The Shack (8 page)

“So,” she continued, “have you noticed anyone strange around your family these past few days?”

Mack was surprised and sat back in his chair. “You mean he’s been stalking us?”

“No, he seems to choose his victims at random, though they were all about the age of your daughter with similar hair color. We think he spots them a day or two before and waits and watches from nearby for an opportune moment. Have you seen anyone unusual or out of place near the lake? Perhaps near the bathrooms?” Mack recoiled at the thought of his children being watched; being targets. He tried to think past his own imagination, but came up blank. “I’m sorry, not that I can remember . . .”

“Did you stop anywhere on your way to the campgrounds, or notice anyone strange when you were hiking or sightseeing in the area?”

“We stopped at Multnomah Falls on the way here, and we’ve been all over the area the past three days, but I don’t recall seeing anyone who looked out of the ordinary. Who would have thought . . . ?”

“Exactly, Mack, so don’t beat yourself up. Something may come to mind later. No matter how small or irrelevant it might seem, please let us know.” She paused to look at another paper on her desk. “What about a green military truck. Have you noticed anything like that around while you were here?”

Mack raked his memory. “I really can’t remember seeing anything like it.”

Special Agent Wikowsky continued to question Mack for the next fifteen minutes but could not jar his memory enough to provide anything helpful. She finally closed her notebook and stood, extending her hand. “Mack, again, I am so sorry about Missy. If anything breaks, I will personally let you know the minute it happens.”

At 5 p.m. the first promising report finally came in, from the Imnaha roadblock. As she had promised, Agent Wikowsky immediately sought out Mack and filled him in on the details. Two couples had encountered a green military-looking truck matching the description of the vehicle everyone was searching for. They had been exploring some old Nez Perce sites off of National Forest 4260 in one of the more remote areas of the National Reserve, and on their way out they had come face-to-face with the vehicle, just south of the junction where NF 4260 and NF 250 split. Because that section of road was basically one lane, they had to back up to a safe place to allow the truck to pass. They noted that the pickup had a number of gas cans in the back, plus a fair amount of camping gear. The odd part was that the man had bent over toward his passenger side as if looking for something on the floor, pulled his hat down low, and wore a big coat in the heat of the day, almost as if he were afraid of them. They had just laughed it off as one of those militia freaks.

The instant the report was announced to the group, tensions in the station increased. Tommy came over to let Mack know that unfortunately everything he had learned so far fit the Little Ladykiller’s MO—to head for remote areas out of which he could eventually hike. It was obvious that he knew where he was going, as the locale where he had been spotted was well off the beaten path. Unlucky for him that someone else had been so far out there as well.

With evening quickly approaching, an intense discussion began regarding the efficacy of immediate pursuit or holding off until daybreak. Regardless of their point of view, it seemed that everyone who spoke was deeply affected by the situation. Something in the heart of most human beings simply cannot abide pain inflicted on the innocent, especially children. Even broken men serving in the worst correctional facilities will often first take out their own rage on those who have caused suffering to children. Even in such a world of relative morality, causing harm to a child is still considered absolutely wrong. Period!

Standing near the back of the room, Mack listened impatiently to what seemed like time-wasting bickering. He was almost ready to kidnap Tommy if he had to and go after the guy himself. It felt like every second counted.

Although it certainly felt longer to Mack, the various departments and personalities agreed quickly, and unanimously, to set out in pursuit just as soon as a few arrangements could be made. Although there weren’t many ways to drive out of the area—and roadblocks were being set up immediately to prevent this—there was a very real concern that a skilled hiker could pass undetected into the Idaho wilderness to the east or Washington state to the north. While officials in the towns of Lewiston, Idaho and Clarkston, Washington were being contacted and notified of the situation, Mack quickly called Nan to give her an update and then left with Tommy.

By now he had only one prayer left: “Dear God, please, please, please take care of my Missy. I just can’t right now.” Tears traced their way down his cheeks and then spilled off onto his shirt.

