A PHONE CALL CAME EARLY IN THE MORNING, WAKING FIELDING from a dream so vivid it might as well have been real. In the dream he was walking with Sara down the sidewalk of Oscar, Iowa, on a warm evening. Just as the birds were beginning their evening songs. All the storefronts were closing up. They were holding hands. Just walking, not saying a word. The air was sweet smelling and there were children running down the sidewalks. In the dream they were still old but Sara’s hand felt young. Felt like the first day he had held it. They walked like that all the way home and then sat together on their porch swing. Still holding hands and still not saying anything. The lightning bugs blinking on and off in the warm air like far-off satellites. They sat there till the stars came out. Finally, Sara said, Nice night. Sure is, he said. Then they went up to bed and together they fell asleep.
The ringing phone tore all that away and Fielding rubbed his eyes and looked at the clock on the bedside table. Saw that it was a little after five. The phone stopped ringing and then it started ringing again. Who the hell, Fielding said. He threw off the blanket and walked to his robe hanging on the door and put it on and walked to the kitchen where the phone was ringing on the wall.
Yes, he said quickly.
Amos.
Yes.
It’s Dee.
Why the hell yeh callin me so early?
Is it early?
It’s still dark.
It’s November. It’s always dark.
What the hell yeh want?
I’m headed over.
Over where?
Your place. Get dressed.
Dressed? Hell, I ain’t even awake yet.
Then wake up.
I need to wake up before I can wake up.
Need your lawman eye on something.
Think I misheard yeh. Sounded like yeh said lawman.
They found another, Batey said.
Another what?
Body.
What kind a body?
You know.
Not sure I want to see that.
Not sure I do either.
Then don’t, Fielding said.
Not sure I have a choice.
We all have choices. Everyone has a choice.
I wish that were true.
It is true. Why yeh goin in the first place? Yeh ain’t the police.
They called me up. Maybe because I’ve seen it before. Want me as a witness or something. I don’t know.
Well sounds like yeh got it all taken care of then. I’ll just head back to bed.
Be good to have your opinion.
Fielding took the phone from his ear and let it fall to his side. He could hear Batey on the other end. Fielding looked out the window. It was dark and raining.
Yer an idiot, Amos, he said to himself.
He brought the phone back to his ear.
Who you talking to? Batey asked.
No one, Fielding said. Where yeh at?
The station.
How long till yeh get here.
Could be there in twenty.
Then I’ll see yeh in twenty, Fielding said. But only to prove it ain’t our business anymore. Okay?
Fielding hung up the phone. He went and started some coffee. Heard the heeler behind him and when he turned he saw Tito sitting just within the light with his head cocked, acting like he was about to be fed.
Don’t look at me like that, Fielding said.
The dog cocked its head the other way.
Don’t yeh know it ain’t even day yet.
Thirty minutes later Fielding was riding shotgun in Batey’s Bronco. He was holding his mug by the rim so he wouldn’t spill on himself.
You know they make mugs with lids these days, Batey said.
I’m startin to regret ever talkin to yeh.
The wipers were working against the rain. The sky was paling to the east, and the flat country to the west was taking shape under the gray light. They were driving west through farmland. Winter cropland with flooded furrows and the remnants of past harvests standing brown and shorn like whiskers.
Where yeh takin me anyway?
The beach.
Fielding looked out the window and tapped on the glass.
Hell of a day for the beach, he said.
It was a long drive. They had to get on the freeway at one point. They drove north. Fielding started seeing signs for border crossings. A place called Blaine. A place called Sumas. It dawned on him that he was nearly in Canada. In that rain and darkness he suddenly felt very far from home.
The freeway ribboned through stands of tall cedars and firs. Trees that knew the world before people did. Old trees that had seen the world change many times and with grace many to come.
They pulled off at an exit and turned west and drove through low country with vines of blackberry and half-dead scrub trees no taller than bicycles. They drove through tidal flats where the mud at low tide had a sheen like oil and thin-legged plovers and herons stepped mechanically among it with their heads bobbing like tin toys, their long faces tilted to see their prey below, to strike as quick as electricity and then step off again in search of more.
Death from above, Fielding said.
What’s that?
Nothin.
The road bent at the shoreline of a shallow bay that was protected from the wind. Fielding could see the wind blowing out there. The water was darker where the gusts were hitting the surface. Looked like shifting stains. All the big trees had given up by this point and they were into a coastal landscape of grasses and crippled pine that huddled low and thick against the earth like battered soldiers. The road led out to a spit no wider than a four-lane interstate. Out at the end a harbor of grim fishing boats moored to creosote docks.
