It was nearly two in the morning when Savanna walked down the alley that led to the detached garage of Dorothy’s rental house. She wore black jeans, a black top and a black beanie she’d bought at a twenty-four-hour Walmart. The goal was to blend in, go unnoticed, but no one else was out. The neighborhood remained quiet and dark, with only a sliver of moon grinning above the treetops.
Off in the distance, a dog barked. Savanna wasn’t sure what she’d do if she happened to set off a dog who was much closer...
There was nothing she could do, she decided, except take the pictures and get out before Dorothy and the neighbors reacted to the noise.
Fortunately, she didn’t encounter a dog. She reached the small one-car garage without incident, and she didn’t have any trouble getting into it, as she’d feared she might. Dorothy hadn’t even bothered to lower the door. Or maybe it was broken. The house and garage Dorothy rented were built in the 1930s, and nothing under her stewardship was in particularly good shape. That was one of the things Gordon had always complained about. He’d often called his mother a slob and recounted stomach-turning incidents of foraging among pots and pans filled with food that’d been left out for days in order to get enough to eat as a child.
Savanna wasn’t looking forward to searching the house, partially for that reason. But she was going to do what she could while she was here. Gordon’s taunting smile had made a lasting impression. She thought of that, pictured it, whenever fear threatened to stop her. She had to make sure he didn’t get away with what he’d done. He believed she was powerless, had mistaken her inherent kindness for weakness. But she’d show him she had far more grit and determination than he’d ever given her credit for.
At least, she hoped she’d be able to show him that. It would depend on what she found here tonight, and tomorrow when she returned to look through Dorothy’s house.
Once she stepped inside the garage, Savanna used the flashlight on her phone to walk around and inspect Dorothy’s Toyota Celica. Sure enough, evidence of the accident with Gavin’s truck was still there. Dorothy or someone else had pulled off the front bumper—or it had fallen off—but the damage was mostly to the right front panel, where Savanna would expect to see it if that same car had been used to hit Emma Ventnor’s car.
“Did you hit Gavin’s truck on purpose, Dorothy?” Savanna whispered. “And, if you did, did you do enough to camouflage that earlier accident?”
Savanna prayed she hadn’t. This could be the only hope of justice for Meredith Caine, Theresa Spinnaker, Jeannie West, Emma Ventnor and who could say how many others.
Savanna’s heart raced as she took several pictures. She was tempted to send them to Sullivan right away. But she wasn’t sure they’d make a difference, and she held off in case he tried to stop her. She didn’t want him to know what she was doing until she’d also searched the house.
Since Gordon could have stuck something above the rafters or in one of the old, warped cupboards along the right side, she decided to stay and search the garage instead of waiting until tomorrow for that, too. She knew she might not have a better opportunity. The opening faced the neighbor’s backyard, and that neighbor could have kids or animals who would be out during the day. The longer she stayed, the more she ran the risk that the neighbor might get up to go to the bathroom and see her light bouncing around. To avoid that, she checked the garage door situation, found there was no electric opener attached and she could close it manually.
Apparently, it wasn’t broken. Dorothy had just been too lazy or unconcerned to lower it the last time she’d driven her car, probably because she didn’t have anything to protect. There were no bikes or tools in her garage or anything like that. Even her car wasn’t worth much.
Once Savanna had the privacy to use her flashlight without fear that it might be spotted, she pulled on the gloves she’d also purchased at Walmart and looked through the car.
She found nothing unusual. Cigarette butts and smashed cigarette cartons, empty coffee cups, food wrappers. There was a letter from Gordon on the floorboards of the passenger seat that Savanna took a few minutes to read, but it didn’t give away anything important. Gordon would know better than that, since all prison mail was monitored. He was merely telling his mother that he needed more money, that his cellmate was a “dick,” that his defense was “shit” and would never work, that Savanna would come around eventually, to keep working on her (Savanna had to roll her eyes at that) and not to talk to the police at all or they’d take something she said and “make it into something it wasn’t.”
When she finished the letter, Savanna sat back in the bucket seat and tried to think. She had pictures of the accident, but what if they didn’t show anything? What if the collision with Gavin had indeed obliterated the evidence of what had come before? She needed to find something that connected him to one of the victims he couldn’t explain away, like his bloody clothes. Where would he have hidden them?
Not in the garage, she decided. If Dorothy was so complacent that she didn’t close the door, anyone could gain access to the things in here. Her house would be a safer bet. But it was so small. Savanna couldn’t imagine Gordon being stupid enough to hide anything under his bed or anywhere else his mother might easily run across it...
