The Shadowkiller (14 page)

S
everal minutes into Ty's Internet search, Christopher knocked and entered. “What're ya doing?” he asked.

Ty had been neglecting his kids so he waved his son over and pulled up a chair for him.

“Some research. Want to help?”

Chris brightened. “Yeah. What are you looking for?”

“Newspaper articles.”

“On what?”

Ty paused for a moment. “Missing people.”

“How come we don't get the paper, Dad?” asked Chris. “Everybody else does.”

Though Ronnie got a copy of the
Seattle Times
at the office, Ty didn't want to try to explain his disenfranchisement with the news media. “Don't need 'em.”

Chris looked on as Ty punched in his inquiry. Chris knew his dad had gotten in a lot of trouble a few years before, not like with the police or anything, but adult trouble he, Chris, didn't really understand. Some kids gave him a hard time about his dad being a weirdo, but Chris just let it roll off his back. The kids were stupid. Chris thought his dad took their harassment harder than he did. Those kids didn't know how smart or cool his dad really was, so Chris wrote them off.

Suddenly something on the screen got his dad's attention. Chris looked at the screen.

“Dad, what is it? What did you find?”

His father didn't answer and his face looked like he was in a trance. Chris scanned the screen for clues to what had so completely captured his father's attention. He saw an article about some missing lawyers.

“Did you know those guys?” asked Chris.

Ty shook his head, engrossed in the article. “No…no I didn't,” he answered, a million miles from his son, for at that moment he was planning a drive into town in search of some newspapers.

When the 911 call came in to the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office, the panicked woman was practically screaming that someone had destroyed her husband's SUV. The dispatcher calmed her, then assured her that a car was on its way. With a few hundred patrol cars spread over a pretty large territory, the dispatcher put out a general call with the location to see who could respond. Deputy Bill Alexander wasn't too far away, so he took the call.

The unsuccessful search for the lawyers not only depressed him, it also worried him. After being alone on that mountain, and having felt that…whatever that feeling was, he wondered what he was up against. He had some ideas—maybe some good ones—but didn't want to voice them, not even in his imagination. The vandalism call sounded like a good way to get his mind off such things. He had a name, an address, and a description of the vandalized item. No problem.

The call took him out to the eastern half of the inhabited part of Snohomish County, up one of the myriad side roads that wandered through towering stands of cedar and fir. The night was moonless and there were few lights out this way, just the way the residents liked it. They didn't live this far outside town just to rub elbows with any neighbors. Most of the lots were at least five acres, with long, often un-paved driveways leading to the homes.

At a tilted mailbox with some stick-on house numbers and letters spelling
Allison,
Bill turned in. Following the roadway to the back of the house, he came upon a strange sight—a big sport utility perched on its roof. He recognized it as a Chevy Tahoe, a truck he coveted but was reluctant to try and swing on forty-six grand a year.

A man carrying a rifle came from the back of the house, accompanied by a teenager. Bill radioed he was on scene and got out. As the two approached him, Bill noticed the man's pants sagging under the weight of a sizable handgun in his front pocket.

Deke held out his free hand. “Man, am I glad you're—”

Bill interrupted him,“Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to put away the firearms.”

Irritated by the request, Deke handed the artillery to Ricky. “Take 'em inside, son.”

As Ricky left, Bill opened his notepad. “When did you discover the vandalism?”

“'Bout a half hour ago,” said Deke. “My son heard it get rolled over.”

Bill walked slowly around the truck.

Deke followed, watching the deputy. “Goddamnedest thing, huh?”

Bill didn't answer. Something had just caught his attention. He shined his light on the side of the truck not illuminated by the yard light.

“This truck wasn't rolled over.”

Deke looked at him like he was nuts. “Whaddya mean?”

Bill's flashlight danced over the truck's unabraded flank.

“See? It's clean. Whoever did this
flipped
it over.”

Deke looked and nodded softly.

“Well, shit howdy. Don't surprise me, though.”

Bill didn't hear Deke's second comment. “Huh? What was that?”

“Said, ‘It don't surprise me.'”

Bill looked at Deke. “So, you saw the vandals?”

Deke didn't answer; instead he motioned for Bill to follow. On the spur of the moment Deke decided to come clean with this deputy. He figured the guy should know what was going on. They walked around the truck and Deke clicked on his flashlight, spotlighting the giant footprint. Bill looked at it for a moment, registering no emotion. As Deputy Bill's gaze continued with no reaction, Deke wondered if he'd made his point or maybe the deputy was too stunned to talk.

