Chapter 39
I rush home, rattling Deputy Zane with my speed until he realizes it’s me, to grab a pair of lock cutters and my firewood axe.
Within minutes, I’m back at the sketchy storage business south of Kalispell.
I want to get there before Lasserio finishes his Wednesday afternoon poker.
I’m hoping he didn’t return this morning to retrieve the backpack.
All is quiet, with only one man in an old Ford unloading who knows what. Americans who own too much shit. If your three-bedroom house doesn’t have room, you probably don’t need it. Think of the money that could be saved and better spent on, say, therapy for idiots like me.
When the Ford pickup leaves, the place is empty. I search again for cameras and find none, so I park in the same aisle as the day before and walk around to Lasserio’s—or Ridgeway’s—unit.
The padlock is tight. The next unit over has no lock, and when I roll up the door, it’s vacant. And no magic side door like adjoining hotel suites. Me and luck? I can’t even remember how it feels. Waiting for Greene and Alderson to get a warrant won’t cut it.
I suck my tongue fiercely against my front teeth, contemplating it. I know from my time on the beat that these units are flimsy. In the days before storage businesses sharpened up and installed security measures, break-ins were common.
I could take an axe to the flimsy wall or use lock cutters on the shank.
Either of these things would make me a thief, right along with being a liar and a crooked cop.
I feel a pit in my stomach like a steady drip of acid.
The insurance agent’s question about my character burns like a heated pair of eyes staring me down.
I go back to my car, get in, and check my phone. My connection from the county forensics unit hasn’t called me back yet. I try him one more time.
When the tech, Ray, answers, I sigh. “Oh thank God.”
“Thank God what?”
“Nothing. Don’t mean to be so dramatic. I’m under a time crunch here.”
“Understandable,” Ray says, drawing it out, like he’s showering me with sympathy in the one syllable.
More acid drips into my stomach. This burn is all disdain and bitterness, of being vulnerable, of being cast as a victim and being treated like one by everyone I know.
But more than that, I don’t deserve one single ounce of sympathy from anyone.
“Have you looked at that video?”
“I’ve got some close-ups for you. I’ll send them to you now.”
I thank him profusely, hang up, and wait for the email to come, trying to ignore more of the social media notifications still piling up, but good God, they’re humming around me like gnats.
Finally, the file comes through. I open it. In the enlargements—a beige, canvas-style backpack, just as Paxton described Clarissa’s. And in one of the enlargements of the flap is a patch of blue.
I think of calling Greene and Alderson and sending them the images, asking them to find a way to get a search warrant for this storage unit ASAP, but I know that will take more time than I can afford to waste.
Plus, even if they could establish probable cause, by the time they get the warrant, Lasserio will have probably come and removed the pack.
Another drop of acid. I know what I’m going to do.
I’ve already crossed the line. I get out of my car and look around for good measure to make sure I haven’t been followed, to check that there are still no security cameras anywhere, and to scan for anything unusual at all, like a peephole in an opposite-facing shed or a door not completely shut.
When I see that there still aren’t any cameras around and everything looks normal, I return to the aisle my car is parked in, put on some nitrile gloves, and grab my bolt cutter.
Inside the shed, it’s dusty and crammed full of boxes, plastic bins, and old horse tack.
Right on the floor, closer to the left wall of the unit, is the pack, right where Lasserio dropped it.
I pick it up and inspect the outside, my ears tuned for any new vehicle approaching. The patch is the Blackfeet Tribe’s flag with black-and-white eagle feathers creating a circle surrounding a map of their territory, all against a blue sky.
Inside, there’s a long-sleeve thermal shirt, a light raincoat, and a Nalgene water bottle, which certainly carries Clarissa’s DNA.
In a different compartment, a kit of test tubes, pens, markers, a wildflower identification handbook, a notebook, and .
. . a sketchbook and drafting pencils. That seems odd, although it’s possible Clarissa sketched wildflowers and landscapes.
I inspect the front cover. It’s made out of leather and has a watermark on the cover.
It’s the same logo as the tattoo. A wave of chills travels up my spine.
Why would Clarissa have a sketchbook with the Ridgeway watermark in her pack?
I open it, illogically thinking I’ll see rough drafts of my own face, but there’s nothing there, only torn-out sheets.
On the remaining blank sheets, the watermark sits at the top of each page.
I put it back in the pack and leaf through the notebook to see notes on the fen .
. . on various plants like the sundew and animal species like the Northern lemming.
I’m about to open the wildflower identification book when I hear a car pull in.
Shit. Was I followed? I throw the notebook and wildflower book back in. I wanted to look through the dusty boxes, too, but I don’t have time.
I make a quick decision to take the pack with me rather than leaving it for Lasserio. The snipped lock will tell him plenty anyway.
I hurry out, scanning left and right. The car I heard is nowhere in sight.
Without turning my back to the corridor, I slide Ridgeway’s shed door down. I scan all opposite-facing units again, still looking for anything out of place: a partially open one, a peephole that someone could look through, anything . . . I spot nothing, so I hurry to my car in the next aisle over.
But right as I round the corner, I clock a blue Chevy 4x4 idling next to my car.
Shit. Security guard?
But no one gets out of the truck. And within several very long seconds—with my heart pounding so hard I feel like it’s going to knock me right into the unit I’m standing beside—the Chevy drives away.
I give it another half a minute so the truck can make it to the exit, then run to my car and drive away.
A few miles up the road, when my pulse is back to normal, I think of how I need to show the pack to Paxton for him to positively ID that it belongs to his sister even though her name is on one of the notebooks.
There’s no time to wait for DNA results on the water bottle, but it could help if I, or maybe even Alderson and Greene, who are already looking into the case as I asked, can get the DA interested in investigating Ridgeway’s and Lasserio’s connection to Clarissa’s death.
I also think of the article Rolling Stone Dude asked me to read and all the inroads he’s made with the Blackfeet.
People on the reservation seemed to trust him enough to give him detailed information on how they saw the tribe’s missing and murdered Indigenous women situation.
More details than I’ve ever been able to gather.
Maybe he’s come across something on Clarissa’s case.
And at the very least, maybe he could get Palmer Edmonds, the Blackfeet elder, to talk to me.
I can’t let it go that there’s something I’m missing about the Ridgeways.
About Clarissa’s murder. And how the sketch might simply originate from Ridgeway and his goons so that if something happens to me, it gets pinned onto the real Confession Artist.
The idea that the real CA might never even have had me in their sights at all makes me feel lighter, but I still don’t trust Jeremy.
And I’m not sure I really believe that the CA isn’t targeting me.
I can’t escape the bruised cloud that’s settled over me, that might never leave me until lightning from it strikes.
I decide to call Jeremy and try to nudge in on his connections on the reservations. Calling him makes butterflies swirl in my stomach. I can’t decide how much is because of my attraction to him, or how much is due to the crazy coincidence that he was in both Dallas and now the Flathead Valley.
But I do it anyway.
“This is Jeremy.”
“Hey,” I say. “It’s Crosbie.”
“Crosbie.” I can hear the smile on his face.
“Where are you?”
“In the park.”
“Which part?”
“West Glacier.”
“Perfect. I’m heading to West Glacier myself. Can we meet?”
He says he’s tied up with some other folks for a bit, but that he can meet in an hour and a half.
“That’s fine. I have some things to do beforehand as well.”
After he agrees, I call Paxton and ask him to meet me in West Glacier, too. Both in a public place, to be on the safe side.