uncover.

She followed her group until they reached their designated coordinates, and they were ordered by John Richter to fan out, keeping one another in their sights but spreading wide enough apart to cover as much ground as possible.

Violet moved with careful steps, losing herself in the process of the search. The familiar, reassuring smells of the woodlands drifted around her. The Christmassy smell of the fir trees surrounded her, along with the dank, earthy scent of fallen autumn leaves left to decompose. The air was moist and thick with the kind of misty precipitation that was common this time of year in the Pacific Northwest. It seeped through Violet’s clothing and her shoes, until it was pressing itself damply against her skin and chilling her all the way to the bone.

While she explored she was aware of several weak echoes around her, which she generally assumed were long-dead animals buried in the underbrush of the thickly overgrown forest floor. They were easy enough to ignore under the circumstances.

Other teams moved past and around them, moving in larger circles, widening the search and covering more and more area. The sheer number of people involved in looking for Mackenzie Sherwin seemed endless, and Violet took some amount of comfort in the fact that so many people were trying…that so many people cared.

She hoped beyond hope that their efforts would be rewarded.

But she wasn’t holding her breath.

She heard the musical ringtone of a cell phone, and even though the sound was far away, she instinctively patted her pocket to feel for hers and realized that she’d left it back in her car. Her mom would be pissed. It probably didn’t matter, though, since she doubted she would have gotten reception out here anyway.

She climbed up, and over, a rotting log that was lying in her way. Her hand touched the slippery film on top of it as she maneuvered it, and when she was on the other side she wiped her hand against her jeans to rub away the slick sensation. She thought of Grady, trying to cram his greasy tongue down her throat last night, and she nearly gagged.

It was the first time she’d thought about what had happened to her, so close to this very spot, since she’d left her house that morning. It had been a nice reprieve, not to be consumed by the instant replays that had run over and over in her head, keeping her awake all night long.

But she let herself think of Jay. And of the kiss. And suddenly the damp chill that had been clinging to her evaporated in a wave of heat that started in her belly and spread like an uncontained blaze, flushing her from cheek to toe.

She realized that she was smiling now, and she had to force it away, not wanting anyone to see her as she searched in vain for the missing girl, grinning like the village idiot.

The cell phone was still ringing in the distance.

Violet looked around, trying to figure out which direction it was coming from, and realized just how easy it would be to get lost out here. All alone, in the dead of night.

Violet couldn’t help but hope that was what had really happened. And that today, with the light on their side, they would find Mackenzie Sherwin, cold and hungover, confused and grateful to be rescued.

She heard another voice calling out for Mackenzie, and she looked around her.

She could no longer see the woman with the too-red hair, the team member that she’d been assigned to keep within visual range. She’d lost track of herself, and of where she was supposed to be searching, and she realized that she’d been moving without thinking, like a sleepwalker.

The sound of the phone grew slightly stronger, and she realized that she’d been following it. Searching for the source. Drawn to it…against her own will.

She could see another team’s members, not too far away, and realized that even though she was breaking the rules by wandering off on her own, she still wasn’t lost. It wasn’t like she was out here on her own. This morning, the forest was swarming with dozens, maybe hundreds, of people. She wasn’t alone.

She heard it again, only slightly louder, and she wondered why it was still ringing.

An ear-piercing bellow broke through her concentrated silence, and Violet jumped. She felt foolish when she realized that it was just another searcher, moving between the trees to the right of her, calling out the missing girl’s name. She silently chided herself for being so skittish.

That was when she realized why she was so skittish…so jumpy.

It was the cell phone.

But it wasn’t really a cell phone at all.

The sound that she’d been following, the sound she’d been drawn to, the very one that had pulled her away from her own search team as she wandered closer and closer to it…it was never a cell phone.

It was the sound of bells.

The spectral sound of Brooke’s bells.

Far away, muffled, obscured over the distance…but growing clearer…stronger.

