L
isa Roy forced herself to squat down and take long, deep breaths to slow her heart. She dragged the back of her hand across her moist brow.
All right. Let’s go.
She tightened her grip on her shotgun as she moved along the path. She went about a hundred paces, froze, and looked up to a man’s head spiked on a stick.
It stood before her, matching her height. Open-eyed. A grinning obscenity, dripping like an ancient talisman endowed to ward off transgressors. Roy whitened, steadied herself against a tree, and dry-heaved. Then she let her training kick in. She was smart, still in control.
But alone.
She reached for the radio, checked the connection to ensure that her earpiece had not come loose, keyed her mike.
“This is Eighty-three,” she whispered.
“Ten-four, Eighty-three.”
“I’m on-site with one confirmed ten-thirty-five. A white male. No weapons. No suspects sighted. Requesting ETA on backup.”
Trying to subdue her breathing, she glanced skyward as she waited for a response. The treetops formed a natural canopy over the forest. They’d lost the light. Whoever was out there in the dark had the home field advantage.
“That you, Lisa? It’s Rob. How bad is it?”
“It’s a nightmare, Robbie.”
“Hold on. I’m almost there.” She could hear the roar of his SUV. “Starchuk’s right behind me. We’re coming, hold on.”
“Ten-four.”
A blood-chilling scream shattered the night.
Oh, Jesus.
Roy couldn’t wait for her backup and let another person die. She continued down the path.
K
aren rolled her head from side to side, imploring the reverend to stop, but he moved closer. She could hear his breathing against the black fabric of his hood. She searched his eyes for mercy, but found nothing but darkness.
“Cleanse your soul,” he said. “Confess now so that you may be converted.”
“I love God,” she said. “I love my family. My mother—”
“Liar!”
“I love my father. I love my sister. And, and, and I—I forgive you.”
“Stop the lies, witch!”
“Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…”
“Stop! Blasphemer! When you speak of Mary, you intend Lucifer!
You love Lucifer!
”
Karen continued, “…now and at the hour of our death.”
“Confess your guilt now! You’ve had commerce with the Lord of the Flies!
Look!
Lucifer has endeavored to rescue you, but to no avail!”
The reverend whirled from her, seized a knife from his altar, and marched to the large X standing opposite and held the blade to the throat of the man bound to it: Jason Wade.
His eyes fluttered opened, to the flames, to Karen bound to the X across from him, to the reverend’s ranting.
It wasn’t real.
Jason was dreaming. He was falling from heaven, arms and legs flung outward, descending to hell. Seeing the fires, hearing the agonies of the tormented. No, he was floating in a nightmare.
Time to end it. Time to wake up.
Wake up.
Why couldn’t he awake? Then it all came thundering back, crushing him. Finding Karen, running for help, being choked into semiconsciousness. Being tied to beams, his body hoisted upright. This was no fantasy.
Karen was praying.
Why?
There was no God here. No hope. Only fear. Jason stared into the eyeholes of the executioner’s hood—grotesque windows to something dead inside.
“You.” He pressed the blade into Jason’s neck until it punctured his skin. Blood webbed from the wound. “You’re a soldier serving Lucifer!” the reverend rasped. “You will know the soul-purifying pain of the ritual!”
Jason summoned every molecule of his strength to battle against the bindings. The ropes bit into his wrists, creaked against the wooden beam, loosened but not enough.
He strained again.
The heat of the fire, his fear, his struggle made him sweat, lubricating his skin against the coarse rope, slipping on his flesh as he persisted.
The reverend went to the fire, returned to Jason, his gloved hand overflowing with glowing red embers.
“Satan is present.”
His other hand blurred under Jason’s T-shirt. A knife blade stretched the fabric before slitting the center from his waist to his neck, exposing his chest. It rose and sank with his breathing as the reverend chose a large piece of charcoal from the smoldering heap in his palm and used it to circle Jason’s heart, then filled it in until it looked like a hole in his chest.
Jason writhed as it scorched his flesh.
The reverend returned to the fire as Jason fought against his bindings. Blood slicked over his raw-flesh wounds, but he felt no pain. He was in shock, struggling for his life as Karen’s screams echoed to the mountains.
The reverend selected the handle of a large serrated knife that he’d set in the fire, its blade blazing pink in the night as he held it to Jason’s eyes.
“Demons dwell in your heart! You require
the Transformation.
I will remove your beating heart and consume it before your eyes, devouring the demons, giving you solace that your soul has been purified.”
Fire gleamed on the knife’s blade as the reverend positioned its tip a quarter inch from Jason’s heart, then inhaled for the strength to plunge it into his chest. Later he’d use the saw for the ribs.
“Freeze! RCMP!”
Roy crouched at the edge of the darkness, arms extended, hands gripping her 9mm Smith & Wesson. She fired, but the reverend had turned and in a quick, fluid motion, positioned himself to put Jason in front of him.
“Drop the knife! Step away! Get on your knees!”
The reverend tensed, flung his knife at Roy, hitting her vest. She flinched, sidestepped, slipped as the reverend lunged at her, sending both of them to the ground, fighting for her weapon.
