Chapter Seven
Cooper was having a strange dream. But when were dreams typical? Unless it was one of those where you’re running late, or show up to class naked, or show up to class late and naked.
Come to think of it, he was naked in this dream. But he was in no rush to get anywhere and he was alone.
Or was he? Someone was behind him, sliding hands over his hips. Speaking quietly into his ear.
What are you afraid of?
You, Cooper admitted.
Silly, the voice chuckled, and pushed him face-first against the wall. You don’t even know me.
That’s exactly why! Cooper said with a level of excitement for this non-insight only found in dreams and daytime television dramas.
You think you know who I am, the voice continued.
Well, Cooper said, all faux modesty. I couldn’t possibly.
Who am I?
He tried to turn around, but the voice’s grip tightened on his hips, hands sharpening until it felt like his skin was being flayed from the bone. Hands that could shift just a few inches and slice into his belly to take the little he had left.
No peeking, the voice scolded, and pushed him into the wall rhythmically. Surprisingly sturdy for a non-corporeal presence, he thought. The voice pushed him so hard against the wall, again and again, that he could feel the inside of his skull vibrate.
Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.
You know who I am. The voice thrust against him.
Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.
Cooper shoved back against the voice and his eyes twitched open. His jaw was clenched shut; he must have been grinding his teeth in his sleep again. Every muscle felt stiff. That wasn’t the only thing that felt stiff.
Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.
The rhythmic vibrations sounded again, but instead of pounding inside his skull, they were coming from somewhere to his left.
Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.
Cooper grabbed his cell off the nightstand and ripped it out of the charger so he could roll onto his back. The motel clock read 6:08. Jesus.
“Dayton,” Cooper rasped into the phone and then cleared his throat.
“We found her.”
Cooper took a moment to place the voice, Chief Brown, and the “her,” Jenny Eagler. He closed his eyes. “Where?”
“Grant’s Park. Morning joggers saw her dumped in the middle of the soccer field and called it in a half hour ago. She’s on her way to Mercy Hospital in Portland.”
His eyes shot back open and he sat up. “She’s alive?”
“Yes. In bad shape, though.”
“Did she say anything?”
“Nothing coherent. They rushed her away pretty fast. I thought you and Agent Park might want to follow her to the hospital. See if you can get more.”
“Yes,” Cooper agreed. “We’ll head there directly.”
Brown sounded relieved. He didn’t blame her. With all her officers tied up in Gould’s search, the murders or home sick, little Florence was outmatched. The more she could hand over to the BSI, the better.
After hanging up, Cooper hurried next door to update Park, eager to tell him his friend was alive. He knocked on the door and waited. Nothing. He knocked again, louder.
It was a bit chilly outside for summer. Maine was no place to go running around in bare feet, boxers and a ratty school T-shirt at dawn, and he shifted impatiently in place. The light still had that peculiar early-morning blue filter to it that made everything just a little more eerie. The mist rising off the surface of the parking lot as the dew evaporated didn’t help matters.
Cooper brought his fist up to the door again.
“What are you doing?” a voice said behind him. The voice, Cooper realized even as he startled forward into the door, a crude imitation of his dream.
You know who I am.
“Park,” Cooper said, turning, and then stopped. Park was looking at him impassively in gym shorts and a T-shirt. His hair was darker than its usual brown, almost black now, wet with sweat. Park’s T-shirt and shorts, however, looked completely dry. “Where the hell were you?”
Cooper was further shocked to see Park look a little self-conscious. “I went for a run. Clear my head.”
Running before dawn? The mind boggled. “They found Jenny alive,” Cooper said. “She’s on her way to Portland.”
Park’s face was grim. “Give me two minutes.”
* * *
There’s something about hospitals in the morning that feels more relaxed, even if there’s nothing causal about your reasons for being there. The morning staff talked quietly over coffee, catching up on what they’d missed the night before. There was a sort of calm in the air of a fresh and rested shift. A tentative optimism. This might be a good day.
Cooper hated it. Always had. Because if you were in a hospital at seven in the morning, then no, it certainly was not going to be a good day. Call a spade a spade.
His dad had brought him and Dean to visit their mom in the mornings. For some reason he thought that would be better than after school. Was his mom supposed to have been more energetic in the mornings?
She wasn’t.
Were they supposed to have been less prone to nightmares if they didn’t hold her hand and feel her thin, waxy skin, like an old-fashioned sealant poured over brittle bones, directly before bedtime?
They weren’t.
Cooper shifted impatiently in the hall waiting for Eagler’s doctor. Beside him, Park stood unnaturally still, his eyes shut. Not with relaxation. They had ridden to Portland in tense silence. Was Park just upset for his friend? Or something else? Cooper wondered if he wasn’t the only one who had bad experiences with hospitals.