The basement was a strong possibility, though. Basically a dank, dark hole in the ground, lit by a single bulb dangling from the ceiling, it had to be filled with all kinds of spiders, but Savanna knew Dorothy kept some storage down there—Christmas decorations and such—because she’d seen it, had helped carry up boxes on occasion. The basement wasn’t a pleasant place to go, however, so other than grabbing something from that small pile, if she decided to decorate, Dorothy wouldn’t stay down there long. Savanna couldn’t imagine she’d ever bother to check the creepy perimeter, especially in one particular section, an area maybe eight feet by eight feet, where there wasn’t even room to stand up all the way...
If Gordon had hidden anything at Dorothy’s, he’d hide it there, Savanna decided. He’d feel it was safe in such a spot. He’d also have fairly easy access to it, which could be important to him if it was a trophy or something else he prized due to the memories attached.
That sounded plausible, but she could be looking for something that didn’t even exist. Maybe he didn’t take trophies. And maybe he’d washed his bloody clothes while his mother was at work and worn them again, or burned them in her fireplace.
Savanna closed her eyes. She was an amateur, and she was searching for a needle in a haystack. Was she being foolhardy for even trying?
Her phone vibrated in her hand.
She turned it over to see that Gavin had texted her. You’re scaring the shit out of me. Are you out yet? How’d it go?
She sent him the pictures. Then she searched the rest of the garage. It was filled with nothing but junk, stacks of old newspapers and magazines and worthless items Dorothy had collected from yard sales.
I’m out now. She sent that text to Gavin as she hurried down the alley and around the next block to where she’d left her rental car.
Did you find anything?
Nothing. Just the damage on her car. She must not have had the money for the deductible, like I said.
That may be our saving grace.
We can hope.
Are you really going back in the morning?
She got into her rental car and locked the door. I know it seems hopeless. But I have to try.
How will you know when she’s gone?
I’ll drive down the alley and look for her Celica. She leaves the garage door open, so it’s easy to tell when she’s home.
You need to get some sleep, Savanna. I know you’ve been too anxious to get much rest lately.
It’ll be another short night, she wrote. But I can’t let Gordon get away with what he’s done, not without a fight. I owe it to his victims. I owe it to my children. And I owe it to myself.
Please be careful.
She returned to the hotel she’d rented before going to Walmart. It was right next to the airport, so it wasn’t a far drive from downtown Salt Lake, where Dorothy lived. Savanna was exhausted, physically and emotionally, and yet she couldn’t seem to unwind.
She took a hot bath before climbing into bed, where she finally drifted off. But then she dreamed of getting trapped in Dorothy’s basement, of being unable to breathe, of Gordon coming down holding that knife the police found in his duffel bag, of waking up to find that she was covered in blood.
When she finally gasped awake, she interrupted a nightmare where spiders were crawling all over her bruised and battered body.
* * *
Gavin was at work when Detective Sullivan called him.
“What’s going on? Have you heard from Savanna?” he asked without preamble.
Gavin had been trying to fix the boiler in one of the dormitories. Dropping the screwdriver he held, he sat up. “She’s heading home today, as expected.”
“Where’d she go last night?”
“She drove to Salt Lake, couldn’t bear to stay in Nephi any longer.”
“She could’ve called me. Or Detective March. We’ve tried to reach her several times.”
“Maybe she thought it was pointless to tell you what you already know. She couldn’t get anything out of Gordon. Surely, you’ve listened to the recordings of her visit by now.”
“Of course. Still, we thought she’d check in, follow up.”
“She’s probably upset. This can’t be easy for her. You realize that.”
“Of course I realize it. But how hard would it be for her to give one of us a quick call?”
“She’s been through a lot. Just leave her alone,” he said. “She’ll contact you if and when she’s ready.”
“You two are seeing each other, right?” he asked before Gavin could hang up. “You’re romantically involved?”
Gavin didn’t have time for this guy’s nosiness, couldn’t imagine how his relationship with Savanna figured into anything. “What business is that of yours?”
“None,” he admitted. “But if Gordon gets out of jail, you might want to keep an eye out,” he said, and hung up.
Gavin cursed as he shoved his phone back into his pocket. Savanna had asked him not to tell the detectives what she was up to, so he was keeping his mouth shut.
But he knew he’d never forgive himself if something happened to her as a result...
