Page 77 of Silent Ridge

“I’m so, so happy for you.”

She asks, “Excuse me?”

I didn’t realize I said that out loud. “I mean I’m glad you aren’t in danger and can get on with your life. I’m sure Detective Osborne’s taken good care of you.”

She thanks me and disconnects.

Sixty-Two

I ride to the office with Ronnie. She’s in a quiet mood. That means she only talks when she has something to say or to ask a question and not her incessant stream-of-consciousness blabbering.

“Did you sleep last night?” she asks me.

“Just fine,” I say. Every time I was about to nod off last night my mind would conjure up an image of Dan being skinned alive and screaming. I’m surprised that I feel as good as I do—physically—with the little sleep I got.

“Marley called this morning while you were in the shower,” she says.

Of course he did.

“He’s coming in early to do the DNA from… you know.”

I know but I want her to say it. Confronting your fear, your monster, is the best way to get past it.

“What DNA?” I ask.

“From last night. The two bodies. The one is probably Michael Rader. I wonder if they did any good identifying the woman.”

She stops at a McDonald’s drive-through and we order six coffees, six apple pies. I pay.

We get to the office and my eyes cut toward the place where I found the cigarette butt. I don’t know why I do that. I doubt that she even smoked. The cigarette butt could have been left there by anyone. The fact that she was stalking me made me think of my other stalker: Wallace. Maybe I’m being pessimistic. Maybe she was Wallace. Or Michael Rader was. They’re both dead and that’s an end to that. I only know it’s not Hayden. He doesn’t hate me that much.

Ronnie and I carry our cache of McDonald’s treasure into the office.

“Coffee and pie for everyone,” Ronnie says. I grab a coffee before it’s all gone. Ronnie apparently has returned to drinking water.

Minus one point.

Sheriff Gray pours three creamers and three packs of sugar into his paper coffee cup and stirs with one of those toothpick-thin stirrers. He seems to be in a good mood. That’s good for me and for Ronnie.

“I have the crime scene reports,” he says. “Photos, fingerprints, the woman’s knife, a list of things found inside the motor home.”

And?I want to ask. But I wait for him. It’s his story.

“I got Michael Rader’s personnel file from Monroe Correctional Complex. The fingerprints match the body we found. We can’t find any next of kin. His brother, Alex Rader, is still in the wind. Kitsap County is looking for him as a murder suspect. The Monroe superintendent wasn’t broken up over Michael’s death.

“Crime scene found some rope behind the motor home and matched it to the rope you said the woman used to bind herself to the tree. As far as the woman goes, we couldn’t find anything on her. No fingerprints or DNA on file. It will be difficult to identify her because of”—he pauses and looks at Ronnie—“because of the damage to her face. We got one clean profile shot and the lab thinks they can create the other side using that to give us a photo we can circulate.”

“Anything connecting her to the murders?” I ask.

“Yang is working on it. He told me this morning that two blood types were found on Rader’s body. He’ll run DNA on both.”

She apparently cut herself while hacking Rader’s head off. Poor her.

“Clallam County Sheriff’s Deputies found a stolen rental car,” Sheriff Gray says. “Rader’s truck was found parked behind the Wendy’s in Port Angeles. We were able to lift latent prints from both her body and Rader’s. Her fingerprints were in both vehicles. The rental company said it was stolen off of their lot and wasn’t rented to anyone. There was nothing in the car to help us identify her. Rader had a moped registered to him as well. It was found hidden in the woods near the crime scene covered with brush. Her fingerprints were on it.”

It looks like the only way I’m going to get her identified is by putting her picture out to every law enforcement agency in the US plus the news media. The crime lab techs might put a good photo together with a face and profile shot, but I’ve seen her. Something is off in the photo.

Maybe if the picture had a knife raised overhead it would be more like her.

---