The Shadowkiller (20 page)

W
hen Chief Ben Eagleclaw walked into the Snohomish County Sheriff's Department the next morning, heads turned. Ben knew that would happen and traded on it. After signing a few autographs, then relating a cockamamie story about a documentary on the paranormal he said he was hosting for The Learning Channel, he got what he came for. Within ten minutes he was walking out with Deke Allison's address.

The television news piece and the article in the paper about the topsy truck were enough to inspire his curiosity. Using a map the sheriff's people provided, he made his way outside town and up into the foothills. The farther out he got, the more he felt…it. Though he was reluctant to try and reconnect with the Oh-Mah, he still had some sort of residual sense of it. The feeling wasn't as strong or vivid but it was there, like listening to a distant radio as opposed to actually talking to someone.

At the Allisons' mailbox he saw a real estate For Sale sign and followed the long gravel drive to the house. It was midmorning and he wasn't sure if they'd be home. Parked by a shed was an old Chrysler station wagon and a Honda Civic wagon with the silver paint fading away, but he saw no damaged truck. A middle-aged woman came out of the house, wrapping her arms around herself against the cold.

“May I help you?” she asked. Then she recognized him. Ben knew it was like a “get out of jail” card. She smiled. He smiled.

“Chief Ben Eagleclaw,” he said, with a slight wave. “Hello.”

“Uh, Marge Allison,” she said, slightly awed. “It's a pleasure.”

They shook hands.

“Maybe you can help me,” he said. “I'm lookin' for the people who had the problem with the truck. I'm doin' a documentary on…uh, strange things. And I wanted to talk to them. Is that you?”

Marge had been told not to talk to anybody: Deke had been very specific. But this old man was a movie star. He was famous and famous people know stuff the rest of us just don't know. At least that's what Marge figured when she gestured him inside.

“My husband Deke's not here, but…”

Ben smiled. “I don't wanna be a bother…”

“Oh no, it's no bother at all. He'll be home in a while. He just went into town to get something.”

Marge went to the kitchen to make coffee while Ben waited in the living room. She reappeared a few minutes later with two mugs of instant Folger's. Ben pointed at the pictures on the wall.

“Nice-lookin' boy. Yours?”

“That's Ricky, our son. He'll be eighteen in a couple weeks, December twenty-second actually. My Christmas present,” she giggled.

Ben nodded. “You're movin'?”

Marge's face sagged a little and there was pain in her voice. “I guess so. We moved here when I was carrying Ricky. Goin' on nineteen years now.”

“Movin' to a better place?” Ben asked.

Marge shrugged resignedly. “I hope so.”

The phone rang and Marge went to the kitchen to get it. The bits of conversation sounded to Ben like it was her husband. When she lowered her voice, he knew they were talking about him. A few moments later she returned.

“Well, that was Deke. He's getting his new truck worked on.” She seemed nervous. “It's actually not new. The insurance company wouldn't buy him a new one. Anyhow, he's probably gonna be a while, so…”

Ben took his cue and stood.

“No problem. Listen, if you don't mind, may I take a look around your yard? I'll be out of your hair in five minutes.”

“Well, uh, okay. Sure, I guess that's fine,” she said, unsure but assuming this celebrity Indian of all people would be safe poking around. Plus, they might get in the movies.

Ben thanked her and went outside. Following the perimeter of the parking area, his eyes examined every nub of dirt and rock. He wanted to know…to feel…if it had been here. He needed to find out, to reconnect with it here on its turf, not from a hotel room two hundred miles away.

Marge watched him for a few minutes, then he disappeared behind the equipment shed. Suddenly a moderate wave of panic came over her, the same one Deke got when real estate agents brought customers. Deke warned her that their “dark secret” could blow the salability of their home. On the phone he had been less than enthusiastic about the old Indian poking around but had deferred owing to the siren song of maybe being in the movies. But now that concern dogged Marge as she watched from the window.

What if the old guy doesn't come back?

Ben followed an overgrown path back about fifty yards, then stopped. He could no longer see the Allisons' home, just huge cedars that blocked much of the light from above, and dense undergrowth that could hide anything ten yards away. He cleared his mind, trying to conjure those specialized senses he needed right now. He let his thoughts drain and took a deep breath of forest air, something he had not tasted in many years. He had only quit smoking a few days before but was already getting more input from his nose and taste buds.

From the hotel room in Portland he had summoned his connection with the Oh-Mah with seeming ease, but he just couldn't do it again. He wondered if his failure was because he hadn't really expected it back then and now he did. He badly needed a cigarette and thought the nicotine fits might be interfering with his concentration. His eyes wandered the woods, looking for anything. He walked a little farther and stopped again. In his fleeting contact with it he had felt its thoughts, its intent. Ben knew he was here not only to come to terms with a very old trauma, but maybe to even try and stop this thing.

