Cold on the Mountain Read online

  “Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Benson?” the bartender said. He had two glistening bottles of Coors. “That woman at the end of the bar asked me to bring these over. I didn’t want to intrude, but she insisted.”

  “It’s no intrusion. We’ve had a long day, so we’re just kind of zoning out over here,” Bo replied. He took the drinks and handed one to Kelli. “Give her our gratitude, if you would.” He raised the bottle and smiled at the woman. She was middle-aged and mousey, with a high forehead and what looked like a hand-knitted scarf tied around her neck. She offered a tired smile in return and looked like she was ready to spring from her barstool.

  “She’d like to…” the bartender’s smile widened. He looked embarrassed. “She’d like to join you. I told her you were busy, that you didn’t want to be bothered, but she insisted. She’s…well, she’s a little different. Harmless, but different all the same. Her name is Anna Wells.”

  “We’d be delighted for her to join us,” Kelli said, and Bo just grinned. That was Kelli—ever gracious, even when women draped themselves on her boyfriend. She waved to the woman, who quickly crossed the room. The bartender just nodded and retreated to unload a batch of dishes at the other side of the bar.

  “Ms. Wells?” Bo said, offering his hand. “Thanks for the drinks. You a fan of the show?”

  A shadow of confusion crossed her features and Bo knew in that instant just exactly who she reminded him of. It was Shelly Duvall! Shelly Duvall, from back in her Shining days!

  “The show? I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

  Bo flashed Kelli a crooked grin, eyebrows arched in surprise. “I…shoot, that’s embarrassing. I guess we just assumed you were a fan. I’m Bo Benson, and this is my girlfriend Kelli Armstead. I’m an actor in a police procedural on NBC.”

  Anna smiled and nodded. “I don’t watch much television, Mr. Benson. I’ll make sure I put aside some time for your show now, though.”

  “Please, Anna—just call us ‘Kelli’ and ‘Bo,’” Kelli said. She took a swig of Coors. “What’s on your mind?”

  “You—” she started, before tripping over the words. She stared at her hands, clenching and unclenching them, before posing her question bluntly. “Why did you come to Bishop?”

  “Pretty obvious we’re from out of town, is it?” Bo said. He was tipsy, and enjoying the strange encounter.

  “Not really. It’s just…there’s something about you. I recognize it now. I see it in the others who come searching here as well.”

  Bo’s mouth fell open and Kelli cocked her head. “What are you talking about?” she said.

  “The mountain, or something on it, takes folks…” she stopped, took a deep breath. “People go missing up there all the time. Something’s just not right about that place.”

  Bo nodded, quickly sober. “My brother and his family came through here on their way to the Grand Canyon. This was a little over a week ago. He said he found a shortcut over the mountain. We haven’t heard from them since.”

  Anna put a hand to her mouth. She finished the last of her Coors and ordered a replacement. “I’m so sorry to hear that, Bo. It’s good of you both to come for them. It means a lot. Having you here—maybe it will make a difference.”

  “What do you mean, Anna?” Kelli said. There was an edge creeping into her tone. “How do you know about any of this?”

  Wells sighed. “My boyfriend disappeared up there almost a year ago. I’ve been here ever since, waiting for him. Hell, I moved to Bishop, just so I could be here when he came home. Quit my job and everything.”

  “But he hasn’t come home,” Bo said gently, “and they haven’t found him, have they? That surprises me. Sheriff Tasket said they close 90% of their cases around here.”

  Wells snorted. “That’s some shady accounting if you ask me. Jurisdiction becomes an issue when folks go missing at the border. The California side claims the cases were bungled over in Nevada; the Nevada side blames the Californians. It’s a great big circle jerk, is what it is. Besides, Tasket shouldn’t be one to talk about solving missing persons cases. One of his own deputies has been gone for months.”

  Bo winced.

  “But,” Kelli continued, “did they ever find any sign of your boyfriend? Any of his clothing? Anything at all?”

  Wells shook her head. “And that’s just one of the reasons why I hold out hope. We were going to get married. He never would have just…just up and disappeared like that. Look, I know my Frankie; he wouldn’t bail on me. But it’s more than that. There have been others.”

