When All The Girls Have Gone(20)

"That would have been too easy."

Charlotte hesitated. "But there is one thing you should know."

"What?"

"If Jocelyn had attracted a stalker, there's a very real possibility that she would not have told me. She wouldn't have wanted me to worry about her."

"We need more data. With luck, we'll get something useful from Briggs."





CHAPTER 21




Egan Briggs had described the location of his cabin in considerable detail, and Max had taken careful notes. But there were no street signs this deep into the Cascades, and GPS hadn't functioned reliably since they had left the town of Loring some forty-five minutes earlier.   





 

The trees grew thick and close on either side of the narrow strip of winding pavement. The heavy foliage formed a nearly impenetrable screen, making it difficult to spot the occasional cabin or lodge tucked away in the woods. The rain wasn't helping matters, Max thought. It fell in a steady sheet on the windshield of the SUV.

He had used the heavy vehicle for the trip not because it was more impressive than his city car but because they were heading into the mountains and the weather was bad. Anson Salinas hadn't raised his sons with a lot of rules, but he had enforced the few that he set down. One of those rules was that you never went into unforgiving territory without taking a few precautions. The SUV had four-wheel drive. There was an emergency kit, some bottled water, a flashlight and some energy bars.

His gun was in the console between the two front seats.

Charlotte looked up from the directions that he had jotted down on a piece of paper.

"I think we just passed the cutoff to the bridge," she said, peering out the side window.

"You think?" He did not take his eyes off the winding road. "You're the one in charge of directions."

"You're the one who wrote them down. What does HR after cross 1 ln br then HL on gr rd' mean?"

"It means hard right after we cross the one-lane bridge followed by a hard left on a graveled road. Seems clear to me."

"Of course. I don't know what I was thinking. Okay. We have definitely gone too far. We need to turn around and head back."

"What makes you so sure of that?"

"Because we just passed another lookout. In your notes you wrote down something that I think says that if we pass Ribbon Falls Lookout, we've overshot the turnoff to the bridge."

"How do you know if that was Ribbon Falls Lookout?"

"I think I saw a waterfall."

"Okay, I'll take your word for it."

The road was too narrow to allow a U-turn and the shoulders on either side had been rendered into mud by the rain. He executed a cautious three-point turn on the pavement.

"Nice work," Charlotte said. "I tried that maneuver once. It didn't go well."

"We all have a talent," he muttered.

He was startled when she laughed.

The drive from Seattle had been a slog because of the rain and the limited visibility, but he had found himself savoring the enforced intimacy of the road trip. He did not think of himself as a good conversationalist, but Charlotte was surprisingly easy to talk to. And the silences, when they fell, were comfortable. At least, he was comfortable with them. He wasn't sure how she felt.

He drove slowly back down the twisting road.

Charlotte leaned forward in her seat, studying the scene through the windshield with an intent expression.

"This is it," she announced. "There's the turnoff. I can see the little bridge."

Max made the turn and cat-footed the big vehicle cautiously over the old logging bridge. It was a single lane with no guardrails. The water was not far below.

"I don't like the look of the river," he said. "It's running high. If this downpour doesn't let up, the water could be over the top of the bridge in a few more hours. We aren't going to stay very long at the Briggses'. We don't want to get caught up here in the mountains tonight."

"If Detective Briggs has any hard information for us, I doubt it will take him long to provide it."

On the far side of the bridge, Max turned off onto a steep graveled road that was gouged with potholes.

"You get the feeling that maybe Briggs's career in law enforcement made him a tad paranoid?" Charlotte asked. "I mean, he couldn't have chosen a more out-of-the-way location for his retirement home."

"One thing's for sure, no one is going to sneak up on him-not using this road," Max said. "He'd hear a vehicle coming long before it arrived."

A few more twists in the old logging road brought them to a small clearing. There was a large cabin with a front porch set in the center. Two vehicles-a relatively new pickup and an equally new, mud-spattered SUV- were parked near the cabin.

