Page 79 of The Grave Between Us
He spread the Iowa atlas across the SUV’s tailgate as Jacob dialed Sophie’s cell phone. “Sophie, pull the files of Ian’s victims,” Noah said, as soon as she picked up. “The ones the FBI strongly suspects are him, that they spoke to him about eight years ago, and the ones we found.”
He heard his office door creak open, heard Sophie shuffle papers. “Got the files. What do you need?”
“Distances from abduction to grave. How far does Ian travel before he disposes of a victim? Cole guessed he wouldn’t travel more than a hundred miles once he abducted Kerrigan. What does the data say?” His thoughts were a maelstrom. His heart was hammering, and his vision had narrowed all the way down to the paper he was scribbling on as Sophie spoke.
“Okay, Shane DeGrassi… They think he’s buried within fifteen miles of the lake he went missing on. Remains never recovered, though. They never sent out a search team. But the file says that Ingram didn’t correct Cole about where Cole thought he’d buried DeGrassi. Paul Mason, buried, quote, not far from his campsite. Brenden Roundhouse, the grave the FBI did find…” Papers flipping. “He was buried eighteen miles from his abduction site.”
“How far from Camp Grafton to Grahams Island?” Noah asked. “In North Dakota?”
“Ten, maybe twelve miles, across the lake,” Sophie answered. “And Brett Kerrigan was abducted from Oak Haven Meadows, outside Booneville, and buried in Banner Lakes. That’s… twenty-three miles.”
“Jacob, we need a circle extending outward for no more than twenty-five miles from this point,” Noah said. “Give me all the state parks and lakes within that circle.”
“Noah, there’s an outlier,” Sophie said. “Nelson Miller, the body they found in Ingram’s truck when he was arrested. Ingram was transporting Nelson Miller to a secondary burial site. He’d taken him to a campground, he said, but ‘had to leave’ and was taking him down the mountain to dispose of his body. I can’t give you a distance between abduction and grave for him.”
“Nelson Miller is how he fucked up and got caught, so it makes sense he’s an outlier,” Noah said. His eyes were glued to Jacob, working the map. “He won’t make that mistake again. He won’t transport a body any farther than he feels he has to. Not again. Thanks, Sophie.”
He hung up and turned to Jacob. Jacob had his phone out and was scrolling through Google Maps as he moved his finger in the rough twenty-five-mile circle he’d drawn around Noah and Cole’s home. “What do you have?” Noah asked.
“Multiple possibilities,” Jacob growled. “You’ve got everything from Walnut Woods in south Des Moines to the Kuehn Conservation Area to the west, to the county fairgrounds up in Dallas County.”
Noah traced the rivers flowing into Des Moines, the outflows of the Raccoon River, Bear Creek, Coal Creek, and Badger Creek to the west and the north. The Des Moines River to the east. “He’s going to want to take his time with Cole,” he breathed. “He won’t want to rush this. He’ll take him someplace he can dig in for a while. Someplace quiet, remote. Where no one can hear the screaming.”
He saw the words from the interrogation transcripts flash in front of his eyes, heard them spoken aloud in Cole’s voice inside his mind. Boat propellers and scalp fragments, strangulation and resuscitation so Ian could prolong the agony. Round after round of assault, mixed with slicing and skinning. Breaking of bones. Ian’s tortures ran like a never-ending list of horrors, something Noah had been able to distance himself from hours before, when he’d read the case file at midnight.
Was this what Cole had felt like, imagining Noah being taken by Ian? Was this why he’d been on the ragged edge, swimming farther and farther out in an ocean Noah couldn’t follow him into? Noah understood, finally. In a gut-clenching, too-visceral way. It was the difference between seeing a murder on slides in the academy and going out to his first crime scene. It was the difference between reading the definition of terrified and tracing the letters in the dark with his bare hands. The difference between thinking he might be gay and finding the man he loved with everything that he was.
“Then I think the Kuehn Conservation Area fits.” Jacob mashed his finger on a spot of green on the atlas, west of Des Moines on Interstate 80 in south Dallas County. “It’s remote. Dirt roads in and out. Miles of protected habitat. This time of year, no one goes out there.”
It didn’t feel right. Noah shook his head, scanning the map. “I don’t think Ian would head out Interstate 80 again. He took Kerrigan near there. None of the men in our profile disappeared from or were dumped in the same area as another victim, right?” He tried to think, to remember what he’d found the night before. No, the incidents were spread out. It made them look discrete, patternless.
“It’s not Kuehn,” he said. His fingers spread out over the map, running over and over the circle Jacob had drawn. Too many choices, too many possibilities, and if he chose wrong, Ian would murder Cole in a lonely woods while Noah was barreling through the wrong forest. He had one choice, one chance. One decision to make, right or wrong, that would decide the rest of his life.
“There,” he said, his finger tapping against an isolated patch of woodlands north of Des Moines, at the outer limit of Jacob’s circle. The Raccoon River curled into and around a chokehold of woods, then jogged south, heading for the city. There was nothing around, save for farms and a few rural roads. “What’s this?”
“North Raccoon River Wildlife Area,” Jacob read, peering at the map. “One hundred and forty-five acres along the river. Oak and hickory timberlands. There’s limited public access for hunting.”
“It’s not hunting season right now.”
“No,” Jacob said. “Which means that place will be deserted.”
“That’s it.” Noah tapped the map again. Jacob plugged the address into Google Maps.Please, please, be the place. Please don’t let me be wrong.
“Nineteen miles,” Jacob said. “US 6 to 169.”
Noah slammed the tailgate closed and ran to the driver’s door. “Call Sheriff Clarke. This is his county. Tell him everything. Tell him there’s a serial killer hunting in our backyard. Tell him Ian has Cole—” His voice died.
“I’ll call,” Jacob rumbled. “You drive, Noah. Get us there.”
Cole, I’m coming. Hang on. Hang on.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Cole wokefacedown in wet dirt, his hands behind him. He jerked, tried to move his arms. Zip ties dug into his wrists, tight enough his fingers tingled. His knees were tied, too, what felt like duct tape looping over and around his jeans.
“Hello, Cole.”
He froze, like an animal in a trap. He knew that voice. He’d heard it inside his head for years. Heard it in his nightmares still. Raw fear settled in his bones.