Park’s jaw was tight and his lips thin, creating lines in his face that weren’t there before. He hadn’t shaved that morning and the scruffiness gave him an edgier, devil-may-care look at odds with the tension in his body. His hair had long since dried into a slightly tangled and curly scramble of soft brown hair that made Cooper want to comb his fingers through it.
Park’s eyes flickered open and Cooper quickly looked away. He watched two nurses, clipboards under their arms and coffee cups in their hands, whispering and laughing. A cart with covered trays stood nearby. The smells of people’s breakfasts mixing with the cloying scent of sickness and fear was nauseating. How could anyone eat here? How could anyone smile and joke and be here?
He supposed some might think the same thing about what he did for a living. But give him dead over dying any day. At least then the pain was over. There was a clear path of what to do next. Unlike the endless waiting and feelings of uselessness that came from watching someone waste away.
Cooper would rather die quickly and violently than become trapped by his own weakness.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” A middle-aged woman with colorful glasses and a short black bob shook their hands. “I’m Dr. Lin. You’re here about Ms. Eagler?”
Cooper showed his identification. “Yes. Agent Dayton, and this is Agent Park. How is she?”
“She’ll be okay.” Cooper heard Park exhale softly at that. “She’s in shock. Bruises and abrasions. Restraint marks on her wrists and ankles. A broken collarbone and three cracked ribs. A bad case of exposure. Hypothermia. I’d say she was kept cold and damp for at least twenty hours. We also found two burn marks on the back of her neck, I’d guess from a stun gun. No signs of sexual assault.”
Cooper glanced at Park to see if he wanted to ask anything, but he wasn’t even looking at the doctor. His eyes were closed again and his expression could almost be mistaken for boredom if not for the visibly pounding pulse point in his cheek as if he was struggling to control anger.
Cooper dragged his attention back to the doctor. “When can we talk to her?”
Dr. Lin frowned. “She’s sedated now and we need to operate on that collarbone. She won’t be awake for a while. Tonight at the earliest. Preferably tomorrow.”
Shit. “We were told she was conscious when she was brought in. Do you know if she said anything?”
“I’m sorry. She wasn’t awake when we got her.”
“Thank you, doctor.”
“The clothes she was wearing when she was brought in,” Park interrupted before Dr. Lin could leave. “Could we see those?”
“She was nude. No personal effects were found.”
“That’s odd,” Cooper muttered after Dr. Lin walked away, more to himself than Park, who ignored him anyway. It wasn’t unusual for victims to be found nude, but those were generally sexual crimes. What would be the point here? A power thing? Humiliation? A forensic countermeasure? Some kind of message from the unsub?
He opened his mouth to say as much, only to find Park had wandered down the hall, trailing after Dr. Lin. Cooper hurried to catch up and then reached out to grab his arm before he could pass into the next ward.
“Hey. Hey, Park, stop.” Cooper had to dig his fingers in before Park even noticed and came to a stop. “You can’t help her in there.”
Park looked at him, and the skin under Cooper’s fingers rippled oddly, like a muscle spasm that didn’t move his arm. He let go quickly and took a step back, stumbling slightly. Park’s expression shifted to something Cooper couldn’t read, confusion or regret—whether for himself or Jenny, it wasn’t clear—before his face smoothed, back under control again.
“Yes. Of course,” Park said briskly. “Excuse me.” His overly formal tone the only indication that he was upset. That and the way he pointedly walked around Cooper, careful not to brush against him again.
They drove back to Florence in more tense silence.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t just the hospital or Jenny that had put Park in a mood. Cooper told himself he didn’t care. If Park’s feelings were still hurt from last night, then he was acting like a child. The silence gave Cooper plenty of time to think anyway. Time he desperately needed when his brain was still working on dial-up after the restless night he’d had.
There was no way Jennifer Eagler’s abduction could be connected to Gould’s, or Bornestein and Doe’s murders, for that matter. Though it was interesting that both bodies had also been stripped...but was it relevant? Was it enough to connect the cases? Probably not.
If the wolf they were looking for was a serial killer abducting people, holding and torturing them and then slicing and dicing them, Cooper would expect to see a consistent victimology. With the three first victims they had that. Men who hadn’t appeared to know each other but were all in peak physical condition. Men who could fight back and often did. Alpha males.
If the wolf they were looking for was working from a certain list of people known to him, however, a target list of people he felt had wronged him, that could explain the deviation in victimology. Could even work nicely with Sam Whittaker being their unsub, if jealousy was a motive. But then why leave Jenny alive?
Not by accident. She may have been in rough shape, but none of those injuries could be considered particularly life-threatening. Perhaps the exposure. But how could her abductor have known when she was going to be found? Come to think of it, why was she suffering hypothermia in the first place? It was Maine, but it was still summer. Sure, it was a bit chilly and wet during the night, but could one night in a soccer field do that? Maybe. Cooper wasn’t sure. And stun gun burns? Why?
