Skin Dancer (8 page)

Walking up on a poacher could be a dangerous practice. John Henry, if he was telling the truth, had done the wise thing and eased back into the forest. “Thanks.” He'd given her a firm time line for the killings. Hank Welford and the surgeon had been killed in the daylight hours. That lent another whole macabre aspect to it. The killer was not only organized, he was bold.

Which led her to the question—had Hank or the surgeon been specifically targeted? The answer had to be yes. Motive was the thing she needed to find. Poacher on poacher, as Jake said? Or something else that would provoke a killer to skin a man alive?

“Rachel, I didn't mean to kill my wife.” John Henry spoke quietly. His arm had stopped shaking.

She didn't say anything. She didn't know what she could say. John Henry, like her mother, had stepped down a path that led in one direction.

“I want you to know, it was an accident,” he said. 

“I can bring you some canned goods and things.” It would be a perfect opportunity to get inside his cabin and take a look around. Just on the off chance he was lying.

“I won't be caught in no trap.” It was a simple declaration. “I don't want something planted to make me look guilty.”

“No trap, John Henry. Think of it as a trade for the information you gave me.”

“Trade is good. I don't have money to pay.”

“Did you see anyone else up around the area?” John Henry was the closest thing to a witness she had.

He considered. “I can't say I seen anyone for sure. There was someone in the woods though.” His arm had begun to twitch again and he rubbed it. “Creepy like. Someone slidin' through the trees. Couldn't see ‘em clear cause they was always in shadow.”

“Could it have been a hiker?”

“Could have.” He hesitated. “Didn't move like a hiker, though. Fact is, it didn't move like a human, either.”

The thick edge of the thundercloud shifted over the sun, casting the small valley into deep shadow as if night had suddenly fallen. Rachel looked to the sky, the clouds roiling like angry water.

“You'd best get goin'. Watch that third curve. The gravel's washed off and there's no purchase for your tires.”

She nodded. “I'll be back with some supplies.”

She was almost at the top of the incline when he called out to her. Taking a careful grip in the steep trail with her boot toes, she turned back to see that he had almost faded into the darkness.

“Don't go in the woods alone, Rachel. There is somethin' in there that ain't right. I felt it before. Something in the trees is mighty pissed off.”

# # #

Derek trailed the man shifting between the big spruce trees. He was bird–dogging one of the Natives, the spokesman from his meeting in the house with the stone faces, but he couldn't remember what the man had said his name was. Bear something or other. Odd how the Native names, which were unusual, actually began to run together in his head. When the man in front of him slowed, Derek also slowed, careful to keep a good distance behind. If the Indians were up to something, he intended to find out what it was.

 It had been Justine who suggested that Derek follow the Indian. And she was right–there was no better way to know what they were up to than to spy on them and see with his own eyes. So far, though, it had only been a tough hike through rugged wilderness. Bear Whoever just seemed like he was out for a stroll, without any real purpose. If so, Derek had wasted a whole afternoon.

In the distance he heard the rumble of what could have been heavy equipment or thunder. The storm that was blowing in was making it more and more difficult to stay back from the Indian yet not lose him. The darker shadows of the forest had begun to blur, and now Derek had to pay strict attention to the figure in front of him or risk giving up his vigil.

Lightning zigged across the sky, popping close enough that he could smell the sizzle of sulphur. When his eyes had recovered from the flash, the Indian was gone. Vanished. As if the thunderbolt had zapped him to the Happy Hunting Ground or wherever the fuck dead Indians went.

Fuck this shit. He turned back, ready to retrace his steps to the ATV he'd left parked three miles behind. As it was, he was going to have a freezing, wet ride back to the hideout—and he had nothing to show for all his time and effort. He hunched his shoulders and ducked his head as the first rain began to fall.

He felt a gentle shove and turned to see who'd pushed him. Suddenly, something grabbed his right foot. Before he could recover, he was snatched upside down. Dangling by one leg and bobbing as if he was on the end of a bungee cord, he couldn't get his eyes to focus. He saw someone standing in the trees, but the motion of his body suspended in air and the upside down view disoriented him.

