The Shadowkiller (23 page)

K
ris sat up in the bed, tucking a pillow between her back and the wall. Still breathing hard, she felt sweat trickling down between her breasts and she wasn't sure if it was his or her own. She was impressed he'd paid so much attention to pleasuring her. Her magnitude nine orgasm had been so strong her jaw still hurt from the contortions. Mac lay next to her, spent.

“Wanta go again?” he said half joking, and when her face told him she momentarily took him seriously, he burst into laughter.

“Can I smoke first?” she retorted.

Mac pretended to think for a moment, then rolled next to her and wrapped his lips around one of her nipples. “You can suck on a butt if I can suck on this.”

“Deal. Let me get my purse,” she said, then got up and walked to the hall. Mac followed her perfect sweat-shined glutes as they bobbed away.
Why is it the bad girls are always so good?
She reappeared, this time giving him the reverse view. Her tits were works of art—natural or man-made, it didn't matter to Mac—bouncing saucily as she approached.

Lying down as she dug through her purse, she casually looked over.

“Yeah, they're real.”

Mac smiled. She'd read him like a headline.

She pulled out a cigarette, lit up, and set the handbag on the nightstand.

“You dating anybody?”

Mac wasn't sure if it was just an informational inquiry or she was staking a claim.

“No. Not for a while. A few here and there, but nothing interesting.”

“You said I was strong. But am I interesting?” she asked, taking a drag.

Mac slid up her body, moving in for a kiss. She held her cigarette away long enough to allow a quick one, then went back to inhaling carcinogens.

“Yes, you're interesting.”

“Good. I hate being otherwise.”

“You're also beautiful and dangerous,” he observed.

“I'm dangerous?”

Mac rolled off and lay next to her. She was on her back, blowing smoke into the air. Mac put his finger in her navel and she jumped, laughing. “Don't do that! It tickles!”

She recomposed herself and Mac put his hand to her flat belly, this time caressing her.

“Yeah, you're dangerous. Self-centered, narcissistic, egomaniacal. It's what makes you good at your job.”

Allowing herself a very slight, self-satisfied smile, she enjoyed the knife-edged context of those terms. They frightened the average person. She embraced them, the power they gave her over weaker,“sensitive” people. She liked that he had identified her power base and yet was still beside her, now fondling her right breast.

“Yeah, you're right,” she said, the pride shining through.

“Does that make you lonely?” he asked.

She pondered for a moment, never having considered that simple question. She wasn't sure what lonely really was. She had no friends in Seattle and didn't really socialize with any of her coworkers, although she'd only been in town a few months.

“Lonely? I don't know. I don't think so.”

She was getting too vulnerable; time for a subject change. “How about you?” she asked. “You like being a cog in the wheel?”

Mac rolled over and looked at the ceiling. “I get satisfaction from my job, usually, but the job doesn't define who I am. A job can pressure a person to conform, but my situation allows me to do my thing and still maintain my individuality. I don't have to be just like everybody, but they trust me because I've proven myself.”

“Trust, huh? Sit up, I want to try something,” Kris said, motioning for Mac to move. He turned and knelt on the bed in front of her.

“What do you have in mind?” he asked, unsure of her suddenly devilish look.

The corners of her mouth curved upward, seductively, a scheme in the works. She reached over and cupped his scrotum, then slid her hand up to his penis, wrapping her thumb and forefinger around it. With her other hand she moved her cigarette slowly toward it, her eyes moving between his face and the tip of his organ.

“I doubt you got this trust exercise at a corporate retreat,” Mac joked rather nervously.

She raised an eyebrow. “You'd be surprised.”

With the burning tobacco a half inch from contact, Mac caved, pushing her hand away.

“Chicken,” she said. “You don't trust me. See?”

She'd made her point. She set the cigarette on the nightstand and rolled toward him. Bringing her face close to his penis, she unfurled her tongue and licked it, then slid it tantalizingly into her mouth. Then she let it drop out.

“See, I could have chomped down right there, done a Bobbitt—”

“She used a knife—”

“Yes, but the point is you trust me to a certain extent, right?”

Mac was getting aroused again and readily agreed with her object lesson. “Sure. To a certain extent.” Despite the clouds of stimulus fogging his thoughts, he wanted to trust her, although he knew it was a bad idea.

Now that he was nearly erect again, Kris positioned herself to get a better angle to finish what she'd started. She teased him with her mouth and wondered for a split second if he really liked her or if he just wanted to chalk up a conquest. She went with the latter as a defense against her feelings. She was starting to feel attachment and that bothered her.

Ten minutes later, Kris stretched out on the bed, having brought her partner to climax once again, this time with her oral skills. She reached over and pulled a box of Tic Tacs from her purse. She popped two and offered them to Mac, who took one. He was on his back next to her, completely spent. She lit another cigarette. After her first pull he took it out of her fingers and also drew on it, inhaling deeply.

“You smoke?” she asked.

“Years ago,” he said, handing it back to her.

Kris took the cigarette and let out a deep, satisfied sigh before taking another pull.

Mac nodded slightly. “My sentiments exactly.”

Despite the fact it was 3:15 a.m. and he was due at work in about four hours, he didn't care. He was savoring her company. Then a crazy thought crossed his mind.

