The 1.5-mile uphill hike from the trailhead to the meadow where we found Mindy would normally take about half an hour, but we were going slowly, carefully. I was trying to imagine the Illusionist walking up this trail with Mindy. Did you really carry her all this way? Or did she walk? If so, why didn’t she fight you? How did you get her to trust you?
Lien-hua spoke, echoing my thoughts. “She walked with him, didn’t she?”
“I think so. It’s too far to carry a body uphill.”
“Did he force her? Restrain her somehow?” she asked.
“Maybe. There were some bruises on her wrists, but the indentations were shallow. He didn’t drag her. He might have tied them postmortem.”
“Then how did he subdue her while he strangled her over and over again?”
“I don’t know.” I’d started panting a little as we hiked but tried to hide it so Lien-hua wouldn’t notice. I stopped and readjusted my pack. “He might have used threats of violence. She had a younger sister, didn’t she?”
“Yeah. She’s eight.”
“Maybe that’s it. He might have threatened to hurt the girl. I don’t know. We may never know.” I started walking again. “We can check on it, though, see what her relationship with her sister was like.”
Sunlight dangled in between the branches of the trees, dancing across my face. We hiked for a few minutes in silence, and then Lien-hua said, “I found your views on motives very interesting, Dr. Bowers.”
Ah, the briefing yesterday.
“So when you say ‘interesting’ do you mean ‘fascinatingly compelling,’ or are you just using the word ‘interesting’ to try and disagree with me politely, the way most people use it?”
“Hmm. Well, since you put it that way, I choose option number two.”
“The ‘I don’t agree with you but don’t want to stir up trouble’ usage.”
“Yes. Honestly, I’m surprised that you believe motives play such a minor role in life.”
We stepped into a sheltered cove protected by ancient trees, some of which must have been over a hundred years old. I could see by the abundance of younger growth that the rest of the hillside had been logged years ago. These hidden coves up in the mountains must have been too hard for the loggers to reach.
“Well,” I said, “I think there are only three primary motives, and none of them are very helpful when it comes to solving a crime.” “Just three, huh?” I sensed a bit of amusement in her voice.
“Yes.”
“And they are?”
“Desire, anger, and guilt.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Just those three?”
“Yup. Think about it. Take them one at a time. Desire: people want fame or sex or money or power. Even revenge is a form of desire. Think of how many crimes result from lust, greed, envy, jealousy, or ambition. All just different names for desire.”
“Hmm,” she said thoughtfully. “OK. And anger I’ll agree with.”
“Yeah. And of course there’s guilt, which speaks for itself. We all have to find a way to deal with our regrets and our shame, or we implode.”
She pushed a branch out of the way. “It may surprise you to hear this, but I agree with those three. However, I think you missed the two most important ones.”
“Oh. Well, I find that very…” I waited until the branch had snapped back into place before following her. “Interesting. And they are?”
She stopped walking, let her eyes crawl along the trail for a few seconds. At last, she raised them to peer at me, and I could see that they were filled with deep channels of pain. “The first is fear, Dr. Bowers. Sometimes people do terrible things because they’ve been pushed into a corner. Fear can turn us into different people.”
I didn’t say anything, but the questions rose in my mind, What are you afraid of, Lien-hua? What happened? Did you do something terrible too? “OK,” I said at last. “Fear. I’ll give you that one. What’s the second one?”
She turned and continued down the trail. “Let’s see if you can guess the most important motive on your own.”
Before I could even venture a guess, we came to an overlook just north of the crime scene. The trail skirted along the edge of a steep escarpment, the mountain ending abruptly at our feet and dropping hundreds of feet straight down to the river. I hadn’t noticed this overlook on our hike out to the trailhead on Thursday because of the thick fog that had ushered in the storm.
“Survival?” I asked.
She shook her head, her attention riveted on the view. “That falls under desire-the desire to live. Now, shh… don’t spoil this. It’s beautiful.”
I followed her gaze. The valley swept out before us and then rose majestically to become autumn-tinged mountains, endless and alive. The valleys wandered through the mountain range, each with their own unique patchwork of shadows cast by the community of clouds gathering high overhead. A blaze of sunlight ignited each cloud, making them glow even more brightly against the steel blue sky.
I remembered, years earlier, another wilderness guide telling me that “Appalachian” comes from a Native American word that means “endless mountains”; and staring out across these mountains I couldn’t help but get the impression that they really did fold back endlessly into space and time. The planet’s ancient origami left over from the days when the continents folded together.
The breeze was constant here, rising from the valley, washing up and over us; the gentle morning breath of the hills. I wondered what it would feel like to stand here when the wind was still. What kind of solitude that must be to have the day decide its shape all around you, sky and shadow and peak and valley all draped in deep and primal silence.
“Maybe that’s why he chose it,” I whispered after a few moments.
“What?” She turned to me.
“Beauty.”
“You think he chose this place because of the beauty?”
“Because of the paradox.” I looked at her. The wind blowing up and over the peak was whispering through her hair, letting it escape from gravity for just a moment, feathering it around her head in slow motion, easy and free. “Humans can’t seem to enjoy beauty without destroying it.” I was transfixed by the sight of her. “This trail, for example, cutting through the forest. It’s the only way to experience the solitude of this peak. But the trail also mars the very thing it allows us to enjoy-the scenery. I think beauty frightens us into destroying the things we admire most.” Our eyes met for a fraction of a second too long, that one tiny piece of time that says more than words can say. “That’s the paradox.”
She looked away. “The medical examiner placed the time of death right about now.” Her voice had become efficient and professional. She stepped back from the edge of the mountain, and her hair returned to normal. Life returned to normal.
“Yeah,” I said softly. “Let’s go.” And then I followed Lien-hua to the place Mindy died, while thoughts of death and beauty, of Christie’s memory and Lien-hua’s presence, wrestled in my mind.