The Last Woman in the Forest Read online

  Again Chester yelped and barked.

  “I need you to move, Noah,” Marian said, and he did. He sat back, and in a quick glance Marian saw the defeat in his body and a sad desperation on his face. “It’s going to be okay,” she said, and though she had meant those words for Chester, she was sure Noah thought she’d intended them for him. She tied one end of the leash to the top loop of the spring on the trap side that was pressing down along Chester’s mouth. She then ran the leash through the bottom spring loop and back through the top. “Hang in there, Chester. You’re doing great,” she said. She stood and placed her foot on the trap chain so that she could pin the trap to the ground.

  “I can do that,” Noah said, and so he took her place. Marian hauled up on the leash until both sides of the spring met, which released the tension of the jaws. With one side of the trap reset, Chester’s neck and body squirmed from the release of some pressure, though he still was unable to break free. Marian repeated the process on the other side of the trap that had clamped down against Chester’s neck. The dog whined loudly and as soon as his head and neck were released, he sprang to his feet, but when he did, his head lolled back toward the ground as if he no longer had the strength to hold it up.

  With all of the activity, Marian and Noah had created a clearing of at least a ten-foot radius. Chester moved several feet away from them. His whines became more muted and tentative, like a soft whimpering. He lay on his stomach with his forelegs out in front of him and lowered his head onto his paws. This was the first time Marian noticed that two of his boots were missing. In his struggle, he’d managed to kick them off. She approached him slowly to try to keep him calm.

  “Please tell me he’s okay,” Noah said, and Marian knew instantly that Noah was crying. She looked over her shoulder to see him once more sitting in the snow. His knees were drawn up in front of him, as if he were afraid to get any closer to Chester, as if he were afraid to find out that the dog might not make it.

  Marian unzipped the fleece layer she’d pulled from Noah’s pack. She laid it over Chester’s shoulders and head. She didn’t care that Chester was Noah’s responsibility. In that moment Chester needed help. She removed her pack and set it on the ground. She retrieved her first-aid kit. “We’re going to have to get him back to the truck,” she said.

  “He’s not going to be able to walk,” Noah said. “You saw him.”

  “We’ll take turns carrying him. I just want to get some antibiotic on his wounds.”

  Marian also had a small wool blanket in her pack. After she applied the antibiotic ointment, she wrapped Chester in the blanket. But when she slipped her arms beneath him to lift him, not only did he squirm free, but she also realized full well how heavy he was.

  “We’re not going to be able to get him out of here,” Noah said. “He’s got to weigh close to eighty pounds. I can lift him, but I’m not going to be able to carry him through this snow.”

  Because there was no cell service in the area, only Wi-Fi back at the compound, Marian brought out her satellite phone from her pack. Once it had powered up and made a connection, she called Jenness and relayed their situation. She described Chester’s injuries. “He’s in a lot of pain,” Marian said. “He’s not able to follow us out.”

  Jenness said she would contact the oil company’s emergency responders. Though other teams had taken the conservation group’s machines and would still be en route back to the compound, the oil company had rescue workers on call who could assist.

  “I can meet them at the vehicle,” Marian said. She went on to relay the vehicle’s location. And so it was agreed that Noah would stay with Chester, and Marian would meet the responders and lead them to Noah and Chester’s location.

  When Marian got off the phone, it was already after three, with less than two hours of daylight left. She checked her GPS receiver. She and Noah had hiked about a kilometer to get to their six-by-six-kilometer study cell and somehow were now just outside that cell on its northwestern edge, which put them over four kilometers, approximately two and a half miles, away from their vehicle. Without having to break trail or collect samples, Marian thought she could cut the time in more than half from what it had taken them to get this far.

  “I’ll have my satellite phone on,” Marian said. She told Noah to power his up in case someone needed to reach him.

  “How did this happen?” Noah asked, his voice still weak with defeat.

  “I don’t know.” Marian looked away. She needed to get going. “I’ll leave you with my pack.” She wanted Noah to have whatever extra supplies he might need, including food and liquids. Along with a first-aid kit, there was extra food, a thermos of hot water, and sleeping bags and blankets back at the truck. She wasn’t worried about herself.

