Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
EVERETT
Bear Mountain is a ski area run by one of Finn River’s founding families, the Raffertys. It started as a single rope tow in the 1950s and even though it now boasts three high-speed chairlifts and summer mountain biking, it hasn’t succumbed to the commercialization of other areas like it.
“You ever ski here?” Zach asks from the passenger seat as we round the final curve leading to the residential community that flanks the ski area. Ski and summer cabins mostly, but some folks live here year round.
“Never been much of a skier,” I reply.
“Me neither.” He eyes the bald swaths of the ski area and the empty, motionless ski lifts waiting for winter just above us. “What’s our plan?”
“We say we’re doing a neighborhood survey to find out how many homes are permanent residents, who’s only here on weekends.”
“Got it. Then we can use that narrowed list to fine tune our research.”
“Exactly.” I park at the corner of the first of four loops on this side of the mountain residences. I offer him my fist, and he bumps it. “Happy hunting.”
“Happy hunting,” he replies.
At this hour, not many people are home. I talk to three residents, all retirees. The first two, a schoolteacher and her part time ski instructor husband, leave on the weekends to visit their grandkids. The third resident I find at home is a former postal worker who hikes every day. He offers lots of details about their neighbors that I scribble in my notebook. Of the sixteen homes in this loop, only five are occupied by permanent residents. Six are VRBOs, and two are only used on weekends. When I ask if he knows the people in the weekend-only cabins, or where they’re from, the postal worker tells me they have “2L” plates—meaning they’re locals.
Because of our county-coded licensing system, at a glance, it’s instantly clear where a person’s vehicle is from. Finn River’s plates all start with the code 2L, a detail people are very aware of. I’ve had plenty of calls in my career from locals complaining about “some asshole with 1A plates” speeding through their neighborhood, or “this woman with 5D plates” taking up two parking spaces at the grocery store, and other such offenses.
It’s the reason I knew the stolen Taurus wagon was from Bonneville County the second I laid eyes on the license plate. Idaho Falls is in Bonneville County. License plates registered there start with 8B.
Zach and I meet back at my rig and compare notes. It’s still slow work and we aren’t getting all the answers, but it feels good to make an effort.
“Let’s try the next loop.”
By eleven o’clock, we’ve covered two more. Our list of known weekend-only cabins has grown to almost twenty, but it’s better than what we started with.
Luke Ballard is due to the station any minute, and with each tick of the clock, my stomach tightens. What I’m doing goes against the protocol he’s insisted we follow and defies the FBI’s cautious, methodical approach.
But fuck waiting for trash day. What if Tisdale kills again before that?
At my next stop, there’s a minivan in the carport and lights are on inside the one-story house, with woodsmoke rising from the chimney. On the dead grass in front of the house are a red plastic bat and two large balls, a tiny pink scooter bike, and on the right side, a half-finished raised bed garden project.
A young woman comes to the door with a baby in a one-piece sleeper on her shoulder. From deeper inside the house, the television is on, the chirpy notes of a cartoon blending with a little girl’s chatter.
The mom in front of me looks tired, but she tries to smile.
“How can I help you, officer?” she asks, patting the baby’s bottom.
“We’re doing a survey of the neighborhood,” I say. “Do you happen to know which of the homes near you are occupied full time?”
She sways while she pats the baby’s bottom. “Um, across from me. Carla and Joe. They’re full time, though they’ve been spending more time in Florida.” She nods to her left. “That one’s a rental.” While holding the baby in place with one hand, she points to a new two-story home down a few homes from Carla and Joe with the other. “That just sold like a month ago. I haven’t seen anyone move in yet.”
I nod toward the other side of her house, where a gravel driveway curves out of sight. “How about there?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen them.”
“Mom!” a little girl calls from inside the house.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Sure,” she replies, and closes the door.
On the opposite side of the street, Zach is talking with a resident, his back turned partially away from me and his hands on his hips .
I wait a moment longer, but when their conversation drags on, I continue to the gravel drive. It splits, with one side continuing to a detached garage, and the other to a one-story brown home with a wide porch partially hidden by tall trees. On the right side of the fork, a NO TRESPASSING sign is stapled to a giant spruce. Below it rests a large, pale boulder with a smooth face and the house numbers painted across it in yellow.
I glance back at the homes on this street. All the garages are either attached to the homes or are carports. While I wait for Zach, I pull up google maps. Are the two structures part of the same residence?
