The Shadowkiller (22 page)

T
hat evening Mac sat in front of the television with the sound muted. He had been making a point of watching the eleven p.m. news on Channel 7 for one blond reason.

Though they hadn't spoken since just after she ambushed Carillo, Mac had watched her reports over the last several days and marveled at her unfounded speculation. It also frustrated him that the news media were giving the story so much attention when they didn't really get it. What bothered him most was waiting. What if this thing found another victim? But Mac couldn't identify any pattern to its behavior, and even if he could, who'd believe him?

After watching Kris's report about a slipping landfill in Mountlake Terrace, Mac went for a night run to blow off steam. He did three miles in a little under half an hour and headed for the shower. Afterward he donned some gym shorts and a T-shirt and sat down to read. A knock at the door surprised him. It was a few minutes after midnight and he guessed it was an older neighbor who often came to him when raccoons raided her trash.

He swung the door open and Kris stood before him, holding out a bottle of champagne.

“Peace offering,” she said. “Sorry it's so late, but your light was on.”

“You can only see my lights from inside the complex,” he said, trying to be aloof.

She shrugged. “Okay, I'm nosy. I'm allowed that, right?”

“It's trespassing. I could take you in,” he said, his tone just light enough to encourage her.

“Can't you just take me into custody here and I'll plea bargain?”

Mac shook his head, took the champagne, and stepped back. She came inside.

“You want an interview?” Mac said, keeping an even face. “See, we caught the murderer this afternoon. He's in lockup as we speak,” he said, wanting to see if there was even a flicker in her eyes.

She smiled sweetly and dropped her coat over a chair. “So, you got some glasses?”

“Champagne at midnight? On a school night?” he asked as he went for the glasses.

Kris casually surveyed the place like it was the first time she'd seen it. “Sure. It's the best time to drink champagne.”

“You've been busy,” Mac noted. “I'm surprised you have time to drop by. Why am I being honored?”

Kris busied herself pretending to look at a shelf of mementos.

“Oh, no reason,” she said,“I just felt bad I haven't talked to you all week. That's all.”

Mac's bullshit meter pegged. She wanted something but he wasn't sure what. He wanted to believe, telling himself the big lie that she was attracted to him but knowing it was probably a delusion.

He handed her a glass of bubbly. They touched glasses.

“To us,” she lied, and Mac knew it, sipping his champagne impassively. He motioned for her to sit with him on the sofa.

She threw out a non sequitur. “Why did you get into this business?”

Mac hadn't considered that one for a while.

“I was going to be a lawyer,” he started. “At first I wanted to be a criminal attorney. Then I changed my mind. I wanted to be a prosecutor.”

“Why a prosecutor?”

“I don't know. Maybe laying blame was easier than defending people who might be guilty. By my third year in law school I realized what I really wanted to do was solve crimes, not deal with the aftermath. I wanted something that was in the moment, more hands-on bringing criminals to justice.”

Sipping her champagne, she looked into his dark, soft eyes. She had been right, he was different. Could have been a lawyer.

“Big difference in earning power,” she noted.

He tipped a shoulder in deference. “Maybe, but I think I've done reasonably well. How about you? Why a reporter?”

Kris thought a moment before answering. “I was a big fan of Nancy Drew when I was a kid. I loved mysteries. I also loved getting into other people's business. I found a job where I could do both.”

Mac half believed her but saw something else in her eyes. “I think you like the attention. I think for you it's less about news and more about image. I think if someone offered you two choices, best newswoman or superstar, it's no contest, you'd go with the latter.”

Another time, another man, and she might have been offended, but he was absolutely, uncannily correct. She chose to be flattered that he saw her true ambition. He didn't seem put off by her lust for power.

“Maybe. Maybe so. I got into this business to be Nancy Drew, but I ended up realizing it was better to be Bette Davis.”

She reached past him, grabbed the champagne, and filled her empty glass. His needed only a splash.

“I'm thirsty,” she said, off his bemused look.

Mac indicated her glass. “I do have water. You don't have to slug down fifty-dollar champagne to quench your thirst.”