But before all that Fielding saw the lights of several patrol cruisers in the accruing dawn and the yellow tape ratcheting in the wind.
Found em, Fielding said.
How’s your gag reflex? Batey asked.
Gaggy, Fielding said.
They pulled to the side of the road and one of the officers recognized Batey’s Bronco. The officer walked over in his long slicker. Batey rolled down his window.
Morning, the officer said.
Yes it is, Batey said.
The officer leaned to get a better look at Fielding.
You Amos Fielding?
That all depends.
The officer grinned and then nodded.
Pleasure, he said. Marty Rawlings. Deputy.
Well? Batey said.
About like you might think, Rawlings said. Want to take a look?
Rawlings stepped back to allow Batey’s door to open. Fielding said, This is goin a be somethin we can’t unsee. If yeh catch my drift.
They exited the Bronco and the wind came at them and tried to convince them to turn back. Fielding shut his door and went around the front of the Bronco where the two men were standing and together they crossed the road to a short boardwalk leading to the beach. They stopped at the end of the boardwalk and looked where the yellow tape had been strung up around the body.
The beach was in the lee of the dune where the wind was abated. Fielding looked down at the washed-up eelgrass clumped like discarded whale’s baleen. Bleached driftwood tumbled smooth as stone pushed against the high-water mark. Old pieces of construction and rotten pilings with squarehead fasteners rusted into the wood. Twists of rebar tangled like root balls. Forgotten feathers of dead birds. On the crest of the dune the dune grass and the dogwoods heeled over and the thin stalks of sedge threatened to snap in the wind and the stunted pine grew sideways because it knew no better.
They walked together to where a small crowd of onlookers was gathered. Some with cameras. Some holding bandannas to their noses. The faintest bit of smoke was twisting up from a burned-out pile of wood.
Someone reported it last night, Rawlings said. Saw a fire going.
It was the same as before only now the body was half burned. She had been laid on a bed of driftwood. Her skin was black and pink and yellow and was stretched tight and where it wasn’t stretched it was peeling away. There was no hair left. Her lips were gone and her mouth was slightly open as if calling out and her teeth were a brilliant shade of white against the black skin. Batey and Fielding just stood there squinting their eyes. Scattered about were a dozen or so miniature structures. Little cairns arranged with no real discerning sense or order. Each cairn had a number laid out by it for evidence’s sake. A halo of barbed wire and vines had been placed on her head.
They ID her yet? Batey asked.
Not definitively, Rawlings said. But they got a guess. Molly Summers. Eighteen-year-old runaway from Lynden. Her grandmother reported her gone three days ago. Seems to fit the profile anyway. Have to confirm off the dental records.
Batey nodded at a young man standing near the scene. He was wearing a long coat and holding an umbrella. Expensive-looking shoes.
Who’s that? Batey asked.
Agent up from the bureau, Rawlings said.
Seattle?
Yep.
He got a name?
Wilson, Rawlings said. Sticks to himself. Peterson told me he’s part of the special crimes unit.
Special?
Yeah, Rawlings said. The kind of a sexual nature.
I see, Batey said. Well, suppose we go introduce ourselves.
They walked over to where the man was standing. He turned and regarded them with a plain look.
Rawlings started it off. Held out his hand to him.
Deputy Marty Rawlings, he said.
The man shook his hand.
Agent Wilson.
Pleasure, Rawlings said. This is Dee Batey and Amos Fielding.
Wilson shook their hands in turn.
Are you deputies as well? It seems I’ve met more deputies out here than civilians.
No, Batey said. Fish and Wildlife. Fielding here’s retired.
Retired? Wilson said. Retired from what?
Sheriff, Fielding said. Small town back in Iowa.
So a game warden and a retired small-town sheriff. Wilson’s lips thinned. What are you two even doing here?
Fielding said, That’s a heck of a good question.
Wilson gave Rawlings a look.
Dee here found that woman in the hills all them years back, Rawlings said.
What woman? Wilson said. Lots of women been found up in the hills.
That one in the cave that made that big splash in the news.
Wilson’s demeanor changed. As if everything suddenly came into focus.
Oh, he said, the Dee Batey. I’ve studied that case extensively. Still unsolved.
Yes, Batey said.
I would love to pick your brain sometime, Wilson said.
Not much to pick.
I’ve read your accounts many times, Wilson said. I was always intrigued that he arranged her the way he did after defiling her.
Defilin her? Fielding said.