Zach finishes up his conversation and the door shuts behind him. When he sees me at the edge of the gravel drive, he crosses the street.
“So far I’ve got four that are weekend only,” he says, scanning the driveway. “And it sounds like all are non-locals. What’ve you got?”
“Neighbor doesn’t have info on this house,” I say. “Looks like both buildings are part of the same residence.”
Zach puts his hands on his hips, his eyes narrowing. “Huh.”
“What?”
“That rock,” he says, nodding at the one with the house numbers. He takes a slow scan of the street, frowning. “I looked up that stuff that Tisdale told Vivian, about isotope and chlorine dating and all that. It’s a real thing. That rock looks like the ones in all the pictures.”
A chill walks down my spine.
My phone chirps. It’s Ballard.
“Where are you guys?” he says, his voice curious.
“Uh, little field work.”
I wait through a heavy pause. “What’s going on, Rumsey?” he asks.
I rub my forehead. “Are you at the station?”
“Yeah, in the conference room.”
“I need you to look up a house for us.”
“Don’t tell me you’re flashing Tisdale’s face all over town.”
I cringe at the frustration in his tone. “We’re not.” I walk to the other side of the driveway. “Just humor me, okay?”
He gives a tense sigh. “Go ahead.”
I rattle off the house number and street while he types. “What’s so special about this residence?” he asks.
I give him what Zach told me and my curiosity about the detached garage, but Ballard is unimpressed.
“Let me call you back,” he says, and hangs up.
Zach’s eyebrows arch up.
“Let’s have a peek at the garage,” I say.
Zach eyes the NO TRESPASSING sign. “We’re pushing our luck, Ev.”
“I know.”
The gravel is so compressed by tires it’s near silent under our boots. At the big pale rock and the giant pine, we take the left fork and continue toward the garage.
There’s no window in the pull-up door. I take the right side and Zach goes left. No windows on the right side, but at the back of the garage, there’s a rectangular one just below the edge of the flat roof.
“Give me a boost,” I say, and reach for the edge of the single pane windowsill.
Zach hugs his waist. “You sure about this?”
He’s not wrong to ask. A walk around the perimeter isn’t breaking any rules, but putting my hands on a structure without permission is about as gray as it gets.
“After this, we’ll walk away until we hear from Ballard.”
He makes a step for me, and I rock upwards. Zach grunts with the strain of holding my weight. I crimp the windowsill and peek in. The glass is filmy, but it doesn’t keep me from identifying what’s parked inside.
It’s a van with 8B plates .
Ballard arrives an hour later in a dark sedan, parking next to my rig.
Zach and I are standing on the porch, ready to bust down the door.
“You got it?” I say when he steps out in a dark suit and dress shoes.
“Yeah.” He flashes the search warrant brought straight from one of our judges. It’s limited to the van in the garage, where Walker and his crew will scope for DNA, and possible evidence inside the home that links Tisdale to his victims. Ballard thinks this is where he keeps his trophies.
What the hell are we about to see?
After we discovered that the van was registered to a Pocatello man who’s been missing for twelve years and the cabin was bought using a phony corporation we linked to Tisdale, things moved fast.
Ballard tucks the warrant into his suit pocket and draws his weapon. “Go.”
Though I was only two months into my training to become a US Marshal before Logan became my priority, we’d already covered the art of busting down doors. So it takes me only a well-aligned boot forced against the weak spot to pop the door from the frame. Weapons drawn, we fan out to sweep each room. As I move through the kitchen, the details flash through my mind: the Formica countertops scoured dull, the aged appliances, the cheap clock on the wall, the heavy curtains drawn tight. The only sounds are coming from my partners moving swiftly through the rooms, though there’s a low hum, like from a fan or maybe a heating system deeper in the house.
“Clear!” Zach calls from the other side of the wall.
“Clear!” I call out, turning the corner.
“Clear!” Ballard says from the end of the hallway.
My eyes lock on a closed door behind the kitchen. It’s the only one left. The basement.
Zach comes next to me and spins his back to the wall so he can cover me .
“Nothing so far,” Ballard says, his face tense.
My breaths echo in my throat as I turn the handle. It’s a cheap, hollow door, with a flimsy knob that shines like brass in the low light coming in from the windows. Like it’s been handled so many times, the fake antique varnish has been worn off.
Cold needles skitter across my chest.
The door opens to a dark stairway. I stand to the side and reach for the light switch, shielding my body in case the light switch triggers any booby traps aimed at the door.