  “At least take one of the thermoses,” Noah told her. “You’ll need to keep yourself hydrated.”

  Marian agreed, and she realized how careful they were being with each other. She took one of the thermoses out of her pack. “I’m leaving you my headlamp,” she said, though she knew its batteries wouldn’t last long.

  “Take it. You won’t make it to the truck before dark. You’ll need it. I’ve got mine in my pack.”

  Noah had since removed his pack. “Take your batteries out of your headlamp,” she said. “Keep them close to your body.”

  “I will. I’ll put them inside my pants.”

  “Gross,” she said, though she knew what he’d said was a good idea, and they both laughed.

  “Okay, I’ll be back. Stay warm.” She looked at Chester. He was lying still where she had tried to pick him up, but he was breathing steadily.

  5

  PRESENT

  July 2017

  NICK SHEPARD

  Sandpoint, Idaho

  Nick Shepard walked with a cane to his car. His left leg felt heavier than his right, and each step took the kind of effort that made him perspire beneath his heavy beard and along his lower back. Some days were easier. This wasn’t one of those days. He crossed the small parking lot and, despite the effort, felt glad for this moment of independence. There would come a time when the doctors would say he could no longer drive. When that time came he would have to rely more and more on his wife, who would quit her job then and say it was all right, that they didn’t need the money anyway. It was true. They lived simply enough, but the medical bills were adding up, and hadn’t politics made a mess of the whole health care system, but don’t get him started. No, today was a lovely day, and his appointment had gone well. His wife would be glad for the news. They’d pour a glass of wine tonight and celebrate, even though he preferred something stronger, bourbon or scotch, but he wasn’t supposed to mix hard liquor with Depakote. Actually, according to the drug’s warning labels he wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol at all, but a little wine never hurt anyone, his doctor had said. Besides, a man shouldn’t have to give up all of his vices. Maybe he’d have that bourbon.

  He kept his appointments at 10 a.m. each Monday. This allowed him plenty of time to make the forty-five-minute drive from Bonners Ferry, where he and his wife lived, to Sandpoint. And after his appointments, he’d stop at Connie’s Café for a coffee and lunch.

  Today the sun was warm. He rolled down the windows and drove to the café and listened to Blonde on Blonde, a Bob Dylan recording, on its fifth track, that his son had made for him, not because his son liked Bob Dylan, but because of the concert Nick had taken the boy to see in Coeur d’Alene two years ago when Nick didn’t know glio cells had begun dividing and multiplying inside his brain. Peter, his son, thirty-eight and married, had two children of his own, both teenage girls, and though Nick was not religious, he prayed every day that these girls would be safe, that whoever was out there would leave them alone.

  At eleven o’clock, the café was quiet. Nick picked up a complimentary copy of the Statesman from Boise and sat at the corner table near the window. But when Angie
walked over to pour his coffee, he folded the paper and set it in the chair beside him, and after they spoke a few pleasantries, she asked him if he was ready to order.

  He said he’d like the roast beef sandwich. He’d have the potato salad. Maybe he’d have dessert. She could come back later and he’d let her know. He blew on the coffee before taking a sip. He liked it black. He was glad for his appetite and that a roast beef sandwich still tasted like roast beef. He’d already been through one round of chemo. The nausea hadn’t been too bad. His wife swore he’d put on weight, and since when was that a good thing, he’d told her.

  Other patrons arrived and took seats around him and talked to one another, and dishes clattered. He ate his roast beef sandwich and potato salad, and when he finished eating, he pushed his plate aside. He opened the newspaper over the table and read about oil fracking, and why homelessness was more common now than just twenty years ago, and a gubernatorial race that had gone corrupt, and what political race was not corrupt he wanted to know, and he got so pissed off that he ordered another coffee instead of dessert and stared out the window at the mishmash of thoughts in his head, making sure they were still his thoughts, and that his brain still worked despite the golf-ball-size tumor that the surgeons had removed two months ago, and all of the brain cells they had removed with it, and how big was the hole in his frontal lobe, and the small tumor in his temporal lobe that was so close to his spinal cord that it was inoperable, so his doctor had said, and maybe he should find another doctor. But the cancer wasn’t growing, and yes, he’d have that bourbon after all. Today he saw his oncologist. Next Monday was physical therapy. He liked the whirlpool. Perhaps he and Cate should put a whirlpool inside their house.

