Last to Die: A gripping psychological thriller not for the faint hearted (23 page)

T
he first part
of the ascent seemed easy. So much so that Jessie felt a ridiculously giddy surge of triumph about her decision. That didn’t last: half a mile up, the incline grew steeper and the loose and sliding surface began to take its toll on her already exhausted limbs. She kept going though, and finally scrambled over the lip of a ridge, coming to rest by a pile of crumbling branches that had washed down the slope and collided with the base of a broken tree. She sank to her knees and rested for a moment, sucking air into her lungs in great gasping drags.

Her mouth was dry and thick with mucus. She was extremely thirsty and the rising heat didn’t help. She wasn’t sure how long she could keep up this pace unless she found water.

She wiped her brow with the hem of her filthy t-shirt and rose to her feet. Soon Jessie began to climb again, a little slower than before but no less determined.

The second climb was tougher than the first. In some places, the undergrowth was so dense she could not force her way through and had little option but to skirt the trees until she found a lighter patch of vegetation. Being slowed this way frustrated her and sapped at her strength and all the while she felt sure he would appear behind her.

The sun was high in the sky when she managed to scramble a final bank and reach a platform allowing her to see, at last, the summit of what she had been climbing. She shielded her eyes with her hand and tried to gauge the distance. Three miles? Maybe four? She could do that, couldn’t she?

She pressed on, but heat and thirst were slowing her down and she began to make simple yet clumsy mistakes. She slipped on a loose rock and fell, scraping her shin badly, leaving a smear of her blood behind. Insects plagued her, biting and stinging until she gave up trying to defend herself against them. She had no more thoughts about the summit or what might lie on the other side of the mountain; her only thought was to put one foot in front of the other, to keep moving.

After another long and arduous rise, she broke through the trees once more. Her heart sank a little when she studied the next section of the mountain. It wasn’t that it was steep, although it was. What worried her was that the ridge above the next bank of trees seemed to be mostly rock and shale. The slopes above it were dotted with bushes and a number of spindly trees, but the rock section was alarmingly bare, with only a number of wispy roots jutting out like the bleached limbs of the dead through the few pockets of pinking earth.

Open ground.

Worse than being open, the slope was staggered. From where she stood, she could not tell if what was beyond the outcrop was climbable or not. She could see a belt of trees about three hundred or so yards further up. It was likely that the ground evened up where they grew, so maybe, 
maybe
, it was not as impossible as she feared.

She had to get across the open ground first. Immediately, doubt and fear accosted her. What was she expecting to find, assuming she made it this far? She licked her dry lips, thinking. What if, after all this effort, there were only more mountains?

God, she was so thirsty.

He had all the advantages. He knew the terrain, the lay of the land. He had equipment, probably water too.

Climbing that would be hard and slow.

She shook her head, viciously chasing the doubting voice from within. What choice did she have? Stumble around in the trees until it was dark and she was lost and too exhausted to take another step? Wait to be found and slaughtered like a wounded deer? No more whingeing. No more self-pity. She had outrun him; now she had to out-think him.

Jessie took a deep breath and began to climb again. In no time at all she had left the relative shade of the trees and faced the bluff. She calculated the distance; a couple of hundred feet, give or take.

‘You can do this,’ she said aloud before she began the next ascent. She pitched herself forward, grabbing at scrub catclaw and sharp-edged embedded rocks, anything that might help her gain height. Halfway up the first bank she slipped. Jessie grabbed on to a root and looked behind her. She had slipped only a few inches, but it was enough to scare her. She needed to concentrate and pay attention to where she put her feet. If she fell or broke her leg here she was dead. If he didn’t find and kill her himself, the elements alone would take care of her.

Jessie dug the toes of her trainers into the hard soil and hauled herself on. The sun overhead was relentless, it burned her skin and made her head ache but still she climbed.

It took her another forty minutes to clear the bald face of the incline and slip into the trees. Utterly exhausted, Jessie began to lope forwards in an ungainly run, heading deeper into the shade. There was only one thing on her mind now, only one single thought.

Survival.

‘
S
ettle down
,’ Earl Dubray said, tightening the belt of his dressing gown around his waist, sounding anything but settled himself. He ushered Mike inside and closed over the door to his living room, pretending not to notice the curious looks of his teenage sons, who had been playing a video game when Mike arrived and nearly hammered the door clean off its hinges.

