CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tuesday, June 20
12:50 p.m.
Maggie and Vic met his partner in a little subdivision in Kalispell and divvied up the missing hikers. They would talk to the families and see what they could find out. Tucker seemed unsteady for the first time since she’d met him, his face too pale, his mouth tight and not even attempting a smile.
While Vic looked over the addresses, she shifted closer. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” He looked back at the house at the end of the street—the one belonging to Lauren Rosario’s family. “Just never gets easier, you know? Local Feds handled having her parents identify the body—she’s definitely wearing Lauren’s clothing—and providing DNA samples to verify, but they’re still in shock and just starting to grieve.” His mouth tightened. “She’s got three little brothers—youngest is ten. She went to school in town, was engaged to a local guy—another one of the missing hikers, Joshua Conlon. Things were kind of rocky there, though her family didn’t want to come out and say it. She was just a normal twenty-three-year-old. Knowing she’s dead, let alone that she went out like that . . .” He shook his head. “Not right.”
“We’ll get her justice.” Vic spoke without looking up.
“Doesn’t bring her back, does it? Doesn’t make it so her parents never lost a child or those boys never lost their big sister. Justice is a sad substitute for a loved one.” Tucker gave himself a shake and turned a surprisingly steady smile on Maggie. “I’m fine. This shit just messes with my head, but I’ll be back to my charming self before you know it. Which ones are you taking?”
“Madison and the brothers.”
Tucker nodded. “Works for me. Ashleigh Marcinko’s family lives a ways out of town, so it’ll be a jaunt to get to them.” He hesitated. “At least there’s some hope for the others.” He said it like he didn’t quite believe it.
That was fine. She wasn’t sure anyone quite believed that those kids would make it out alive at this point. It didn’t matter. They couldn’t afford to doubt. Until they saw bodies, they had to operate like there was hope.
She flipped through the information while they drove to the house Madison Garcia grew up in. Tucker had added to the file since yesterday. The Hispanic girl—woman, really, since she was old enough to drink—had graduated valedictorian from high school and immediately moved to Seattle. She’d finished college at SPU with minimal student loans and worked her way up from an unpaid internship to a pretty decent job with excellent employment benefits. For all accounts, she lived a relatively quiet life in the city with her best friend—Ashleigh—and stayed out of trouble. “Nothing popping here.”
“That’s because it’s focusing on the now, not whatever it is that links her to the unsub.” Vic took a turn, bringing them off the beaten track to a row of tiny houses.
They were old and shabby, but obviously well loved in spite of that. There was a bright box of flowers in the window of the home they pulled up in front of, and Maggie had the sudden urge to beg Vic to stay in the car and keep driving. “I don’t want to be the one who breaks the news to them.”
“There isn’t any news yet. Madison’s party of hikers has gone missing, and we’re looking at any helpful information we can find.”
She turned to him. “You’re not going to tell them about the unsub?”
“What good would it do? They’re going to panic.” He shut off the engine. “We need information—something they’re less likely to give us if they’re worried about their daughter being murdered.”
“Their daughter is in danger of being murdered.”
“Which is why we need the information.” The expression on his face held none of the warmth she’d become accustomed to seeing. “Can you handle this? Or do you want me to drop you with the high school teachers to see what they have to say?”
She started to snap back but forced herself to stop and think. She was angry and frustrated and wanted to shred something, but she wasn’t in danger of breaking. “I’m fine. Or as fine as I can be given the circumstances.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I am.” She wanted to be there, both for the missing hikers and for him. She wouldn’t falter again. She wouldn’t let herself. Maggie climbed out of the car before she could talk herself out of it and started for the door.
Vic caught up before she hit the front porch. “I’ll take lead.”
“Of course.” She would have thought that went without saying. She was just a park ranger. He was the FBI agent. “I’ll keep my mouth shut and observe.”
He nodded, but she could tell his mind was already on the people who lived in the house in front of them. Maggie tried to look over it with a critical eye, but she kept coming back to the flower box. No matter the state of the house, those flowers represented a kind of hope that came from making the best of any situation. Happy people decorated their homes with flowers and put in the work to keep them alive. She turned and looked back down the short walkway. The grass in the yard was sparse but well maintained, and someone had taken the time to sweep the dirt from the walkway into the street.
