Page 60 of Everything She Feared

“Our goal has a couple of aspects. We want to find her, confront her and get her to reveal what happened to her victims and where they are.”

“That’s one,” Sonya says.

“More important, we believe that Magda has not, nor ever will be rehabilitated. We believe she is a threat, a danger to society and could kill again. Look, there’s so much we don’t know about her early life—it’s shrouded in mystery. Some members say it’s as if Magda dropped from the sky to earth, or clawed her way up from a netherworld beneath the surface. One last point, and I put this to the millions of people in your audience, what if Magda was living next to you and your family?”

Several seconds of silence fill the air.

“I think that was a collective gulp,” Sonya says.

“Thank you so much for an amazing episode, Beatrice. Anything you want to say as we wrap up?”

“I invite people to join our group, become searchers, help us find Magda, find justice, peace and healing for the families. Thank you so much for having me onTell-Tale Hearts.”

“Thank you, Beatrice Clearfield ofThe Hunters—Finding Magda. All the information is on our site. That’s our time.”

Sonya and Shane wave.

The same opening music plays against the empty city streets at night as the screen fades to black.

26

Near North Bend, Washington

Benton switched offtheir SUV’s motor in the parking lot of Sparrow Song Park.

“What’re we doing here, Kim?”

He turned to Pierce. She was still focused on a forensic video of the scene playing silently on her tablet. From the moment they’d left Lake City and their interview with Tanner Bishop, her nose had been in her file notes.

“Really, Kim, why did we come here?”

Pierce closed the folders on her tablet, gathered her bag and things, and turned to Benton as she reached for the door handle.

“We’re here to investigate, Carl.”

They headed to the trailhead, neither of them speaking until they got to the clearing.

“I’m going to check the time to run the distance from here to where the group was setting up,” Pierce said.

“It was done by Tilden and Grotowski.”

“Time me.”

Pierce ran as fast as she could, gripping her phone and timing herself, imagining Katie Harmon, terrified and running at top speed. Arriving at the day site area, Pierce allowed ten seconds before running back. Getting the time from Benton and checking it on her phone, Pierce put the time gap between when Anna was left clinging for her life to the branch and when she was found on the rocks at a total of five to seven minutes.

“This is a pointless waste,” Benton said.

Bent over, catching her breath, Pierce glared up at him. At every step of the investigation, she felt him suppressing anger, and with every step, her patience with him was thinning. Pierce moved to the open area and the cliff where Anna Shaw fell and stood there, surveying the area.

Benton came up behind her. “This whole place was processed a couple weeks ago,” he said. “It makes no sense to come here.”

Pierce took another deep breath, released it, closed her eyes, then opened them.

“Something doesn’t feel right.”

“Doesn’t feel right? How long you gonna play that record?”

“I’ve been studying everything and I think the answer’s here.”

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