Leaving her in the middle of a public soccer field was yet another unexplained deviation from pattern, though. Whoever took Jenny wanted her to be found. Depended on it, even.
Bornestein and John Doe were never supposed to be discovered, he was sure of that much. Someone had gone through the trouble of picking a secluded spot in the middle of a national forest, away from the trail, and covering up their tracks. Gould’s body had still not been found. Of course, he might not be dead. Cooper was beginning to doubt it at this point, but it was possible. And if Gould wasn’t dead, that would tie his disappearance more closely to Jenny’s.
Was it possible that Gould and Jenny were the victims of one unsub and Bornestein and Doe victims of another? Was it coincidence that Gould had disappeared from the forest where the bodies were found?
But Gould hadn’t disappeared from there, Cooper corrected himself. Sam Whittaker had allegedly seen him at the Pumphouse between one and one-thirty. Sam could have overpowered him then and there. He could have dumped the body somewhere on the way to Canada and then come back to deal with Jenny.
And what about this mystery job? Gould was supposedly stopping by on his way toward “Crazy Baker,” who lived practically in the national forest. Where did an eccentric territorial lone wolf come into all this?
Cooper felt like he was trying to make a bed with a too-small sheet. No matter which way he turned it, he couldn’t cover all the corners at once. He wanted to be able to connect all four crimes but there were just too many inconsistencies.
They drove directly to the station. There were a few more people milling around than the first day they’d arrived. Cooper wondered what that meant for the search for Gould. It was too early to call it off. But these were professionals. Three days of searching hadn’t turned up a trail. The locals knew it didn’t look good.
Park had disappeared from behind him upon entering the building, so Cooper took a moment to observe the station at work. The mood was somber, hushed tones and skeptical looks. Mostly in Cooper’s direction. The sentiment was clear. They’d expected him to do something useful by now. To be better.
A few days ago Cooper had been bemoaning never having an opportunity to really investigate anything anymore. Now he wondered if it was too late. Maybe his brain had atrophied from disuse. Maybe bounty-hunting wolves was all he could do now.
Cooper didn’t see Harris or Miller, but he recognized most of the others from the search on Sunday. It had been a mistake to join them. If they were going to find Gould, it probably wasn’t going to be through grid searches and volunteer work. There was too much ground to cover. They needed to come up with a starting point. Some clue as to where the victims were being kept before they were dumped.
Cooper fixed himself a big cup of black coffee, which subsequently peeled the roof of his mouth straight off. Someone must have just rebrewed yesterday’s sludge. His eyes were still watering when he went to find Chief Brown in her office.
“Agent Dayton. Were you able to talk to Jenny Eagler?”
“Sedated before we arrived.”
“Damn. Seat?” Brown gestured, and Dayton shook his head and then sat anyway. It made other people more comfortable to see him sitting even if he hated being still. He needed her to feel comfortable for this.
“Chief Brown, were you at the Pumphouse sometime Saturday? It’s a bar—”
“I know what it is,” Brown interrupted. “Yes, I was there ’round three, maybe. What’s this about?”
“Do you happen to know a Sam Whittaker?”
“Sure,” Brown said easily. “He was on the high school wrestling team. Good kid.”
“That was, what, five years back at least? That’s some memory you have.”
Brown grimaced and spun her chair slightly, back and forth. “This is a very small town in very white, conservative Maine, Agent Dayton. People tend to remember the skinny, gay Black kid who could flip a two-hundred-pound guy on his back. He had quite a following.”
Cooper acknowledged that. Whittaker hadn’t been exaggerating when he said he was getting too much attention on the wrestling team.
Someone moved behind him and Cooper looked over his shoulder. Park had slipped into the office and gone to stand by the wall silently. So silently that Cooper wasn’t sure he’d have noticed him come in at all if Harris wasn’t following and making a more reasonable amount of noise.
“Morning, Dayton.” Harris fit his broad frame into the empty chair beside Cooper’s. A small sigh sounded from Harris or the chair or both. “Park was just telling me you’ve come from Portland visiting Jenny Eagler. How was she?”
“Broken collarbone and hypothermia, but she’ll be okay.”
“She was lucky.”
Park said, “Was she?”
Harris flushed a little and then grimaced ruefully. “No, you’re right. Jenny didn’t deserve this.”
Brown said, “Hell, when does deserving ever have anything to do with it?”
“Chief, back to Whittaker. When was the last time you saw him?”
She frowned. “I’m not sure. It’s not like I—wait, Saturday. I saw Sam then. He works at the Pumphouse now.”
“Did you see him with anyone?”
“No. It was busy. A few large groups of people had stopped in. Bikers passing through. It doesn’t look like much, but you’d be surprised how much stop-off business the Pumphouse gets.”
No, I really wouldn’t, Cooper thought.
“Anyway, Sam was there the whole time, working like a dog.”