Happy. Definitely happy.
Only one way to tell for sure, and that meant knocking on the door and throwing a bucketful of bad news onto these people.
Vic knocked before she could think better of it, which was just as well. The woman who answered was pretty in a very down-home sort of way. She wore jeans that were broken in and a button-up cotton shirt that covered her from neck to wrists. Her thick dark hair was pulled back into a low ponytail that spoke of something done on the fly to keep it from her face while she worked.
She looked just like her daughter.
They had the same strong jaw, direct brown eyes, and warm brown skin, and there was a level of confidence in the way they held themselves. Madison is going to need that confidence and a whole hell of a lot of strength to get through this.
The woman frowned. “Something I can help you with?”
“Mrs. Garcia?”
“Yes.” Worry appeared on her face for the first time. “It’s not Peter, is it?”
Vic didn’t hesitate. “As far as I can tell, your husband is just fine.”
“Thank God.” She sagged against the door frame. “That last heart attack took more years off my life than it did his, and do you think he slowed down a hair?” Maggie saw the exact moment the truth hit. Ruth Garcia shot straight. “If you’re not here because of Peter, you’re here because of Madison.”
Maggie stepped forward, bringing the woman’s attention to her. “Can we talk inside?”
“Yes, of course. I’m being a terrible hostess.” She stepped back in, her gaze jumping between them. This wasn’t the type of woman to panic unnecessarily, but they were here because of her only daughter—her only child. There was a level of fear there that nothing they could say would fix.
And they were about to make it a whole hell of a lot worse.
She led them into a small living room with a well-loved recliner and sofa that had been re-covered in a cheery floral print sometime in the last few years. “Now, please tell me what’s going on.”
“Madison went hiking with a group of friends a few days ago. Did she tell you what her plans were?”
“Sure.” The wariness didn’t leave Ruth’s eyes. “They drove up through Canada, because Madison and Ethan wanted to start the trip with the ferry ride. They were planning on going down through Many Glacier to hike their favorite loop. I told her to keep her phone on, but ever since she moved to Seattle after high school, she likes to disconnect as much as possible when she’s in the park.”
“Madison and Ethan Conlon planned the trip?”
Ruth nodded, a small smile pulling at the edges of her lips. “Never would have guessed on things falling out like that. He’s always been such a quiet boy, and he dated one of Madison’s friends in high school—Lauren—but they somehow ran into each other about a year back.”
Vic leaned forward. “They’re dating.”
“It’s not ‘official.’” She made air quotes with her fingers. “Madison is determined not to rush into anything, and he seems to be on the same page, but all this talk of official and not official is silly to me. Life is too short, you know?”
“Yes.”
And life had already been cut short for one of their friends. The same friend who had dated Ethan in high school. Maggie shot Vic a look, and he gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Were Ethan and Lauren serious when they were teenagers?”
“As serious as anyone is at that age, I suppose.” She shrugged. “It’s a small high school, and most of the kids have known one another since they started kindergarten. We don’t get much in the way of new blood around here. Everyone seemed to date everyone over the course of four years. If I’m remembering correctly, Lauren and Ethan weren’t together long after graduation, but I couldn’t tell you specifically when it ended.”
“Does Madison come back to Kalispell often so she can hike?” Maggie shot Vic a sharp glance, wondering where he was going with this line of questioning.
“She and her father have gone out once or twice in the last five years. She comes home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but no one in their right mind goes hiking out there during those months.”
“She and her father go out?” Vic asked.
“Yes, Ashleigh came back with her on those trips home to visit her parents, but that girl hates the outdoors.” She shrugged. “Whatever fight happened on that last trip, Madison hasn’t hiked with her other friends again—until now.”
She frowned at Maggie, seeming to take in her uniform for the first time. “Did something happen to her? She’s an experienced hiker. She’s been in that park in every season, and I won’t pretend that I don’t know that accidents happen, but she was prepared.” Ruth’s hands crept to her mouth, her eyes wide. “Tell me what’s going on right this instant.”
