by J K Ellem
Definitely gay. She cut the tags from the jacket and handed it to him with her best smile.
Molly had the best cleavage on the mountain, so she thought.
He wasn’t from around here either, or from the logging company. Most of the workers from there were grubs, rough and unruly with dirty fingernails, and too much facial hair. Most of them came into the store just to cop an eyeful of her boobs, never bought anything, just ogled.
He thanked her again then smiled. It was the briefest of smiles, but Emily felt her world tilt off its axis. It felt suddenly very warm inside the store, her cheeks prickly and flushed.
She watched his tight butt in black jeans as he went out the door. She liked a man in black jeans. Black seemed to accentuate the complete package, front and back.
Nice, very nice, she thought absentmindedly. I’d definitely like to have a crack at that.
Emily Bell, the local elementary schoolteacher was the next to see him up close. She was sitting in Annabel’s café, the only decent coffee establishment in the whole of Lacy, when her cell phone pinged. Molly had texted Emily all excited about some new guy in town and to keep an eye-out for the tall, dark handsome stranger. Molly had no idea.
School was out for the holidays, so Emily was getting used to her daily ritual of rising late, then donning her jacket and scarf and heading down to the main street to Annabel’s for coffee and a bagel.
Ensconced in her regular booth, with the smell of coffee and cinnamon in the air, Emily had just settled in for her hour of reading the latest thriller on her Kindle when the text arrived. No sooner had she finished reading it when the door of the café opened and a man entered in a swirl of cold air and snowflakes.
Emily looked up.
Everyone in the café looked up, men and women, but the women’s stares lingered just a little longer. He was that kind of person, not muscular but lean, athletic-looking, maybe late twenties Emily guessed, short dark hair and with a confident, chiselled face. He glanced in Emily’s direction and their eyes locked.
Emily looked away. The stranger ordered a large coffee at the counter then sat at the window bench and drank while watching the street outside.
Emily returned to her book, but her concentration wavered, her eyes rolling over the words on the screen without the story sinking in, her mind focused on the man. She watched him out of the periphery of her vision. Her schoolteacher logic couldn’t explain it, it defied her otherwise calm and reserved demeanour, but there was something about the man that was pulling at her like she was being sucked into a black hole.
Emily had only been on Echo Mountain for two years. Before that she taught elementary in Boulder, Colorado. She preferred the picturesque region of Echo Mountain where the town of Lacy was situated amongst the Colorado Rockies. She wasn’t a city girl, although she did miss the buzz of the malls, sports bars and vibe of Denver.
The man got up, wrapped his scarf around his neck, and picked up his rucksack. Once again heads turned. He prepared himself for the cold air then pushed the door open and was gone without so much as another smile or an acknowledgement to Emily.
Emily returned to her book, still curious about the stranger. The man didn’t look like a tourist. He blended in, like a local, with a confident manner to him like he had been in the café a thousand times before. This made Emily even more intrigued, and a little cautious.
Her cell pinged again, no doubt another text from Molly.
Did u c him?
Emily deleted the message without bothering to reply and settled into more important things—like the murder and mayhem in her book.
2
The town of Lacy sat at an elevation of just over seven thousand feet. It had a population of slightly more than nine thousand, which meant it didn’t have a full-functioning police department.
The Sheriff’s office was a small quaint house on the edge of the downtown area, away from the boardwalk stores and eateries. The place used to be a doctors surgery. It had a picket fence out the front, a small brick path leading to an ornate front door, timber siding painted in dove gray, and a wraparound porch. In summer, the porch had some feminine touches, like planter boxes and hanging baskets overflowing with red geraniums. In winter, it was bare.
People came to pay their parking fines or collect their stray dog. Occasionally the single holding cell in the basement was occupied by a DUI sleeping it off after a big night at McKenzies. Anything more serious was usually left to the authorities in Boulder, or if it was really serious then there was always the Denver Police Department that could be called upon.
For Sheriff Clare Decker, in the five years she had been stationed on Echo Mountain, the worse thing she had to deal with was a few years back, when Billy Hicks ran his pickup truck into a fire hydrant after drowning his sorrows because the Broncos lost in the playoffs. Apart from that, Sheriff Decker’s days were filled with the mundane; traffic stops, parking violations and maybe having to be called out to shoot a red fox or mountain lion when she couldn’t be bothered calling Parks and Wildlife, asking someone to make the thirty mile trip west of Denver along Interstate 70 to do it for her.
The bell above the door jingled as Clare pushed it open with her knee, balancing two take-out cups of steaming coffee and a paper bag of onion bagels from Annabel’s.
Clare had shoulder-length chestnut hair that she usually had plaited into a ponytail. She was in good shape for her age, average height with dark brown eyes that took in everything. Even though she would disagree, ageing had made her more attractive, it gave her an air of authority and a look of confidence. She was comfortable with herself and how she looked. She ran track-and-field in college, but was never really considered to be an athlete or homecoming queen. There was something about her that had attracted her husband, Jeff, back then. They had divorced five years ago when he ran off with a twenty-five-year-old he met at a sales convention.