Karen screamed.
Jason twisted wildly against his bindings, pulling one wrist free, strips of his skin slapping like torn rags as he released his other arm. Pain shot to his ankles, which took his full weight for they remained restrained to the X as he pivoted hard to the earth.
Roy drew upon all she’d learned from her self-defense training. She shifted her weight, anticipating the reverend’s moves, attacked vulnerable spots, kicking and kneeing where she could. But he was big, fast, strong, and Roy was hampered by her Kevlar vest.
She could feel him winning, slowly prying her gun from her hands.
One of her kicks sent the knife to Jason, who seized it and cut himself loose. Bleeding, he limped to the edge of the light, found Roy’s shotgun, and trained it on the reverend.
But he was too late.
The reverend now had control of Roy’s handgun and stood over her, drilling it against her temple, wedging her head to the ground. The air exploded with six shots, hoisting the reverend from his feet, hurling him into the darkness.
RCMP Constables Rob Talon and Paul Starchuk, Roy’s backup, stepped into the light. They signaled quickly for Jason to drop the shotgun. He did. Then they approached the reverend with their guns drawn and handcuffed him.
There was no need.
He was dead.
Roy sat up, drew her knees to her chin, and buried her face in her hands.
Karen had fainted, her head hanging down like a Christ figure on the cross. The Mounties moved to free her from her bindings, as the fire dispatched sparks to the stars.
It was over.
A
s Jason helped the Mounties free Karen Harding from her bindings she came to and locked her arms around his neck and cried.
Her body shook against his and he stayed with her, adrenaline still rippling through him as they stared into the fire.
Starchuk and Talon tended to Roy.
Soon their radios sizzled with transmissions and the world began learning of the nightmare at Garrison.
The RCMP’s Emergency Response Team arrived. Through the trees, Jason saw their laser sites raking the property as heavily armed members conducted a building-by-building, room-by-room check of the compound. Air 3, the Bell 206h out of Kelowna, thundered overhead, using its infrared and “Night Sun” to scour the terrain.
No other suspects or living victims were located.
After ERT secured the scene, the RCMP’s homicide people moved in. Medical crews were led to Karen, Roy, and Jason near the altar in “the killing zone.” The helicopter’s intense light swept the area. As a female paramedic bandaged Jason’s wounds, his attention followed the jagged line of large standing Xs, stretching to a hilltop in the forest like a surreal perversion of Golgotha, the hill were Christ was crucified. Then, under the blazing light, he noticed tiny half-buried metal objects glittering on the ground around him.
Gold chains, rings, watches, necklaces, jewelry of the victims.
His concentration narrowed on something.
“Sir, please don’t move,” the paramedic said.
Jason turned to alert someone, but the investigators were huddled, comparing notes, shouting in each other’s ears over the rotor wash. Ignoring the paramedic, he got down on his hands and knees and inspected the items until he came to a piece that jarred him.
A bracelet.
A familiar beaded bracelet.
Gooseflesh rose on his skin as something cleaved in his heart and a new fear consumed him with one thought.
Valerie.
He reached for it but did not to touch it. His breathing grew deep and ragged. Blood pummeled his eardrums, making him deaf to reason, deaf to anything but the new horror swirling in him as he lifted his head to the light.
Valerie.
The bracelet was identical to the set she’d bought for them in Pike Place Market, to the one in his apartment, on his bedpost.
Had she been—
oh, Christ, no.
He glanced around. Helpless. Had she somehow been among the victims?
No, this can’t be.
Tears stood in his eyes. Something caved inside. Something collapsed. A shadow fell over him, and then a latex-covered hand grasped his shoulder.
A detective bent down beside him, seeing what he was seeing.
“I think this belongs to someone I know,” Jason said.
Concerned, the detective stared at him, then flipped to a clear page in his notebook.
“Who?”
“Valerie Hewitt of Seattle.”
“And your relationship to her?”
“We used to be together.”
“You’re her boyfriend?”
Jason nodded, struggling with his anguish.
According to his card, the detective was RCMP Sergeant Warren Taylor.
“We’ve found wallets, purses in an underground safe he kept behind the house,” Taylor said. “Is this item unique?”
“I—I don’t.” Jason stared. It was unique to him. “I don’t know.”
“Listen, unless this piece is one of a kind, it could belong to anyone. We’re going to need time to confirm things.”
Jason took a long, hard look around at the images he would carry forever.
“Sir, we have to go,” the paramedic said.
They put Karen and Jason on stretchers. Medical crews and Mounties carried them to the ambulances parked with the emergency vehicles that jammed the clearing in front of the house. Their strobing lights painted the trees and buildings red. Radios scored the chaos as the two ambulances inched to the gate.
Their release from hell.
Jason saw more cars there, including an SUV with the call letters of a Cranbrook radio news station. A reporter, a young woman, was holding a microphone and trotting alongside a grim-faced cop.
The story was going to break worldwide.
Jason’s ambulance gathered speed, its siren wailing. Behind them the pulsating lights of the scene faded like a dying heartbeat.
He thought of the bracelet.
Of Valerie.
And he struggled not to scream out her name.
