Dark Places (29 page)

Black finally fished out the phone. “Nick Black.” He listened a few seconds then said, “Okay. I'll tell her.”

I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Felt sick to my stomach. Then Black smiled, and my entire body went limp with relief. “He's responding better now. They say he's probably going to be okay.”

My eyes burned like fire, and I set my jaw, sure as hell not going to cry in front of Black like some kind of little baby. Get a grip. This was good news, not bad. I nodded. “I knew he'd be okay. Great. I knew it all along.”

Black squeezed my hand. I took a couple more cleansing breaths, pulling myself together. I didn't like people seeing me all weak and sappy. It didn't happen often but when it did, it had been with Black when he was trying to analyze me.

“Okay, that's good news. Now let's get every damn cop in the state looking for this bastard. I want him behind bars tonight, and then I want him alone in an interrogation room.”

Black laughed. “Poor guy. Glad it's not me. I've been there.”

I managed a charity smile, but I was not in a joking mood. I was in a bloodletting mood. I stared out through the shifting, drifting snowflakes, where the Humvee's twin beams lasered smoky trails through snow-covered trees. I could see the four-wheeler's tracks and wondered where he was headed now. Maybe he had another lair somewhere. What about the poor little girl he'd snatched? Where was she? Was she in the four-wheeler with him? Or had he killed her, too? I gritted my teeth and made my head pound worse and I wondered what kind of stupid, ineffective painkiller they'd given me until I saw something high up in the trees that looked out of place in the stark black-and-white tableau of tree trunks and falling snow.

“You got a spotlight on this thing, Black?”

“Yeah, a custom job, nice and bright.” He flipped on the one outside the driver's window, and I pointed to a giant oak tree about thirty yards off to our left.

“Look up there, real high. See it? The fork of the biggest branch?”

Black moved the bright light slowly across the ground and bushes drifted in deep snow. He steadied the high-powered beam on the target, and said, “Oh my God.”

It was a black trash bag hanging from a limb. The wind was buffeting it back and forth but I could see the head clearly visible at the top, just like Classon's had been.

My stomach took a forward roll. “He's a serial. Scan the rest of the trees.”

Black maneuvered the brilliant spot from tree to tree and gradually revealed one swinging black trash bag after another. Deadly cocoons, rocking from snowy limbs like babies in cradles. A macabre dumping ground stretching into the woods as far as the eye could see.

Less than two hours after Black and I found the killer's dump site, the woods behind McKay's house were awash with gigantic floodlights. Parka-bundled officers traipsed around in the frigid night, in a gallant but futile effort to preserve a crime scene encompassing several acres of snow-crusted, forested hills. Charlie was back in town, angry as hell, and had the entire department mobilized.

At the moment he stood near the tree where Black and I saw the first body bag. He was beating his gloved hands together for warmth while a consulting captain from the Missouri State Highway Patrol filled him in on their end of the search. So far, there was no trace of Joe McKay, his four-wheeler, or the abducted child. He had not left her behind in the farmhouse, dead or alive, but some of her clothes and a white teddy bear were there. Chances were she was his next, or worse, his latest victim.

Black was gone. Confident, I guess, that I'd be safe enough in the midst of twenty or thirty well-trained officers of the law, all armed and collectively pissed off. He was on his Learjet by now, a late flight concerning some emergency with a high-profile patient at his New York clinic. Obviously he still worried about me but this was something he couldn't ignore, so he'd asked me if I wanted to go, to which I'd replied, “Yeah, right.”

Black didn't bat an eye. He knew I took my job seriously. He took his job seriously, too. That's why he left me by my lonesome. He did spend about fifteen minutes insisting that I spend the night at his place while he had my house checked out for creeping or slithering secret-pal gifts. I told him maybe, but truth was, that remained to be seen. If my house was thoroughly fumigated by Orkin, I didn't have to worry, but you can bet the farm I'm shaking out my black-and-orange-hightop Nikes before I step into them.

I tromped through the snow to where Buckeye Boyd was watching a couple of firemen lower a victim into the hands of a waiting forensic team. Buckeye's maroon parka was unsnapped. He had on green lab scrubs underneath. Not exactly snow attire. He had on fur-lined camo hunting boots, though. He was hatless, his white hair blowing back and revealing a receding hairline that was usually hidden by Captain Kangaroo bangs. His eyes looked spooked. “This vic looks like a youngster, Claire, possibly female, but the body's been out here awhile, I can tell you that. A lot longer than Simon Classon was. After I get her on the table, I'll know more.”

“Jeez Louise.” That was Shaggy. He came up beside me and stared into the treetops. Glaring lights carved dark planes in his young face and sent our elongated shadows chasing back into the woods where other forensic technicians stared up into other trees with the same horrified expressions. “The lake's getting worse than that town in
Halloween
. What's the name of that guy who killed everybody?”

