Filed to story: Return of the Reaper Story
“All of the victims were either murdered or their bodies disposed of within a half-day’s drive of their homes. They had traveled alone to the place where they were killed. In each case, their cars were found within a half-mile or less from where their bodies were discovered.”
“What does that tell you?” Marshal Holland asked in a tone like a jock doing color commentary on ESPN.
“They were lured to their deaths,” Dauber said. When the big marshal gave her an approving nod, she flushed.
“What kind of timeline are we looking at?” Godshall asked.
“Since late September,” Laura said.
“Well, this boy sure works fast,” Godshall said with a whistle.
“That’s why we think it’s safe to rule these out as serial killings,” Laura said. “Eight victims in less than four months doesn’t match any known profile. These are classified as pattern crimes and will remain so in all communications. You understand why.”
“So the federal bureau doesn’t take an interest,” Godshall said.
The marshals nodded.
The last thing anyone wanted in a hot ongoing homicide investigation was the FBI showing up to slow-walk the investigation. Their consultants from VICAP would go over the case with a microscope in the hope of catching a serial killer with some psychobabble hocus-pocus that would sound good at a press conference that might take place ten years after the perpetrator had died of old age. What on God’s green earth did that gang of lawyers know about working a homicide case?
“Do the MOs line up?” Dauber asked.
“Your victim is the second to die from hypothermia, in much the same way as…” Laura scanned her cheat sheet, “Walter Amis in Gainesville. He died at a Hampton Inn two weeks ago.”
“And the others?”
Laura ran a finger down her list.
“Birmingham, Rocky Mount, and Knoxville by firearm. .38 Special in Alabama and Carolina. Two differentthirty-eights. A 9mm in Tennessee. Blunt force trauma in Huntsville. Suffocation in Athens. And in Valdosta, we found the victim beaten to death in his own car.”
“Beaten with what?”
“Fists. And no DNA. Chemical analysis of the wounds shows the killer wore vinyl gloves, a heavy ply available at any Home Depot.”
“This is one pissed-off sumbitch,” Godshall said.
“No. I don’t think that’s the case,” Laura said. “Each of these killings was methodical. This guy takes every measure not to leave behind even a bit of useable evidence. And no witnesses.”
“It’s as if he’s hunting them,” Holland put in. “And when he catches them? It’s lights out. I doubt most of them saw it coming. He doesn’t play with his food like a psycho would.”
“They’re more like executions,” Laura said. “Precise. This guy knows how to kill and does it quickly with little or no mess.”
“That says ‘military’ to me,” Godshall said.
Both marshals nodded.
“Okay, he’s the Terminator. Except for the ones he made into popsicles,” Dauber said.
“That’s thrown us a curve,” Laura said. “That’s one of the reasons we’re looking for your help.”
“This old boy was looking for something. Or someone. Or some damn information about some damn thing,” Godshall said.
“What can you tell us about this Krogstad?” Laura asked, fingers poised over the keys of her laptop.
“He was a baby-raper,” Dauber said. “He did time and is in the registry.”
“Where’s that fit into your pattern?” Godshall asked.
“Like pocket aces,” Marshal Holland said with a feral leer that brought a dew of sweat to the backs of Lindsay Dauber’s knees.
“Well, let’s see about filling out that hand for you, son,” Godshall said and patted the tabletop with his palm.
The half-moon hungover the treetops in a clear sky, its blue-gray glow reflecting off the fresh snowfall. Isaac drove the Avalanche up the packed gravel drive with its headlights off. The indigo shadows the trees cast over the hummocks of snow made it feel as though he were driving his truck across the floor of a luminous ocean.
The rutted drive climbed gradually to the top of a knob of ground, where it flattened out in a broad area dotted with low-roofed cabins. It had once been a Boy Scout camp but was long abandoned. Where there were once neatly delineated walkways of chipped pine shavings lined with whitewashed rocks, there was now a dense carpet of ferns crushed by the weight of the snow. The dark shapes of the cabins looked adrift atop them.
Isaac pulled alongside a cabin and killed the engine. He sat there in the dark while cold crept into the cab, his head back against the rest and his eyes closed. His mental clock was set for one hour, something he’d been trained to do by Gunny Leffertz back in SERE. He recalled laughing at the idea when it was explained to him, but Gunny hadn’t laughed and had told him he needed to forget the impossible and open his mind to the possible.
“All this high livin’ and cushy bullshit comfort has bred the animal out of you, son,” Gunny had said to him. “You and me come from different tribes, but there was a time both our people waited out the night with a spear in their hands and eyes on the dark. They could feelthat dark. Shit, they could feel the starspassing by over them. They were in touch. We all lostthat, and we need to get it back. You think I’mblind? Most folks are walkin’ around with their heads up their asses and no idea what’s looking at them from out of the dark.”
If he was to see in the dark, Isaac would need his night vision. An hour with his eyes closed here in the cold would give him distance and clarity in the light of the moon.
He needed this time alone to sort his thoughts. This task he’d set himself, the men on those tapes, was troubling him. He wondered for the hundredth time if he should have left those tapes where he found them. If he should have let the law take its course. Only there was no guarantee of that.
Here in the cold and the dark, miles from home and alone with only his mind for company, Isaac knew he needed this. He needed the focus, the purpose, of the hunt.
At the end of one hour, he eased the cab door open. His boots made a crunching sound as they broke the fresh rime of ice covering the snow. He opened the rear door to drop the seatback. A shotgun and a rifle hung in a rack. He chose the rifle, a modified M-1 carbine.
He walked south away from the truck to the rear of the scout camp, where the ground dropped away into a deep holler. This was the next holler over and to the north from where someone had shot a rifle at him and Merry. Isaac knew it from hunting here in his youth. It was a blind gulch ending in a bowl-shaped depression enclosed by steep inclines. The neck of the holler was made impassable by a thick growth of berries and thorn, rough country for a man but heaven for deer and other game. He and his brother Dale had only hunted here once and had found it an unforgiving place.
Through a starlight monocular, he viewed the drop below. The lenses turned the blackness to an alien landscape of green and gray shimmering under the moonlight. There was no movement. Nothing he could see. Plenty to feel, though. The darkness below was alive with something.
Isaac picked the easiest grade off the ridge and made his way down to the floor of the holler. He took his time, taking care not to make noise, but when it could not be avoided, matching his movements to the sounds made by the wind through the treetops. The creaks and groans of the branches were a screen for his footfalls.
Another peek through the starlight scope revealed a trail. He followed its serpentine path as it tracked back and forth along ledges of more level ground that led in natural steps down to the bottomland.
There was a slight tang of woodsmoke in the air. He came to a halt in the shadow of a massive boulder at the base of the ridge. He scanned the dense growth of birches and hackberry with the monocular but saw no source of light that would mean a campfire. The direction of the wind was no help since the deepening cold of the night was drawing down air from the ridges that walled the holler.
He waited in the shelter of the stone with his eyes, ears, and mind open. An hour had passed when the wind shifted in a dominant westerly gust. It carried the smoke scent to him, stronger now. The fire lay in the blind end of the holler to the west.