Cold as Hell (Haven’s Rock #3)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

We’re at the hotel packing as fast as we can. Dalton has contacted the airport to make sure we can take off in the next hour. We can, since our destination isn’t on a route that coincides with other flight paths.

We aren’t heading to Whitehorse anymore. We’re going back to Haven’s Rock.

There’s no choice here. It might turn out that the phone problem is a temporary glitch. If so, then we can turn around. But it doesn’t seem like a glitch. It seems like someone is making sure we can’t contact Haven’s Rock. Someone who knows where those phones will be and can take them.

The whole time we’re packing and driving to the airport, I’m calling those numbers. Endlessly calling. At the same time, I dig for more on Jerome Moyer. It’s an online slog. The name isn’t uncommon enough for me to easily sift through the chaff, and the fact that “our” Jerome Moyer is an online ghost means most references I find aren’t him. It doesn’t help that I’m looking for a Jerome Moyer who might be a killer and there’s an unrelated Jerome Moyer who is a convicted killer.

At the airport, I wait with Storm as Dalton runs through his preflight checks. émilie has already sent me a quick-and-dirty history for Jerome Moyer, proving why she has a professional investigator instead of just relying on a former police detective with a laptop.

Jerome Moyer. Forty-two years old. His father was Black, that being the Moyer side, but his dad had died in the military when Jerome was young, and he’d been raised by his white mother and her new husband, a big-game guide in Montana.

Jerome moved out before his eighteenth birthday, and his mother and stepfather never bothered reporting him gone, as if they’d all decided he was close enough to legal age. From there, he seemed to have held down a string of jobs that I’d expect to be above the reach of a guy who hadn’t finished high school, including a stint as a paramedic… despite having no paramedic training.

The “Marlon” I know is even-tempered and easy to get along with. Charming, but not so charming that it puts people like me on edge. He’s self-effacing, happy to help out. On the surface, he’s a far cry from a manipulative sociopath, but even in his Haven’s Rock persona, I see a form of manipulation, a far more clever one.

Marlon has been who we need him to be. Friendly and helpful without causing any waves. Looking at him more critically, he reminds me of Anders… or the version of Anders most people see. The popular guy everyone wants to have a beer with, wants to be paired up with on a job. The guy who always has a smile and a warm greeting and a sympathetic ear, if you need it.

Is the Marlon I know Jerome’s usual persona? Or did he come to Haven’s Rock, zero in on the most popular guy—another man of color, no less—and craft his facade to match? I think it’s a combination, given that string of seemingly impossible jobs he held down, often for years at a time. He got away with it because he seems like the last guy who’d lie to get ahead.

Along with that data comes a list of cities where he’s lived. He likes cities—easier to disappear in. And when he relocates, he doesn’t just hop in the car and drive a hundred miles. He crosses the country. Putting distance between where he was and where he wants to be next.

I use those cities as the starting point for my search. This is where I do have the skills to search, though again, I could do better with access to databases and contacts. Still, since Jerome seems to have stayed in the US, I’d have been limited there, too.

My search for unsolved murders is nothing short of depressing. These are major cities. Of course there are unsolved murders, and narrowing it down to “female victim” and “sadism” doesn’t help.

I’m aware of time ticking by. If I’m close to any kind of breakthrough, Dalton will wait, but otherwise, we cannot afford for me to surf the internet while something may have happened in Haven’s Rock. Nor can we risk missing our takeoff window.

I need to be more specific. Search on hypothermia. How about exposure? How about—

The link doesn’t come where I expect it. I’ve searched on Jerome in connection to murders in all the places he lived and found nothing, but then I get a hit on his name and a death by… dehydration.

It’s a strange story, one I need to read twice to parse it out. The connection comes because Jerome attended high school with the girl who died. They’d been in the same class, and in one article, he’d been referenced as having helped organize the search when she disappeared.

The strange part is the girl’s death. It happened over the summer break. She’d gone missing, and the whole town had searched for her. She’d been found five days later… in the high school, which had been closed for the season.

It seemed she’d broken in through a window to retrieve a necklace she’d accidentally left in her former locker. After she had the necklace, she went into the accessible bathroom, and the door locked behind her. The janitor had been on vacation, and no one was in the school to hear her shouting and banging on the door. This was back at a time when few kids—especially in small-town Montana—had a cell phone.

A horrific and tragic accident. One that I would have taken a helluva lot closer look at. A girl described as a “model student” breaks into the school for a necklace rather than wait until the janitor returns and ask to get it? After breaking in, she decides she really needs to use the bathroom before making her escape? She chooses the accessible bathroom… which also happens to have the water turned off for the summer, leaving her with nothing to drink and survive? And how the hell did the door lock behind her? The article says something about it being an automatic door that failed, but add that to the other oddities, and I’d be very suspicious. The local sheriff was not. The school raised money and installed emergency alarms in all the bathrooms. Problem solved. Future tragedies averted.

That sets me on a new search. Girls or women dying in bizarre and horrible accidents, particularly involving things like exposure to the elements or dehydration. Something where they were trapped and died slowly.