Bill closed his notepad. Another shiver.
So much for relaxing.

He looked at Deke. Both men knew the implications of the footprint. The turned-over truck and a bare manlike footprint so big as to be ridiculous meant only one thing. Both men had grown up in the area and had heard the stories since they were kids, but neither had ever really believed them. Bill had an anthropology degree and had read extensively about these things on his own. There were a number of scientists who had gone out on a limb by saying they thought they existed.

Now the decision was upon them whether they would join all the rest who had come forward with myth-come-to-life stories. Neither man wanted what he feared would happen should they open their mouths. Deke visualized hordes of news crews and the nightmare of trespassers day and night looking for this thing on his land. Bill saw skepticism and a diminution of his credibility, both at work and in his personal life.

Bill finally spoke, indicating the muddy print. “I can't tell what that is. Can you?”

Deke automatically started to disagree,“It's a—,” then shut up, realizing the cop was telling him, not asking.

Bill repeated,“I can't tell what it is. Can you?”

Deke eliminated the impression with a few swipes of his shoe. “Nope.”

Bill nodded approval. He took some more information, and then they shook hands. He walked to his patrol car, having written in his report that the truck was “rolled over by unknown perpetrators.” He stopped and looked back at the Tahoe. “What's that thing weigh?”

Deke eyed his damaged baby. “Fifty-four, fifty-five hunnert.”

Bill nodded again, then let his eyes patrol the perimeter established by the Allisons' powerful backyard light. “I'd keep that flood on,” he warned.

Deke's agitated eyes followed the same path. Deputy Bill's advice went without saying. That thing might be watching them even now. Bill opened his door and started to climb in, then paused. “Was that an aught-six?” he asked, referring to Deke's rifle.

Deke shook his head. “Thirty-thirty.”

Bill cast another wary look at the tree line. “I'd maybe go with something with a little more stopping power. That is if you got it.”

Deke didn't appreciate the ominous suggestion that he might not have enough firepower but still waved halfheartedly as the cop closed the door and drove off. Ricky came back out of the house and joined him.

“What'd he say?” Ricky asked.

Deke didn't answer for a moment, then said tightly, “That we should move.”

Ricky snorted at the joke, then saw his father wasn't joking.

A
fter dinner, Mac slid into his leather lounger, turned on the TV, and pondered the unusual item covering most of the end table next to his chair: a plaster cast of a giant footprint. Mac had taken Undersheriff Tom Rice aside that morning, showed it to him, and told him he and Carillo were keeping its existence quiet for now. Rice agreed since it was uncertain what had happened to the hikers. “Plus,” he said, “you let stuff like this out and you'll have all kinds of unwanted press, not to mention crazies.” The official position was the casting was a confidential piece of evidence.
Evidence of what?
Mac stared at the plaster casting and a little tingle ran up his back. The phone rang, jarring him from his thoughts.

“Mac Schneider,” he answered.

“Mac? Kris Walker,” came the sultry voice on the other end. “You busy?”

Mac's eyes went to the casting. “Just doing some homework.”

“The hikers?” she asked.

“No,” he lied. “Something else. So, you still have a theory?”

“I do. Can we meet?”

“When?” he asked.

“I'm near your area.”

“How do you know that?”

“I'm a reporter.”

He smiled to himself. “Okay,” he said. “Down the street, the Mexican place. The bar in ten minutes.”

“I'll be there,” she said. “See yah.”

Mac wrapped the casting in newspaper and set it aside. While getting his coat, he realized he was still wearing his gun, preferring to pack a shoulder holster instead of the tidy belt job most guys seemed to favor lately. As he slipped off the gun, he was pleased he was nervous about seeing her. Since the stress of his job in L.A., the turmoil in his former marriage because of it, and his move north, there had been little life in his love life. That a woman could get his heart rate up was a long lost sensation. He decided he might even have a margarita.

Mac walked into the restaurant eight minutes later, expecting to see Kris in the bar, assuming she would have beaten him there since she was on the way. Mac realized he should have known better. Kris would have to make an entrance; that was the kind of woman she was. His speculations continued until she arrived, twelve minutes late.

“Sorry,” she said, dropping her coat into the booth,“I got held up on the phone with the station. I'll be right back.”

As she departed for the restroom, Mac noticed most of the eyes in the crowded bar following her, both male and female. Those who didn't recognize her were just staring at a head-turning woman.