* * *
Although Dorothy was gone, Savanna couldn’t be sure Gordon’s mother was at her job. Normally, Dorothy worked full-time. Had to in order to survive. But that could’ve changed. Maybe she’d been fired. Or she’d quit. She’d been far more stable in recent years than ever before, but Savanna supposed anything was possible. She could only hope that wherever Dorothy had gone, she’d stay away long enough for Savanna to get in and out of the house.
It was a hot day for mid-May. Savanna could feel sweat rolling down her back as she approached Dorothy’s house from the rear.
Dorothy’s car was gone, but three small children were playing in the fenced yard of the neighbor closest to her garage. There was also a pit bull at the house kitty-corner to Dorothy’s off the alley. But neither the kids nor the dog paid Savanna any mind. She told herself to walk confidently, as if she belonged in the area and had every right to be doing what she was doing, and that seemed to work. She arrived at the door leading into Dorothy’s tiny laundry room without incident.
The door was locked, but Dorothy had always left a key out for Gordon so he could get in if he ever stopped by when she wasn’t there. Savanna had been with Gordon once when he used it. She was relying on that key to get her in, but when she checked under the rock where Dorothy typically kept it, there wasn’t anything there.
“Shoot,” she murmured, and began to circle the house to see if she couldn’t find another way in.
She checked the front door. It was locked, too, but the weather was warm enough that Savanna found several windows open. One was in the bathroom, too small to squeeze through. Another was in the living room, where she could be seen by any car that drove by. The last was in Dorothy’s bedroom, which looked out on the neighbor’s side yard. Savanna didn’t have a lot of cover there, should that neighbor come around the corner doing yard work or whatever, but it was her best option.
Putting on her gloves, so that she wouldn’t leave any fingerprints, she tried to remove the screen and couldn’t. Finally, in desperation, she took out the pocketknife she’d bought when she got her clothes and other supplies and cut the edges.
She bent the screen back, forced the window up higher and managed to wiggle through the small hole, although she fell on the dresser and knocked off the lamp.
Fortunately, the lamp didn’t break. Savanna recovered as quickly as she could and righted everything before beginning a quick and dirty search of every drawer, closet, nook or cranny in Dorothy’s house.
Before too long, she realized she was lucky the house was so messy. Thanks to the garbage, discarded clothes and worthless knickknacks that were strewn everywhere, Dorothy would be much less likely to notice that she’d had a visitor—although she would wonder about the cut screen, if she saw it. Savanna wasn’t sure what to do about that. She thought she might use the duct tape she’d seen out in the garage to tape it shut on the outside. With Dorothy’s lack of attention to detail, and the messy house in general, she might never notice.
Savanna searched every room before approaching the door leading to the basement. She’d been hoping to find something that would make going down there unnecessary. But other than confirming that Dorothy was indeed one of the filthiest housekeepers she’d ever seen, and that her mother-in-law still had alcohol in her cupboards, Savanna had come up with nothing, other than a few more letters from Gordon. The accusations contained in some of those letters were simply ridiculous. He claimed that Savanna had wasted his money on furniture and clothes and frivolous purchases or they would’ve had more savings, that it was her idea to take out a second mortgage on the house, that she’d colluded with the police to get him out of her life so she wouldn’t have to share her inheritance. Those letters upset her, but no one else would care about them. They certainly wouldn’t keep him in jail.
She had to keep looking. And that meant...the basement.
She checked the time on her phone. She’d been at Dorothy’s for over an hour already. She’d been working as fast as possible, but leaving everything as she found it took time, and the more time she spent in this house, the more anxious she became. She was dying to get out. If she didn’t leave right away, she’d miss her flight. That meant a sizable fee—this time, one she’d have to pick up herself—another reschedule, alerting Gavin and trying to figure out what to do with the kids until she could get back.
Those concerns were almost enough to make her give up. But she knew she’d have to answer—to herself, if no one else—for not doing more while she had the chance.
Think of Emma Ventnor, and Meredith Caine, who felt you should’ve done more. Well, now you’re doing it.
She had to force the door. As old as it was, it’d been repainted so many times it no longer fit the opening properly. But she got it unstuck with a reverberated wham-am-am-am and flipped the switch at the top of the stairs.
One bulb couldn’t illuminate the darkest reaches of the damp and musty basement, couldn’t reach around the corners to reveal what might be shoved or buried there, couldn’t ease all of Savanna’s misgivings. So she used the flashlight on her phone, too.
Taking a deep breath, she started down.
