Том Светерлич - The Gone World

“Read the names out loud so I can hear them,” said Petal. “Or—don’t bother with the names, let’s stick to credit-card numbers. I have an idea. Give me the last four numbers, and I’ll write them down, we’ll check for duplicates.”

“All right,” said Moss, unaccustomed to receiving this level of engagement, but Petal seemed particularly game, readying her notebook, starting a new column next to a poem she’d been writing. Moss read out the credit-card numbers, and Petal checked each number against her list, looking for repeats. They worked for nearly forty minutes, taking a break only to refill their coffee.

“Wait, wait—can you give me that last one again?” asked Petal.

Moss repeated the number and Petal said, “Here we go. Yes. I found a match, here. Patrick Gannon.”

“Patrick Gannon,” said Moss.

Moss jotted down the credit-card number that “Patrick Gannon” had used to make his reservation. He hadn’t reserved a room in the lodge but rather one of the cabins along the south rim of the gorge: Cabin number 22, the same number as the code on his pager. She had him. She checked all the past receipts—the number of guests was listed as two, though there was no information on the second guest.

“Anything unique about that cabin?” Moss asked. “About the name ‘Gannon’? Maybe someone you work with might have an idea about him? Might remember him?”

“I’ll ask around when the morning shift clocks in,” said Petal, tying her bright blue hair into a loose knot. “Let me check the file for Cabin 22, see if we’ve kept any notes about it.”

“Are you in college?” asked Moss as Petal gathered up their paperwork.

“I’m working a few years,” said Petal, “not sure if I want to go to school. I wanted to backpack across Africa, but my dad found me this job.”

“Consider a career in law enforcement,” said Moss. “You’re a natural. You’ve been a help tonight.”

Petal replaced the files of room receipts in the management office before stepping behind the front desk, opening up the three-ring binder labeled CABINS. She flipped to the back, scanned a series of forms. “Wasp’s nest in Cabin 22 in 1983,” said Petal. “Looks like it was taken care of.” She opened another three-ring binder labeled CHECK-IN, said, “Oh, shit. Gannon’s checked in right now. Cabin 22.”

“Tonight?” said Moss. A prickle of adrenaline. She thought of Marian, wondered if she was in one of the cabins, possibly held here.

Petal checked a pegboard full of keys on the rear wall, checked again in her binder. “He made the reservation Friday night, checked in Saturday, and has the cabin through the week.”

A Friday-night reservation—he’d booked his cabin just as Marian had been kidnapped. “I need to get there,” said Moss, no moment to spare if she might recover Marian here, now. “I can follow one of the roads that lead from the parking lot?”

“About a mile from here,” said Petal. “It’s tricky in the dark, I can take you over.”

Petal threw on a pea coat, brought Moss through the administrative office to the garage, where she found a golf cart spattered with mud. They left the garage and rode along the cabin path, a winding strip of concrete lit only by the dim wattage of the golf cart’s front light. Moss gripped the crossbar as Petal drove, taking the bends quickly. The stars were thick out here, without the diluting light of cities. Orion and the Dippers were clear, but the sky was dominated by the silvery flare of the comet Hale-Bopp, the cosmic ice and burning tails like a thumb smudge of light.

Two dozen cabins were situated near the gorge rim, each private, separated by dense hemlocks. A few were booked, Moss figured, seeing cars tucked into the woods, but most of the cabins stood empty—March was still too cold for most people. Petal drove around to one of the distant cabins. “Here’s 22,” she said. A Wrangler was parked in the gravel patch, the spare tire draped with a POW*MIA cover. No lights. The cabin seemed consumed by night.

“Petal, go ahead and wait back here, all right?” said Moss, standing from the golf cart. Petal bundled up in her coat, lit a cigarette. Marian might be here , thought Moss. She picked her way along the mulch path to the cabin. The night was so opaque she could barely see Petal and the golf cart, could see only the orange tip of her cigarette bobbing like a firefly. Moss knocked on the door, waiting a few moments. Nothing stirred inside the cabin, no lights snapped on, no movement. She knocked harder.

“Special agent, NCIS,” she said. “I need to speak with Patrick Mursult.”

Silence. She unsnapped her holster, ready to draw. Moss knocked again, no answer. Or maybe there was no one here—the cabins were small enough she should have heard movement if someone were inside.

“Do you have keys?” Moss called back.

“Yeah,” said Petal. “I have to open the door for you. I can’t hand over the manager’s keys.”

Moss watched the cigarette tip bob closer. Petal had a ring of keys, squinted to find the one marked 22. “I wish I had a flashlight,” she said, stepping around Moss, feeling for the cabin lock with her fingers. Moss heard the key slide in, heard the lock unlatch. Petal stepped inside just as Moss was smacked by the odor of blood.

“Petal, don’t—”

Petal flipped on the lights, and when she registered the wash of blood, she screamed, her cigarette dropping from her mouth. Moss took the girl by her shoulders, held her, led her from the cabin, “It’s okay, it’s okay—go back to the office, call 911—”

“I’m all right,” said Petal, her voice bubbling with hysteria. “I’m all right, it’s fine, I didn’t see it, I didn’t see—”

Moss put her hands to Petal’s cheeks, steadied her. “Listen to me, listen,” she said, and registered the moment when Petal regained herself. “Go back to the office, call 911,” said Moss. “My cell won’t work out here. I need you to do this for me, okay? Call 911.”

Moss waited until she heard the sound of the golf cart’s motor diminish before returning to the cabin. She crushed out Petal’s cigarette, smoldering on the floor. She closed the door behind her. The cabin’s interior was wood, with exposed ceiling beams. Patrick Mursult’s body was beside the bed, his head resting on the mattress, his wrists tied behind him with a belt. Someone had shot him through the back of the head, an execution. Blood had sprayed from the exit wound, dousing the headboard with blood that glistened in the room lights.

She checked the rest of the cabin. There was no one else here, no sign of Marian. Mursult had been staying here alone. She spotted a gun on the floor, a Beretta M9. Could be a service weapon, she thought, wondering if the Beretta had been Mursult’s or if his killer had left it here. But even if it was his service weapon, the NSC SEALs she worked with strongly preferred the SIG Sauer P226. The M9 might have been the weapon Mursult was originally issued back in the mid-eighties. An older gun.

She heard sirens piercing the silence long before they arrived. The first on scene was an ambulance from the Broaddus Hospital, Moss waiting outside the cabin, waiving off the EMTs so they wouldn’t contaminate the crime scene. When the Tucker County sheriff arrived, Moss asked him to radio in, ask for the FBI. Deputies woke the few others in the cabins, taking their names, contact information, asking them what they might have heard, what they might have seen. An FBI unit from the Clarksburg field office arrived, already in contact with Brock, who was on his way down from Pittsburgh.

No cell reception here, but Petal let Moss use the office telephone. The lodge office was stuffy, with a minuscule metal writing desk and a calendar of the Blackwater Falls photographed in different seasons. Moss dialed for an out line—at this hour O’Connor must be asleep, she figured, so she tried his home number rather than NCIS headquarters. She thought of him now, wisps of white hair, sandpaper stubble, sitting up in bed and shuffling through his vast house in Virginia, chasing down the ringing telephone before his younger wife’s sleep was disturbed.