Maggie kept her mouth shut, allowing Vic to take the lead. He didn’t disappoint. He leaned forward again, his elbows on his knees, his tone easy and meant to convey support. “There’s a situation in the park, and Madison is involved.”
Ruth narrowed her eyes, and her hand dropped to her lap. “A situation. They aren’t lost, but something happened.” Anger appeared in the line of her mouth and the set of her shoulders. “It’s that little shit Joshua Conlon, isn’t it?”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because he has been nothing but trouble from the time he hit grade school. Oh, my daughter and he were friends, make no mistake, and I tolerated him because he never turned that trouble on her, but that doesn’t change the truth.” She paused but pushed on, face resolute. “He’s the reason Madison left two months early for college.”
That was news. Maggie leaned forward. “He hurt her?”
“No, nothing like that.” Ruth looked troubled. “There was a fight—a verbal one. He and Ashleigh broke up on that last trip after they graduated, and no one would confirm what exactly happened. Since he hadn’t hurt my girl, I had no reason to step in.”
“Do you know what the fight was about?” Vic asked.
“I can take a few guesses.”
When neither of them said anything, a clear invitation to elaborate, she gave a tight smile. “Ashleigh went and moved in with a brand-new boyfriend that same summer. Big step, moving in together, and Madison let it slip that Ashleigh hadn’t exactly been the best kind of girlfriend to Josh, if you get my drift.”
Meaning she’d cheated on him.
Ruth continued. “And that Josh barely waited for the girls to leave town limits before taking up with Lauren. So I firmly believe that those sins went both ways. And then there were the fights—he’s been brawling since he was old enough to walk.”
Cheating and a temper to match . . .
People had killed—and been killed—over less, though waiting well over five years to do it seemed a stretch. Stop making assumptions. What do we know for a fact?
Things changed for those kids during that last trip into Glacier—which meant that there was a good chance the triggering event had happened during the same time.
Maggie tried to process that, but her mind kept coming up against one possibility she’d never even considered before now. Surely not . . . no way is the unsub one of these missing hikers.
Except . . . what if he was?
While she was chewing that over, Vic hadn’t missed a beat. “Do you think Joshua would harm Madison or any of the others on that hike?”
“I wouldn’t put anything past him.” She sighed. “But I’m biased, I suppose. Ethan isn’t so bad, but Josh and the rest of his family have been no friend to mine over the years. That boy is made in the image of his father—and I believe they both have a bit of a drinking problem. Mark Conlon has gotten into it with my Peter more than a few times over the years down at the bar.” She sighed. “And, to be honest, it’s hard not to blame Josh instead of Ashleigh for my Madison leaving Kalispell like the hounds of hell were on her heels.” She seemed to realize what that sounded like, because she straightened. “We are proud of our girl. I went to college, but I stuck close to home. She got an opportunity, and even if that meant she was leaving for a few years, that was worth it for her to be happy. Her daddy and I are proud of her.”
“You have every reason to be proud,” Maggie said, but her mind was still circling the revelation that things hadn’t been completely friendly among friends. She’d caught some of that tension that first day when she’d met them, but she hadn’t put much thought into it. Get enough people together, and having no tension was the surprise.
But tension was different from being actually afraid of a person.
If Madison really was that afraid of Joshua Conlon, why would she come back and agree to go on a multiday hike with him? For that matter, why would Ashleigh, who had apparently cheated on him? Not to mention the strangeness of adding Lauren to the mix. It was possible that everyone had gotten over whatever broke up those two relationships in high school, but it was equally possible that someone was harboring the kind of jealousy and rage that could potentially evolve into murder.
But there was murder, and then there was this.
If Vic had made the jump with her, he gave no indication for Ruth to pick up on. “Madison and the other members of her hiking party are missing. The circumstances surrounding why that’s the case are murky at this point, but it appears that they set off in different directions unexpectedly.” He held up a hand when Ruth would have spoken. “Search and rescue is already working the area and tracking them. The storm is going to complicate matters, but they’re doing the best they can.”
“It doesn’t make sense.” She shook her head. “Madison has been hunting since she could walk. She knows that park as well as any of you ranger folk do, no disrespect. I don’t see how she could possibly be lost.”