‘I will not settle down.’ Mike shoved the cassette he had taken from Ray’s Diner into Earl’s hands. ‘I’m telling you what I have been telling you from the start – somebody is behind Jessie’s disappearance.’

Earl looked down at the tape. ‘What is this?’

‘It’s the CCTV tape from the parking lot at Ray’s Diner. There’s something on it I want you to see.’

‘Start from the beginning again: you say a man was asking questions?’

‘Yeah, he was in Ray’s Diner on Thursday asking Louisa Winters all kinds of questions about us.’

‘What kind of questions?’

‘How the hell should I know? All I do know is that he was asking, and he got information about where we live.’

‘And?’

‘And? 
And?
’

‘And I’m saying this town has been inundated with people from all over the country asking about Jessie for weeks. Why have you got a bee in your bonnet about this guy?’

‘Ace reckons someone has been watching the house.’

‘Oh? How’d he come by this notion?’

‘He says there’s trampled grass up on the ridge near where we found Rudy. He says you can see right onto the property from there.’

Earl looked at him sharply. ‘
Trampled grass?
’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Ace back on that wacky backy or something?’

Mike glowered at him.

‘Come on Mike, trampled grass? Be serious. You want me to go take a look at flattened grass.’

‘I want you to take on board that somebody might have been watching our house.’

‘Could have been any critter done that.’

‘You think a critter shot Rudy? I don’t know of any critters that shoot arrows into old dogs.’

‘What makes you think it was an arrow?’

‘Or whatever the hell it was then,’ Mike said quickly, forgetting his word to Ace. ‘Look, to hell with the grass, you need to look at that tape.’

‘Now? At this hour?’

‘I think this is the guy who was asking questions about Jessie. Right before she went missing.’

Earl sighed. ‘Mike, look. I know you’re going through a tough time—’

‘He had our address, said he wanted to send flowers. Look at this tape, Earl, he made sure he was off camera as much as possible – even the way he shields his face is messed up.’

‘Mike—’

‘
I’m asking you just to look at it
.’

‘All, right, come on through into the kitchen, we got a little portable in there that will play it’.

Mike followed Earl down a corridor crowded with photos of a growing family. Earl had become a grandfather during the winter for the second time. Mike sometimes forgot there was only two years between him and Earl.

‘I spoke with your momma again,’ Earl said, not looking at him directly, as he pushed open a swing door and led them into a spacious kitchen with a marble-topped island dead centre. ‘She said Jessie was real low in her spirits the days leading up to her disappearance.’

‘She says a lot of things.’

The television was bolted to the wall to the side of a double-doored fridge opposite a breakfast counter. Mike could picture Earl seated there watching the news over his cereal of a morning.

Earl plugged the TV in and slipped the tape into the little slot below the screen.

‘Fast forward to around eight-thirty.’

In silence, they watched patrons of Ray’s pull in and pull out of the parking lot. A few minutes before nine, a car pulled in and parked in the far end of the lot, on the blind side of a rig.

‘That’s him,’ Mike said, moving closer to the television. The man – and they could only really assume that it was a man – appeared at the right-hand corner of the screen and walked along a low walk that divided the lot from the pavement. He skirted the entire parking lot before he came to the main door.

‘You see that?’

‘I see a man walking into a bar.’

‘Ask yourself why would he walk like that, ’less he don’t want to be seen?’

‘If he didn’t want to be seen why the hell go to a bar?’

‘Just play the damn tape, Earl.’

Earl fast-forwarded for a while, and together they watched the same curious performance as the man exited Ray’s and drove away.

‘Well?’ Mike demanded when they had viewed it a second time.

‘Well what?’

‘I reckon that’s a Taurus. Can’t tell colour on the tape but I reckon it’s light coloured.’

‘Could be.’

‘He wasn’t local so chances are he was staying in the area. We need to find this man.’

‘And ask him what? Why he walks funny or why he was asking after a woman who has been all over the news and television for weeks?’

‘Are you going to sit there and tell me you’re not going to do nothing? Jessie deserves more than that, Earl.’

‘Mike, I think you and I both know what happened to Jessie. I’m sorry for it, you have no idea how much, but you need to start facing up to some facts. Your home was not broken into, Jessie’s car was not broken into; it was parked neatly in an area well known for … well, where people go. It’s possible your wife found your dog dead and snapped. Probably she removed the collar herself. She’s been under immense pressure, Mike. I think you know Jessie is not coming back. In your heart, I think you already know it.’