He suddenly knew it had been here. It was a subtle sensation, like your vision refocusing when you're reading and you look up at something in the distance. He heard the voice from within:
it was here.
Now on automatic, he moved off the trail, cutting his own way through the tangled ground cover. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew it had come this way. He noticed a high broken branch, a freshly snapped rotted limb, some scuffed moss. His eyes were seeing what they were taught as a boy: he was reading the woods.

Another thirty yards and he stopped. It had tarried here, perhaps to smell the burning alder of a fireplace, maybe to make out a distant light. Ben crouched, his old joints crying in pain as he ran his hand over the pliable forest floor. It had covered itself well…

But not completely. He saw what he was looking for. Pulling back a fern, he looked down at a heel impression. It had stepped over a fallen log and its heel had dug in. Looking at the dented soil, he judged the size of his adversary. He knew the print was fairly fresh because the decaying soil had two different tones from oxidation, one old, one newer.

Ben sat on the lower end of the log it had stepped over. The log was at an angle and the point it had crossed over was easily five feet high. Ben's breath made clouds and he thought again about a cigarette. He directed his mind back to his foe. This one was big, much bigger than the one that had chased him all those years ago.

He rested a moment, warily eyeing the woods, then went back toward the house.

K
ris's desk phone buzzed and she picked up the handset. “Walker.”

“Miss Walker?” The voice was slightly officious. “Jason Kupperman. I'm the assistant district attorney for Snohomish County. You've made some claims in your newscast and I'm beginning an investigation into their nature.”

Kris's mind raced to determine if this was a stupid joke. She thought Mac Schneider might have put up some friend to torment her. “Ever heard of the First Amendment?”

“Miss Walker, I'm a lawyer. Have you ever heard of obstruction of justice? How about making false statements? You could very well—”

Kris interrupted him. “I'm not under oath, so I can say anything I want.”

“Aside from issues my office is pursuing, I am going to contact the FCC and demand that they sanction your station for your irresponsible behavior.”

Kris didn't care if this were a joke or not. “Go for it.”

“My sheriff wants your head on a platter and I'm going to give it to him. You've abused your position by making knowingly false statements regarding the missing men. Aside from the havoc with law enforcement, consider the grief you've caused the families of those men.”

“I speak regularly to them and they want to know what the hell you're doing to find their bodies. And their killer.” Kris threw in that last sentence to piss him off. And it worked.

“Good day, Miss Walker. Your station will be hearing from my office very soon.”

She hung up the phone and considered what had just happened. If that really was the Snohomish ADA, then she had several things on her side. First, the Constitution. Second, the climate of the day: reporters were wrong all the time and nobody seemed to give a damn until some other news outlet exposed them. Even then the issue would blow over fast. And third, her gut said she was right. And if she was, then the DA could kiss her ass. If she was wrong? She'd have bigger worries than the toothless district attorney.

She glanced at her desktop and found a message to call Mac. She'd call him back but not right away. She was saving him. She wasn't sure how, but she felt he might help pull her feet out of the fire. She knew she still had a hold on Mac. Then Kris looked heavenward and thought of the four missing men.
Please let them be dead.

Ty fingered the keys of his computer like a Mozart without music. He hadn't spent this much time at his computer in a long while but it came back like the proverbial bicycle skills. His Web site had already garnered more than sixteen thousand hits and dozens of responses, but nothing worthwhile. A lot of traffic in his e-mail was from afar, places like Indonesia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Arkansas, where kindred spirits sympathetically recounted their experiences with “large hominids.” For many others, the notion of a corporate cover-up or police incompetence resonated. Ty didn't really believe either were the case, but he acknowledged they were the necessary cornerstones of his site. Ty flashed over the e-mails, and if they didn't have something to do with his current concern—the forests above his home—he deleted them.

He was emboldened by the response and began adding more fuel to his site, including additional information gathered on the four missing men. He also reported two other disappearances that he did not yet know were unrelated. But the drain on his time from his job, the pressures at home, and the opportunity he saw slipping away were taking their toll.

His focus on uncovering the mystery had been narrowing the past week, along with the desperate hope that its solution would—like the Enterprise blasting an asteroid from its path—solve all his problems. Each day he believed that more and more. Wanting to quit the Forest Service, he conjured up various scenarios to sell Ronnie on why he should, but he knew none of them would work.

Looking at the computer screen, he considered telling his story, exactly as it happened, on his site. He'd told it once before to a so-called respectable reporter, but that interview got so chopped up that he sounded like those misguided fools who killed themselves over the Hale-Bopp comet some years back. He never told it again, not even to Ronnie. He sipped some Scotch and decided against it. He rocked back and stared at the monitor, the cold, wet glass in his hand the only feeling in his body.

