SEVENTEEN

MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL

BLACK HILLS REGION, SOUTH DAKOTA

 

 

 

 

 

AFTER RETREATING DOWN the mountain with Libby nowhere in sight, a dozen text messages unreturned, repeated calls going directly to voice mail, freaking-out, Sarah reported her friend missing. She was asked by a Ranger of the National Park Service to file a report. Hoping to reassure her, the Ranger said, “Your friend will turn up, miss. Happens all the time, here, visitors get separated.”

Chewing her fingernails, Sarah waited for news of her friend until after nightfall when the park closed. Offered a lift back to Rapid City by the kindly Ranger, he said, “Don’t worry, miss, she’ll turn up” though he declined to say in what condition.

Back at the motel, Sarah telephoned her parents. Her parents called the Steins. Blood-spatter found the next morning at the place where Rangers discovered Libby’s mobile telephone suggested a potential animal encounter; a brazen coyote as wolves and big cats in the area are uncommon.

It took three months for Elizabeth’s decomposed remains to be discovered by a backpacker along Route 244 off the side of the road where he’d stopped at the base of a narrow crevasse to collect runoff.

By this time, the shooter was over a thousand miles away and planning his twenty-third kill.