Headlights(38)

“You drink two beers, and get … wild.”

He nods his head solemnly. “One night I was with some buddies o’ mine, back up in Oregon. That’s where I’m from. Don’t know if you know that. We were slingin’ some brewskies, and I had like three of ’em. And one of my buddies dared me to a race to the top of Ruckel Ridge, which, if you don’t know, is a real dangerous hike. Can be, if you’re not careful. Just a real scramble, slick mossy rocks, and there’s this part called the Catwalk that’s just like a foot wide, straight cliff down, and I’m tellin’ ya, we were running! So yeah. Gotta limit myself to one, ’cause when I drink I just throw caution to the wind!”

He happily bobs his head to the Phish song playing on the speakers. An Avalanche game plays on the TV behind the bar. I sit back down and pull both glasses toward me. My phone buzzes, Josie again.

I’m serious, call me.

I pull out my notebook and start writing things down, everything Frank and Lucy Wheely said, everything I noticed in the field. Try to lower my blood pressure.

“Pete didn’t go the way we thought he did,” Tillman says. “Gotta redraw the map.”

It takes me a second to register that Tillman is actually talking about the case. “What?”

“I don’t think he walked on the road we thought he did. I think he took the other one around the side of the property.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When I set off the car alarm. Frank Wheely didn’t take the same route coming to us as we all walked before—from the house, around the paddock. He took a cut-through path.”

I set my pen down, look at him.

“Pete Noland’s clothes,” he says. “When we found them, there was a piece of grass stuck to the bottom of his boot, wedged in between the grooves. Timothy grass isn’t common here. You need it to be wetter for it to grow. But it’s real in demand, people think it makes premium hay, so it’s like a point of pride if anyone’s got it—it’s a thing. Except it’s common up in the northwest, since … wetter. Anyway, Frank Wheely’s got a patch of it, down on the other side of the house, the one we didn’t walk on. Pete didn’t go the way we thought he did. And I wanted to see if Frank was gonna show us some route I hadn’t thought of when he came to us from the house. Also see if he was lying about finding the car keys. Seems like he wasn’t.” He shrugs. “So, may not matter, but Pete didn’t go back to his car. Someone intercepted him and made him go the other way from the house. Or he planned to go that other way all along.”

At the front, a delivery is made, kegs brought in through the door and set just inside. Something about a truck blocking the back entrance. Two employees start carrying them, one by one, through the taproom. Tillman watches and says, “It’s like the skies. Flight paths can tell you a lot. And we’re in the Central Flyway here.” He winks.

“You don’t have working theories,” I say. “Nothing listed in any of the files.” It’s a question. Nat Tillman, who set off that car alarm on purpose.

“Do you meditate?” Tillman asks. “I do,” he says when I don’t answer. “Every day, for the last ten years. You don’t need to write things down. I got it all logged right up here.” He touches his head. “Caffeine’s the other thing that’ll screw ya, I don’t touch the stuff.”

I take a breath. “Tillman. Do you have a working theory?”

“Don’t think we’re there yet, compadre. Just gotta keep takin’ it all in. Eyes to the skies.”

He’s up then, off his stool, and walking over to the employee struggling with one of the kegs. He asks if he can help her with it and lifts it off the ground with strength I’m surprised he possesses, and which makes my mood significantly worse.

I get a text from Daphne, but not about catching up. It’s an ID on the John Doe from the motel room, the one taped into the bed with Hannah Lawrence. She sends it to Jack, Frazier, Tillman, Garcia, and me. Frazier sends a follow-up PDF report through the FBI server a few minutes later.

Tony Howell. Twenty-six years old. Geological survey analyst for a major oil and gas company. Lived with his brother, socials showing him out with friends, volunteering at shelters. From his outward persona, a very well-loved guy.

I read through the preliminary report, and something catches my eye. His company office, in another area I haven’t heard of. Granite Ridge. All these names of these new developments, all these stupid meaningless nature references. Eagle’s Nest, where Ramona Lopez’s hospital is; Rock Creek, where Everett Brown lives with his wife. And something occurs to me. Something so glaringly obvious that I cannot believe it didn’t before. I search for the owner of each of these developments. Different LLCs.

But all one developer.

WrightStar. I exhale a long slow breath.

The very first victim in all this, six years ago, was a fourteen-year-old girl. Claire Wright. None of us will ever forget it.

Claire’s father, Oliver Wright, is the developer on Rock Creek, Eagle’s Nest, Granite Ridge.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Years ago we found a connection with a guy named Ryder Smith who went to the same high school as two of the victims and one of the killers. While at that school, years before—and unrelated to this case, we ultimately determined—Ryder took a fake gun to school and threatened to kill everyone. Jack interviewed him in jail, but he was a dead end. It was a straw grasp anyway.