M
ac braked his sheriff's issue Chevy Malibu to a stop and looked down at the USGS survey map on the passenger seat. He accelerated slowly to a dirt turnout and parked. The place looked familiar. It was where Skip Caldwell's truck had been found and not far from where he and Carillo had found the other footprints. The map showed he was about six hundred feet in elevation above Highway 2 and that this quiet mountain road ended some miles ahead, deep in the foothills of the North Cascades mountain range.

Mac and Carillo had now been assigned this case full-time. That meant they needed to follow any and all leads to solve this thing soon. It also meant they would have to split up at times. Mac drew the duty of investigating Skip Caldwell's trail. Mac was blasé in the office but now that he was here, all alone in a lonely place, he was experiencing the slightest creeping feeling. He tried ignoring it but the feeling simply went into a corner of his mind and waited.

The owner of a bike shop in Monroe told Mac about the trail, and since Skip Caldwell's truck was found at the trailhead, it was assumed he must have taken that route. The bike guy acknowledged that this trail's degree of difficulty was legendary.

“Yeah,” he said, “people have gotten busted up pretty good on it over the years, but if anybody could run it, Skip could.” He drew Mac a map on the back of a bicycle brochure with the caveat, “Probably accurate, but I can't guarantee it.”

From his car Mac sized up the area around the trailhead. The large search over the last few days had turned up only one clue, tire tracks that likely matched those on the bike Skip was riding. Other than the few footprints that Mac and Carillo had discovered during the initial search, no others were found. But the ground had hardened again after the last rain, and as the searchers ascended the trail. The higher they got, the harder the soil got. Soon the tracks disappeared.

Mac's finger followed the trail on the survey map to where it ended. But the bike store owner's drawing contradicted the survey map, indicating the trail actually continued and then returned, making a circuit. It made sense to Mac. And if the store owner's drawing was correct, then the circuit dumped onto the road he was on about three miles farther up. Mac deduced that Skip would have started here, climbed the trail, run the downhill, then taken the asphalt road three miles back down to his truck.

Mac started his car and continued climbing, driving slowly. After around two miles he watched for any indication of the trail, or single-track as bikers call it. He crossed a river spanned by a wooden Army Corps of Engineers bridge. About three miles later he noticed a dip on the side of the road.

He slowed and saw what looked like a path. He parked and got out. He hung his binoculars around his neck and adjusted his shoulder holster for a hike. He checked his cell phone's battery charge; it indicated full.
Not that it'll even work up here.
The overcast was thick, so he wrapped a scarf around his neck, tucked it into his coat, and headed out.

Mac had been laboriously navigating through the trees for about twenty minutes, wondering how anyone could ride a bike on a path that was barely visible. But when he exited the stand of trees and stood on the brink of a sweeping clear-cut, he suddenly understood how someone with Skip Caldwell's skills could probably ride this trail down from the top.

The trail continued far above him and his eyes followed its course, finally losing it near the top, which he guessed was easily three thousand feet higher than his position. Through his binoculars he traced the route to the top, where the slope melded into a fir-covered butte. Though more than a half mile away, Mac's twelve-power Nikons found what appeared to be a pattern of broken trees. He wasn't sure but he could almost swear it was so. He recalled from his research that broken trees were a possible sign of an upper primate marking its territory. He strained his eyes, hoping to confirm that the damage was intentional and not wind-aided, but he couldn't.

He continued on and every step of the way his eyes darted back and forth between the trail and several yards off trail, fearful he might find more mammoth footprints. Unlike Carillo and their two bosses, Mac was now pretty sure the prints were real. His meeting with Dr. Frazier had left him a bit rattled. Frazier did not have a shadow of doubt that the print maker was a living, breathing creature, and that excluded a joker, or killer, with huge wooden feet. And as he made his way farther into the wilds, Mac's thoughts drifted to the proportions of the entity Frazier had pictured. Mac shivered slightly and shook his head.
No way. Nothing's that big.

Far below he felt a small two-leg. It was searching. Its thoughts were strong, clear. Again, the small two-legs were looking for their own, this time for the one on the shiny thing, and perhaps two of the three from a few dark times before. Of those three, one escaped in their hardshell and he let it, so distracted was he by the idea that the small two-legs could kill each other. He sensed the dead one had been killed by the other two and was perplexed by this.

Far below he saw the small two-leg who sought him. He knew it and any other small two-legs who searched would never find any of their missing ones, for he always took them to places no small two-leg could go. The searchers were small and weak and needed their paths. His trail was not their trail.