Maggie understood that Vic didn’t want to advertise that not only were the hikers lost but they were being hunted, but she could handle this aspect. “I’ve worked in Glacier for seven years now, and even though I know parts of it like the back of my hand, there are times when things happen beyond my control. It’s more likely than you’d think.”
Ruth stared at her hands. “It could very well be that she’s not lost but that she’s ended up in a spot where she has to take an alternate route back to the nearest ranger station.”
It became readily apparent that this woman wouldn’t believe that anything truly bad could put her daughter at a disadvantage. Maggie and Vic shared a look, and then he changed tactics. “Tell me about Madison’s forestry skills. You said she spent a lot of time hunting?”
“Her and her daddy went out every year.” Pride crept into her tone, though she still didn’t look up. “She’s good with a rifle—a crack shot, really—and he taught her bow hunting when she was in high school to give her a bit of a challenge.”
Bow hunting. Maggie straightened. “She as good with a bow as she was with a rifle?”
“Lord, no. She said she didn’t like the feel of it, so that only lasted a year.” Ruth shrugged. “She promised my husband they’d go out again next year, said she’d have more time now that she’s not in school anymore. She’s even considering moving home if things get serious with her and Ethan.” Her lower lip quivered. “Madison and her daddy would go out for a solid week and camp. She’s more than capable of feeding and defending herself and anyone else she’s with in a pinch.”
If she was capable of all that, she was more than capable of potentially evading the unsub for long enough that SAR could find her.
Unfortunately, it meant she was more than capable of being the unsub, too.
Tuesday, June 20
1:34 p.m.
They didn’t get anything else out of Ruth Garcia, though she promised to call if she thought of something that might be helpful. Vic didn’t expect her to. She was worried about her daughter, and rightfully so. But the line of questioning had opened up something he’d had eating away at the back of his mind. It was possible that the unsub was some heretofore undiscovered person who happened to have a connection with the missing hikers, and that he had infiltrated the park by hiking in off the grid . . . but it was also possible that the unsub had walked into Glacier in the most blatant way possible.
Hiding in plain sight.
They didn’t have evidence to back it up. At this point, it was barely a hunch. But he’d keep the potential in mind going forward, because it would complicate things to an infinite degree—and it would mean that any of the hikers they recovered alive couldn’t be trusted.
He drove to the Conlon house in silence, and though he could see Maggie practically brimming with questions, she kept them to herself. Joshua and Ethan Conlon had grown up about a mile from Madison, but in a significantly nicer neighborhood. It was solid middle class, though the houses were a good thirty years old and starting to show wear and tear. The driveway was pitted—a combination of not being sealed correctly when it was put in and the harsh Montana winters—and the yard was slightly overgrown. It might be a larger house than the one they’d just left, but the Garcia place was a home, and this was just a structure that housed people.
He’d learned to tell the difference over the years.
The man who opened the door was balding, a little red around the face from a life spent drinking, and dressed in jeans and a faded shirt beneath the flannel that seemed to be ever present in this area of the world. Since he’d experienced firsthand how cold Montana nights got, even in June, Vic understood.
“I don’t need to buy anything, and I already found Jesus.” He started to shut the door.
“Mr. Conlon?”
Watery blue eyes blinked at him, as if taking him in for the first time. “You the five-oh?”
Vic registered Maggie sliding a little farther behind him. He almost turned and looked at her, but there was something about the man that was setting off all sorts of alarm bells. Though he’d played coy with Mrs. Garcia, doing so with this man might get him drawn on. “Your sons, Ethan and Joshua, went on a camping trip a few days ago. Something went amiss, and they’re currently missing.”
Conlon didn’t relax. “They’re big boys, and they know their way around these parts. They’ll be fine.”
Vic waited, but there didn’t seem to be more coming. He affected a casual stance. “You don’t seem that worried.”
“Why would I be? When those boys were growing up, they’d spend half the summers out in the forests, living like little savages. Didn’t stop when they graduated, either. They spent last summer at some survival-camp shit in Colorado. There ain’t nothing Glacier can throw at them that they haven’t seen before. You tell them to call their old man when they finally show up, you hear?”
