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Ollie guides Peter around a museum parking lot in the high desert outside Baker City, Oregon. The structure overlooks the rugged Oregon Trail, a path cut through scrubland that’s hardly as romantic as historians make it sound. The early November air bites Peter’s neck. He pulls his coat collar up to keep the wind off.
His father is in his standard orange jumpsuit. Someone loaned him a light jacket, but it can’t be doing much to fight off the cold. It doesn’t matter, though. Ollie seems oblivious to the thermometer reading two degrees above freezing on the museum’s information ticker.
He hasn’t said what kind of marker the search crew should look for. Oliver promised the group of U.S. Marshals scattered around the property that they’d find Sasha here. She was a twenty-two-year-old office assistant when she was last seen, almost thirty years ago.
“I’ve been thinking about our talks,” Peter says, speaking as low as he can while still allowing his father to hear him. The way the wind howls, he doubts anyone outside arm’s reach could hear him even if he were shouting. “I think I might try things your way.”
“Oh?” Peter’s dad stops and looks at him with intense interest. “Do you mean...”
Peter nods once. He hopes his father understands. Ollie smiles and Peter ducks deeper into his jacket. Just because he’s decided to give Ollie’s scheme a try doesn’t mean he has to feel good about it.
“Do you know how you’ll do it?” Ollie moves closer and acts as if he’s chilled. Peter puts his arm around him.
“No. Well, maybe. I don’t know.” Peter trembles as the conversation takes hold. Ollie pushes closer against him, giving him a nudge of sympathy.
“The anticipation is the worst part,” the older man offers. “Once you’ve done it a few times, you know, gotten a system down, it gets easier.”
Peter backs away from him abruptly. “Whoa there, Dad. Calm down. I said I was thinking about it. Not blazing the trail to become a career killer.”
Ollie wobbles his head sarcastically, then apologizes. “Sorry. Was just trying to let you know I understand how hard it can be.”
The wind pelts Peter in the side, guiding him close to his father again. “How did you do it the first time?”
Dropping his head back on his shoulders, Ollie laughs. “She fell in my lap. I never did learn her name. I was running away from home for the millionth time. She got on the bus, drunk and mean. An old lady sat across the aisle from me. The drunk woman wanted her seat. The old lady got pissed and whacked her in the head with her purse. Knocked the drunk clean out. She landed on me when she fell. Smelled like turpentine and piss. She had a swastika tattooed on her neck. It wasn’t hard to tell she was an immoral person.”
The wind gusts, pushing the men toward the edge of the parking lot. They let it carry them a few feet, then resume their slow, circular walk. Peter glances over the collar of his jacket to make sure no one has noticed the added distance between them and the rest of the group. “Then what?”
“She blacked out. There wasn’t a thing on this earth that would have woken her up. When no one was looking, I shoved her tongue down her throat.” Ollie winks.
“Holy shit, Dad. What made you do that?”
Ollie twitches his nose. “When your granddaddy got drunk, he’d pass out. Mammy used to make us kids roll him on his side and check that his tongue was loose so he wouldn’t choke.”
“So, you didn’t plan your first one at all?” Peter gives his father a sideways glance.
“Nope. God just gave her to me. That’s when I figured out what he put me here to do. Watching her resting on her back, dying in my lap on the bus... it was the most peaceful feeling I’d ever experienced.”
“You didn’t get caught?” Peter’s voice cracks with surprise. If they’d stopped Ollie the first time, maybe Peter wouldn’t be haunted by the faces of his other victims.
Ollie shakes his head, laugh lines deepening as he grins. “They all blamed it on her being a drunk. Nobody figured out what was happening until it was too late. They pulled her off me after she died. Who’d blame a ten-year-old for killing some lady on the bus? The driver even bought me ice cream to make me feel better. Vanilla with double chocolate fudge and sprinkles.”
“You were ten?” Peter’s eyes go wide, the story making his father both more terrifying and intriguing. Peter hadn’t even known how to buy a bus ticket at that age. “Jesus Christ, Dad.”
Ollie looks at him with an angry spark in his eye. “Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain, Son. He doesn’t like it.”
Peter looks at the pale sky above them. “Sorry, Jesus.”
“Don’t be patronizing, Hen.”
They walk a moment more before Peter asks, “Do you think it could be that easy for someone to die on me?” Peter probably looks more hopeful than he should, but he can’t help it.
“Not everyone’s that lucky.” Ollie gives Peter a quick hug of forgiveness under his jacket. “Besides, adults have a lot more to think about. You’ve got to make sure you arrange events in such a way that it doesn’t come back on you. The courts don’t give a hoot if you can be rehabilitated once you’re older than seventeen. You’re a lost cause, then.”
Inspector Douglas suddenly appears from behind them. Peter pops his head above his upturned collar and looks around innocently. He and Ollie have drifted beyond the wagons arranged in an old-west circle on the edge of the hill. They’re almost out of sight of the others.
“Sorry,” Peter calls out to Dougy. “I didn’t realize how far we’d wandered. That wind...”
A suspicious look fills the inspector’s face, but a gust of wind comes barreling over the vacant lot and blows him backward a step. He nods, coming closer to talk. “Oliver, I need to know what we’re looking for. It’s freezing out here. The boys are walking around in circles looking at scrub brush and asphalt.”
Ollie nods. “You know, it just occurred to me they probably wouldn’t keep her exhibit out here where it’d get ruined.”
Peter and Inspector Douglas share confused expressions.
“The elements,” Ollie says in explanation. He gestures to the world around them. “The preservation would deteriorate quickly outside. My guess is, with how much they paid for it, they’d probably want to keep it intact for a generation or two.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?” Inspector Douglas’s wind-blown face takes on a deep shade of red. Between the freezing air and the anger simmering below the surface, he looks like he’s about to lose what little patience he has.
Oliver gives him a calm smile. “Yes. The more I think on it, the more I figure a museum that spent eight thousand dollars on a stuffed bear would likely keep it somewhere inside. Don’t you think?”
“A bear?” Dougy and Peter ask in unified surprise.
Frowning as if he has an awful taste in his mouth, Ollie says, “I don’t know how happy they’ll be with you ripping it apart, having been so expensive and all. But if you put the Grizzly through an x-ray machine, you might find reason enough to convince them to let you cut it open.”
The inspector slaps his forehead with the palm of his hand. He waves Special Agent Jones over and instructs her to take Peter’s dad and four Marshals back to the hotel they rented in town. They won’t need Ollie again unless they can’t verify Sasha’s location. If they find a bear in the museum with a body inside, they’ll pack everyone up and send Oliver back to his cell in Sheridan in the morning.
“Good luck,” Ollie calls to the inspector over his shoulder as Mac pulls him away. “And have a little fun once you pull her out. Lots of photos for the papers!”
Dougy watches him leave with disgust. “He couldn’t have told us that three hours ago?”
“I think he was enjoying the fresh air,” Peter says. He takes in a deep breath of the icy atmosphere.
Special Agent Jones opens a door for Ollie and soon he’s secured inside the van behind black windows.
“He’s the only one,” Inspector Douglas grumbles. He marches toward the museum’s entrance, shouting orders as he goes.
“Guess I’m on my own, then?” Peter asks the empty space around him. He walks back to Dougy’s car and lets himself in. He settles into the frigid back seat, closing his eyes, listening to the howling wind as he waits.