She was impressed he knew it was good champagne. The wine had started in on her brain. Though she had few inhibitions, her mood was quickly winding down from the intense pace she had maintained the last fifteen hours. Ready to settle in for the next seven or eight hours, she decided it would be here.

She ran a playful finger over Mac's forearm. “I'm sorry I had to leave the other night.”

Mac knew where this was going and let it. “I was too.”

She coyly fixed her eyes on his, then looked away. “I don't have to tonight.”

With that, Mac slipped his hand into her silky blond hair and moved her face and full lips to his. They kissed. Again. And again.

He came down from his mountain, moving swiftly through the trees, the moonless night not slowing him at all. A night traveler, he preferred the dark time, when his senses were keener, more focused.

Hunger drove him toward the flat land, the place of the small two-legs. Revenge and the pleasure of the kill were secondary now to the search for sustenance. Crossing a black trail, he moved away from the prying night-fire eyes of a hardshell as it passed. He knew a small two-leg was within and he kept to the old ways, the teachings that said let no animal know of your presence until you are moving in to make the kill.

From his vantage point above the valley he saw the controlled fire coming from the openings in the wood caves of the small two-legs. He thought of the thunder unleashed by the small two-leg he had stalked. He had never before heard the thunder of the small two-legs and had forgotten the warnings of the old ones, but now he knew their teachings might be true: the thunder could kill. He felt the small two-legs probably kept thunder in their wood caves, so he needed caution approaching them. Any challenge to his power caused him anger but he knew he could use surprise to defeat them.

He also knew from his encounter with the small two-leg that though they carried the thunder, they were still afraid. So the thunder might not be as powerful as he had been told. But he would take no chances. He was a hunter and he was wise. If his prey had sharp teeth, he would avoid those teeth.

Kris lost her blouse in the living room, Mac his shirt. Ten feet down the hall, her pants fell. Up against the wall, outside the guest bathroom, Mac fumbled with her bra and she helped him free her breasts. Kissing her furiously, Mac worked his way down her neck, across milky shoulders, down the curve of her breasts to her nipples.

As he tugged gently on her left nipple with his teeth, Kris's eyes rolled back and she brought the back of her hand to her forehead in rapture. He edged her panties over her hips, revealing downy blond hair between her legs, then dropped them to her ankles. She stepped out, now wearing only her calf-high socks, wristwatch, and an expression of total abandon.

Mac, on his knees, moved his tongue down between her flawless breasts to her navel and below. Reaching the upper line of her perfectly coiffured pubic hair, Mac's nose told him the area had recently been perfumed, and he smiled inwardly that she had had this all planned, probably to the beat. As his tongue lathered her belly and thighs, his left hand pressed against her naked bottom and his right one-handed his gym shorts down and off.

Running her hands through his hair while his tongue wandered south, she let out a slight, almost controlled shriek when he found his mark. She opened her stance for him. Her head rattled a picture on the wall as Mac tortured her with slow swirls of his tongue.

S
ometimes when Burt Krinkel heard his dogs barking at night, he'd get out of bed and check on them. There was really no reason to do it except it gave him an excuse to get up. At seventy-five Burt didn't sleep as well as he used to. By moving around he found he could go back to bed and sleep better. Why not? It wasn't like he had to get up early, though he mostly did. He'd left his job with the railroad seven years back and still couldn't break that habit of waking at four thirty.

His wife, Ada, never woke up that early, but she hadn't been in the habit for years. When their four kids were growing up, she was always up before them, cooking breakfast, doing last-minute laundry and such. But when the last one left home twenty-five years ago, Ada slowly settled into a more leisurely pace. In bed at ten thirty, up by seven, just like clockwork. Burt envied her that unbroken sleep.

At around one a.m. Burt sat up in bed. He had tossed and turned for a couple of hours, so when the dogs started yip-yappin', he figured he'd investigate. He slid into his slippers and donned the big wool robe that his grandkids had given him the previous Christmas. He assumed some possums had gotten into the trash or the dog food, but the dogs suddenly quieted, so maybe they'd chased the possums out back of the property. He decided to check anyway. He stopped in the kitchen and poured a glass of milk. A walk and the milk were guaranteed sleep aids.