She returned, her makeup freshened. Those piercing blue eyes and bang-cut platinum locks reminded Mac of an English movie from the sixties about a village full of perfect blond zombie kids. He decided she was the best-looking woman he'd ever seen in person. Maybe anywhere. The waitress appeared. “Coupla specials?”

Mac nodded and the waitress left.

“I could use one,” Kris said. “I've been doing an investigation into crooked transmission shops and we just had a guy come forward who trained managers for a chain. He's got some unbelievable stories. They actually teach them how to screw customers. It's great.”

She grabbed a chip and munched as she continued. “This story will kill some jobs, maybe even put some people out of business.”

Mac noticed that the prospect lit up her face and voice. He liked busting criminals too but it often left him with a hollow feeling. There were always two sides to every story, no matter how indefensible the other position seemed to be.

“You like being a reporter,” he observed.

“I love it. You like being a cop?”

“Less than I used to. Hard to walk on the wild side that long and not have it affect you.”

“How long?” she asked, surmising again about his age, now pegging him as a young-looking thirty-eight.

“Twenty next year. Joined out of college.”

She recalculated: a youthful forty-one or two. Impressive, she admitted, nary a wrinkle or hint of gray.

“Married?” She asked despite knowing the answer.

“No. Divorced. We're still friends.”

Kris deducted a point. No one should ever stay friends with an ex. “She live around here?”

“Los Angeles. Teaches college. How long you been reporting?”

“Since I was at Wazzu. Did an internship. Bounced around on the way up. Landed here. Just another stop on the road to the network,” she said.

Their swimming-pool-sized grande margaritas arrived, and as the waitress walked away, Kris shook her head. “Wow, I finish this and it'll finish me.”

They hoisted their huge drinks and sipped. Mac stirred his with the Mexican flag that flew from a lime quarter.

“So, you're not staying in Seattle?” he asked.

“Probably not,” she said. “This is a great city, but I want to take my career as far as I can. That's either New York or D.C. Maybe CNN in Atlanta.”

“Family?”

“My folks live in Spokane,” she said. “I'm an only child.”

“See 'em often?” Mac assumed an unmarried woman in her mid to late twenties was probably pretty close to her parents.

She shrugged. “When I can. I'm not all that close to my dad anymore.”

Mac could have followed that up but let it drop. “Going home for Thanksgiving?”

“I wish,” she answered. “No time. Got the investigation, then I'm on call over the long weekend. You? You have family you're visiting?”

“No,” he said. “My family's in Arizona. This Thanksgiving I'm working the early shift, then I'll go home and kick back.”

Kris balanced her hefty margarita in a toast. “To working stiffs on Thanksgiving.”

Mac raised his drink and they clinked glasses.

“To working stiffs on Thanksgiving,” he said, noticing her hands. They were strong, with long fingers and short, sculpted nails covered in clear gloss. Practical. He looked into her eyes as the first blast of tequila hit his brain. His desires welled. Afraid his face would give him away, he moved the subject over to business. “All right, so what's your theory?”

She leaned forward as if anyone in the noisy place could actually hear them. “A serial killer.”

Mac casually took a sip and ate a few chips. Finally he said,“Three missing men, two probably unrelated to the other, and you think it's a serial killer?”

She nodded. This was not quite the reaction she had hoped for. “They were all in the same general area. The broken trees? It sounds like it could be some kind of cult. I checked it out. Supposedly there were at least a hundred trees…”

“You saw the trees?” Mac interrupted.

“No, but it's in Barney Fife's report. I read it.”

“Okay,” he said, signaling her to continue.

“The truck guy, the logger? Just vanished. The hikers? Same thing. The dogs? They sensed the killer—or the cult members.”

Mac smiled. “Sorry to blow your scenario, but those are tracking dogs we're talking about. Some crazy religious cult members on the lam aren't going to scare them.”

“Maybe. But I did some research. Years ago, it was the midseventies, a cult in Idaho was stopping motorists, kidnapping, then killing them. They were pretty scary.”

Mac nodded. “Yeah, I know, I read about it. Near Rathdrum, but it wasn't proven that it really ever happened. Some say it was just another urban legend.”

She sat back, fiddled with her Mexican flag for a moment, then struck back. “Okay. What's
your
theory?”

Mac smiled.
I have no theory, but I've a got a huge fake footprint and two lawyers who probably fell off a cliff, one trying to save the other.