What if I tell her? What if she keeps my name out of it? Then I can go around Barkley and Rice and Carillo and let people know this could be a lot more than just some random disappearances. Or conventional murders. Who's going to know?

Mac rationalized to himself that his was a big department. The list of possible leaks could go on and on. Outside of himself and Carillo and their two bosses, Suzy Chang knew, and probably her boss, and then the list widened after them. Even that young deputy, Bill Alexander, seemed to know, or at least suspect, that more was going on than met the eye. He didn't want to get Suzy in trouble, but if Barkley's hunt for the leaker could buy Mac time to explore the stranger side of this case, then it just might be worth it. But probably more important than anything, it might just help Mac heal the guilt he was feeling for keeping his mouth shut. Of course Barkley's hunt for the leaker might be very short, given Mac had already expressed some doubts. But his desire to find the truth outweighed the potential consequences.

“I do trust you,” he said, giving a slightly displaced answer from earlier but using it as a setup for what he was about to say.

“Okay, good. So a blow job was all it took? I'll remember that.”

Mac smiled at her frankness. “No, I actually do. Trust you, that is.”

She puffed away, wondering where he was going with this.

“What if I said I might have a lead for you? On the missing persons case.”

Kris almost dropped her cigarette. She had really just come over to fuck the guy, figuring anything she might get in terms of the case would be gravy. She had been formulating an introduction to that very subject that wouldn't raise a red flag, but now he'd saved her the effort. She reached over to her purse and fiddled for some more breath mints.

“You mean the
murder
case?” she said, trying to sound indifferent.

Mac paused a moment. Although they had shared intimacy over the last three hours, he didn't fully trust her. But this woman had a television station at her disposal.

“If I tell you something, a pretty important piece of information, will you keep your source confidential? What I'm saying is, the department would come down on me like, well, it would get ugly. Probably end my career there. So you've gotta keep me out of it. I'll give you the information and you do what you will with it. Get it out there. Deal?”

Kris stuck the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and held out her hand. “Shake hands with a naked lady. Deal.”

Mac gathered his thoughts for a moment. “I'm convinced there is a killer at work. But not in the…normal sense.”

She ignored the qualification. “So you're confirming the fact, what I've been reporting now for more than two weeks, exclusively, that there is a killer at work? You're saying that?”

“Yes, I believe so. I'm ninety percent certain.”

“Do you have a suspect?”

“Yes and no.”

“What does that mean?”

“Carillo thinks it's a former computer guy named Ty Greenwood.”

“Ty Greenwood…”

“Right.”

“But…”

“But I'm pretty sure it's someone else. I don't think Greenwood's involved at all. And whatever you do, don't mention his name. I shouldn't have told you. I think he's clean. But if his name got out in the wrong context, he'd sue you and your station and me and the department and he'd win. He's got the money to bury us all. Forget him.”

Kris leaned in slightly. “Interesting. But okay, forget him, so who really did it?”

Mac struggled with this next sentence for a moment. “Actually, it's more
what
than who.”

“Huh?” She was confused by the word game.

“The department has a piece of evidence from two of the scenes and we're holding it back. It's pretty unusual evidence and we've kept it quiet, mainly because my bosses don't believe what it is. Or at least what I think it is.”

“What is it?”

“It's a piece of evidence that leads me to believe that the missing men were not victims of any kind of normal abduction.”

Kris held her breath in anticipation.
Not victims of a normal abduction?

“I think they were taken away by an unknown species of animal.”

“What?”

“An animal very closely related to human beings. A hominid.”

“A what? A what? I've never heard of such an animal.”

“A hominid is a type of animal. Humanlike. Walks on two legs. We're hominids. Only this thing's bigger than us, a whole lot bigger.”

Kris narrowed her eyes. “You're saying the killer is
not
a human being?”

“Exactly. And we have a twenty-one-inch footprint to prove it.”

Kris took a puff and blew it in his face. “Bigfoot? Like a Sasquatch? You're saying Bigfoot took these people? That's really fucking hilarious,” she said with irritation. “So I'll bet space aliens have something to—”

“I'm not joking.” Mac's face and tone were dead serious. “I've researched this thing. Read up on it, talked to experts…and I'm almost completely convinced they exist.” He paused for effect. “I think I even came close to meeting one—maybe the same one that's taking people—the other day in the forest. Up where the cyclist disappeared. It was there, right behind me on the trail, swear to God.”

His face told her he either believed this or was the best liar she had ever met.

“Okay…,” she said deliberately. “You saw it?”

“No.” But Mac pressed on because she hadn't started laughing. “Let me get the casting.”

He leaped up and went down the hall, coming back with a huge plaster foot. He held it out as she looked at it.

“It's big,” she said hefting it with both hands, then setting it on the bed. “So you're saying there's something running around out in the woods, carrying people off. Something with a foot this big? How big is it? This thing?”

Mac sat back down on the bed, the casting between them. “I went to the U-Dub. An anthro prof over there, one of the world's leading experts on these things, he said the casting's absolutely authentic and whatever made it is probably more than ten feet tall.”

She looked suspiciously at him. “You got this casting on eBay, right?”

Mac was deadly serious. “We pulled it from where the lawyers went missing. There were three or four of these where the biker disappeared. This is no joke.”

“‘We' pulled it? The department knows about this?”