Chapter 40
Forty-five minutes later, I’m sitting with a cup of coffee in a café on the outskirts of Glacier National Park.
This is a bonus because up around Glacier, cell service isn’t great, so people who’ve been in the park for days aren’t paying a ton of attention to the news.
I profile everyone who looks at me a second too long, which is hardly anyone.
Maybe Jess’s pink-and-blue ice cream hat is really a Harry Potter Invisibility Cloak.
But before Paxton arrives, I suddenly find I’m wrong. As in, dead wrong. Which is a funny phrase if you think about it. Because if you literally were dead every time you were wrong, it might be a whole different world. I’m not laughing.
A set of three women have come in and taken a table across the room, but after one of them motions with her head to me, the rest all rubberneck it to get a look.
When one of them turns to the table behind her and whispers something to a man and he cranks his neck around to look, too, I’ve had enough.
They’re all too close. I feel claustrophobic.
I throw a five on the table and walk past them with all eyes gunning for me.
As I exit, I hear one of the guys saying, “Wait, aren’t you . . . ?”
When I pull out and drive into the village of West Glacier, I check that there are still a lot of tourists milling about and that I won’t be isolated if I conduct my meetings here or inside the park.
I figure I’ll have just as high a chance of being recognized in the village as I did in the café, so I go through the entrance gates off the park.
I want to thread the needle of diluting the crowds enough to decrease the chances I’ll be recognized while still keeping enough tourists around to feel safe.
I find a brief patch of service and call Paxton. “Change in plans,” I tell him. I call Jeremy and repeat the info.
I drive to the quaint village of Apgar, perched at the southwest end of Lake McDonald. I find a parking lot past the docks among about ten other cars.
At least here the café walls and the whispers of people aren’t closing in on me.
Still, I check to make sure I’ve got my gun securely fastened in its holster under my light jacket. Then, I wait, trying to relax enough to draw in a deep breath of the fresh pine and the smell of breeze off the cold lake.
Paxton arrives, driving a flashy black Lincoln MKZ that looks out of place among all the SUVs, Jeeps, and generic rental cars in the lot. He parks beside me and hops in my car.
I show him the picture I’ve taken of the pack. “That’s hers,” he says, excited. He wants all the details. I make up a fib. It doesn’t matter.
“What’s in it?” he asks.
“Test tubes, notes. Paxton, did your sister draw?”
“Not that I know of, but maybe she drew pictures of the plants she studied. Why?”
I tell him about the sketch pad with the Ridgeway logo.
In the back of my mind, I’m wondering if the pad belonged to Ridgeway or one of his guys who might have drawn a picture of me and simply shoved it in Clarissa’s pack to get rid of the evidence along with her things.
“Would she have had a sketch pad of theirs?”
He stares at me and shakes his head. “I have no idea. I mean, maybe, if she was out there trying to interview him and forgot her own notebook. Maybe she borrowed one?”
When he asks if he can have it, I tell him that I’m going to have it analyzed and it’s best not to mess with it.
“And Palmer Edmonds?” I ask about Paxton’s ex-fiancée’s father, who met with Clarissa the morning she drowned. “You still can’t get him to chat with us? Even for Clarissa’s sake?”
Paxton shakes his head. “I’ve left messages and even gone to his house. He refuses to call me back or see me.”
I’m about to wrap things up with Paxton when I see a white Chevy Equinox with a single driver.
Jeremy. Dammit. He’s a good twenty minutes early. The last thing I want is for him to know anything about my clients.
Jeremy misses the entrance to the lot, so he drives to the end of the road to swing back around. I rush Paxton off, telling him I’ll be in touch. I stand outside my car as Paxton drives away, rechecking my gun—even though I know it’s exactly where I put it before he arrived—when Jeremy pulls in.
He parks next to me, where Paxton had parked. His shaggy hair is tucked behind his ears. He’s wearing a button-down, clay-colored shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing tanned arms and confirming my memory that he has no tattoo of an upside-down R.
He grins as he approaches. “Who was that?” he asks.
“None of your concern.”
“One of your cases?”
“I can repeat those four words if you didn’t hear them well enough.”
“So it was one of your cases.”
“And if you keep prying, I can go back to my main job of simultaneously lying low and finding out who is trying to hunt me down while the clock ticks down to my own personal doomsday.”
“Easy,” he says. “Easy, easy.”
“Nothing about this is that.”
“Understood.”
“Then leave shit alone when I ask, okay?”
“Got it,” he says. “By the way, nice hat,” he offers with a flash of a smile.
My cheeks heat up. I’m embarrassed that this man who I’m not sure I even trust yet has this kind of pull on me. “Not very effective, though. Which is why we’re here instead of the café.”
“Ah, I see. Too many gawkers.”
“You’ve been camping?” I ask.
“And hiking,” he says. “Sorry if I’m a little scruffy. Wasn’t expecting a call from you.” He leans one sinewy arm on the top of my car. “What brings you my way?”
My way? Like he owns Montana and the glorious Glacier National Park?
“I read your article.”
He waits.
