The Last to Vanish(21)
For the investigators, Jack’s statement indicated that this was probably an unfortunate accident; that she may not have even realized she was in a town notorious for the disappeared when she set out. And the state of her car: back seat piled high with a duffel bag of luggage, a camera bag with several attachments and a battery charger, sneakers tossed on the floor—like she’d just been passing through and got caught up in the beauty of the moment, went angling for a closer shot.
Looking at these images now—trees, snow, sky—I couldn’t even say that these had been taken here, on our trail. In the woods, in the winter, everything had a tendency to look the same. Just bare crooked branches, and barren ground, as far as you could see.
“These could be from anywhere,” I said. It was even possible that this arrived in Landon West’s possession from some other time, some other work trip. That these were not the last images that Farrah Jordan had ever taken.
Trey paused scrolling only for a second before shaking his head and continuing. “Then why the hell did my brother have them?”
My back teeth clenched together, because that was the question. That was the big question. Because, in all the searching, in the list of things that were never seen, that camera—and any presumed contents—had disappeared along with her.
“We don’t even know these were hers,” I said. They didn’t look like art, didn’t look like shots taken by a professional photographer, documenting the beauty of a place.
He turned his head toward me, disbelief radiating off him, in a way that made me lean back. He moved the cursor up to the file properties, and a list of details filled the screen to the right. “What day did she disappear?” he asked.
He had highlighted the date in the photo properties, and my stomach sank. “January sixteenth,” I said; I knew the date by heart. The same date currently on display in the properties.
“It’s hers,” he said, and I nodded once. I imagined her surrounded by trees, tipping the camera upward—
Trey clicked forward again, and this time, my mouth started to form a word—Wait, what—as the landscape slowly gained context. A snowy trail, seemingly untouched, and I heard the crunch of ice and snow beneath my boots. The next photo: a curve of a rock wall, icicles hanging from the grooves, and I felt the cold texture of the stone ledge under my fingers. Next: a set of ice-slicked rock steps stretching down, and suddenly I knew exactly where we were.
“I know that place,” I said. My heart was racing. It was an identifiable location. Would be memorable to anyone who had done the hike. “It’s on the way to the falls.” It was the last stretch before the end of the trail, when the sound of the cascading water carried around the curve but still remained out of sight. The air cooled by the mist of water and the shade of the rock as the trail veered suddenly downward—a place of expectation.
Trey clicked forward again, but we had reached the end of the photos, the icy steps frozen on the screen.
I closed my eyes, just as a noise escaped my throat. After all this time, I had given up on answers. I’d given up on the idea that anything had been left behind at all.
Until now, there had been no evidence that Farrah Jordan had made it any farther than the trailhead by our property, but seeing these, I knew she’d gone on to the falls, at least. Maybe farther. And she’d documented it all before she’d disappeared.
I should’ve felt relief: It was the mountain, the weather, exposure, as we made sure to warn the visitors. It was not something intrinsically, disturbingly dangerous at the heart of the town itself.
Except. Someone had recovered this camera, and kept it hidden.
Somehow these photos had ended up on a flash drive in Landon West’s possession. A tip, sent to a journalist. A new angle into Cutter’s Pass.
Farrah Jordan’s stay in Cutter’s Pass had been short and succinct, her movements cataloged up to her last sighting at the trailhead. It was Celeste who was the last to officially see her, later that morning. We’d closed the inn that week for the renovations we put off throughout the past year, and she’d been checking the outside for signs of weather damage.
“What time,” I said. “What time were these taken.”
Trey clicked over to the file properties again, leaning closer to read the fine print. “January sixteenth,” he repeated. “At 3:06 p.m.”
I swallowed nothing. Dry air. Fear.
Celeste remembered her because Farrah Jordan didn’t seem dressed for a hike in the snow-covered woods. She wore a brown hat, or maybe it was gray. A red scarf. There was no backpack, just a small case, to protect her equipment; just that red scarf slung around her neck, dangling over her shoulder, and a camera in front of her face, angled toward the mountain.
Celeste figured she didn’t plan to go very far. Anyone would know better. We certainly knew better.
But of course, that was after. We didn’t know for several days that she was missing, that this was the last moment anyone would see her. By the time the sheriff called for her abandoned car to be towed, any footprints that marked her route had long since been buried under the fresh layer of snow that blanketed the ground the evening of her arrival and had continued to fall for days after.
I imagined her now, taking a step forward onto the trail, watching the view through the lens of the camera. Another step, crunching the snow, a track she had left for others to follow. A blanket of white sweeping in behind her, erasing it; any trace of her, vanishing.