But nothing happens when I flip on the light. No fire, no alarms. At least none that we can see. Though that hum I heard from earlier is louder now.
Zach spins into the stairway and descends. I follow, a sickening feeling taking root in my core. Though he and I have partnered on searches and seizures dozens of times together, neither one of us has encountered anything as high-stakes as this.
A dry, dusty scent permeates upward as we descend, and that hum gets louder. At the open doorway at the bottom of the stairs, Zach glances in and flips the light switch on the wall. The space beyond brightens, but it’s a muted, flickering glow. Not like overhead lights. He and I lock eyes for an instant. I give him a nod, and we swing into the space.
It’s one open room with bare cement walls and garish red carpeting. Set up around the perimeter are little tables. Each is decorated differently, with a framed picture and a candle. In front of each shrine is a padded rectangular cushion, like you might see in a church pew.
“Oh fuck,” I say, my voice faltering.
Ballard slips in next to me and releases a slow, measured breath. “They’re shrines. He comes here to worship them.”
I don’t have to get a closer look at the framed pictures to match Marin and Michelle’s. Instead, I look away. It feels wrong to see them like this, so exposed .
My phone chirps, but it takes me a moment to remember what I’m supposed to do about it. “Hey,” I say, turning away from the room.
“Thanks to you I missed my lunch,” Walker says. “But I’ll let you make it up to me, you know why?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “No, Walker, why.”
“The inside of this van is crawling with DNA.”
I start climbing the steps. I’ve seen all I need to see in this place. “That’s good news.”
“Let’s just hope it gives us what we need.”
“Thanks for the update, and sure, lunch is on me.”
“Fucking right it is.”
He’s likely not leaving here anytime soon thanks to what we just found, but I don’t tell him that.
Outside, I gulp the dry mountain air, focusing on the heavy scent of pine and the dome of blue sky dotted with puffy clouds. As the earth spins back into focus, the spear of my anger turns razor-sharp.
This ends now.
Ballard appears at my side. “We’re bringing in Tisdale.”
I cross my arms. “When?”
He arches an eyebrow. “How would you and Zach like a chopper ride to Idaho Falls?”
It takes some creative teamwork and scrambling to get our crime scene secured and the necessary authorizations signed to get Zach and I to the helipad located behind the Finn River Sheriff’s Department building. The ride is cold and loud, and though there’s tactical chatter going on between Ballard and the rest of his team and the police department in Idaho Falls, I use the idle time to try to process what we learned.
There were six shrines in that basement room. Six young women who lost their life to satisfy Tisdale’s sick urges. Though someday I might feel satisfied that we stopped him, right now I’m too angry that it took us this long.
Six families torn apart. Six young women with dreams and plans that will never be realized.
I think of Marin’s family and what our discovery will do to them. Will they ever find peace?
After the chopper lands on top of the Idaho Falls police department, Zach, Ballard, and I are shuttled into vehicles. Our convoy closes in on the Idaho National Laboratory, a federal research facility not far from downtown.
Because the INL is a federal research facility, it’s under tight security, but Ballard’s team has already set everything up, so we’re inside and heading to Tisdale’s floor without a hitch.
Tisdale is in the middle of giving a presentation to a group of about ten men and women gathered around an oval table inside a large conference room, the lights partially dimmed. When we file in, surprise ripples through the small crowd while Tisdale takes a step back, his gaze darting from me and Zach to the others, a look of disbelief on his narrow face.
The bystanders sit frozen as we file around them to reach Tisdale.
“Christopher Tisdale, you’re under arrest,” I say. Though I’ve dreamed of saying these exact words since I learned this guy’s name, it doesn’t bring me any joy.
“What? There’s some mistake,” Tisdale says, his eyes snapping to anger. He puts up his hands, like he can stop us from moving in. “Wait!”
“Turn around and put your hands on the wall,” Zach says in a firm voice.
“Arrested for what?” he says as Zach spins him to face the board.
“For murder.” I unclip my cuffs and step in close behind him.
“What? That’s?—”
Smashing his face into the wall is so tempting, but I bite the inside of my cheek instead. I snap the cuff on his right wrist, then draw it down to his lower back. As I reach for his other wrist, Zach leans in close.
“For the murder of Marin Lambert and Michelle Swanson, Jane Beasley, Nichole-René Page, Kimberly Saxon, and Suzanne Bingham.”
Tisdale’s jaw hardens, but he doesn’t look at either of us.
I tighten the second cuff and spin him around. “Let’s go.”