Mike stared at Earl for a long moment. It looked as if he was going to say something more, but instead he walked past him, pressed eject and retrieved the tape.

‘Mike.’

‘We’re done, Earl.’

‘Mike, come on now, sit down. Let me make you a drink.’

Mike left Earl’s home and walked down the drive to where Ace waited in his truck, with the window down, smoking a cigarette. He got in and slammed the door.

‘Well?’

‘You were right. A stick of dynamite wouldn’t make a lick of difference.’

‘We done wasting time with this shit then?’ By ‘this’ Ace was talking about ‘the law’.

Mike threw the tape on the dashboard.

‘We’re done.’

C
aleb climbed
through the cavern and emerged, blinking, into the sunlight. He jumped up onto the rocks facing over the path and positioned himself high enough so that he would be able to watch her as she made the final approach towards the creek. This was his favourite spot; the penultimate zone before the real fun could begin.

He got comfortable and glanced down towards the creek. There were a number of old rotten trees bent across the water. They were too slippery and feeble to climb on, but she might try to use them to help herself wade across. It could work, if she was prepared to get cold and wet. It had worked once or twice before. One of his earlier Category As had made it to the far bank, slipping and sinking and gasping before falling heavily into the rushes and weeds. He smiled. What a fighter 
she
 had been.

But most of them did not attempt to cross. Most of them gave up as soon as they realised that the current running through the freezing water was treacherous. Faced with a daunting uphill climb over rocks, they all turned and followed the creek south. He liked to watch their expressions before he whistled from his vantage point. The shift, when they saw him and realised how hopeless their plight, was glorious.

The temperature was beginning to rise. Caleb took a sip from his canteen, shifted his weight from one hip to another and waited.

Before long, a young whitetail buck dropped off the bank nearest him and skittered down the rocks towards the water. Caleb stayed completely still, watching the animal’s graceful movements. Halfway to the riverbank the buck stopped and stood stock-still, listening. Its ears twitched back and forth, trying to locate the source of its unease. After a few moments, it moved on and disappeared into the trees. Caleb watched it go, perplexed at its fearless and casual movements. While he had not expected it to exhibit any sign that it had noticed him, he had fully expected it to be able to hear Jessie’s imminent arrival. That it did not do so indicated to Caleb that something was wrong.

He checked his watch. From the length of Jessie’s stride she ought to have been almost upon him by now. Yet he heard nothing, saw nothing, and neither had the buck. He looked up along the path.

He waited another few minutes, trying to keep his irritation in check. Maybe she’d fallen or twisted an ankle. That had happened before and he’d had to trot back to despatch his game where she lay. That had annoyed him, he recalled. It always annoyed him when a hunt ended early.

He looked at his watch again. Another minute went by.

Then another.

He slipped the Winchester over his shoulder and began to climb down from the rocks. As soon as his feet hit the dirt he broke into a jog and trotted back up the path, half expecting her to come around a corner any second. But the woods remained silent as the sun beat down on him. Caleb Switch began to have doubts.

He began to run faster, scanning the ground for indentations. He found nothing for over a mile, then closer to two.

What the hell was going on?

He had gone almost two and a half miles before he spotted a scuffed herringbone print. He tracked it back a short way. She had been running, but then she had walked and stopped against a tree for a spell. He looked back in the direction he had come. From this angle, the path curved ahead and dipped from view. It was exactly the sort of route a person might hope for if they were fleeing. So something had either stopped her or she had changed her mind.

He moved to the right-hand side of the track and let his eyes drift over the leaf piles and plants growing down the steep slope. He narrowed his eyes, but could find no sign of unnatural disturbance anywhere. He crossed and studied the ground leading steeply up away from the track. Within seconds, he spotted a freshly snapped fern and beyond that, further up the incline, a branch with lichen that had been turned.

She had gone up.

Caleb stared at the ridge in amazement. They never went up.

He glanced at his watch and calculated. At this stage, she had more than a thirty-five-minute head start on him.

This would be quite a challenge.

Caleb slung his bow over his shoulder and began to forge his way uphill. He moved fast, choosing his line carefully, making sure to conserve as much energy as he could. He would need that for when he caught up to her.