“You happen to know anyone by the names of Bill and Jennifer Haglund?” He brought them up on a whim. Mrs. Garcia hadn’t recognized the names other than being vaguely familiar, but if they could pin down the connection between the Haglunds and the missing kids, they might start to get somewhere.
He was still surprised when Conlon’s eyes narrowed. “What are you wanting with my nephew and his wife?”
“Bill Haglund is your nephew.”
Even though he didn’t phrase it as a question, Conlon still answered. “My sister’s kid. He grew up a couple blocks over. Answer the fucking question.”
There was no way around it—and it’d be public knowledge shortly. The local sheriff had already sent his folk to talk to the victims’ parents, so Conlon would hear before too long as it was. “Bill and Jennifer Haglund were killed over the weekend in Glacier.”
Vic didn’t get another word out before Conlon shut the door in his face. He blinked, surprised for the second time in as many minutes. He’d expected the man to curse at him or threaten him or maybe even show a glimmer of humanity. Apparently that was hoping for too much. “Well—”
“Not here.” Maggie grabbed his hand and towed him down the walkway to the rental. It wasn’t until they were pulling away from the house that she relaxed.
Another surprise. He kept his tone even and his eyes on the road, wanting to put her at ease even though he needed answers. “Want to tell me what that was about?”
“There’s a group of locals who have this whole conspiracy theory that park rangers are out to get them. We’re the ultimate buzzkill, because we expect them to actually follow the laws. I didn’t put it together, which I should have, but Mark Conlon is one of the biggest loudmouths in the area. He hates us—hates us even more because Wyatt dumped his brother in jail when they caught him poaching.”
It made sense that she wanted to minimize any chance of the guy throwing a huge bitch fit, but that didn’t cover the fact that there’d been fear in her eyes just then. “There’s more.”
She gave a half smile. “Isn’t there always? He made some threats—some pretty serious threats. I don’t think he’ll go out of his way to come into the park to carry them out, but I wouldn’t put it past him when I’m standing on his doorstep.”
“I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you.” He knew exactly how ineffectual the words were, and he still said them because they were the damn truth.
“If he and his brothers get together, you wouldn’t have much choice.” She shook her head. “It’s neither here nor there. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before we went in there. I was letting you take the lead, but I still should have given you a heads-up. He didn’t bother to recognize the uniform, or pretended he didn’t because you were there. But you add in the information he passed us—along with the talk with Ruth Garcia—and we’re looking at a picture much different than we thought.”
“I think I underestimated how many people in this town have the ability to walk into the woods and not come out again for weeks—and how interconnected the relationships would be.” Bill Haglund was cousin to the Conlon twins. Another connection, though Vic still held to his original theory that the man and his wife had been at the wrong place at the wrong time. It seemed absurd that his being related to the Conlon twins had no bearing on his and his wife’s deaths, though, so Vic wasn’t prepared to discount the possibility that he was wrong.
He’d been wrong before.
If Mark Conlon had been anyone else, he would have questioned further. As it was, Vic couldn’t even begin to guess if the man’s attitude was because he was hiding something or just a general distrust for the government.
“There’s a difference between hunting recreationally—and using it as an excuse to leave life behind and spend a few days drunk off your ass—and what we’re talking about with the Conlon twins and Madison. Most locals can hunt, but it’s more of a conditional thing. They get up early, they head out to the stands they have set up, and they spend the day out there. Not everyone takes it to the lengths where you’re becoming one with the forest,” Maggie said.
That made sense. Vic tapped his finger on the steering wheel. “The unsub falls into the latter category. It’d be almost impossible to track who has those abilities if they don’t broadcast it, even with a narrowed-down population, but it’s something.”
That was the problem, though. All they had were a bunch of disconnected puzzle pieces. He knew from experience that if they managed to close the case, they’d have the gift of hindsight to put everything in its place.
There was no telling if they’d put things together fast enough to help the innocents among the missing hikers. Those kids wouldn’t realize that one of their own had potentially turned against them. They’d see a friendly face and have just enough time to experience hope before things went to hell in a handbasket.