Her heart pounded violently, and her feet suddenly felt like they were mired in quicksand that was slowly sucking and pulling her down. She was afraid to struggle, afraid to move or even breathe, for fear of being dragged beneath the surface forever.

A thought flashed through her head that maybe she had never been moving closer to the sound at all, but rather he was out here and moving closer to her. She wasn’t sure whether that was good news or bad. This was a man she’d been hunting. A man she’d been determined to find. A killer who needed to be stopped.

But why would he be out here? Now, of all times? Was he part of an assigned rescue team, searching through the forest and pretending not to know the fate of this poor girl? Or of all the others before her?

And, now, he was out here with her?

She suddenly felt trapped, and she wished that her father were here. Or her uncle Stephen. Or Jay.

And then the sound grew fainter, and Violet knew that could only mean that he was moving away from her. An unexpected panic settled over her as she realized that she could lose him. He could still get away from her, and they would be no closer to ending his reign of terror than they had been yesterday or the day before that. And no closer at all to finding Mackenzie Sherwin or Hailey McDonald, both of whom were still unaccounted for.

Violet moved then, stumbling in an effort to keep up with the sound of the bells…not wanting to lose his trail. She caught herself before she actually fell and was practically running before she’d fully recovered. She passed through areas being searched by other teams and felt a little like she was trespassing on their assigned coordinates, but that didn’t slow her down. Thankfully no one seemed to notice her as she rushed past them.

She barely watched where she was going, concentrating only on following the sound of bells that was resonating, louder and louder, as she drew closer to the man carrying it. She didn’t bother planning what she would do when she found him, when she could see into his face and feel the imprints he wore like a tainted uniform woven from his monstrous deeds.

She was more afraid of not finding him. Terrified that she would lose him inside the vast, crowded, overgrown woodlands.

She didn’t even see the man in front of her until she had run smack-dab into him. The impact knocked the wind out of her in a breath-stealing whoosh as she collided against his rock-solid chest. He caught her with one strong arm before she could fall backward from the force of the collision.

She was too stunned to be immediately embarrassed.

“Whoa! Are you okay?” he asked, not releasing his grip right away, probably afraid she was too klutzy to stand on her own two feet. He looked down at her with genuine concern. “Do you need some help?”

Violet didn’t recover quickly, and she looked up at him in confusion, still processing what had just happened. “I…uh, I…I guess I’m okay,” she stuttered, wondering at the buzzing sensation in her head. Had she actually hurt herself when she’d so gracelessly run into this man?

He let go of her cautiously, watching her for any sign that she might not be ready to stand on her own.

“Er, thanks.” She started to feel the lagging humiliation wash over her.

She took an unsteady step back and saw that, beneath his orange vest, he was wearing the standard-issue uniform of the Buckley Police Department. He was one of her uncle Stephen’s officers.

She didn’t recognize his face, and she silently hoped that he didn’t recognize her, especially since she’d practically run him over.

“Sorry about that,” she offered lamely.

“Don’t worry about it. Did you need something?” he asked her. He raised one eyebrow, studying her. “Did you find something?”

Violet had the sudden, inexplicable feeling that she shouldn’t tell this man anything, and she wondered a little at why she would feel that way. “No,” she stammered, uncomfortable about lying to a cop. “No, nothing like that. I was just…leaving.”

He looked down at her, and she wondered if he believed her. She wasn’t even sure that she’d been moving in the right direction if she had actually been leaving.

She met his gaze, smoothing her face into what she hoped looked like a convincing smile. “Thanks, by the way,” she said, trying to laugh at her own clumsiness. “You know, for catching me.”

He smiled back and reached out to pat her on the shoulder. She felt the vague buzzing again, and she realized that it was coming off him. An imprint, probably…not all that unusual for someone who carried a gun for a living.

“Anytime,” he responded. “Just take it easy. Oh, and keep an eye on where you’re going-it can be dangerous out here.”