“It was the Dominicans.”

Kris wrinkled her brow. “Huh?”

Mac laughed. “
The Exorcist.
Sometimes I make obscure film jokes only I laugh at.”

“Never saw it. Okay, so who made these guys disappear?”

Mac took a big sip. “Here's what happened. The lawyers met a bear and the bear had never heard that shark joke about professional courtesy and ate them. And the logger saw his kid's nose ring and bolted, afraid the other loggers would mock him for having a gay son.”

Kris slumped in her seat. Mac saw she was not as amused as he had hoped.

“All right, number one,” she said,“having a nose ring doesn't mean you're gay. Tommy Lee has about eight of them and he's not gay and so does Lenny Kravitz. Not gay either. And bears eat salmon, not lawyers. Lawyers are low on omega-three. Bears know that.”

“So who's playing with who?”

Kris playfully fixed him with an intense gaze. “Who's playing?”

They spoke for another half hour about everything but business. Then Mac began to feel the effects of the alcohol and the long day. He didn't want to look tired, so he made his excuse.

“Early morning tomorrow,” he said. “Gotta go.”

“Any serial killers to catch?” she asked.

“Maybe. I have a strong lead on a cult of religious nuts operating up in the mountains. Apparently they're targeting hot television reporters.”

“You think I'm hot?”

Mac's smile told her to quit fishing for what she already knew. He rose and threw down a twenty to cover the drinks.

She held up her glass. “I feel so safe knowing you're protecting me.”

“You should,” he said, then turned to leave.

Kris's eyes followed him as he walked away. Initially, she'd called him to pick his brain about the missing men, but now she was intrigued. Here was a guy who walked away from
her.
Men didn't do that to Kris Walker. Ever. Then a thought so terrifying as to be unspeakable flashed though her mind: she was becoming attracted to him. Kris knew that couldn't happen because she was convinced relationships were career killers: once you got unfocused from the main task, you would be lost in starry-eyed bliss and then your competition would eat you alive.

She flagged down the waitress, ordered a shot of Cuervo, and unfolded her phone. The station's newsroom had wound down but an intern named Gwen answered. Kris instructed the eager young lady to dig up backgrounds on the lawyers, the logger, and a Snohomish County Sheriff's detective named MacDonald Schneider. She also told her to find anything she could on missing persons in the last year, particularly in eastern Snohomish County.

Kris was still Christine Walkowski in college. Quickly moving up through the television sequence at Washington State University, she became a communications department star with her iron tenacity, competent work product, and stupendous looks. She was also fine-tuning her sense of whom to throw under the bus and when.

Immediately after landing her first reporting job at a hick station in Yakima, she reinvented Christine Walkowski and became Chris Walker. From the moment she arrived, she did everything possible to get enough usable tape to move up the food chain. Taking every assignment she could, she gave them all the “Chris Walker edge,” as she dubbed it. Her “edge” was an abrasive, almost confrontational style of reporting that landed her in several unpleasant meetings, first with the news director, then the station manager.

Those run-ins fanned the flames of her desire to get out of there as fast as she could. Two months into the job, while watching herself on a monitor during an edit session, she suddenly saw a major piece missing from the assembly of the Chris Walker persona: she needed to dial in her look. She had a natural beauty, but if she was ever going to go to the network, she needed to look big-time. At that moment, she looked too Yakima.

She drove to Seattle and maxed out her new Visa with a salon makeover and the genesis of a drop-dead wardrobe. It was a big financial roll of the dice for a rookie reporter making twenty-four grand in a top 500 market, and definitely a gutsy play for the daughter of a lowly milk route driver from Spokane. But it paid off a few months later with a job offer in Tacoma at triple her Yakima salary.

That's when Chris made another decision. She heard a story that inventor George Eastman so liked the hard-palate sound of the letter
K
he coined the name Kodak to represent his new company. Agreeing with George that
K
s ruled, notwithstanding the fact she already had the
K
sound, Chris became Kris. On that day, as Kris gazed into the mirror at her new look, and bolstered by her new
K
name, she saw a future anchor and swore to herself that
nothing
would stand in the way of her goal.

Kris thought about the risks she was going to need to take to get where she wanted to go. Although Kris was not one to build a large circle of friends, she did acquire relationships when they could help her achieve her goals. She smiled as she pictured her most recent “insurance policy” relationship, as she liked to refer to it in her thoughts. She knew that she was about to test its limits.