  “Others?” Bo said.

  “Folks like you. Folks that come into town, poking around for their loved ones. Something’s happening up there. It…it scares me.”

  Bo exhaled slowly. He instantly trusted this woman, despite the skeptical smile the bartender had worn earlier. “Do you think…is there any hope that Frankie is still alive?”

  Her smile returned, and it was a nice one—warm and not the least bit crazy. She rooted through her purse before pulling out a piece of folded paper. She smoothed it on the bar and slid it over to Bo.

  It was an e-mail, and he read it out loud:

  Anna, I can’t believe it, but I got to a computer! I’m alive. I’m in a place called Adrienne. It’s not far past Deep Springs, but you won’t find it on any map. I’m not able to leave—not yet, anyway. Not sure when I’ll be able to write again. I love you. I’m trying to get home. Don’t give up on me! ~ FR

  “When did you get this?” Bo asked.

  “Three days ago. I haven’t gone to Sheriff Tasket yet. I’m not sure why—it’s just…well, he hasn’t been as receptive to my help as I’d hoped he’d be.”

  Kelli nodded. She read the message over again before pushing it back to Anna. “Holy cow, what a relief! You got this in your e-mail?”

  “Yeah, and it’s about damned time. Like I said, I’ve been here for months.” Anna kept her eyes down when the bartender delivered her beer. “They all think I’m crazy,” she whispered.

  Bo and Kelli exchanged a glance. “I don’t,” Bo said. “I think you’re on the level. What are you going to do next?”

  Anna’s eyes darted about the room. She leaned forward. “There’s a woman in town. She knows things. She—well, she has a special set of skills. I think I can arrange a meeting if you’re willing.”

  Bo leaned closer. “What, ah…what kind of woman are we talking about here?”

  “We better…can we just get into that tomorrow? I mean, if she’s willing to meet with you? She’s very cautious around strangers. I’ll see her tonight, and I’ll try to set up an appointment. Meet you outside of here at 1:00?”

  Kelli sighed, unable to hold the frustration back. “That’s almost another twenty-four hours, Anna. If our family is out there in the cold, they don’t have the time. We need to…”

  “Kelli, I think the cold might be the least of their problems. They’re not stuck out there in the elements, or we would have found them by now. At least, that’s what she says,” Anna interrupted.

  Bo smiled. “You can’t even imagine how much we want to believe that, Anna.”

  Anna took down the rest of her beer, finishing with a dainty little burp. Olive Oil could drink, that much was clear. She stood from her stool. “Don’t get your hopes up, Mr. Benson. I didn’t say they weren’t in any danger. Just not the kind you think. Will you be here?”

  Kelli swallowed thickly. She glanced at Bo, who gave a little nod.

  “We’ll see you tomorrow afternoon,” Kelli said.

  EIGHT

  Phil was the last one up.

  When he opened his eyes and recalled the previous evening’s bizarre encounter, a wave of panic swept through him. He desperately grasped at the pile of bunched bedding where his wife had slept.

  She was gone.

  “Carrie? Cammie!” he shouted. “Girls!”

  He stumbled out of bed to discover that he was utterly alone. His girls—damn it, they were outside!

 
He leapt out of bed and rushed to get dressed. He was hopping around the room, one leg jammed into his jeans, when he heard the key in the door.

  “Yeah, it’s really cute!” Wendy said. She was talking with the girls, whose laughter provided the purest sense of relief Phil had experienced since surviving a round of October layoffs back in Oregon.

  “Wendy! Girls! Jesus, is everybody okay?” he said. The words came out on the verge of a shout, and the shock was evident in the girls’ expressions.

  “Phil, honey, what’s the matter?” Wendy said. She strode across the room and touched his shoulder, and he pulled her into a tight embrace.

  “You too…c’mon over, kids,” he said to the girls, motioning frantically with his hand; they joined the family hug, but not before he caught Carrie rolling her eyes.

  Hell, they could roll their eyes all they wanted. They were safe—at least for the time being. He fought against tears that were pushing to the surface, and then he realized that the door still stood wide open.