“And why were you there, Chief?”
She looked briefly, shockingly angry before her face shifted to mild impatience. “Taking my lunch break. What’s this about?”
You either knew about the Pumphouse or you didn’t...
Cooper stared at her carefully, but there was just no way to tell. Besides, if she was a wolf, Park would have said something. Cooper was surprised to realize he believed it.
He said, “We’re trying to establish Whittaker’s whereabouts at the time of Gould’s disappearance.”
Brown’s face closed up. Behind her glasses her eyes were cool and sharp. “What makes you think Whittaker was involved?”
“He admits to arguing with Gould at the Pumphouse shortly before you arrived. They have a long and...complicated history.”
“That’s it?” Brown said. “Gould fought with lots of people. He was an angry young man.”
“And one of those people was Whittaker.” Cooper wondered if she realized she had switched to talking about Gould in the past tense.
“Sam Whittaker is a good kid,” Brown protested.
“Whittaker has some warning flags.”
“Such as?”
Cooper struggled. This was the problem with working with the unaware. If Brown was really unaware. “How long were you at the Pumphouse?”
“I had a chicken salad. Sam Whittaker was there the whole time. He asked me how my day was going. I said, ‘Like shit.’ He said, ‘Same.’ I left around four. Any other questions?”
“Was Whittaker in sight the whole time?”
“Yes. Well, I stepped out to have a conversation with—with the owner,” Brown stuttered. “But that was for half an hour. Forty-five minutes at most.”
Cooper frowned. Forty-five minutes of unaccounted time right around the time Gould’s phone was deactivated. It wasn’t much, but...
Park was saying, “Rudi Abouesse? What did you need to talk to her about?”
“Something that’s completely unrelated to this.”
“Chief,” Harris said before Cooper could argue that nothing was unrelated. “Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to talk to Whittaker again. He could have attacked Gould and then—”
“Stashed his body somewhere on a busy scene with at least twenty witnesses and then continued waiting tables in under thirty minutes?” Brown slapped her hand on the desk. “You’re all nuts.”
“Not that nuts,” Harris said calmly. “Whittaker does have a record.”
Brown shot him a look. “How do you—It’s a closed file. Enough of that.”
Harris shrugged and smiled. “Sure, Chief. But perhaps it wouldn’t be unwise to put Whittaker on surveillance.”
Brown hesitated and Cooper could tell she was going to agree before she said so. Oddly he felt disappointed, especially since he had just fought with Park over the same thing last night. But the timeline didn’t quite add up and Cooper’s gut wasn’t convinced.
Then again, his gut wasn’t always the most reliable these days. Especially since getting shredded and reassembled.
“Miller can keep an eye on him,” Harris continued.
“Miller’s still out,” Brown muttered, exchanging a significant look with him. “If you—”
“I’m bringing the agents to Baker’s property,” Harris interrupted.
Cooper looked at him in surprise. Park had gone ahead and arranged backup? After the things he’d said last night? He tried to catch his eye, but Park was still looking straight ahead, detached and professional, with his hands crossed loosely in front of him.
“Baker? You mean Geoff Baker? What do you want up there?” Brown was saying.
“Whittaker claims Gould had been hired to do some work in that area.”
“In that area? Or for Baker? ’Cause there’s no one else living out there,” Brown said.
“Whittaker didn’t know the details. We’re hoping to get more from talking to Baker and taking a look around.”
“All three of you?” Brown said, frowning. “Expecting trouble?”
“Just not as familiar with the area as I’d be comfortable,” Park said easily.
Brown nodded. “Makes sense. In that case, take a forest officer with you as well. All sorts of geological fuckery going on in those parts—if you’re going to go poking around and don’t know the land, you could end up on the wrong end of a rock slide. Take Christie. The man can’t shut up about how impressive your tracking skills are, Park.” She grinned. “I’m sure he’d love to get you one-on-one.”
Cooper felt a flash of annoyance curiously close to jealousy. Why? Because Park was getting recognition he wasn’t? He didn’t seriously expect to be better than a wolf at tracking, did he?
Still, the feeling persisted when, walking outside, Park quickened his pace to join Christie, who was loading a pack of gear into his trunk.
“Guess that means you’re with me.” Harris smiled and Cooper could see his own frowning face in the reflection of the officer’s sunglasses.
He made the effort to smile back. “Let’s do this.”
“First...” Harris reached into his truck and pulled out a can. “Repellant. Or you’ll regret it tomorrow. Trust me.”
He shook it and quickly sprayed Cooper, and then himself. The sinus-tingling smell of bug spray settled over them and quickly triggered a headache in the closed air of the car. Even the faint jingling of a delicate gold cross and ring on a chain hanging from the rearview mirror set Cooper’s teeth on edge as they bumped up the mountain. He wished he was riding with Park, even if the wolf was ignoring him.