“It’s good. Congratulations on the awards. Especially the National Magazine Award. Impressive.”
“Thank you. Does this mean you’re going to let me interview you?”
“I’m still mulling over the idea.”
It’s a lie.
“So why did you call?”
“I was interested in the work you’ve done on the reservation. You know Palmer Edmonds well?”
“Well enough to get his take on the situation with the missing. Why? What does he have to do with the pickle you’re in?”
“Nothing.” At least, not that I know of. “But he has something to do with another case I’m working on.”
Jeremy leans his entire back against my car and listens intently. I tell him about Clarissa Haynes without using her name, and that Palmer Edmonds had breakfast with Clarissa the day she went hiking, but that he won’t speak to me, and refuses to speak to Clarissa’s brother, Paxton. I tell him why.
“Aha.” He smiles again. “So, you want to use me to get in front of him because Paxton hasn’t been able to?”
I give an innocent shrug.
“What do I get in return?”
“Depends,” I say. “If you can get Edmonds to talk to me about Ridgeway, I might consider giving you that exclusive.”
I can’t really fathom the idea of going through with it, but I can’t think of another bargaining chip in my possession.
“Might? That’s weak.”
“It’s better than nothing. And it might help me figure out what happened to this poor drowned woman.” I don’t tell him it might also provide another avenue to figure out if the killer, or at least a copycat of the killer, is affiliated with the Ridgeway Ranch in some way.
He thinks about it. “I know who you’re talking about. Clarissa Haynes, right?”
“Yes.”
“Sad case,” he says, and he looks sincere. “Who hired you to look into her death?”
“Someone who cared for her.”
“The guy with the black Blackfeet Nation Pikuni license plates who just drove away?”
Again, I shrug.
“Okay. I can try. But why are you running around alone? Shouldn’t you have a bodyguard or something?”
“And pay him—or her—with what? And the real danger doesn’t kick in until my six days are up.”
“Which is the day after tomorrow.”
“You’re keeping track?” A wire of tension travels up my spine. I casually run my fingers across my gun.
“The whole nation is. But still, Crosbie, your life is at risk. Are you taking this seriously enough?” He pins me with his eyes, like he’s known me for years.
It’s the same intense way he looked at me when he handed me the note the night before.
I can’t read it. I can’t read him. Is it born from good ol’ basic genuine interest in me or is it something else entirely?
I can’t tell. Everything is too messed up. Too crazy.
“Yes,” I say, staring back. “Of course I am.”
“Why are you going about business as usual?”
“What else am I supposed to do?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe go on a vacation somewhere safe, somewhere nobody knows about.”
His concern feels real. It melts something inside me.
I feel the pressure of tears threaten behind my eyes but push them back.
My mind is frayed from my interaction with Jess.
I’m still trying to make sense of the coincidence of her speaking to Ryan Petronis’s sister, Vivian, the sister of the boy who was raped during a football team’s hazing ceremony under the supervision of the coach who ended up being one of the CA’s victims. And of Jess not telling me about it.
What I need is one of those walls to hang photos and draw dashed lines or solid lines around connections and possible connections.
What I need is time to think it all through—even probe deeper into my conscience and consider all the consequences if I confess, and how to plan to catch the killer if I don’t.
Is it possible to upload all your facts and suspicions to AI and have it point you in the right direction?
Probably, and that thought creeps me out, too.
It’s all making me uneasy and a little crazed, but I don’t need to let Jeremy see the mess.
When I’m confident I can speak without my voice cracking, I say, “There’s been a part of me that’s been in denial.
I mean, it’s hard to swallow something like this.
And even after having it sink in, a part of me still wants to believe this is a stupid internet trick and a colossal coincidence that two of the people in the joke both ended up dead, but I know that’s wishful thinking.
There’s no situation where two people matching two of the sketches both end up murdered. ”
“What about that deputy outside your house? Is he doing his job? I mean, your boyfriend had a point. I got to your house fairly easily.”
“Wallace isn’t my boyfriend.” I feel silly for correcting him so quickly. “But Deputy Zane is making sure no one unwanted swings by or is waiting for me when I return.”
He studies me with narrowed eyes. “There’s a lot you’re not telling me.”
An echo from Jess.
Another car pulls in. Two couples. Older.
Hats, tennis shoes, fleece jackets. It’s a calming, happy scene, but something about it makes me feel alone.
With time banging its mean clock like a heavy metal drummer, it’s the opposite of what I can afford to do right now.
Or even if I could afford to be part of it, I know the feeling of serenity would be wasted on me.
Too much baggage. I wish I were any one of them.
A part of me knows better than to confide in Jeremy, but I can’t help it. He has a way of making me suspicious and lowering my guard at the same time.
I fill him in about the messages on my car and Jess’s and the tattoo pointing in the direction of the Crazy R. When I’m finished, Jeremy tells me that as soon as he gets somewhere with better cell service, he’ll make calls on my behalf to try to hook me up with Edmonds.
“In the meantime—and I don’t mean to assume too much—but you seem anxious. How about a walk? A few deep breaths?”
He bobs his head, pointing to the beach.