  “Sit down, girls. I’m going to close the door, and then we need to have a talk. Go! Sit down, please…”

  “Everything okay in here?” the night clerk said.

  Phil winced. There was just no getting around the fact that the man was the spitting image of John Wayne Gacy.

  The clerk swung into the doorway; his eyes devoured the room, lingering an instant too long on Wendy and the girls. He leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed over his chest. “Ya’ll sleep okay?”

  “Yeah,” Phil said. He stepped in front of his family, thankful to find that tiny bit of starch in his spine. He buttoned his jeans and took a step toward the door. “We’re doing just fine. Thanks for checking in.”

  He took another step forward to close the door, but the clerk ventured further into the room. “Are you folks…are you gonna be re-upping for another night? We’d love to have you. Give you some time to explore our little piece of heaven here.”

  “Oh, thank you, but no,” Wendy said, “we’ll be moving on. But it’s a delightful little town you folks have here. Very quaint.”

  A grin split the man’s doughy face. His teeth were a sickly yellow. “Shame. Well, I wish you luck if you’re leaving. But maybe you’ll reconsider. It happens from time to time.”

  “Thank you, uh…” Phil said.

  “Gacy. John Gacy,” the clerk replied. He shot Phil a wink before waving at the girls, flitting his fingers like a copse of fleshy tentacles at them. “Toodle-oo, ladies!”

  When he was gone, Phil quietly closed the door before fastening all of the locks. He went to the window, saw Gacy sauntering toward the office.

  “Phil, what is the matter?” Wendy said, her forehead a warren of wrinkles. “Why are you acting so crazy?”

  His mind raced. What could he tell them? What should he tell them?

  Hell, an even better question bubbled to the surface: What would they actually believe?

  He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

  The twins stared at him with fascination. It must have been unsettling, he thought, seeing a parental figure in such a state of confusion.

  “Phil?” Wendy prodded.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “No big deal. Let’s…let’s just get packed up, huh? Chop, chop. The road’s calling, and I’m ready to get back at it.”

  Wendy gave him an awkward smile. She stood. “Oooo-kay. Girls, use the bathroom one last time while we load up, will you?”

  Cammie headed for the bathroom and Phil exhaled. What had he been thinking? The discussion he’d had the previous evening—the delusional man in the gray suit, and the sincere bartender—it had all been a trick. Elaborate and cruel, but a ruse nonetheless. No doubt the folks at The Dark Earth Saloon would have a nice laugh at his expense tonight, but that was okay.

  Fuck ‘em—they were welcome to it. He just wanted to get his family out of there.

  They packed up the van and he headed for the motel exit. As they passed the little office, Phil noticed that the shades had been opened on the back window. Gacy stood before a mirror, smearing makeup on his face with a sponge. Phil stopped the van to let a bread truck pass on the road, and Gacy turned his head and grinned at him.

  He made a gesture like he was firing a gun at him.

  Phil goosed the gas and the van shot out onto the main strip. He made a left and, when the truck peeled off and the road was open, he put his foot down, driving into a clear, cold day. The Sierra Nevada loomed over them in every direction. He checked his rearview—saw a scattering of figures standing on the sidewalks of Adrienne.

  They grew smaller and smaller and then vanished altogether, erased by granite as the road dipped up and around a wide stone ridge.

  “It’s such a shame to leave,” Wendy said. “It really is a cute town. We’ll need to stop soon for some breakfast, honey. Even if it’s just fast food. I’m starving.”

  “Me too,” Cammie piped up.

  “That’s three of us,” Carrie said.

  “And four’s a crowd,” Phil said, feeling himself relax. He shifted in his seat, letting the tension run out of his legs. He had it up to fifty, his confidence improving by the second.

  They’d been on the road for about fifteen minutes, steadily climbing, when they crested a little bluff, a mountain pass nestled between two peaks, before starting down the other side in a gradual descent.

  Before them stood a picturesque little town.

  “Hey, here’s a place,” Carrie said.

  Wendy’s face twisted in confusion. “Wait, is that..?”