It was a long drive to Baker’s place, made longer by slow, twisty roads and Harris, who seemed determined to drive five under the speed limit. Cooper wondered if he was the only one jumping out of his skin. When he looked behind them, he could just make out Christie gesturing animatedly in the driver’s seat and pointing out various barns they passed. Harris had a big animal cage in his trunk that mostly obscured Cooper’s view of Park, but if Cooper squinted and twisted his neck just right, he could see Park’s brown, muscular forearm resting out the open passenger-side window. His palm was open, fingers spread. Was that the werewolf equivalent of a dog sticking his head out the window and letting his tongue flap in the breeze? Or a covert signal of exasperation regarding their twenty-mile-an-hour progression?
“Problem?” Harris interrupted.
Cooper startled. “No, just...” He cast around for something to say. “Got a dog?” he said, nodding at the cage in back.
“Used to,” Harris said shortly, clearly not distracted. “So how long have you been with the BSI, Agent Dayton?”
“Less than a year. Three years with the FBI before that,” he added. They were told to keep their talk of the BSI limited, divert attention quickly. He waited for the inevitable questions of what exactly the BSI did, but Harris didn’t ask. Cooper wasn’t sure exactly what his supervisors told the locals about their involvement. Usually that the BSI specialized in certain types of violent crimes, which was true enough. Often the locals were so grateful for the extra resources they didn’t question it too much and BSI tended to be in and out of town fairly quickly. “Officer Miller mentioned you haven’t been here in Florence long yourself.”
“Less than a year,” Harris echoed Cooper with a smile. “But twenty years on the force back in Philly.”
“Twenty?” Cooper was astonished. Why pick up and leave after that long? Why Florence? A town that didn’t really have room for his rank and experience. Why now? “So what happened?” Cooper stammered, realizing how that sounded. “I mean—”
“Why’d I embrace my inner Barney Fife?” Harris smiled.
“Hey, I come from a long line of small-town cops. I’m not knocking it.”
“Neither am I. Believe me, Agent Dayton, I found exactly what I was looking for when I transferred to Florence.”
“And what were you looking for?”
Harris braked gently at a stop sign and paused a moment too long for the deserted road. He touched the tinkling gold chain hanging from the mirror reverently and cleared his throat. “I lost my daughter a little over a year ago. Her...killer got away.”
“I’m sorry,” Cooper murmured, fumbling with the sudden change in direction.
Harris nodded and continued to drive. “It was always hard, of course, when the system I dedicated my life to wasn’t enough. But I just couldn’t do it anymore. Not after Al—” Harris’s voice choked a bit on the name, thick with emotion. “With, ah, my daughter. Not while the monster that took her from me was still out there. I wanted speeding tickets and property disputes. Good people having a bad day, or bad people having good days. Either way, people. In Florence I wouldn’t have to feel powerless against the evil that took away my baby girl. Or, I thought I wouldn’t, anyway.”
Cooper acknowledged that with a grimace and they slipped into silence. The car crawled up the mountain road. He watched Christie and Park in the mirror again.
Harris had picked a hell of a town to get away from monsters. Smack-dab in the middle of Route 66 of werewolves. Not that it sounded like there was a lot of trouble round here. Not until now.
Park’s hand clenched and tapped against the side of the car. Definitely exasperation. Cooper smiled.
“How long have you been working with your partner?” Harris said, and Cooper straightened in his seat.
“This is our first case together, actually.” Should he have admitted that? Would that decrease the department’s faith in them knowing what the hell they were doing?
Harris didn’t look surprised or worried, though. He scratched the faded blond fuzz of his buzz cut. “Hell of a case to get acquainted on.”
“They all are.” A stock answer. But what Harris said was true. This one felt weirder. Disjointed. Something about the stun gun burns on Jenny Eagler kept niggling at Cooper’s brain. It didn’t fit with the typical wolf cases BSI worked.
But Eagler’s abduction wasn’t connected. Right?
Still. Her abduction was one hell of a coincidence.
Cooper asked, “Ever have any trouble with Baker?”
“Nope. From what I understand he was a real loner type. I never met him. He never came down to town. Self-sustained up here.” Harris threw up air quotes around self-sustained and sounded vaguely disgusted.
“You’re a hunter yourself, aren’t you?”
“I took it up after moving here. Bornestein was helping me.” Harris’s smile became a bit wistful. “Poor kid.”
“That reminds me, did you find anything on Bornestein’s computer?”
Harris blinked. “Computer?”
“Didn’t you take a computer into evidence?”
“We didn’t find a computer at Kyle’s.”
Cooper frowned. “My mistake,” he said slowly. “Did Bornestein ever mention Baker? Or maybe hunting up around here?”
“No. Too dangerous.”
Cooper looked at him in surprise.
“The ground. It’s all drop-offs, caverns and unstable earth.” Harris smiled at him. “You’ll want to watch your step, Agent Dayton.”