His warning hadn’t really been necessary. Everyone who was out here this morning knew just how dangerous it could be.

But Violet knew, better than anyone else, what the real danger in the woods was today.

She thanked him again and moved away as casually as she could, trying to maintain the appearance that she was calmer than she felt, all the while focusing to stay tuned in to the sound of the haunting bells that were still too far away from her. Once she was sure she was out of the officer’s sight, she sped up again, paying little notice to where she was stepping.

The sweetly melodic sounds drew her closer…seeming to pull at her from the inside out.

She came upon it quickly, much more quickly than she’d expected, thinking that it was farther away…so distant. But now she was sure he was nearby.

She slowed down, only now noticing that her shoes were muddy and the lower half of her jeans were soaking wet and filthy. She wasn’t cold, she wasn’t even afraid, but she was shivering, and her teeth were nearly chattering as she shuddered all over. She thought that it must be the anticipation, the adrenaline coursing through her as she approached a killer, still not knowing what she would do when she saw him.

She looked around. The bells were nearly deafening here, louder even than they’d been at Brooke’s grave site. A volunteer moved past her, but she knew when she looked at him that he wasn’t the source of the echoes.

Violet was sure, beyond any doubt, that she would recognize the killer immediately when she saw him.

She slowly scrutinized the area now, searching for something that no one else knew how to find. She moved in and out of stands of evergreens and stepped around the giant ferns that sprang up from the damp, shadowed forest floor.

She passed other searchers, as voices called out from all directions, but nothing could penetrate the musical chimes of the bells.

She saw the oil-slick echo, like the one that had come off the dead girl in the lake, clinging to him before she saw anything else. It seemed to glow, shimmering over him in slippery ripples that danced over his skin, obscuring the rest of him from her immediate view.

Violet felt as if her airway were squeezing shut, making her feel unexpectedly light-headed.

It was him.

Brooke’s bells…the oily sheen from the body in the lake…both attached to him. And there were other echoes too…tastes…and smells…and colors. There were too many for Violet to differentiate one from another, as they created something less innocuous than the staticky white noise created by those who had been laid to rest. Instead he carried them, in all their furor, parading them around like a bonfire that signaled to her.

She almost couldn’t believe that she’d never sensed him before.

He didn’t see her, and amid the chaos of the search, with all the activity in the area, she stood out no more than any one of the hundreds of volunteers in the woods this morning. She drew back, only a little, to watch him, unnoticed from behind the wide trunk of a tree.

His back was to her, and she could see that, beneath the imprints of death, he was wearing the same exact vest as the other searchers that milled around the forest. He had joined the search for Mackenzie Sherwin. But to what end?

He turned sideways, and she glimpsed his face. Violet observed him. Only his behavior was different from the other volunteers. He was there, wearing the conspicuous vest, but he wasn’t searching. He wasn’t really even moving. He hovered…waiting… in the same place.

No one else seemed to notice, because to their eyes, and with their attention on other matters, there was nothing out of the ordinary about him. He wasn’t young and he wasn’t old. He was neither attractive nor unattractive. His bland expression looked passive enough. And Violet thought that he could probably live his entire life in anonymity, barely given a second glance. He certainly didn’t look like a killer. He blended perfectly.

She waited for anything unusual to happen, noting that he moved slowly, if at all, but never actually left his spot.

It was as if he were standing guard.

And then it hit her. And she saw it so clearly then that she couldn’t believe she’d missed it before.

One of the colors, a sparkling, radiant green that he wore like an aura, shining through even the oily sheen that painted him, was also coming up from the ground at his feet. It shimmered brilliantly, hovering over the sediment on which he stood. Coming from the spot he was guarding.

There was a girl down there.

That was why he was here among the searchers, camouflaged like a chameleon in plain sight. To make sure that the girl in the ground was never unearthed.

