We couldn’t find Joseph Grolin.
Sheriff Wallace’s team checked the MountainQuest offices. He grunted as he recounted the visit to Ralph and me: Yes, Grolin had shown up for work that morning, but no, they didn’t know where he’d gone. Yes, they knew what he was writing: an article about North Carolina raft guides who spend their winters working on the slopes of Vail, Colorado, as ski instructors, but no, they didn’t have any idea where he might be. Yes, they would call if they heard anything about his whereabouts. Yes, yes, yes, and now could you please leave the office since you’re disrupting the production schedule?
Meanwhile a team of crime scene technicians was combing the remains of Grolin’s house for any evidence that he’d taken Jolene there. Anything at all. Last I’d heard, they found a video camera in the woods with a remote cellular feed. I’d told them to look for it. After all, I figured that somewhere out there, he’d been watching.
Unfortunately, they hadn’t been able to recover anything substantial from the bomb’s timer or ignition mechanism. That was a big disappointment because it might have led us to a munitions manufacturer or distributor.
Brent did some checking and found that four of the bodies had been dumped in popular climbing locations featured in Mountain-Quest magazine.
Still no sign of the remaining half of Jolene’s body.
They did find Grolin’s other car, though-his Subaru station wagon. It was in a Wal-Mart parking lot. The missing handsaw from his basement was in the trunk, Jolene’s blood on the blade.
One team was going door to door in Margaret’s neighborhood to see if anyone had noticed someone suspicious near Margaret’s car earlier in the day. So far, nothing. An APB went out on Joseph Grolin, and cops all over the southeast were looking for him. Despite our efforts to keep a lid on the investigation, once the news stations found out Grolin was listed as “a person of interest” in the case and that his house had blown up, the media frenzy began. Within an hour all the major cable news stations were interviewing everyone involved in his life all the way back to his middle school teacher. “How do you feel to have known the Yellow Ribbon Strangler?” After all, in American newsrooms, you’re guilty until proven innocent. And you remain the lead story until the ratings drop enough or the next grisly crime occurs.
I did a cross-check comparing Grolin’s vacation days, time off, and days missing from work with the times of the murders. Not surprisingly, he was accounted for during the deaths of Bethanie and Alexis but always seemed to be on assignment researching one of his articles or taking a day off at the times of the other abductions and murders.
Still we had no idea where he was.
Overall, the day had been a wearying roller coaster of excitement and disappointment, discovery and frustration, and right now I could feel my body plummeting into a downward corkscrew; shutting down physically and emotionally. Not a good sign. I needed sleep, and I still had a two-hour drive in front of me to pick up Tessa from the airport in Charlotte.
Also, I still needed to check into my new hotel and unpack the luggage that had been following me around the country for the last week. I told Margaret I was heading out for a little while, and she nodded without saying a word. “Call me if anything comes up,” I said. “I got the charger from Ralph. I’m still using his phone.”
Another quiet nod.
She was in worse shape than I’d thought.
Of course I could understand. Finding half of a corpse in your car would do that to you.
I left my climbing gear in the backseat of my rental but wrestled the rest of my luggage into the lobby of the hotel across the street from the federal building. A college-aged couple stood hand-in-hand checking in at the registration desk.
The woman was giggling at everything her man said, and when she wasn’t laughing she was giving him a slight smile that was oh-so-shy. He stood with his head back, chest out, and ambled toward the elevator like a cowboy ready to drive a thousand head of cattle across the state for his sweetheart.
It was charming. They were in love. It was perfect.
I had to look away.
I checked in and drifted over to the elevator, up to the second floor, down the hallway to room 217, slid the keycard into the lock, shuffled across the threadbare carpet, and collapsed onto the bed. I barely managed to remember to plug Ralph’s phone into the charger before I closed my eyes and everything slipped into a dreamy haze.
Sleep came in spurts. Jumbled snatches of dreams mixed with momentary awarenesses of being awake followed by the fading, drifting, helpless tug of sleep once again. I made plans to call the front desk to get a wake-up call… plans to set the alarm clock for 4:00 so I wouldn’t miss Tessa’s flight… plans to check my email… but then the plans withered and faded away, and darkness, rich and deep, settled over me again.
Sleep.
In my dreams I mostly saw dead bodies. Beautiful, graceful girls with slit throats and manacled wrists. Giggling and flirting one minute, choking and dying the next. Faces of life and masks of death, laughter and tears rolling across each other in a wash of blood and screams and summer dreams. Swollen and distorted, young and attractive. Eyes laughing. Eyes fixed and staring.
Jolene. Mindy. Tessa.
The flirting girl from the lobby.
Lien-hua.
Christie.