It was high noon by the time they turned down Baker’s long driveway, but you couldn’t tell from looking around. Huge pine trees lined the dirt road, obliterating the sky and sun. It was at least ten degrees cooler here, too. Cooper wondered if they’d gained more elevation than he’d realized. Everything about the area was disorienting, as if he’d fallen asleep in the car and woken up at a different hour in a different season. Almost as soon as they’d turned down the driveway he’d lost sight of the main road. Baker definitely had the isolated part of crazy, isolated loner down.
Cooper thought of what Whittaker had said about an adult male wolf passing by his territory being perceived as a threat. Park hadn’t seemed concerned last night. But now they had two human witnesses who had no idea what was going on behind the scenes. Would that force Baker to step back? Or would it just add to his feeling threatened?
“Can we pull over here?” Cooper asked.
“See something?”
“No, just, from what I’ve heard about Baker, he might be the type to spook if the four of us drive up to his front door.”
Harris shrugged and pulled slowly to the side of the driveway, the car tilting a bit in the pine needles of the soft ditch. They got out as Christie’s pickup pulled in behind them.
“What’s up?” Christie said, hopping out of the driver’s seat.
“Agent Dayton thinks we should walk it.”
“I don’t want Baker to get ideas,” Cooper offered, looking to Park for an opinion. But Park had already started down the long driveway and was peering avidly at the trees, looking for all the world like a tourist on a nature tour except for a slightly increased rise and fall of his chest. Sniffing the area, Cooper realized.
“Are we going to approach through the woods?” Christie asked a little excitedly. “I brought my pack of gear.”
“Uh, driveway should be fine,” Cooper said, already regretting his decision to stop. “I was hoping to make this look less like an ambush.” Christie’s face returned to its usual scowl.
Harris laughed, slapping Christie on the back. “We’ll find a reason to use your carabiners someday.”
Cooper jogged to catch up to Park. “Hey.”
Park nodded in acknowledgment but veered a little to the right, as if to put more distance between them. Cooper chose to ignore it along with the tightening in his chest. He walked closer to Park. “So you weren’t kidding when you said there was nothing out by Baker’s.”
Park grunted and walked a bit faster. Cooper bit his tongue in annoyance.
“Hey. Park. Hey.” Cooper sped up and grabbed Park’s arm, forcing the wolf, his partner, to face him.
Park stare was cool, though he didn’t go as far as to shake off Cooper’s grasp.
There was no weird rippling this time, but Cooper could feel the substantial muscles of Park’s arm tensing under his fingers. He was too annoyed to be intimidated. “Are you serious right now? You’re running away from me because, what, I hurt your feelings last night?”
Something in Park’s amaretto eyes flickered. Not a glimmer of the primal wolf like he’d seen in the bar, but something soft and uncertain that landed like a kick to his throat.
Cooper continued and his voice was a little gruff. He wasn’t good at apologizing. People in his family usually just fought and started speaking again when they needed something, grudges carefully filed away to resume later. “What I said yesterday, about wol—locals being scared of you and the other thing, it was, ah—I shouldn’t—look, I don’t know why I said it,” he lied.
Park took this in silently and Cooper thought he was going to ignore him. So much for apologies. He shouldn’t have brought it up at all.
Then Park abruptly said, “Do I scare you?”
Cooper frowned. “What...?” Then he understood. “You mean because I—” Flinched, jerked away, stumbled over himself pulling away this morning, insisted on backup that Park went ahead and arranged despite not wanting to. “Is that why you’re avoiding me?” His voice was incredulous. “You think I’m...” He trailed off, unwilling to use the word afraid.
Park blinked once, slowly, waiting.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I—” This next part felt harder to say than anything else so far. Cooper realized he was tugging and twisting his own shirt over his scars and stopped, shoving his hands under his armpits. He kicked a little rock in the dirt road between them and watched it roll rather than look at Park. “That shit has nothing to do with you. Nothing. Okay? And I got to say, it’s pretty self-centered of you to assume it is. So does that soothe your big, fragile feelings?”
“Wow,” Park said after a long minute. His voice was dryly amused and when Cooper looked up his expression was warmer, gentler than before, in a way that was hard for Cooper to see. “You really know how to butter a guy up, Dayton.”
“Oh, get over yourself. It wasn’t that big a deal. What are you expecting, that I get on my knees and beg?”
Park tilted his head. Now the look in his eyes was not soft at all. They flicked down to Cooper’s mouth and then back up.
Cooper didn’t breathe. Had he...?
Harris called from farther down the drive. “Everything okay up there?”
The moment, if there had been a moment, was broken. Park looked away and gave Harris a thumbs-up over Cooper’s shoulder. He said, “I’m not running away from you because my feelings are hurt, Agent Dayton. I’m running away because you smell like you bathed in bug spray and it’s destroying any chance I have of picking up anything useful.” He paused. “And I know that you want me to be more useful.” The dig felt oddly comfortable. Not cold, almost playful. Teasing.
