Difficult Run (17 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

M
.J. GOT UP VERY EARLY the next morning, which was not hard to do since she had never really gotten back to sleep after her nightmare.
 
The sun was just coming up when she arrived at Great Falls Park.
 
She changed clothes and set out for a long run.

When she had run before she had looked for suspicious people on the trails and in the park. Now she found herself focusing on the park’s terrain.
 
She noticed large clusters of rock in the forest, some with crevices big enough to shelter an ape, and dense foliage that obscured the underlying ground where a nest might be located.

Just where would these things live?
she thought.
Wherever they lived, they would probably avoid coming out in the daytime because of all the people in the park.
 
They and their ancestors had probably become strictly nocturnal animals, only venturing out when the park was closed and the people had left.
 
That’s when they would forage for food, returning to their nest before dawn.

All of the murders had occurred at night and all in the spring or early summer
, she thought.
 
But why had all of the murders taken place on Difficult Run? Did that mean that the apes had always lived in that part of the park or was it just happenstance?
 
And, if they lived in that area, why were the murders confined to just that time of year?
 
And what prompted the attacks in the first place?
 
Dr. Peterson had said that the males were naturally aggressive.
 
Were the attacks the result of some primordial need to assert territorial dominance?
 
Or perhaps the attacker was not a male at all, but a female protecting her young.

One thing was certain,
she thought,
there remained many more questions than answers.
 
She knew she was going to need help in building a convincing case or no one would accept her solution to the murders.

After she had showered and changed into her work clothes, she went to Dodd’s office.
 
He was sitting at his desk going through a stack of papers.

“I need to talk to you,” she said, “and it may take a while.”

He pushed the stack of papers aside and said, “As much time as you need, M.J.
 
Why don’t you close the door.”

“What I’m going to tell you I haven’t shared with anyone else, not my partner or my boss . . . no one,” M.J. said. “I’ll need for you to keep it confidential until we figure out what to do, but most of all I need your help in making sense out of it.”

“You know you can trust me, M.J. and I’ll be glad to help in any way I can,” he said.

She told him about her conversation with Ollie Coppin, her recollection of the escape of the two apes in 1936 and the suspected murder of Kevin Murphy in 1942.
 
Then she told him about her meeting with Dr. Peterson at National Geographic and the conclusions of Dr. Martin about the cause of death in the Murphy case.
 
She also showed him the picture of a Bili Ape.

As she spoke, Dodd’s eyes grew wider and when she had finished he sat for several seconds staring at the picture without saying a word.
 
Finally he said, “M.J., do you really think all these murders were committed by this creature or its ancestors?”

“I’m certain of it,” she replied. “If you think about it, it’s the only explanation given the span of time.
 
It’s also the only logical explanation of why the murders were committed the way they were.”

Dodd thought for a minute, then said, “I think you’re right, M.J.
 
Now what can I do to help?”

“We need to do several things in short order,” she said.
 
“First, we need to go back as far as we can and look for any other suspicious deaths or disappearances on Difficult Run.
 
I’ll check the county records if you’ll check the log books.
 
Once we have that, we need to try to put everything together and figure out where these things live in the park.
 
Then, we need to figure out how to prove they exist, because without that I’ll never be able to sell this to my superiors.”

“Well,” Dodd said, “since this only became part of the national park system in 1966, I won’t have any records before that.
 
I stopped at the year 2000 last time, so I’ve got 34 more years to go through.
 
That’s going to take some time, but I’ll get started right away.”

“I’m going to check as far back as I can in the Fairfax County records,” M.J. said.
 
“We can cross-check what we come up with and maybe find some clues or a pattern.”

M.J. drove to Fairfax County Police Central Records Division and found Becky Whitmer.

“I’m sorry to just show up like this Becky,” M.J. said, “but some things have developed in that case I’m working on and I need to do another records search.
 
How far back does your computer database go?” she asked.

“1960,” Becky said.
 
“The records before that—back to 1940 when the Department was formed—are all in hard copy, like the one I found for you yesterday.
 
By the way, was that of any help?” she asked.

“More than you can imagine,” M.J. replied. “It sounds like for records before 1960 I’d need a name or a date to find anything.”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Becky said.
 
“One of these days—if we ever get the funding—we can put those old records in the system, too.
 
Well, just sit down at the same computer you used last time and let me know if you have any questions.”

“Do you know how far back the Fire and Rescue system goes?” M.J. asked.

“Well, I think the county department formed around 1949, but I’m guessing their system probably only goes back to 1960, like ours.
 
The same company put both systems in, so that would make sense.
 
I’ll call my counterpart over there and see what I can find out,” Becky replied.

M.J. sat down at the computer and entered the same search terms she had used before.
 
For the period between January 1960 and March 2000 there were fourteen missing person reports for Great Falls, eight of which were related to the park.
 