By 7:30 p.m. the convoy of patrol cars, FBI SUVs, pickups with dogs in kennels, and some Ranger vehicles headed up the Imnaha Highway. Instead of turning east on to the Wallowa Mountain Road, which would have taken them directly into the National Reserve, they stayed on the Imnaha and headed north. Eventually they took the Lower Imnaha Road and finally Dug Bar Road into the Reserve.

Mack was glad he was traveling with someone who knew the area. It seemed at times that Dug Bar Road went in all directions simultaneously. It was almost as if whoever had named these roads had run out of ideas, or simply got tired or drunk and began naming everything Dug Bar just so he could go home.

The roads, with frequent narrow switchbacks edging steep drop-offs, became even more treacherous in the pitch dark of night. Progress slowed to a crawl. Finally, they passed the point where the green pickup had last been seen, and a mile later came to the junction where NF 4260 went farther north-northeast and NF 250 headed southeast. There, as planned, the caravan split into two, with a small group heading north up the 4260 with Special Agent Wikowsky, while the rest, including Mack, Emil, and Tommy, went southeast on the 250. A few difficult miles later, this larger group split again; Tommy and a dog truck continuing down the 250 where, according to the maps the road would end, and the rest taking the more easterly route through the park on NF 4240 down toward the Temperance Creek area.

At this point all search efforts slowed even more. The trackers were now on foot and backed up by powerful floodlights while they looked for signs of recent activity on the roads—anything that might suggest the particular area they were examining was something other than a dead end.

Almost two hours later and moving at a snail’s pace toward the end of 250, a call came in to Dalton from Wikowsky. Her team had caught a break. About ten miles from the junction where they had separated, an old unnamed road left the 4260 and headed straight north for almost two miles. It was barely visible and deeply potted. They would either have missed it entirely or ignored it, except that one of the trackers had flashed his floodlight off a hubcap less than fifty feet from the main road. Out of curiosity he retrieved it, and under the covering of road dust found it splattered with specks of green paint. The hubcap had probably been lost when the truck had tussled with one of the many deep potholes strewn in that direction.

Tommy’s group immediately turned back the way they had come. Mack didn’t want to let himself begin to hope that perhaps, by some miracle, Missy might still be alive, especially when everything he knew told him otherwise. Twenty minutes later, another call from Wikowsky; this time to tell them they had found the truck. Choppers and search planes would never have seen it from the sky, covered as it was under a carefully built lean-to of limbs and brush.

It took Mack’s crew almost three hours to reach the first team and by then it was all over. The dogs had done the rest, uncovering a descending game trail that led more than a mile into a small hidden valley. There they found a rundown little shack near the edge of a pristine lake barely half a mile across, fed by a cascading creek a hundred yards away. A century or so earlier this had probably been a settler’s home. It had two good-size rooms; enough to house a small family. Since that time, it had most likely served as an occasional hunter’s or poacher’s cabin.

By the time Mack and his friends arrived, the sky was beginning to show the grays of predawn. A base camp had been set up well away from the battered little cabin in order to preserve the crime scene. The moment Wikowsky’s group had found the place, dog trackers had been sent out in different directions to try and locate a scent. Occasionally, the baying indicated that they had found something, only to have it disappear again. Now they were all returning to regroup and plan the day’s strategy.

Special Agent Samantha Wikowsky was sitting at a card table doing some map-work and drinking a large dripping bottle of water when Mack walked up. She offered him a grim smile, which he didn’t return, and an extra bottle, which he accepted. Her eyes were sad and tender but her words were all business.

“Hey, Mack.” She hesitated. “Why don’t you pull up a chair?”

Mack didn’t want to sit down. He needed to do something to stop his stomach from churning. Sensing trouble, he stood and waited for her to continue.

“Mack, we found something, but it’s not good news.”

He fumbled for the right words. “Did you find Missy?” It was the question that he didn’t want to hear the answer to, but desperately needed to know.

“No, we didn’t find her.” Sam paused and started to stand up. “But, I do need you to come and identify something we found down in that old shack. I need to know if it was—” she caught herself, but it was too late, “I mean, if it is hers.”

