by Danae Ayusso
Colt shook his head in resignation; how she didn’t hear the accent was beyond him.
“What’s the body count?” Cat asked, all mirth stolen from her.
“Five,” Colt automatically answered before he could stop himself.
“The victim today making the fifth,” she surmised and he nodded. “How long since the perp last hunted?”
“Interesting choice of words,” Colt dryly commented.
“Not really,” she said indifferently. “It’s been noted by many FBI profilers that serial killers’, especially those with a set M.O. and territory, actions are more comparable to a hunter than an opportunist. Since he has a set type that would mean that victim five wasn’t a chance meeting or simply two strangers crossing paths, and that leads me to believe his reappearance coincides with something of importance. How long was he gone?”
Colt swallowed the lump in his throat. “His first victim was nearly five years ago to the day,” he managed to say, the words sounding strangled.
“So a fifth victim on the fifth year anniversary of his first,” Cat said, looking out the window. “Obviously he’s sentimental,” she continued. “Marking the fifth year with a fifth victim is poetic in a disturbing way. I’d run a check on the most recent inmate releases on all sides of the border—Canadian, American, Montana, Idaho, Washington—and see if they cross paths with Eureka or any of the victims, if their wrap sheets fit the FBI’s profile. What were the commonalities between the victims?”
When Colt didn’t say anything, she looked over at him.
“What?” she asked. “I’m not going to say anything to anyone. If you hadn’t noticed, I know all of two people in town, well, three now. I promised Probie I’d buy him a beer since I broke his nose. I’m a sucker for Probies that are eager to please their superiors.”
“Because you were once one,” Colt mumbled, slightly grateful for the slight change in subject.
Cat opened her mouth and then promptly closed it.
“That’s what I thought,” he said.
“You know nothing,” she corrected in a clipped tone. “I know what it means to seek the acceptance of a superior or parental figure. But no matter how hard you try or what you do, how many acclimations or awards you acquire, it’s never good enough.”
Colt pulled up to the front of the Paterson estate and put the jeep in park. It had been years since he’d been there, since Vicks’ funeral, but it looked the same as it did when he was younger: three story Shingle style home with Victorian detailing, wood and wrought iron encased front porch, white lap siding, lead detailed windows, stained glass windows along the entire third story, glass and wood front door painted bright red with polished brass accents, sprawling white yard, tall bare maple trees and frozen shrubbery.
For a brief moment, he could picture Vicks skipping down the front steps of her grandmother’s house before running to Colt’s arms when he came to pick her up for their Saturday date night. He could see him and James with the rest of the guys playing football in the side yard before Sunday Night Football started. There were steaks and chicken grilling on the barbeque out back, a raging fire was dancing high into the summer sky from the fire pit, and marshmallows were being roasted before sandwiching them between chocolate and gram crackers. Music was playing and Vicks was spinning around barefooted in her white cotton summer dress, trying to get Colt to dance with her at least once that evening.
For a brief moment, he was home.
The passenger door opened and he jumped, startled.
“Parent or boss?” Colt blurted out, not entirely sure where it came from but he wasn’t strong enough to sit there in the driveway of Vicks’ childhood home alone at the moment.
“There’s a difference?” Cat asked, looking over at him. “You squeeze that wheel any tighter and you’ll snap it in two, Fury,” she warned, noting his death grip on the steering wheel.
When he didn’t say anything, she sighed.
“Damn it,” Cat mumbled. “Did you want to come in for a cup of coffee or something?”
He shook his head but turned the jeep off and started to get out.
Not entirely sure what he was doing and why, and not liking the open invitation she just gave him, Cat got out of the jeep and followed him around the main house and across the backyard towards her cabin.
“I take it you’ve been here before,” Cat surmised, following him.
Of course he didn’t answer.
Irritated, she scooped up a handful of snow and formed a ball, then hurled it at him.
Colt stopped in mid-step when the compacted ball of snow slammed into his shoulder, peppering the back of his head with ice. Slowly he turned and glared at her, just in time to get a second snowball in the chest.
Cat cocked an eyebrow, arm back and ready to release a third.
“What was that for?” he demanded.
“You don’t go storming off like a bitch on a mission into someone else’s house,” she informed him.
“Did you just call me a bitch?” he asked, trying to fight the tug at the corners of his lips.
She smirked; tossing the snowball up in the air then caught it and repeated the cycle, tauntingly. “Yea, I did. What are you going to do about it? And in case you were wondering, I played first base for the eighty-fourth. We kicked ass took names, bringing home that trophy three times.”