The front door opened just as Max brought his vehicle to a halt in the clearing. A big, burly, bearded man appeared on the front porch. His thinning gray hair was pulled back in a low ponytail. He was dressed in a faded plaid flannel shirt, baggy jeans and scuffed work boots.

Max opened the console, removed the holstered gun and strapped it around his waist. He pulled on his slouchy sports coat to cover the weapon.

Charlotte looked startled.

"You brought a gun?" she said.   





 

"Just a precaution. By all accounts, Briggs has been living off the grid for a while now. That can do things to the mind."

"Oh. I never considered that he might be a little crazy."

"Don't know that he is."

He reached into the backseat for his waterproof windbreaker and then angled the baseball cap down over his eyes.

"Ready?" he said.

"Yes."

"One more thing. Be polite, but don't eat or drink anything that's offered."

"What?"

"This case involves drugs. We're not taking any chances."

Charlotte gave him a strange look. Probably thinks I'm borderline paranoid. Hell, maybe he was.

But Charlotte merely nodded. "Okay."

She pulled up the hood of her anorak and opened her door.

He climbed out from behind the wheel and jogged around the front of the SUV. Together he and Charlotte hurried toward the shelter of the porch.

"Detective Briggs?" Max said.

"Retired. Call me Egan. You must be Cutler. Sorry about the weather. Hell of a day for a drive up into these mountains. Didn't know the storm was going to turn bad like this. It's gonna catch a lot of folks by surprise."

The voice matched the man: deep, booming and infused with an authority that, in Max's experience, was common to those who'd had a long career in law enforcement.

"Max Cutler," Max said. "This is Charlotte Sawyer."

"I'm Jocelyn Pruett's stepsister," Charlotte said. She lowered the hood of her jacket. "We appreciate your taking the time to talk with us today, sir."

"Yeah, well, not like I had anything else planned this afternoon," Egan said. "Not with this weather. Figured you two were damn serious about talking to me if you were willing to drive all the way up here. Come on inside. My wife is making coffee."





CHAPTER 22




"Let me get this straight," Egan said. "You think that the death of this Louise Flint might be connected to that old rape case at Loring College?"

"At this point it's just one more angle I'm trying to check out," Max said. "Ms. Sawyer is assisting me because her stepsister is unavailable."

Egan frowned. "Something happened to Ms. Pruett?"

Thank goodness she had prepared for this question, Charlotte thought. Max had been very clear right from the start that they were not going to give away any more information than was absolutely necessary in the course of the interview. But he hadn't been convinced that she would be able to lie well enough to fool a former cop, so he had made her practice a few things on the drive from Seattle.

"No, she's fine," Charlotte said. She was proud of the cool, calm manner in which the words came out. "But she's away on an extended retreat for a month. I can't get in touch with her, so I'm here in her stead. I know she'll want to be informed about any developments."

"Yeah, well, just to clarify, I never really doubted your stepsister's story of the rape," Egan said. He leaned back in the big easy chair and propped his booted ankles on a needlepoint hassock that looked handmade. "I could see that she'd been terrified and there was definitely a bloody nick on the side of her throat. She said that was where the assailant had held the tip of the knife."

Charlotte was very careful not to look at Max. She was afraid that if she did, she would reveal her rage. She remembered all too well Jocelyn's furious, anguished description of how the detective in charge of the case had insinuated again and again that the rape had been consensual-just some adventurous sex that had gotten out of hand.

"Did the Loring Police Department's investigation produce any leads?" Max asked.

He sounded so easygoing and professional, Charlotte thought. Like he believed everything Briggs said.

Her damp anorak was hanging from a wall hook near the front door. Max's windbreaker was next to it. He was still wearing his ill-fitting sports coat. He kept it fastened to conceal his gun.

The interior of the cabin was a real-life version of what designers liked to call rustic. The sturdy wooden dining table looked handmade. So did the drapes and the area rug. Genuine logs, not gas, burned in the fireplace. Lanterns were scattered around the room, an indication that the occupants of the cabin were accustomed to losing their power during storms.