The next one comes quickly, because in this case, the family didn’t accept the manufactured explanation. Twenty years ago. College student in a city where Jerome lived. Her death was ruled a suicide after she apparently tied a cinder block to her leg and stepped off a dock into a small lake near the school. Her family argued that she wouldn’t have done that, but when it looks like suicide—especially with someone that age—the police will often ignore the family’s protests. Her parents no longer lived with her, so she could hide her college-induced depression from them.

In this case, though, it wasn’t just the parents—no one who knew the victim had seen any sign that might indicate suicide. All this wouldn’t get my attention except for one tidbit that didn’t make it into most respectable publications. The investigators believed the victim had underestimated the depth of the lake, because the cinder block hadn’t pulled her under to a relatively quick death. She’d been held under just enough to cover her mouth and nose, leaving the top of her head above the surface.

I imagine what that would be like. How she’d have been able to get snatches of air as she struggled, swallowing water when she tried to scream. How long would it take to die like that? How horrible would it be?

And what if your killer was right there, on the dock, watching? And with your eyes above water, you could see him watching.

“Casey?”

I look up to see Dalton standing there.

“Ready to go?” he says.

I nod and I go to snap the laptop shut, but then keep it open. “Can I keep working while we have a signal?”

“Of course.”

We’re in the air, ten minutes outside Dawson City, when I finally lose the last flicker of cell signal and shut my laptop.

Then I glance over at Dalton. His attention is on the sky, but it’s clear today.

“You okay to talk?” I ask through the microphone.

“I am.” It’s hard to make out tone through the connection, but his voice sounds tight, as if he’s dreading hearing what I have to say. “You found something.”

“Possibilities. Deaths in areas where Jerome lived. Girls and then women, all around the age he’d have been at the time. He went to school with the first victim, but otherwise, there are no connections to him.”

“No connections to him. But connections to Lynn. How she died.”

“Yes. I started looking at unsolved murders, but then I thought more about Lynn. What if Will hadn’t noticed the abrasions? Would we have chalked it up to death by misadventure? A tragic accident?”

He grunts, letting me continue.

“Removing Lynn’s clothing was risky,” I say. “After Kendra had been dosed, it would automatically have us thinking sexual assault. But maybe that was part of the game. We’d jump to that conclusion but be confused by the lack of any signs of assault. Then someone would mention paradoxical undressing or April would find it in her textbooks or, if all else failed, Marlon could mention he’d once heard something weird about victims of hypothermia undressing.”

“Which he would be able to do because he knows everyone involved in the investigation. Classic sign of a serial killer, isn’t it? Interest in law enforcement? Even inveigling their way into the investigation?”

I nod, remember he can’t see that, and say, “Yes. The people he befriended the most were Will, you, and me, along with our inner circle. His supposed military background made him perfect for our militia. That fits. Not everything does. Serial killers are usually white, but there have been serial killers of all races. He was raised by a stepfather who made a career out of hunting. Jerome dropped out of high school and left his family behind, suggesting issues there. He’s older than the average serial killer, but he seems to have the ability to pace himself. He started as a teen and only takes one victim every five years or so.”

“You found more?”

“A few possibilities. His MO seems to be what we saw with Lynn. Not hypothermia per se, but deaths that were ruled accidents or suicides, the circumstances of which were…” I swallow. “Horrible. The girl from his high school died of dehydration after getting locked in a windowless and waterless bathroom during the summer break. A college student who drowned of apparent suicide, weighed down by a cinder block that didn’t submerge her enough to die quickly. Just before I lost service, I found a case from five years ago, a woman who died while hiking, after falling into a crevice and breaking her leg.” I pause and then add, “Her cell phone was on a ledge just out of her reach. She could see it, tried to get to it, but couldn’t. That’s what caught my attention. That cell phone.”

Dalton doesn’t curse. He doesn’t say anything. He’s silent. We both are. Silent with the horror of these deaths.

“I’ll keep trying to call our sat phones,” I say. “émilie is, too. She thinks it might be a service failure.”

“I hope so.”

“If so, then we’ll get there, quietly take Marlon into custody, and get him out of Haven’s Rock. Then we can push on to Whitehorse.”

Dalton glances over. “How are you feeling?”

“Sick that this guy got into Haven’s Rock. But you’ll notice that I didn’t say we brought him in. I didn’t even say émilie let him in. He took advantage of a loophole no one saw. We’ve had them, and we’re going to keep having them until we plug every one.” I take a deep breath. “In this case, the outcome was… as bad as it can get. But no one in the process made an unforgivable mistake. We just need more checks and balances.”

“Agreed. However, I was actually asking how you’re feeling physically—you and the baby.”

I manage a weak smile when he glances over. “We’re fine. Just regular punches and kicks and movement. I even think they may have gotten turned the right way—I was sure I felt kicks up top this morning.”

“Good.”

“At least one thing is.”

We share a brief, worried smile, and reach out for a quick hand squeeze before Dalton focuses on getting us home.