The stairs creaked beneath her weight and the smell that greeted her turned her stomach. It was far worse than she remembered—bad enough to make her fear she might find more than she’d bargained for. Could Emma Ventnor’s body be down here? Other killers had buried their victims under their houses. John Wayne Gacy had done that with at least twenty-five people, if she remembered right. She’d seen a documentary on him. She’d also heard a news report years ago about an old lady in Sacramento who buried several of her boarders in her backyard and continued to collect their social security checks.
Savanna felt weak and shaky by the time she reached the bottom. Finding a body would be a good thing, she told herself. That would prove Gordon was responsible for Emma’s death. But she didn’t want to uncover something that gruesome, still wanted to believe that Emma was alive.
Stopping in the middle of the basement, she turned in a tight circle, training her light on everything around her. She’d already found Dorothy’s storage pile. It was in disarray, like all of Dorothy’s things. Savanna wasn’t going to waste her time going through that now. She feared she’d wasted too much time trying to find something upstairs.
When nothing struck her as odd or out of place, she examined the floor instead of the walls, thinking she might find evidence of the dirt having been disturbed. She saw nothing that would lead her to believe a body or anything else had been buried down here—except that sickening stench. She wished she could tell Sullivan about it, that it would get him out here with a whole team of forensics specialists. On TV, she’d seen police search the ground with some type of penetrating radar, but would reporting the smell be enough?
She had only one chance. She had to get more while she was here.
“Emma, are you down here?” Thinking of the girl as being alive and needing her help made it possible for her to swallow her revulsion and press on, into that small area where she had to stoop over because the ceiling was so low.
There the stench was far worse. She’d never smelled a decomposing body, so she couldn’t be certain, but this smell had to be similar. Was it Emma?
Her hand shook as she used her flashlight to go over the ground inch by inch. She should’ve brought a bigger flashlight, but she hadn’t wanted to carry a lot of things. She’d felt she might need to be nimble, and she’d proved that when she’d had to climb through the window. But in this small room, she couldn’t see anything that fell outside the six-inch diameter of her little flashlight, and that terrified her. A spider could drop on her at any moment, or she could accidentally step on a human hand jutting out of the ground—
Quit freaking yourself out, she admonished. There are policemen and forensics people who have to do this all the time. But the second her light hit the rotting carcass she’d smelled, she screamed and bumped her head as she jumped back, dropping her phone.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she muttered as she went to her knees. She had to get her phone, couldn’t leave it there and run. But once her hand landed on the hard plastic rectangle, she forced herself to take another look at what she’d found and realized it wasn’t a human body. It was a dead rodent, caught in a mousetrap. That was what had caused the smell.
She gripped the wall for support. She was glad she hadn’t called Sullivan to claim there was a dead body in Dorothy’s basement. She could only imagine how embarrassed she would be, not to mention the police, if they believed her and acted on that information.
I’m an idiot, she texted to Gavin.
What’s going on?
There’s nothing here. We’re totally screwed. Gordon’s getting out of jail.
At least you tried, Savanna. You did all you could. Now let someone else take any risks that need to be taken. I’m tired of worrying about you. :)
I’m leaving, she wrote back. I can’t stay another second in this creepy basement. There’s a dead rat down here.
Gross.
With a frown for her failure, and all it would mean for her and her children, Gordon’s prior victims and any future ones, she did a final sweep with her flashlight. There was no need to get caught here on top of everything else, she decided, and was just turning to go when she spotted a mound that didn’t look entirely natural. Someone could be buried there...
Surely she was wrong again. That pile of rubble was probably where the rats were nesting. If Dorothy wanted to get rid of them, she should also get rid of that, Savanna thought. And then she began to wonder why Dorothy hadn’t. There wasn’t any debris anywhere else...
Just to be thorough, she found a piece of wood lying nearby and used it to poke through the cast-off Sheetrock, wood chunks, dirt and rocks. It’s nothing, she told herself, but before she tossed that piece of wood aside, she struck something that felt different—bigger, more solid, less yielding to her probe.
What is that?
She held her flashlight closer. It wasn’t a body, but it wasn’t simply more debris, either. It was a deep blue backpack.
Why would Dorothy, a woman who never camped and hadn’t been to school in decades, have a backpack? And why would it be buried over here in the corner, where it was very unlikely to be seen?
Savanna kept looking over her shoulder as, trying not to breathe for the stench of that rat, she crept closer. She didn’t want to touch anything down here, but she was curious enough to make herself unzip the top of the backpack. And she was glad she did.
It contained three high school textbooks and several small notebooks filled with assignments. The name on those assignments was Emma Ventnor.