The digital thermometer indicated the outside temperature was thirty-eight. He grabbed one of his coats off the hook in the mud room and went out the back door. Slightly misty, the chill air invaded the loose cuffs of his pajamas. Though it was pitch-dark, Burt knew the way by heart, aided by residual light from his porch lamp. He had a small flashlight in his pocket but didn't need it until he got to his destination. Some called Burt a frugal man but he considered himself efficient.

Kris grabbed aimlessly for the curtains in front of the sliding glass doors to the patio and missed, knocking over a tall standing lamp. Finally, her fingernails found fabric and she held on tight, afraid her knees would buckle from passion as Mac positioned himself to enter her standing up.

She leaped up and straddled him, her legs twining around his waist. The change of position was all he needed. Suddenly she felt him slide inside, full and very hard. She cried out as the deep probing sensation fired all her circuits. Their mouths found each other, their tongues entwining. Mac pumped up and down, in and out, and she broke the kiss to gulp air as she expressed her ecstasy in a very loud moan, a moan that rose and fell with each thrust.

Mac had never made love to such a breathtakingly beautiful woman. His heart, against all reasons, wanted to keep this one, and not just because she was stunning, but for the aura of excitement and danger that surrounded her. Coming to his home in the middle of the night, after attacking his partner and his department, was risky at best. Yet here they were.

Slamming her bare ass against the glass, he began to feel the rise of a climax.

Burt got to the shed and called the dogs, “Zoe, Sophie, Simon? C'mere!”

No answer. Burt opened the front door of the old clapboard building and that's when he knew there was trouble.

He shined the light inside and found the glowing crimson irises and white faces of his three dogs, huddled together in the back, all on Zoe's blanket.

“Hey, what the heck's wrong with—”

Then he felt something that made the ruddy, wrinkled skin on the back of his neck crawl. It was the sensation of…a presence. Someone was there. But the dogs would have been barking. Heck, they even barked when the chipmunks—

He felt it again, palpable but odd, almost like static electricity. He couldn't quite place it. He shined his weak flashlight around the front of the shed but saw nothing. Then his old nose caught a stench, just a whiff, but a very sour smell. Wondering if the dogs had killed something that was now going bad, he decided to leave it until later. He had an uneasy feeling and suddenly wanted to get back to the house. He sniffed again but smelled nothing, then turned back to the dogs.

“You kids do your job, you hear m—”

Before poor old Burt could complete the word
me,
a closed fist, concrete hard and the size of a milk pail, arced down, instantly crushing his head onto his shoulders. He was dead before his flashlight hit the damp grass.

Examining the corpse of the small two-leg, he saw it was old with not much meat on it. He would eat it but needed another. He considered the dogs. He had eaten dogs but did not like them. Their lean flesh tasted different from small two-legs; their bones were smaller and more of a nuisance.

He turned to the wood cave of the old one. Maybe there were more inside. He left the old one where he had fallen and headed for it.

Now on the bed with Mac on top, Kris threw her hips at his to heighten the power of their coupling. Up and down they went for fifteen minutes. She'd already had two minor orgasms but was anticipating a big one, one that was building, the others just foreshocks to her coming San Andreas climax. She hadn't been fucked like this ever. Most guys came like jackrabbits, but this guy…She'd been right when she met him: not a normal cop.

He walked around the wood cave, looking in the openings covered by warm ice. Through one of the openings he found another small two-leg,

asleep. This one was old like the other, and female. Its mate. He was learning more about the small two-legs and was finding they were unlike other animals. Any other animal would have felt his presence and fled. This one continued to sleep.

He touched the warm ice and it felt less solid than the warm ice of the hardshell he'd turned over. He ran a finger over it, gauging the distance to the old female that slept. He wanted food, not pleasure or revenge, so he decided to make it quick.

His hand pushed easily through the warm ice and it made a cracking sound like cold ice. The old one awoke, confused more than scared. Then he felt her terror as he reached through the opening and got his hand around her throat. Pulling her small body through the opening, he let her live for a moment, allowing the fear to overcome her. Then he squeezed and her life force flickered out. Walking back to the other, he put them both under one arm and returned whence he came.