Park continued down the driveway.
Well. It could have gone worse.
Cooper took a few deep breaths and then followed, leaving a slightly larger distance between them. “Let’s say Gould wasn’t lured here to work for Baker—what else could he have been out here for?”
Park scanned the woods. “No one else lives up here. It’s mostly cliff face. The ground’s solid rock. Christie was telling me that this part of the forest was mostly for climbers and rock hounds but rarely used by hikers. The only trail head’s been closed for years. Too rocky.”
“What are you saying? That he was up here on a Forest Service job?”
“Or he thought he was. Christie said Gould could be a bit—” Park tapped his own temple “—jump-first, ask-never.”
“Really?”
“Well, Christie didn’t put it quite that way, but yeah. He said Gould was impulsive. Didn’t think ahead. Didn’t think of much at all besides himself and his bike, according to Christie.”
Christie said, Christie said. “Well, isn’t Christie a spring of information today,” Cooper said, feeling testy. Why hadn’t any of this come up before?
He looked over his shoulder at the men following twenty feet back. Christie didn’t look like the guy who had been flapping his hands excitedly in the rearview window or someone who had gossiped the ride away. He was frowning yet again, his angular face twisted with suspicion or nerves, and he kept glancing around the woods at either side of the driveway.
He was also younger than Cooper had first thought. Skinny and pointy-looking, his auburn hair flopped messily over his face, his disarmingly blue eyes never seemed to stay focused on one thing for very long. Not bad-looking. Not Cooper’s type. But maybe he was Park’s.
Maybe it wasn’t any of Cooper’s business.
“I’m surprised you got him talking. He seems so—” Cooper made an exaggerated scowl.
“He’s an interesting guy.”
“Oh?”
“Mmm.” Park paused. “He also admitted to seeing Whittaker visit Gould at work fairly often.”
Cooper stopped walking for a moment and then trotted to catch up with Park. He kept his voice low and said, “Why didn’t he tell us that before?”
“Claims he didn’t think it was important. Said Whittaker and Robbie would hang out on the trails after work a lot because they didn’t want Gould’s mom to find out.”
Cooper’s eyebrows popped up. “So they were fucking.”
“Is that what hanging out in the woods means to you?”
“When I was their age? Hell yeah.”
“And now?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Park gave him an odd look. “I asked Christie about it and he said no, they weren’t romantically involved. Just friends.”
Romantically involved. How sweet. “Would Christie necessarily notice if they were, though?”
“Yes. Definitely,” Park said immediately.
Cooper chewed on that. “No. Wait.”
“Yes, I think so.” Park sounded pleased Cooper had caught up so quickly. “Christie has a bit of a thing for Whittaker. It made him very observant of the two of them. It also made him feel protective of Whittaker. So when we asked about friends of Gould’s—”
“He lied to keep him out of it, and then tried to be the one to tell Whittaker himself, break the news gently. Idiot.”
Park didn’t disagree.
“I ought to book him for obstructing an investigation right now. Where was Christie when Gould went missing?”
“Using his lunch hour to go to a meeting. Why?”
“Just wondering if someone so observant of our main suspect might have seen more than he’s letting on. What kind of meetings do rangers have during lunch?”
“He’s observant, not a stalker,” Park said. “And not a work meeting. AA.”
“Huh. How candid of him. Is there anything you didn’t talk about?”
Park’s smile seemed a little thin. “Some people like to tell me things.”
“I’ve noticed.” Not to mention he always found himself talking more than he planned to around Park. “I’m surprised you told me all this.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s not doing Whittaker any favors, is it?”
“This again?” Park sounded pissed. “You still think I’d lie to protect a killer?”
“But you don’t think Whittaker is the killer, do you? Like Christie, you might think you’re lying to protect a kid caught up in a mess.”
“And you really think he’s our number one suspect?”
Cooper avoided that. “Harris does.”
“Harris just learned about Whittaker an hour ago. He doesn’t count. What do you think?”
“I think I want to see what Baker has to say about Gould being on his property the day he disappeared.”
Park scoffed, “Baker. I don’t see it.”
“You don’t want to believe anyone you know, no matter how distantly, is involved in this. You’re too damn close to it, Park.”
To his credit, Park appeared to seriously consider that. “Maybe you’re right. But you’re too close to it, too. Not in the same way. Not because you grew up around these people, but because you’ve already written the story out in your mind, and now you’re just looking to cast roles.”
Cooper shook his head. He felt...agitated. Park didn’t know what he was talking about. Cooper kept an open mind. His mind might even be considered too open, recently...
Almost without meaning to, Cooper said, “Miller didn’t come in to work today again.”
Park made a small huffing sound. “I don’t think he’s going to get that promotion he’s angling for.”