Buckeye said, “Michael Myers, maybe? Jamie Lee Curtis played the girl.”

Shag said, “Yeah. Well, maybe Michael's set up camp here.”

I said, “Yeah. Lucky us.”

Shag turned to me. “Hey, I heard about Bud getting bit. How's he doing?”

“They think he's gonna be okay.”

Shag looked at my bandaged stitches and the ugly bruise on my forehead. “You got knocked a good one. Concussion?”

“A little one, maybe. It still hurts like hell, but I'll live.”

“Thank goodness about Bud. This perp's just full of nasty surprises, ain't he?”

“Yeah. Nasty's a good word. Buckeye, did they come up with a final count on victims yet?”

“There's twenty-seven bags on what we think might be McKay's property, which is about two acres, I'd estimate, but there's a couple of other houses nearby which might own some of this land. And there are national forests on two sides that we haven't had time to canvass yet. One good thing, I think some of these trash bags contain animal carcasses. Dogs and cats, maybe, and some other small mammals like squirrels and raccoons.”

I stared off into the distance and watched another team working on the ground underneath a tree. Gloved, cameras in hand, they were placing a trash bag on a stretcher. “I can't believe he's gotten away with this for so long. Why hasn't somebody stumbled over these bodies before now?”

“Private property, and so far out in the boondocks you need a map to find it. If he's been gone and the place closed up, there'd be no reason for anyone to come around here. Especially not out back of the house in the woods.”

I said, “Wonder if he's been back to town on and off to use this place as his own private hunting and dumping ground.”

“Yeah, could be, I guess.” Buckeye stomped his booted feet, shivering. He should've dressed warmer. “Did I hear you say Bud was still holdin' up?”

“He's hanging in. There for a while it was hit or miss. I saw the snake strike him. Close to the throat. Right about here.” I touched my clavicle and shivered when I remembered how the fang marks had looked.

“You pretty sure McKay's the perp?”

I nodded. “Killing this many victims takes time, unless he got them in groups.”

Buckeye grimaced, pulled up his fur-lined hood, jammed his hands into his pockets, and did some more stamping around in the snow.

Shag said, “How're we gonna handle this many freakin' bodies down at the morgue?”

Buckeye said, “Charlie's already requested help from the State Highway Patrol labs. But that's not the worst of it. Most of these bodies are gonna be frozen solid.”

I said, “Have you found any viable evidence yet, Buckeye?”

“No, and we probably won't until we get them all downtown. It doesn't appear any of them are in sleeping bags like Classon was, so I doubt if he went to the trouble of torturing them with widows and recluses. I guess that was a special nightmare designed just for Mr. Classon.”

Shag said, “Snow's let up some. That'll help get them down and tagged.”

I said, “Hate to tell you guys this, but another storm's incoming. Black's pilot had to change flight plans to go around it.”

Shaggy squatted down and examined the icy tree trunk with gloved fingers. He turned to me and said, “Hey, Claire, look at this. I think I just figured out how he gets 'em up the trunk and tied off without a line to the ground.”

“How?”

“You know my bud, Steve Granger? How he's always on me to go out deer huntin' and stuff?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, I finally went with him the other day so he'd get off my back about it, and he's got this cool deer stand thing he bought down in Springfield at the Bass Pro Shop. He says it's a climbing deer stand, or something like that. And guess what? It makes these same kind of notches.” He aimed his flashlight on some small chunks cut into the bark. They were identical to the ones at the Classon crime scene.

“What'd you mean, climbing deer stand?”

“It's pretty awesome really. You carry it in the woods on your back, you know, folded up like a regular backpack, and then you unfold it and stand up inside it and make it walk up the trunk with a strap you put around the tree trunk. You know, sorta like those lumberjacks you see having races up to the top of those big redwoods out in Oregon.”

Buckeye reached down and touched the scarred bark. “I've used those things. It'd work just like Shag said. But the perp'd have to put the body inside, between him and the tree, or he could carry it on his back, I guess. Then he'd only need a rope to tie the victim onto the limb then climb the whole rig back down. He's strong as hell to do something like that.”

I gauged the distance up to where the body had been hanging. “Unless he hoisted the body up first, then climbed up and tied it off up high. Maybe we oughta get your friend out here and see if he could do that with a hundred-pound sandbag.”

Shag said, “Cool. I'll give him a call.”

I said, “I guess you're going to open the bags down at the morgue.”

“None of these vics are going to wake up like Classon did. They've been out here a very long time, years, maybe. I bet he quit for a while, gave up the killing spree for some reason, then gave in to temptation again when he came back home. That's my best guess.”

“Right. Or there could be a fresh killing field just like this one somewhere in California. God only knows how many he's done.”