Five of those had been closed out because the person had been found; one contained a supplemental report; and the other two remained open.

M.J. looked at the first case, which involved the disappearance in mid-April 1972 of a photographer from Washington. He had gone to Difficult Run late at night to take time-lapse photos of the Potomac below Mather Gorge for a coffee table book he hoped to publish.
 
When he didn’t return by morning, his girlfriend contacted the police who found his car in the Difficult Run parking lot.
 
When they checked the trail they found his camera and tripod knocked over next to his gear bag and a flashlight, but no sign of him.
 
A supplemental report said that his body was found almost three weeks later floating in the tidal basin near the Jefferson Memorial.
 
She printed a copy of the report.

The next case concerned the disappearance in late June 1985 of a confirmed alcoholic from Vienna, Virginia who left his home to go late-night drinking on Difficult Run.
 
His credit card records showed that he had stopped at a state-run liquor store earlier in the evening and purchased a fifth of vodka.
 
His car was found in the Difficult Run parking lot the next day, but police did not find a trace of him there or on the trail, not even the vodka bottle. His body was never recovered and it was assumed that he had fallen in the stream, been swept into the river and drowned.
 
M.J. decided it was probably a case of someone rock hopping while under the influence, but she printed the report anyway.

The last case dealt with the disappearance of a resident of Falls Church, Virginia who went night fishing on Difficult Run in early May 1996. His fishing rod, tackle box and a flashlight were found on the trail, not far from where Doc was murdered.
 
The body never surfaced and, due to the high water in the river, it was presumed to have been pinned to the bottom by the strong current.
 
M.J. printed a copy of the report.

Becky returned and said, “I talked to the head of records for the Fire and Rescue Department. It’s like I thought. Their computerized records only cover the same period as ours.
 
She also said that their hard copy files before 1960 are kind of hit or miss because the volunteer departments kept their own records and didn’t always turn in copies to headquarters.
 
Here, I’ll pull up their database and you can take a look.”

M.J. entered the same dates.
 
The database produced a list of several hundred reports for Great Falls Park.
 
As before, many of them dealt with medical emergencies and there were multiple rescues of persons who had fallen in the river below the falls. There were twenty-seven reports for rescues on Difficult Run of people who had been swept away in the stream and no reports of suspicious accidents. Since all of the incidents on Difficult Run had occurred during daytime hours, M.J. disregarded them entirely.

She thanked Becky again, picked up the copies of the reports from the Fairfax County Police files and drove back to the park.
 
It was late in the afternoon when she arrived and Dodd was paging through one of the logs.

“Ten left to go,” he said.
 
“How’d you make out?”

She told him about the three suspicious missing person reports she had found.
 
“They fit the pattern,” she said.
 
“Did you find anything?”

“Well, no suspicious accidents or missing people, but I did find something that’s interesting,” he said.
 
“In early April 1970 a call came into the office from a man. He and his wife had been out walking on Difficult Run the night before.
 
They heard something moving through the woods north of the trail and when they looked they saw what they thought was a bear. Couldn’t shine their flashlight to get a better look because the batteries had gone dead, but there was a pretty bright moon shining through the trees.” Dodd paused.
 
“Now here’s what got my attention:
 
The man said that whatever it was turned and looked at them and when it did the face didn’t look like a bear at all, more like a gorilla.
 
That’s when they decided to head back to their car.”

“Could it have been a bear?” M.J. asked.

“Well, we do get bears in the park sometimes, but not usually until later in the year,” Dodd replied.
 
“I think what they saw was an ape.”

“That incident just made me realize something,” M.J. said.
 
“I’ve been trying to figure out what causes the attacks.
 
I thought it might just be inherent aggressive behavior, but I think there’s another explanation.
 
All of the victims had some sort of light with them—a flashlight, a lantern or, in the case of the boys, helmet lights.
 
That makes sense because it was dark, but I think that’s what causes the ape to attack.
 
I just remembered that Ollie Coppin talked about boys shining lights in the ape’s eyes and how it became enraged, bared its teeth and shook the cage.
 
I’d be willing to bet that if that couple’s flashlight had worked, they’d have been attacked too.”

“That makes sense,” Dodd said.
 
“But I’ve been wondering about something else too.
 
All of the victims except the boys and Doc wound up in the stream.
 
Do you think this thing throws them in after it kills them?”

“I’ve given that a lot of thought,” M.J. said.
 
“I don’t think it throws them in. I think they’re trying to get away from it and their body falls in after they’re killed, just like what probably happened to Kevin Murphy in 1942.
 
The reason we found the boys on the trail was because they were on bikes and the best route of escape seemed to be to ride away. In Doc’s case, I think Lola may have attacked first and Doc was trying to help her instead of running away himself.”