Violet stumbled backward, nearly tripping over her own feet in an effort to escape him. She covered her mouth with her hand, stifling her own terrified yelp as she caught herself before she fell, and then froze, praying that he hadn’t noticed the sound of her clumsy feet crushing the twigs beneath her. Suddenly everything she did seemed too loud to her…each carefully plotted step she took echoed loudly off the trees, each labored breath she took was like an explosion. She tiptoed away, but even that seemed too obvious, and she told herself that she needed to act normal…to behave as though nothing had happened, and to sneak away unnoticed.

He never even looked up from his position.

Once she was far enough away from him, she looked around for help. It would have been too much to even hope to see her father or her uncle standing nearby. She wished she had her cell phone. She wished she had her pepper spray with her…and she cursed herself for leaving both of them back in her car.

She stumbled recklessly, no longer following the echo of a lost soul, but evading a killer. She was afraid now. Afraid as she had never been before, and she looked around for someone-anyone-that might be able to help her.

A woman in a vest appeared from around a thick cluster of dormant blackberry bushes, and Violet practically fell on top of her, not realizing how panicked she was.

“Where’s your team leader?” Violet asked hoarsely, grabbing the surprised woman by the sleeve. “I need to find someone with a walkie-talkie.”

The woman looked shocked by Violet’s unexpected ambush, but she didn’t hesitate. “He’s…over there,” she said, pointing. “On the other side of those trees.” But Violet was already gone, rushing off in the direction the woman had pointed.

She knew she looked wild. She felt wild. But she had just found the killer. She had just stood, practically within arm’s reach, of the man who had murdered God only knew how many girls.

And she had just detected another body. Maybe Mackenzie Sherwin’s.

She saw the man ahead of her, with a map in his hand, and she knew he was a team leader. She couldn’t see his walkie-talkie, but she was certain that he had one. Another man stood beside him, and they were talking when Violet exploded on them.

“You have a walkie-talkie?” she asked, sounding breathless even to herself.

The stern-faced man looked at her, taking note of the volunteer vest she wore before answering her. “You’re not on my team.”

“I need you to call for help. I need you to ask for Stephen Ambrose.”

The man placed his hand over his pocket protectively. Violet was sure that was where his walkie-talkie was stashed. “Where’s your team, young lady?” he asked with authority.

Violet was suddenly angry, her fear eclipsed by something more potent as she lost her patience. “I need you to tell someone to send Chief Ambrose out here. Tell him Violet needs him!” she demanded. She couldn’t believe this guy was giving her a hard time about teams-they were all out here for the same reason: to find Mackenzie.

A look of irritation flashed across his face as he slowly-hesitantly-removed the walkie-talkie from his pocket. He eyed her suspiciously, gauging whether he should be following the orders of a hysterical kid demanding to see the police chief.

“Now!” she screamed at him when he took too long. And then she fell to her knees. She looked up at him, pleading now. “Please!” she begged the man. “Please… call my uncle and tell him I need him.”

Something, either in her actions or her words, must have gotten through to him, because he was suddenly on the walkie-talkie, telling whoever was on the other end that he needed to get in touch with Chief Ambrose, and that it was an emergency. When he was finally patched through, it wasn’t her uncle on the other end but one of her uncle’s police officers who was acting as an intermediary for the chief on this chaotic day.

The team leader in front of her repeated what she’d told him, only pausing to ask her to state her name again, to make sure he’d gotten it right. The man was asked where he was and he repeated his coordinates twice. The officer on the other end told the team leader to wait a moment, and there was an extended silence that ensued.

Violet shivered there, staying where she was on the ground, unable to find the strength to get back up again. She thought that she should feel uncomfortable, huddled at this man’s feet, while they waited for word from the other end. But she was too tired, and too afraid, to care what any of them thought of her.

Finally there was a crackling sound from the walkie-talkie that filled the silent space, and Violet heard the words she’d been waiting for.

Chief Ambrose was on his way.

Violet leaned forward, putting her face in her hands, and started to cry tears of relief.