That thought was chilling. I gazed around, thinking the scene looked like something out of Dante's
Inferno
, with all the smoky lights and silhouetted men and women bending over corpses and lowering them with ropes and shadows passing in and out of the trees and over the bright snow cover. A scene from hell, all right. And the devil made his escape in a four-wheeler.

By dawn my Explorer was released back to me, swept clean, and sans any other rattlesnakes. I drove straight to the hospital and checked on Bud. He was sleeping, still in CCU, still doped up, but they took mercy on me and let me go in. I hardly recognized him. His face looked purple and black and grotesquely swollen. His lips were dark, too, and about three times their normal size. He opened his eyes, and I tried to keep it light.

“You look like crap, Davis.”

“Thanks.” He mumbled something else through those horrible, thick, engorged lips, and I finally realized he'd said, “You should see the snake.” He attempted a grotesque grin, and so did I. Neither of us quite made it work.

“I shot the hell out of that frickin' snake. It didn't know who it was messing with. All this medicine and stuff making you feel any better?”

“Just peachy,” he rasped out. “And just when I was makin' time with Fin.”

I did smile then. “Nurse said she's been down here to see you five times already. You were just too out of it to know.”

He shut his eyes as if too tired to hold them open. I said, “It was McKay, Bud. We found more victims in the woods behind his house. Everybody's out there tonight processing the scene. Buckeye's bound to find enough evidence to nail him.”

Bud peered at me. His right eye was blood red. “You get him?”

“Not yet, but we will, sooner or later. Everybody in the state's in on the hunt.”

Bud's eyes drifted closed, and he didn't move again. I sat beside the bed and watched him sleep, then I listened to the steady beep and watched the lights on the monitors, just to make sure he was still breathing. Then, when I couldn't hold my head up any longer, I lay my cheek against the mattress beside his hand and slept hard until a nurse woke me and told me I had to leave.

I drove straight home but stopped at Harve's first to tell him what had gone down and make sure he was all right. He was fine and invited me to stay with him until the evil spider meister was behind bars. The offer was tempting, especially with Black gone. I told him maybe, then got in the car and headed to my cabin, not as thrilled to be going home as I'd been just after Black had remodeled the place. Deadly critters had that effect on me, just took the sweet out of home sweet home.

I ignored the garage and pulled up out front. I sat looking at my house. It looked the same, not at all as if a psychopath with a pouch of spiders and a basket of rattlers was on the loose. I was loath to go inside, which means I was scared as hell of what I'd find now, even after exterminators had treated the place. McKay's surprises were getting deadlier.

There were no motorcycle or four-wheeler tracks, no footprints. I took time to walk around outside the house but saw nothing in the snow under my windows and doors but an undisturbed, beautiful carpet of white. No crawling spider tracks, no curvy snake trails, which was a good thing. The front walk was cleared, so I climbed onto the front porch and peered into the window. Everything appeared normal. I looked for Jules Verne but didn't see him. I didn't hear him either, which was not normal. The ramification of his silence sent a massive shudder undulating up my spine. Spooked, I turned the key and pushed open the door.

Everything seemed fine, normal, warm and cozy, the light I left on glowing in the early-morning gloom, except for one thing. My feisty little puppy dog was nowhere to be seen, no excited yapping, no little white face watching for me out the front window or barreling down the stairs to greet me. Don't panic. Maybe Black dropped by and took him to Cedar Bend so the exterminators could sweep the house. Somehow I didn't believe that.

I swallowed hard and knew what McKay had done before I saw one of my white kitchen wastebasket bags laying on the kitchen floor. A thick lump rose and clogged the back of my throat.

I pulled the Glock out of my shoulder holster and stood very still. Not a sound, but my sixth sense was screaming like a banshee. Filled with utter dread, I went down on one knee beside the bag. I pulled open the yellow ties affixed in a bow. When I saw a little body covered with arachnid silk , I backed away against the kitchen counter, shut my eyes, and tasted bile, caustic and terrible.

“Damn you, McKay.”

Sidestepping the bag, I didn't touch it again, couldn't bear to look at poor little Jules Verne. Black should've left him in Paris; even animals aren't safe around me. Then, like a lightbulb going off, it dawned on me that even a hundred spiders couldn't have killed and cocooned a pup that fast. I had been here yesterday. Black had been here later that afternoon and so had the Orkin men. I moved back to the bag and dumped the rotting carcass out on the floor. Most of the spiders were dead but I had to smash two or three under my boot before I examined the body. It was a squirrel. I could see the bushy tail.

Breathing easier, hopeful now, I searched the house, looking for the dog, cautiously, back to the wall, finger near the trigger, careful not to open any baskets. I found myself shivering with revulsion, and, yes, fear. Never in my life had I been afraid of spiders and bugs, that was Bud, poor disfigured Bud, but the horror of how McKay's victims had died was having a strong, negative effect on me now, and the arachnophobia had kicked in and was growing stronger by the minute. Lots of other phobias, too.