“What do you think of him? Miller.”
“What do you mean?”
Cooper wasn’t sure what he meant. He just thought it was odd he was the only one who seemed to find Miller’s timing, well, odd. And he couldn’t stop coming back to those stun gun burns or the look on Miller’s face as Eagler spoke to Park. But it was a serious jump from funny feelings to accusing a fellow officer of...what?
It wouldn’t be an accusation, though, would it, to float it past Park? It would be partners—temporary, experimental partners—bouncing ideas around. Which was fine. Expected, even. And it would show Park he wasn’t here to just play pin-the-tail-on-the-wolf.
Unless Park put it in his report. Between inappropriately staring at my lips and lashing out for no reason, Agent Dayton accused a local officer of abduction and assault, conclusively proving himself unfit for duty and his paranoia out of control.
Christ.
It really depended on whether or not he trusted Park.
“Dayton? Is there a problem?”
“No, forget it. I—I was just wondering, is this going to be a problem? Us coming onto Baker’s territory unannounced and you, uh, that thing Whittaker was saying?”
“You mean me being a huge, adult alpha wolf marching down the door of a territorial recluse with three armed men? What could possibly be the problem with that?”
Cooper swallowed. He brushed his hand reassuringly over his weapons firmly secured at his waist, gun and Taser. Whittaker had complained about him being decked out in weapons, but it was standard procedure for BSI. More and more LEOs were carrying both, too. Well, not Tasers modified to take down wolves. But normal ones.
Would Baker see it as standard? Or a threat?
“Will walking up help? I thought it might be less aggressive than if we drove right up to his door.”
Park nodded ahead. “I guess we’re about to find out.”
Cooper squinted. Through the trees he could just make out the shape of...some sort of truck? Machinery? As they got closer and the house came into view, Cooper’s brows shot up. The yard was full of...everything.
A couple of old cars slouched in the grass, looking Dali-esque in their droopiness. Lawn mowers and table saws were scattered through the yard in between disassembled machines and precarious piles of parts. Long metal pipes here, a collection of rusted buckets there. Some of the machinery Cooper couldn’t identify, and after a moment he realized they weren’t machines at all. Not anymore. Towers of various metal objects were welded together to become sculptures. Either that or Baker had piled junk together in some sort of giant game of mousetrap. Some of the benches held chainsaws and other tools in various degrees of dilapidation and rust. If Cooper had to name the aesthetic, he’d say “American Psycho has a yard sale.”
There was a big tent with the flaps closed and multiple metal storage containers scattered around the house. Cooper thought of Gould trapped in one of those things and shuddered.
There was an odd stillness in the air as they approached the front door, no birds chirping or squirrels rustling, like all of nature was waiting on bated breath for what happened next. Cooper’s hand twitched to his gun nervously.
“But you’ll just flash him your Park gang sign or whatever you did in the bar and it’ll be fine,” Cooper said, belatedly realizing he sounded like he was continuing a conversation.
Park didn’t blink. “Not in front of the kids,” he said, glancing back at Harris and Christie, who were picking their away across the yard, stepping over poles and eyeing nail guns.
“Right.” Cooper suddenly felt a lot less grateful Park had gone ahead and requested the backup Cooper had wanted.
Pull it together, Dayton.
He strode past Park to the house. It was a one-story, dark blue clapboard in much better condition than the yard. He climbed three wood steps, opened the screen and gave the door three loud bangs. “Mr. Baker? BSI. We need to ask you some questions.”
The house was silent as far as Cooper could tell. Christie and Harris waited at the bottom of the steps. Park stood beside him, eyes partially shut like he was concentrating on something. Cooper knocked again. “Mr. Baker, if you are able to, please answer your door.”
Nothing. Cooper glanced at Park, who shook his head slightly.
“Should we check the back?” Christie said, his rough voice soft.
Cooper agreed. “Christie, with me around the left. Harris, Park, take the right?”
Park was already heading down the stairs, which didn’t so much as creak under his weight. Harris followed close behind. Christie and Cooper walked quietly around the house, carefully navigating through a mine field of junk and the occasional crevice where the earth simply gave way.
“Jesus,” Cooper muttered, nearly tripping over another rock hole.
“Watch your step,” Christie said uselessly. “We’re on the mountain face here. Lots of loose rock.” His long legs carried him to the back of the house first and he peered around the corner. “Huh,” he muttered, and his hand went to his weapon. Cooper quickly followed suit.
“Visual on Baker?” Cooper asked.
“No,” Christie said. “Just...” He nodded for Cooper to step around him and take a look. Cooper felt a tensing in his shoulders as he eyed Christie, who eyed him right back with his icy blue stare. Cooper slowly stepped around him.
The back door was wide open, hinges squeaking softly in the slight mountain breeze. Leaning up against the house was a ’97 Yamaha, gold paint dull in the shade.