“Hey!” He kicked out with his left leg, but it only made him bounce harder. “Hey, lemme go.”

He spun, dangling by his right leg. Reality touched him like a hand from the grave. The dead hunters had been hung upside down. Before they'd been skinned and decapitated.

“Hey!” He lashed out with his free leg again. “Shit! Let me down. Shit!” Panic set in and he felt the gorge rise in his throat. “Let me down!”

The whack of the wood on his skull was so sudden that he felt nothing before he was lost to the blackness that surrounded him.

 

The storm cloud writhed in the Southern sky, moving in fast, another aggravation in a day fraught with obstacles. Reginald “Mullet” Bellows cursed god, the mountains and the weather. On his way up the mountain, he'd been pulled over for an expired tag by that son–of–a–whore Deputy Scott Amos, then he'd had to sit another ten minutes for the lecture on danger in the woods that the deputy delivered with such enjoyment, and then he'd finally gotten up to the campsite only to discover that Burl Mascotti hadn't left the supplies where they were supposed to be. He'd found them stuck in the hollow trunk of a pine tree, not a spruce, after a thirty–minute search in the failing light. Burl was a fucking moron. He couldn't recognize one tree from another. His only redeeming quality was that he'd do whatever it took to make money. And he could bullshit with the best of them. He had a great act going—a philanthropist who took in unwanted zoo animals to give them a retirement home. Right. What he gave them was a shot of drugs so strong they couldn't even stagger away from the stupid fuckers who paid upwards of ten grand to shoot a panther or a tiger.

Mullet went to the cage where the black panther waited. She was older, but she wasn't too old to hurt him if she got the chance. She'd been docile when they'd first gotten her, but now she'd caught a whiff of her future, and she meant to go down fighting. He'd have to use the dart gun on her, but not until tomorrow. There was no way the two lawyers from Albany, New York, would make it to the campsite in a flood, so the kill would have to be postponed. Damn it all to hell. He'd hoped to move the lawyers in, set up the cat, let them shoot it, and get them back on a plane tomorrow with their trophy left down at Zell's Taxidermy to be stuffed.

Now, the weather had thrown a monkey wrench in his plans. The cat would just have to sit in the cage another day. Hell, it was going to be killed anyway, so another twelve hours of discomfort wouldn't matter.

He reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a pouch. He rolled the joint with dexterity. He thought about giving the cat some water, but after the first two tokes, he didn't feel like doing anything until Burl showed up. Burl said this cat came from some small zoo in Mississippi. They'd given it to Burl, thinking it was going to a loving home. He chuckled aloud at the irony.

The sound of an ATV roaring through the thick trees told him Burl was on the way. He saw the headlight bobbing along the dim trail.

He lost sight of the headlight when it went into a small hollow. When it came back up it was only five yards from his extended feet. He waited for his friend to turn off the engine.

“Burl, you bring any beer?”

Burl kicked his foot, hard. “Those fucking lawyers didn't want to spend the night in the rain. I tried to get them to come on up and finish this, but they wouldn't think of getting their expensive guns wet.”

“I figured as much. Pansy asses.” He re–lit the joint, took a hit and offered it to Burl. “This'll make it all seem better.” He frowned. “Hey, fancy footwear. Where'd you get the money for boots like that?”

Burl took the joint, a grin splitting his face. “I bought ‘em this morning at Abe's Outfitters. Some hiker ordered ‘em special but never picked ‘em up. I got ‘em half price.” He inhaled, holding the smoke until he expelled it on a cough. “Man, that's some good shit.”

“Once we get the money from those lawyers, I'm gonna make a little investment in this. Buy five pounds and cut myself in for a nice profit by selling it.” He could see Burl's eyes light up at the thought of a profit.

“Got a line on a wolverine. That oughta draw some big bucks next week.” Burl glanced around the woods. “You think those two murders are gonna hurt our business?”