  But really what he was thinking about was the young woman who had called. It was true, people contacted him all the time about one case or another. After all, there had been three-hundred-plus victims over thirty years. He ignored most of the people who tried to get in touch with him. He didn’t answer his phone, seldom listened to messages, and had no trouble finding the DEL key on his keyboard. It wasn’t so much the murders themselves; it was more like being interrupted, an annoyance. He contemplated all of this because he wasn’t sure why he had answered the phone that day, and what was her name, Marian, yes, but her last name. He’d written it down. Even run a background check on her. She’d impressed him with her many jobs saving the habitat. There was something innocent about her that was rare these days.

  But all of that was after the fact, after he’d reached for the receiver, after she’d rambled on, and he could tell she was nervous. He was intrigued. She had her own personal mission. She knew what she wanted. She didn’t feel like an interruption to him. Besides, coincidence was for those who wanted to avoid the deeper meaning in life. There were no coincidences as far as he was concerned.

  It was on Friday, after lunch and some reading and a little yard work. He had just walked into the kitchen from his garden, where he had pulled a ripe tomato from one of the three vines, had bitten into the fruit as if eating an apple, and the light red juice had run down his arm. He’d gone inside to tear off a paper towel, to wash off the juice. The phone had rung, and he’d reached for the receiver, like an old habit, instead of turning on the faucet. And somewhere in the conversation Marian had stopped referring to her boyfriend as “he” and “him” and instead said his name, though her voice sounded tentative when she said it, as if she were giving something away she would want to reclaim as soon as she had let it go. But there it was, out in the air, and now in Nick’s consciousness, where so far it had not been consumed by the big C cells that at the moment were not growing in his brain.

  And was it déjà vu or had he heard the name Tate before? It wasn’t a common name, and might Nick have jotted it somewhere in his copious notes, which had now all been turned over to a Canadian digital archivist. Nick had befriended the Canadian a couple of years before on the Moyie River. The man was bird-watching. Nick and his wife were bird-watching also, and one thing had led to another. And besides, Nick had recently retired and was looking to downsize his belongings. For a reasonable fee, the Canadian would turn Nick’s notes into digital files. That was almost a year ago. The Canadian had said it might take as long for him to complete the project. Nick was all right with that. He knew where everything was. He could retrieve the notes if he wanted, rent out some storage unit where the papers would collect moisture and dust. But what would be the point of that? Getting rid of the evidence of his work had felt cleansing.

  Nick knew it wasn’t the murders that haunted him so much as the killers, as if they stood in the shadows of his life, always watching him. And there was the one killer in particular who had remained a part of Nick’s subconscious. But that was before Nick had stepped down from his work, before he’d crossed any ethical boundaries, before he’d made a young woman afraid. Maybe the disease would rid him of these thoughts, get rid of the killers’ faces and names and affect, give him some release from the remaining window of his life that, from what he understood of this disease, was more like a porthole.

  * * *

  • • •

  Marian wasn’t from Montana, but she’d heard about the Stillwater cases: four women who’d disappeared and been murdered over the course of six years: one woman for approximately every eighteen to twenty-four months. Marian wanted to know if her boyfriend had found one of the bodies. A little over two years had passed since the last victim had gone missing. Maybe the murders had stopped, or they’d been taken elsewhere.

  Three of the victims’ bodies had been disposed of within a couple of miles of each other in the Stillwater State Forest, just over the border in Montana. The other body was found outside Helena. Nick wasn’t supposed to have gotten involved with the Stillwater cases, or with any other cases for that matter. Wasn’t that why he had moved twenty-five hundred miles or some such distance across the country, to leave his thirty-some-odd years of working with criminals and their acts of violence behind him, to watch birds and study wildlife, to read poetry, to garden a little and get some writing done, and maybe sleep a little better than he had before his move.