Yes, Mr Fielding, Wilson said. Congress. Intercourse.
He did that to her, Batey said. After she was dead?
Yes, Mr Batey. Several times. And I suspect the last time he did it he knew it was going to be the last and so he arranged her the way he did. A final goodbye, if you will. A remembrance.
What do yeh mean the last time he did it? Fielding said.
He had returned to her, Wilson said.
Returned? You mean to . . .
Yes, Mr Fielding. Right up to the point of putrefaction.
Putrefaction, Fielding said.
Decomposing, Mr Fielding. The fifth stage in the death process.
Wilson watched them to gauge their reaction. All three of them looked away at that statement.
And I believe, Wilson said, this is what happened here. Also with Amy Barnhardt. I trust you have heard about her. I believe it’s the same perpetrator.
But this is a popular beach, Batey said. A woman’s body wouldn’t just be left here and go unnoticed for three days.
No, Wilson said. She was brought here. As a final resting place. Maybe at one point she expressed something about loving the water. Or maybe he does. But he brought her here, maybe connected with her a final time and then started the fire.
So you think he carried her out here? Fielding said.
Wilson smiled a thin smile and said, I want to show you something.
Between the fire and bank of grass where the beach ended there were dozens of fluorescent markers. The markers highlighted boot prints. The boot prints went out to the fire and came back again. Wilson knelt down to one of them. He pointed things out with his finger.
See how this print is deeper than this one? See how it wavers slightly? How this one here walking away from the fire is even and the pace is regular as if just going for a stroll on the beach?
Let me guess, Batey said. Not just a stroll?
See how the heel is marked on this one? See how it goes deep into the sand? This tells us a lot. Tells us he was carrying something.
Or someone, Rawlings said.
You can follow these prints all the way to the fire. You can see the moment he put her down. His next step is lightened.
Yeh can tell all of that, Fielding said, just from a boot print?
Ask Mr Batey here.
Ask me what?
You’re Fish and Wildlife, Wilson said. You must have done a fair amount of tracking in your time.
Sure, Batey said. Fair amount.
And?
And what?
And would you agree that whoever made these prints was carrying something heavy?
Yeah, Batey said. Yeah I would.
But why the fire? Fielding asked.
Wilson shrugged his shoulders.
I don’t know, he said. Anger. Regret. Ablution.
Remorse? Rawlings said.
No, Wilson said. Remorse would indicate some kind of empathy. Whoever did this lacks that. Remorse wouldn’t even register. Incomprehensible. There is a ritual taking place, however. The cairns. The halo. The crude dolls they’re finding in the trees about. What do they mean or symbolize? Again Wilson shrugged. What we do know is that it’s typical behavior.
Typical behavior? Fielding asked.
Perpetrators like these have a ritual they perform. It doesn’t always have to be elaborate. Perhaps routine is a better word. People who do this like their routines. Ritual has the connotation of a cult, and I don’t believe any of these were the result of a cult.
Like Manson? Rawlings asked.
Yes, Wilson said. Take Bundy for example. He would bring his victims up into the mountains and visit them several times. He believed a part of his victim’s soul was now a part of his. That the two souls were joined forever. No cult there, but it is a ritual. Remember Berkowitz?
That Son of Sam shit? Batey said.
He believed the same thing. Believed that the ground he shot those people on was hallowed. And just like Bundy he’d return to the place to . . . reconnect. If you will.
Did he . . . Rawlings asked timidly.
No, Wilson said. He never engaged in necrophilia but it was of a sexual nature. After he would visit the site he would often go home and masturbate.
Sick shit, Batey said.
Yes, Wilson said. Definitely a disease.
So that’s what we have here, Rawlings said. We got another Bundy on our hands? Another Berkowitz?
No, Wilson said. His face darkened. There’s something else going on here. This is something new. These kinds of killers are like artists, they’re always trying to invent something new.
New? Fielding said.
Wilson motioned with his hand. Come here.
He walked them to a taped-off area about fifteen feet from the fire. Wilson pointed at the sand.
What does that look like? he asked.
There were three marks in the sand. Evenly spaced. Three points of a triangle.
Looks like three dots, Fielding said.
What would make three dots in the sand? Wilson said. He was asking it almost rhetorically. As if to play this out a little longer.
A tripod would, Batey said.
Yes, it would, Wilson said.
Why would there be a tripod here? Fielding asked. Steady a gun?
Not a gun, Mr Fielding. A camera.
You think this guy was taking pictures? Rawlings said.
No, Wilson said. I think he filmed it. I think he films every one.