Mullet ran his fingers through the long hair that hung down the back of his neck. The front and top were close–cropped, a style he'd adopted when he was in his prime some twenty years earlier. The haircut, and a certain way with the ladies, was his signature and had earned him his nickname.

“Naw, our out–of–town clients don't know about it ‘til they get into town, and by then it's too late. We've got their money, so they can't back out.” He yawned. Damn but smoking dope made him lazy. “I think putting ole Hank in the ground is only gonna help our business. Less competition.”

Burl cocked his head as if he heard something.

“What's wrong?”

“I smell gasoline.” Burl walked off two steps, then turned to the ATV. He knelt down beside it. “Well, I'll be a son of a bitch. There's a damn hole in the gas tank.”

Mullet closed his eyes to hold on to his temper. Burl was such a major fuck–up. “You could tear up a steel ball, Burl.”

“I didn't tear nothin' up. Look at it. Someone punched something in it. Like a screwdriver or something.”

Mullet stood and pulled the flashlight from the pack of supplies beside the panther's cage. Once he looked at the hole, he had to back off Burl a little. It did look as if someone had punctured the gas tank deliberately. The idea of it made him turn slowly in all directions.

“You see anyone around when you got the four–wheeler out of the woods?”

Burl shook his head. “It was right there, covered up with limbs like we left it.”

“Someone found it, though.” Mullet remembered a paragraph from the newspaper story he'd read about Hank Welford's death. The state game warden, Jake Ortiz, had speculated that it was likely some poachers killing other poachers. Mullet tried to think if he'd pissed off any of the competition lately.

“Hank was skinned alive,” Burl said, turning to look in all directions. “He bled to death from where the person peeled the hide off him. They took his head and nobody's found it yet.”

“Shut up.” He and Hank had had a bitter falling out, but he didn't like to think of him being tortured.

The snap of a stick made both men turn to the south. The edge of the storm cloud was right on top of them, a black thunderhead that looked as if divine justice was about to come down from the sky. “Let's get back to town. We can double on my four–wheeler.” He staggered a bit, ruing the effects of the joint. Now his imagination was on overdrive and his reflexes were dull.

“What about the cat?” Burl asked.

“It ain't going anywhere. Now move.” He had the creepiest sense that someone was watching them from the trees. “Get your fat ass humpin', Burl. I want to get back to town.”

“Let me get some water—”

“Fuck the cat!” He roared the words, taking some courage from the sound of his own agitated voice. He was still in command. “Pick up this shit here, and I'm going to grab the drugs up on the top of the ridge where I left ‘em.”

He straddled his four–wheeler and roared off, leaving Burl to pick up the beer and sandwiches they'd planned to eat while waiting for the lawyers to “find” the panther. He was halfway up the ridge when he heard a high–pitched sound that was neither human nor animal. He cut the engine to listen and was about to turn the machine back on when he heard it again, this time a distinct scream. Burl's scream.

He hesitated, his fear blooming, as alive and powerful as the forces barely contained in the overhead cloud.

Burl's cries tore through the gloom. Mullet spun the ATV toward the site where he'd left his partner.

Mullet re–entered the camp area as the first drops of rain began to fall. Hard and cold, containing small crystals of hail, the rain sang as it struck his nylon jacket. He shone his headlight on the area.

The door of the panther's cage swung open. The lock that he'd taken such precautions to buy so that some happenstance hiker wouldn't free the animal had been sprung.

A blood trail disappeared into the woods.

Terrified, he wanted to flee. He could always claim he thought he should get help rather than search for Burl on his own. He could claim…

The headlight caught the boot.

He left the ATV running as he got off and walked slowly toward the hiking boot that stood all alone on the forest floor. The blood trail ended at the boot, Burl's brand new boot.

The rain came down harder, washing away all traces of Burl and what might have happened in the small clearing.

# # #

Rachel shuffled the papers she'd been studying and glanced out the window of the sheriff's office. Her best lead so far involved Trussell, a wealthy plastic surgeon who had a legal problem. A serious one. He wasn't highly regarded by his office staff. Or his wife. She'd come to claim his body, sans head, and never shed a tear.