They had no kids and that really pissed Clare off. Jeff never wanted kids, but Clare would have loved to have had a daughter, someone to fawn over and raise as her own. It was the source of many arguments during their marriage, and now at forty-five years old it was too late. Clare had lost some of that maternal spark.
She kept fit by trying to run three days a week, but she was fighting a losing battle with gravity that was pulling all her “good bits” south. She wasn’t into yoga or that Pilates crap that seemed to preoccupy most of her old friends who now lived in the more affluent suburbs in Denver. They had all married well and had families, and at times it made Clare a little envious. She was sick of seeing Facebook posts of their perfect kids at Disneyland, or on some perfect Pacific island beach, or sitting in their perfect seats at Mile High Stadium watching the Broncos go around.
She had already succumbed to the hot-flushes of menopause and resigned herself to the fact that she would never have kids or find the right man who wanted a family. Adoption was always a possibility, but living alone and with the commitments that came with being the only law enforcement officer on Echo Mountain, she simply couldn’t devote the time to raising a child. Not that her job was stressful, but she never went home at the end of the day and just switched off like everyone else. It was a one-Sheriff town and in her mind she was on-call twenty-four seven. So she channelled all her disappointments into her job no matter how mundane it was on some days.
And it looked like today was shaping up to be one of those mundane days.
Inside, the Sheriff’s office was simple and cozy with a well-worn front counter, two desks, a small kitchenette out the back, a separate interview room in the back corner, and the holding cell downstairs in the basement. The gun cabinet was down there too.
Clare placed the coffee and bagels on the counter, unwound her scarf and removed her winter jacket, and hung them next to the front door.
Alice Munroe, her long-suffering assistant, looked up from her desk. Alice was in her sixties, born and raised on Echo Mountain, and she knew everything about everyone in town. Sh
e had worked for a string of Sheriffs over the years before Clare and they had all been men. She was proud as punch when old Sheriff McAlister retired five years back and his replacement turned out to be a woman. “About time too,” she said to all and sundry in town, when Clare Decker arrived from Denver to take up the post.
“Anything interesting on the log for the day?” Clare said, as she placed one of the coffee cups and the bag of bagels next to Alice’s keyboard.
“Thanks honey,” Alice replied, her smile warm and motherly. It was Friday, and Friday morning meant coffee and bagels from Annabel’s. Alice flipped through the incident log, her glasses perched on the end of her nose, her eyes scanning her neat meticulous script. “Nothing much from last night. Just a missing dog from the Reed property up on Culver Street. A few tourists got drunk in McKenzies and made a nuisance of themselves. One of them threw up in Bill Taylor’s front yard all over his wife’s Christmas roses. He wasn’t too pleased with that, but I told the old fool just to hose it off.”
Clare smiled, took her coffee and a bagel, and sat down at her own desk behind Alice. Her first few months up here were certainly made a lot easier by Alice and her inside knowledge of the locals and some of their peculiar customs and ways. Alice was not the local gossip, but she pruned and fertilized the Echo Mountain grapevine better than anyone else. Clare often turned to Alice for sage advice. Small town policing was as much about compromise as it was about keeping the community safe. Clare wasn’t some hard-nosed city cop, and at times felt she was more like the town shrink than Sheriff.
“Oh, by the way, there are a few phone messages I took this morning for you.” Alice slid several small yellow squares of paper off a message spike. “I don’t know if they’re worth writing up,” she said, as she swivelled her chair around and faced Clare. She peered over her glasses as she read through them. “Alfred Beckett called, said he saw the ghost again last night. Third time this week, but who’s counting?”
Clare rolled her eyes and sipped her coffee. She looked at her computer screen showing the weather forecast for the next few days. There was a storm front moving in with the chance of heavy snow.
Alfred Beckett was an old recluse who lived up on Dawson’s Ridge. His house looked more like a junkyard than a home, but high on the ridge gave him one of the best views of the township below. Last week he claimed to have seen a ghost wandering through the streets downtown in the early hours of the morning. Reckoned it must have been a ghost, because it just appeared out of nowhere then vanished.
Everyone knew old Al used his brass telescope to spy on everyone. He felt he was doing his civic duty by reporting any strange occurrences. Mrs Bishop from the town committee believed he was just an old pervert with nothing better to do than spend hours perched behind his telescope hoping to catch some of the women in their underwear putting out the trash, or seeing them in the shower through an open bathroom window.
“What else, Alice?” Clare said impatiently. At least it was shaping up to be a quiet weekend. She may even have time to fit a run in before dark.
Alice scrunched up the message and tossed it in her trash basket. “Walter Pickens called too. Said there was some guy walking up the mountain road. Nearly ran him off the road, he said. Said he didn’t look like a tourist or a worker from the logging camp. Had a bag or rucksack with him like he was a drifter or vagrant.”
“Great,” Clare replied, only half-listening to Alice as she watched the computer-generated swirl of yellows and reds of the storm front spiralling towards Denver from the east. It was dangerous to be walking along the mountain road, especially with the logging trucks running back and forth from dawn till dusk.