His gaze went to the ground. He again felt a million years old, almost wishing he could somehow turn himself into a big unfeeling rock.

“Oh, Mack, I’m so sorry,” Sam apologized, standing up. “Look, we can do this later if you like. I just thought . . .”

He couldn’t look at her and even found it difficult to come up with words that he could speak without falling apart. He could feel the dam about to burst again. “Let’s do it now,” he mumbled softly. “I want to know everything there is to know.”

Wikowsky must have signaled the others because, although Mack didn’t hear anything, he suddenly felt Emil and Tommy each take one of his arms as they turned and followed the special agent down the short path to the shack. Three grown men, arms locked in some special grace of solidarity, walking together, each one toward his own worst nightmare.

A member of the forensic team opened the door of the shack to let them in. Generator-powered lighting illuminated every part of the main room. Shelving lined the walls, an old table, a few chairs, and an old sofa that someone had hauled in with no little effort. Mack immediately saw what he had come to identify and, turning, crumpled into the arms of his two friends and began to weep uncontrollably. On the floor by the fireplace lay Missy’s torn and blood-soaked red dress.

For Mack, the next few days and weeks became an emotion-numbing blur of interviews with law enforcement and the press, followed by a memorial service for Missy with a small empty coffin and an endless sea of faces, all sad as they paraded by, no one knowing what to say. Sometime during the weeks that followed, Mack began the slow and painful merging back into everyday life.

The Little Ladykiller, it seemed, was credited with taking his fifth victim, Melissa Anne Phillips. As was true in the other four cases, authorities never recovered Missy’s body, even though search teams had scoured the forest around the shack for days after its discovery. As in every other instance, the killer had left no fingerprints and no DNA. He’d left no useful evidence anywhere, only the pin. It was as if the man were a ghost.

At some point in the process, Mack attempted to emerge from his own pain and grief, at least with his family. They had lost a sister and daughter, but it would be wrong for them to lose a father and husband as well. Although no one involved was left unmarked by the tragedy, Kate seemed to have been affected the most, disappearing into a shell, like a turtle protecting its soft underbelly from anything potentially dangerous. It seemed that she would only poke her head out when she felt fully safe, which was becoming less and less often. Mack and Nan both worried increasingly about her, but couldn’t seem to find the right words to penetrate the fortress she was building around her heart. Attempts at conversation would turn into one-way monologues, with sounds bouncing off her stone visage. It was as if something had died inside her, and now was slowly infecting her from the inside, spilling out occasionally in bitter words or emotionless silence.

Josh fared much better, due in part to the long-distance relationship he had kept up with Amber. Email and the telephone gave him an outlet for his pain and she had given him the time and space to grieve. He was also preparing to graduate from high school with all the distractions that his senior year provided.

The Great Sadness
had descended and in differing degrees cloaked everyone whose lives had touched Missy’s. Mack and Nan weathered the storm of loss together with reasonable success, and in some ways were closer for it. Nan had made it clear from the start, and repeatedly, that she did not blame Mack in any way for what happened. Understandably, it took Mack much longer to let himself off the hook, even a little bit.

It is so easy to get sucked into the if-only game, and playing it is a short and slippery slide into despair.
If only
he had decided not to take the kids on that trip;
if only
he had said no when they asked to use the canoe;
if only
he had left the day before,
if only, if only, if only.
And then to have it all end with nothing. The fact that he was unable to bury Missy’s body magnified his failure as her daddy. That she was still out there somewhere alone in the forest haunted him every day. Now, three and a half years later, Missy was officially presumed to have been murdered. Life would never be normal again, not that any time is really ever normal. It would be so empty without his Missy.

The tragedy had also increased the rift in Mack’s own relationship with God, but he ignored this growing sense of separation. Instead, he tried to embrace a stoic, unfeeling faith, and even though Mack found some comfort and peace in that, it didn’t stop the nightmares where his feet were stuck in the mud and his soundless screams could not save his precious Missy. The bad dreams were becoming less frequent, and laughter and moments of joy were slowly returning, but he felt guilty about these.