  Phil swallowed thickly. He slowed the van, coasting to a stop beneath the sign.

  WELCOME TO ADRIENNE

  SMALL, BUT MIGHTY!

  Wendy stared at her husband. “I don’t understand, Phil. You never left the road! What happened—how did we end up back here?”

  She peered up the road. A crowd was forming in the street.

  “I’m…I’m not sure, Wendy. Let’s try again.”

  He floored it, spraying gravel and ice across the recently scraped roadway. The van gathered speed and they cleared Adrienne in ten minutes. The motel passed on their left. Gacy stood outside, dressed in garish spats and a jester’s hat.

  He bowed his legs out and preened there on the sidewalk, complete with jazz hands, as they passed him.

  “What in the..? Phil, what’s happening here?”

  “Not sure, honey. Just…just believe, okay? Believe.”

  “Believe in what? This is crazy!”

  “Believe that we can leave. Okay? It’s as simple as that, Wendy. Believe that we can go home.”

  But the route was identical, and it delivered them right back at the gates of Adrienne.

  “Isn’t there another way, Daddy? Did you miss something?”

  “I don’t think so, honey.”

  “So what do we do?” Wendy said. “How can this be? It’s…it’s not physically possible.”

  Wendy shared his fear. It made him both sad and relieved, that shared burden. At least he wasn’t going crazy alone. “I suppose that we go into town. What else can we do? We can’t stay out here.”

  He nosed the van forward. A police cruiser blocked their progress just outside the entrance to The Sunbeam Theater.

  A lawman in a dark jacket leaned nonchalantly against the cruiser. He put a hand up when the van inched to a stop.

  “Stay put,” Phil said. He turned to the girls. “Listen to your mom, okay? Do just as she says.”

  They nodded. Cammie had tears in her eyes. Carrie looked more annoyed than anything else.

  “Sheriff?” Phil said, stepping into the street.

  The man nodded. Men of all ages—and now a few more women, too—crowded into the streets outside the theater. There were at least fifty of them there, just watching the proceedings.

  “I’m Sheriff Dennis Rader. I keep the peace here—by any means necessary, Phil.” He had a thick grey moustache and wore wire-rimmed glasses. A tuft of fluffy hair topped an
otherwise bald pate. Phil recognized him instantly. How could he not? The BTK killer had dominated the news for a solid six months. He’d been torn apart during an attack in prison, but he was standing there in the flesh now.

  “We’d like to pass on through. How…how do we leave Adrienne, sir? We don’t…we don’t belong here.”

  Rader grinned. “Oh, well that’s a shame! You get lost? Made a wrong turn back at Albuquerque, did you Phil?”

  “Look, Mr. Rader, I’m not sure—”

  “Sheriff Rader! Mind your manners, Phil. You’re in our town now.”

  “Sorry, sorry! Look, I just…I thought we could go. It’s pretty clear that’s not possible this way. So how else can we leave?”

  Rader winked at him. He turned to the townsfolk, playing to his audience. “You know that line by The Eagles, right Phil? You can check out any time you like, but you can’t ever leave? I guess it’s kind of like that.”

  “There has to be a way. We…look, we didn’t do anything. We don’t belo—”

  “You don’t belong here, do you, Phil?” Rader interrupted, mocking him. “You don’t belong with the killers and the monsters? What kind of an attitude is that? I’ll tell you what kind of an attitude it is. It’s damned racist is what it is.”

  Phil considered pointing out to Rader that his particular brand of sociopathic behavior had nothing to do with race, but instead offered a meek, “Sorry, sir.”

  Rader waved it off, softening just a little.

  “Well, there is a way. You’re going to hear all about it anyway, I suppose. And you’re in luck. You’ll only have to stay with us a few weeks or so until you get your chance.”

  “What chance?” Phil said, feeling something like hope shatter inside of him. A few weeks? A few weeks! His job was hanging by a thread as it was…

  “The lottery,” Rader said, and a low murmur bounced through the crowd. Folks exchanged grins. Phil saw a waifish girl with purple hair lick her lips before winking at him and breaking into bawdy laughter.