“Next.”
“Bob Marshall called and said his dog’s gone missing too. Put him out last night after dinner to do his business and the dog didn’t return.”
Clare looked up. The Reed property and the Marshall property were within a mile of each other. Two dogs missing in one night. “Mountain lion?” Clare asked.
Alice shrugged. “Could be. With winter and all, maybe they’re straying closer to town and looking for food.”
Clare thought about it for a moment. Missing domestic pets around Echo Mountain was a tell-tale sign that a cougar was present in the area. Clare had seen a few last winter, but it was early in this season to have them brazen enough to come into town. There were small children and even adults to consider. Most locals owned a shotgun for home defense, or in case the wildlife strayed too close. She hated killing any animal, but a big predatory cat was another matter altogether.
“OK, I’ll go and take a look,” Clare said. She finished her coffee, unclipped a set of keys from her belt and headed for the basement.
Clare’s everyday carry was a Smith & Wesson M&P 40 handgun with two fifteen round magazines. Anything more substantial was locked away.
Downstairs, she unlocked the cabinet. Sitting snug in an upright rack was a high-powered hunting rifle with a telescopic scope. Next to it was something she hoped she would never have to use, a Colt M4 carbine fully optioned. The M4 was an assault rifle that Navy Seals used and it came with the job, so it was stowed away with her ammunition—just in case the zombies decided to invade Echo Mountain.
Things would have to get pretty bad for her to pull that weapon out.
Clare unfastened the hunting rifle, checked the action, then selected a box of ammunition from the shelf. After locking the cabinet, she went back upstairs.
She put on her snow jacket and scarf, and slung the rifle over her shoulder, barrel down, butt stock up. She grabbed a portable two-way from its charging cradle and opened the door. Echo Mountain’s cell coverage fluctuated depending on the weather and she preferred a two-way radio when she went on foot.
“Hold the fort, Alice. You can get me on the radio if you need me.”
Alice just nodded.
Clare stepped out into the cold air and closed the door behind her.
“Ghosts and cougars,” she said to herself, as she paused on the porch looking at the sky. A light smatter of snowflakes had started to fall. “That’s all I need, and it’s only the first day of winter.” She trudged down the steps towards her police SUV.
3
Humans tend to be creatures of habit. They get up at the same time, eat the same food each week, shop at the same stores, and get coffee from the same place. Their lives are filled with idiosyncrasies, routine, and habit.
Emily Bell was no exception. She rose typically around 8:00 a.m. He knew this, because she pulled the kitchen window blinds up at this time and he could see her clearly in the kitchen. She would then fill up the coffee machine and turn it on. Next she would open the overhead cupboard and get down a bowl and pour some cardboard crap into it. From his hidden position he had a clear view and could see her at the breakfast-bar eating her cereal and checking her messages on her phone. Then she would get up and pour herself a cup of coffee in the same cup she used each day. She kept it on the draining board next to the sink in front of the wide kitchen window.
Next she would feed her cat, some scrawny gray thing that meowed incessantly until its bowl was filled. She would then shower and get dressed. He was disappointed that he couldn’t see that part of her daily routine.
Then she would check all the windows, lock the front door and make her way into town. It wasn’t far, just a quick walk. She would go to the café and spend an hour inside drinking coffee and reading. She would sit in the same spot and probably ordered the same drink, every time.
It was too risky to look around her house during the day, despite the fact that her house was at the end of the street and the block backed onto vacant scrub that sloped up to the forest behind.
But in the early hours of the morning, just after midnight while most people were asleep, he did leave his hide and walk around town. He wanted to be familiar with the terrain.
He was going to kill the cat—strangle it like how he was going to kill her. It was just a matter of choosing the right
moment.
Watching her at night was proving a little more difficult. She seemed to be more security conscious. At dusk she would go around and double-check all the windows and doors, then pull all the curtains and blinds tight. He watched her take out the trash one evening and she took a moment looking around the surrounding darkness, almost like she thought someone was watching her.
Guess what? Someone was.
She was going to get one hell of a fright, having locked all her doors and windows, only to realize she had locked herself inside her own house with him. He was looking forward to seeing the look on her face when he confronted her inside her house, his hand clamped over her mouth. He had fantasized about that very moment a million times, deciding how long he would keep her alive. Should he kill her straight away, or should he play with her for a while? He really wanted to take her upstairs into her bedroom and slowly cut her clothes away with the hunting knife he had bought just for the occasion. He imagined the type of underwear she wore. She was a schoolteacher after all. But he was hoping the outwardly conservative Emily Bell was inwardly a raving sexual vixen. Black, sheer underwear, the type that was almost translucent at the front so you could see her young tight mound of hair, that’s what he hoped. Christ, he was getting hard now just thinking about it again.
He was going to take his time with her, he decided. She needed to be taught a lesson, to know why she was being killed. He wanted to look her in the eyes, to see them go wide when she saw his face, then be inside her when he slowly strangled her and watch the life leave those same pretty eyes.