I
n the immediate aftermath it didn’t take long to tentatively identify the headless corpse Roy had come upon along the path.
It was Gideon Cull.
Investigators had checked his driver’s license against his severed head, then run his fingerprints at the scene using a mobile scanner.
Then they set out to process the reverend. They removed his hood and saw a bearded white male in his late forties, about six feet tall, one hundred eighty pounds. He matched Cull’s body type.
Lawrence Allan Haines of Seattle, according to his Washington State driver’s license. But closer inspection and computer checks proved his license was fake, as were the two dozen others discovered in the house.
He had manipulated and deformed most of his prints.
His true identity was a mystery.
The investigators would run him through FBI and RCMP databases. Once they confirmed his identity, they could begin sorting out the case. How Cull came to be at the property and his links to the suspect were key starting points.
The expanded international task force now involved the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the FBI, the Seattle PD, and police agencies in Washington and Oregon whose officers were en route, or in contact.
Early estimates put the total number of dead women at the site at eleven.
So far.
I
t took fourteen stitches to close the gash the reverend had made under Jason’s jaw. He had first-degree burns on his chest, abrasions on his ankles and wrists. Time would diminish his scars, the doctor at the Cranbrook hospital told him.
A sedative put him out for a long time.
When he woke a nurse took him to a large meeting room where detectives were waiting to take his statement. Jason told them all he could and they shared a little of what they’d pieced together.
They’d confirmed the suspect’s ID: Ezra Skeel, a U.S. citizen of no fixed address. A convicted felon for assaults against women. Skeel was finishing his time at Coyote Ridge in Connell, Washington, when he met Gideon. Cull was his spiritual adviser. It appeared that was where the two hooked up. The detectives had their theories, but the exact role Cull and Ezra played in the killings had yet to be substantiated. They still had plenty of work to do.
Hank Stralla from Sawridge County glanced around the table.
“One thing we’re sure of, Jason,” Stralla said, “is you connected a lot of the dots. Your reporting was critical. It helped end the killing. And you helped save Karen Harding’s life.”
Jason said nothing.
“The victim count on the property is now fifteen. We expect it will rise,” Taylor said.
“How many have you identified?” Jason asked.
“Eight. Six women from the U.S., two from Canada.”
Jason exhaled and his eyes stung as Taylor read the question in them.
“Nothing on a Valerie Hewitt. I’m sorry, Jason,” Taylor said.
That evening, down the hall from Jason’s hospital room, Karen Harding’s sister had arrived with their parents. After long hugs and teary kisses, Marlene wiped Karen’s cheeks.
“I just never gave up on you, kid,” Marlene said.
Karen’s mother and father were haggard and tanned. They brought balloons, flowers, and Karen’s favorite treat, chocolate-covered almonds. They held her hands for much of the time.
“I prayed and prayed,” Karen told them. “I made my peace because I believed I was going to die.”
Her mother stroked Karen’s hair. “God had other plans, sweetheart.”
Later Karen went alone to Jason’s room where he was sitting in a chair looking at the mountains. He turned to her and she smiled.
“I wanted to thank you for what you did. The police told me everything when I gave them my statement.”
“I was just chasing a news story.”
“You risked your life to save mine.”
“So did Lisa Roy.”
“Yes, I talked to her.”
“Did Luke come with your family to see you?”
She shook her head.
“He wanted to.” She touched her fingertips to the corners of her eyes. “I asked him to stay in Seattle. Marlene and Detective Stralla told me everything. I’m going to need time….To think about my life, you know.”
Sure, he knew, he told her.
She kissed his cheek.
After Karen left, Jason resumed searching the mountains. It was pretty here. As the sun sank, he tried hard not to think of Valerie. But it was futile knowing what he knew. Every time his fingers brushed his bandages, it reminded him.
Did she suffer?
Ezra Skeel was demented. He made certain they all suffered.
Jason ran his hands over his face when the phone next to him rang. The nurses had said the hospital was screening calls from reporters. They were coming in from all over the world. He hesitated before he answered.
“Jason, is that you?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Ron Nestor.”
“Ron.” Jason’s face brightened. “Man, I’m so glad you got that message. You were my only hope.”
“I was at Safeco watching the game. Are you all right?”
“I think so.”
“The wires have been moving updates. That’s a helluva thing you did. A helluva thing. CNN and the others have gone live. We’ve sent an army up there. All hell’s breaking on this. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I think I’m OK.”
“It’s really hit the fan here. Neena Swain has agreed to take an indefinite leave of absence. Largely because she let her politics interfere with her news judgment. I’m the new assistant managing editor and I’m offering you a full-time job with the
Mirror,
if you want it.”
Jason said nothing.
“You’ve got every right to tell this paper to shove it. But Beale and I are hoping you’ll say yes.”
“I don’t know. I’ve got a lot to think over in the next few days.”
“Absolutely. Take your time.”
Before hanging up, Jason agreed to give Nestor an interview over the phone, recounting his pursuit of Cull’s link to Garrison, his doubts, his fears, and all that followed. Jason ended the call without telling him about the bracelet and Valerie.