During the moments when my eyes flickered open, I would glance at the clock beside the bed and find that the waking world had moved forward a few minutes, or even half an hour. And then I’d slip back into my nightmares of beauty and death.
A fire alarm went off or maybe it was the phone ringing or maybe it was an alarm clock somewhere. My sleeping mind couldn’t tell and didn’t care. Part of me fought the idea of waking up like it was the thought of dying. Stay alive. Stay alive. Sleep is the only way to stay alive. Don’t wake up. Never wake up. The sound came again. Persistent. It wouldn’t give up. I groaned and rolled over. It wouldn’t stop. Pick up Tessa. You have to pick up Tessa.
I managed to pry my eyes open.
3:45 p.m.
The room was quiet.
Slowly, space and time began to make sense again. I was in a hotel room with lime-green walls and a creaky bed. Jolene was dead and so was Christie. They weren’t coming back. Wouldn’t ever be waking up. Not ever. I hadn’t set the alarm. There hadn’t been a fire. A house had exploded right next to me earlier today. My shoulder really, really hurt.
I noticed a blinking glow beside me. Ralph’s cell phone. That was what had been ringing.
Only the cell phone ringing.
I had two voicemails.
The first was from an unknown number: “Yes, um, Dr. Bowers, they told me you’d be at this number. Special Agent Eric Stanton here-the, um, Tessa’s escort, that is, chaperone. We were diverted to Chicago because of the blizzards up here in the Midwest-you probably heard about ’em on the news. Anyway, they’re not letting any planes in or out. Everything’s shut down. We won’t be able to fly out until tomorrow at the earliest. I’ll call you later when I know more. We’ll be in a safe house here in Chicago tonight.” He gave a few details about where they would be staying and what number to reach him at, and then he finished by assuring me that Tessa was fine but that she didn’t really want to leave a message right now.
Well, that was no surprise.
Actually, I was relieved I didn’t have to drive to Charlotte tonight. It gave my shoulder a chance to recover. I listened to the second message on my way down the hall to get some ice for my shoulder. It was from Terry Wilson, my NSA friend.
I returned his call right away. “Hey, Terry, it’s Pat. Sorry I missed your call.”
“Is this line secure?”
“Yeah. It’s Ralph’s phone,” I said. “Encrypted to level 5-C.”
“I’m only 4-D.” He sounded a little disgruntled.
I filled the bucket with ice. “What do you have for me, buddy?”
“Pat, listen. Sebastian Taylor was a spy.”
“What?” I topped off the bucket and turned toward my room.
“Probably CIA. Maybe NSA. It’s a little tough to decipher all that. Back in the seventies, most low-ranking overseas diplomats were agents of some type. Remember, those were Cold War days. The threat of communism was everywhere. The thing is, he was stationed in South America in November of 1978.”
Back in my room I sat on the bed with my back against the wall and tied off the bag of ice.
“And?”
“Ever hear of Jonestown?”
“Jonestown? You don’t mean the Kool-Aid drinkers?”
“Yeah. Jim Jones and Peoples Temple, you remember all that?” “Vaguely.” I slipped the ice in place and leaned back. It stung, but in a good way.
“Well, listen, Pat. I did some checking, and I stumbled across some CIA communiques from the Jonestown compound. One came at 3:29 a.m. the night of the tragedy. According to the files, though, no CIA operatives arrived on-site until two days later. So who sent the communique? I also found references to a tape, Q875, in connection with Taylor’s name. Someone had tried hard to hide the link, though. Pat, listen, this thing is a powder keg. Lots of international black ops went on in those days. I’m not sure how deep you want to go poking around here.”
“As deep as I have to go to find our killer. Somehow Taylor is connected to this series of murders. One of the girls called him, apparently tried to warn him-oh!”
“What?”
“Transcripts of her calls. I was supposed to read them this morning. I forgot all about that until just now. It’s been… how can I say… an ‘interesting’ day.”
“Listen. The governor is a powerful man, Pat. The Democrats have the presidency pretty much locked up for 2008; I mean, we’re only a couple weeks out from the election, and I know you’ve seen the polls. Some people say Taylor is already being groomed to be the Republican frontrunner for 2012.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be careful. How about I call you tomorrow morning. I’ve got a few things to check on. Until then, see what else you can dig up. OK?”
“Pat, I don’t think I should-”
“Terry, we found the torso of a girl in the trunk of a car today. Someone sawed her in half, and somehow the governor is involved. Get me whatever you can.”
He sighed. “All right then, I will. Talk to you tomorrow.”
I clicked the phone shut, and pulled out my notebook. I needed to clear my mind and sort through what we knew so far. Even if it took me all night, I had to start getting my mind wrapped around this case.