  Marian said she’d searched archives of local papers, read articles about the missing women, but none of those articles had given the identities or any specifics of the people who had found the victims’ remains. Nick knew one body had been discovered by a couple who was doing some backcountry snowshoeing; two of the others were discovered by hunters; another was found by a man and his dog. The man was cutting firewood. Nick asked the woman if her boyfriend ever cut firewood. “I think so,” she said.

  “Did he ever hunt?” Nick asked.

  “No, I don’t think he ever did.”

  Nick didn’t recall who had found the remains of the women, and he wasn’t sure he would have written the names down in his notes. He wasn’t part of law enforcement. He was more interested in the personalities of the victims and of the killer. He’d even gone so far as to type up narratives of what the victims’ lives were like before they had disappeared. He’d tried to inhabit their minds, put himself in each one’s point of view.

  He gave Marian the names of some of the investigators on the cases, but she wanted to be cautious regarding her search. No one could find out. And Nick understood that it wasn’t information about the cases that she was really after. She wanted to understand who her boyfriend was psychologically and emotionally. She wanted to know if he could have been responsible for the murders. She didn’t say those words precisely. Instead she asked if Nick would profile her boyfriend. Would he do this for her?

  And so he’d agreed to help this woman who loved dogs and turtles and a man who’d said he’d found a body in the woods. And after they hung up Nick washed the tomato juice off his arm and thought about the day almost eight years before, when he’d stood at the kitchen counter in this exact spot, the article about the missing woman with the red pickup truck spread out in front of him
.

  * * *

  • • •

  Nick and his wife had chosen Bonners Ferry, Idaho, for a quieter way of life, a different perspective. It was a radical change, Nick’s son had told them. Nick had wanted to do something radical. “Why Idaho?” his son had asked him. “Why not Idaho?” Nick had said. It was more affordable and not as popular. After all, whom did the boy know who had packed up house and home in Boston to settle down in Idaho? After Nick and his wife moved, Cate found a job as an office manager for a family dentist in town. Nick left his forensic profile work and went back to counseling, determined to leave his past behind. He opened a private practice in a small space down the street from where his wife worked. He helped couples that were having marital problems. He treated teenagers who were getting into trouble at school. Business was slow for Nick, and he liked the pace. He’d take his time in the mornings, enjoy a second cup of coffee. Then he learned about Natasha Freeman. Nick had just set his coffee cup in the sink. And maybe he was getting ready to turn on the faucet and rinse the cup. The paper was spread out over the counter. Cate had already left for work. He returned to the paper and glanced at a headline about a missing woman in Montana, whose red pickup truck was found alongside Highway 12 outside Helena. The woman’s cell phone had a Massachusetts area code. She was originally from Franklin, a town about fifty miles southwest of Boston. Perhaps it was the East Coast area code that caught Nick’s attention, or that the woman was from Franklin, Massachusetts, or perhaps it was simply that she had gone missing.

  Nick cut out the article. He folded it and put it in his wallet. He saw three clients that day and was glad when his afternoon ended early. After he saw the last client to the door, he removed the article from his wallet, and on the legal pad on his desk, he jotted down facts about the missing woman. He wasn’t going to get involved. He would simply do what he’d done in the past, try to piece together the last seventy-two hours of the missing woman’s life, pay attention to details that were reported, understand the woman’s personality, her dreams, the places where she was the most vulnerable. He was keeping himself sharp, he told himself. That was all. Maybe she’d run off to start another life, to get away from a bad relationship. But then two weeks later, her body was found, and though Nick had given up his work as a forensic profiler upon moving to Idaho, he found himself lured back in. He ended up devoting more than six years of his life to the Stillwater cases before stepping down for good. The whole thing, the hours and minutes and days, had left him fatigued to the bone. But he’d never divulged to anyone, not even Cate, the real reason why he’d quit.