He knew this one was looking. His hunting skills told him not to warn it. He gazed down from his dominion and his eyes followed the tree line to
the bottom. He could go that way, staying in the trees, and cut the small two-leg off. Once he was between it and its escape, this small two-leg would be his.

He turned and moved downhill, hidden from below by the trees.

Mac panned his binoculars across the hill for a few moments, trying to find any trace of Skip Caldwell. Then he glimpsed something, a dull glint, out of place amid the horizon of green and brown. Something metal in the distance, on the side of a ravine. Using his unaided eyes to get a wide perspective, he tried to gauge his chances of getting to the object. It appeared to be at least a thousand yards away, and the steep terrain in between was a formidable rampart of gouged earth, stumps, and overwhelming deadfalls. Not a seasoned hiker, he allocated at least an hour and a lot of scratches and torn clothes to the round-trip trek.

Just as he was deciding whether to hike to it or just report it, he felt something quite strange. Glancing at the sky, he noticed the cloud deck was so thick he couldn't tell where the sun was. A thinking man, Mac didn't often dismiss things out of hand, and he had definitely felt an odd sensation.
Was it heat?
He wasn't sure, then as fast as it was upon him, the feeling was gone. But his uneasiness wasn't. Again he didn't know why, but took one guess.
Instinct? Telling me what?
Mac stood motionless for a moment, trying to get a handle on what, if anything, he was feeling. Just as he was about to dismiss it, it hit him again, an odd tingle he couldn't put a finger on. But given where he was, it was alarming. He turned and started walking, fast.

He knew now what his gut had been telling him:
get the hell out of here.

He heard the mind voice of the small two-leg. Sensing its rising fear, he knew it felt him. And though its thoughts were confused, it knew enough to flee for its life.

He reached the flat at the bottom and moved through undergrowth like it was a runner's track. This was his world, and when he sensed prey, nothing could stop or even slow him.

As Mac left the clear-cut and headed back into the forest, his senses were telling him things he couldn't reconcile. Anxiety and the feeling of being watched, or maybe…pursued? He thought maybe all of his reading had planted the seeds of fear in him, but something in his environment had suddenly changed and the fact that he didn't understand it didn't mean it wasn't real.

Mac moved quickly, his apprehensions escalating to a controlled panic. Unable to see anything in the trees around him, and with his feeling of being stalked so perceptible, he gladly erred on the side of prudence and started running. Until this moment it had all been speculation, a theory. Now he felt something closing in on him. Mac was irritated that as a veteran cop he would allow such fear to well up and smother him. Yet as much as his rational side told him this was crazy, his instincts told him to keep running.

Frantically brushing back small branches and trying not to trip over fallen limbs, he drew his gun and racked the slide. If this thing was real and if it was going to jump him, he'd likely go down but not without a fight. He'd try for a head shot, but he knew from safari hunting accounts he had read as a kid that sometimes big game—really determined and
very big
game—continued to attack even after receiving a mortal wound. He wondered if that were true.

He felt the small two-leg just ahead. It was so slow, staggering along, out of place, scared. He thought of the shelter he had built, far away from the reach of the small two-legs, marked by his trees, at the summit of his new land. He would take it there, where he took the others. Then he would kill it and eat well.

Mac recognized a big moss-covered widowmaker and knew the road was close. But just past the dead tree he heard a limb crack, then some rustling branches. It was right behind him.
Is something really there or am I imagining it?
He beat down the impulse to turn and look.

Mac broke into a panicked sprint, hopping over deadfalls and bounding across small springs that crossed his path. As the trail rose in the last fifty yards before the car, he knew it was close, close enough to know he wouldn't make it to the car.
There is something behind me. It's really there.

Closing on the small two-leg, he saw it ahead, desperate to get to its waiting hardshell but knowing it would not make it. He didn't understand their trait of giving up when they seemed to have no escape. Other animals fought to the death, no matter how small or weak. But these animals were different. More fear, less fight.

Suddenly the small two-leg raised its arm and three sounds—loud, sharp, and deep—ripped through the air. He stopped his pursuit, not knowing what it was. They were power sounds like thunder.

The small two-leg continued toward its hardshell and he watched it vanish into the thicket ahead. What was that sound? This was new. He knew they controlled the hardshells, larger creatures with no thoughts, no life. And they were Keepers of the Fire. But this power sound, this thunder was something he could not explain.

Then he remembered something from long past, something the old ones taught: this thunder might hurt him.

Mac leaped into the car, his keys sailing from his hand and landing on the floor. Taking his eyes off the woods for no more than half a second, he retrieved them and shakily found the ignition slot. Bringing the engine to life, he backed the Malibu three hundred yards down the road at top speed before deciding it was safe to turn around.