Colt opened his mouth more than once but he was at a loss of words. Never in his life had he met someone, especially a woman, who was so damn irritating and defiant. He knew she was hiding something, something major, but at the same time, he didn’t give a damn. His indifference irritated him, never had he been like that, but it was a refreshing change of pace, especially since he was, once again, reliving the worst moment of his life.
“That’s what I thought,” Cat purred and gently tossed the snowball at his feet and headed toward him. “Just because you look like Bigfoot doesn’t mean that you intimidate me,” she said, jabbing her finger into his chest when she stopped in front of him. “Do we got an understanding here?”
Colt slapped her hand away so she jabbed her other hand into his chest. “You’re stubborn,” he grumbled, smacking her other hand away.
“You have no idea,” she informed him then stepped around him, pulling the key for the front door from the chain around her wrist. “Are you housebroken?” she called out, taking her time to unlock each of the deadbolts adorning the solid wood door.
“Yes,” Colt said from directly behind her, and she jumped, startled before slamming her elbow back into his stomach and he grunted. “Ow.”
“You’re in my space, Fury,” Cat warned him, releasing the last lock. She started to turn the handle then stopped. “I wasn’t expecting company so can you give me five minutes to straighten up?”
That’s putting it mildly, she mentally groaned.
“I should get going,” Colt said and stepped back. “Jim...Sheriff Lake will need some help.”
She chuckled. “You mean he’ll need you to hold his hand.”
“He’s very capable and a decent sheriff,” he informed her in a clipped tone, coming to James’ defense.
“Then why was he following you around like a lost puppy?” Cat countered.
When Colt growled under his breath, she put her hand up in surrender and turned around to face him.
“Look, I get it,” she said. “Sometimes, especially when working closely with someone, lines are crossed and you just can’t deny that raw, sexual tension that builds between you. Whether it’s mutual or just a drunken one nightstand, I get it. We’ve all been there, it’s part of the job. You put unconditional trust in the hands of your partner, just as they do with you, and that trust sometimes causes feelings to grow that Internal Affairs gets in the middle of. I get it. But you really should let Jimmy know that you just aren’t into him so he can move on.”
Colt stood there with wide eyes and his mouth hanging open; he wasn’t entirely sure what to say about that.
&nbs
p; Cat scratched her beanie-covered head. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He continued to stand there staring at her.
“Good talking to you,” she huffed as she turned and opened the door.
The loud roar of laughter from behind her caused her to jump, startled, and suddenly her Walther PP was in her hands and leveled at him. Colt looked from her to the gun and back again then laughed even harder, having to use one of the cabin’s awning posts to stay upright. His entire body shook as a loud, primal bark of laughter rolled from deep in his chest. It echoed across the quiet yard, causing crows to scatter from the trees, and the back porch light clicked on. The simplistic action of laughing was long forgotten to Colt; he hadn’t laughed, chuckled, or found amusement in anything in years.
“What in hell is going on...Colt?” Emma Paterson called out from the back porch, her hands covering her mouth.
Colt swiped his thumb across his eyes to wipe away the tears of amusement flooding them.
Emma hurried out into the yard in her oversized snow boots, pulling her housecoat tight as she went.
Cat lowered the gun and tucked it back behind her.
Colt looked to the old woman heading towards him. Her long gray and black hair blew away from her as she hurried to him, her tall frame was rail thin, her pale skin wrinkled with age and stress, but the tears flooding her vibrant blue eyes made them sparkle like topazes in the sun. A smile filled Colt’s face, but it was short lived and the amused tears were replaced by tears of guilt and unfathomable pain, and the moment Emma’s arms wrapped around his waist he returned the embrace and his large form consumed the old woman’s lithe body. He buried his face against Emma’s shoulder and sobbed; his shoulders heaved, his body shook as he struggled to catch his breath and compose himself.
“I’m so sorry,” he stammered.
Tenderly, Emma caressed his head. “It’s not your fault, Sweetheart. It’s not your fault,” she assured him, and the pain in her usually short and clipped tone caused Cat to slip inside the cabin, locking the door behind her.
“Are you sure it’s him?” Emma whispered, her index finger tapping against the side of her coffee cup in agitation.
Colt nodded; his attention on his hands.
It had been years since he sat in the library at the Paterson estate. He used to sit on the loveseat he was sitting on now and watch Vicks cram for her exams while he absently flipped through police reports and witness statements from whatever case he was working on at the time. In the fall through spring there would be a fire burning in the marble fireplace that was situated on the far wall, and Vicks would have one of her long, baggy knit sweaters on and would be chewing on her thumbnail as she read, her glasses sliding down her nose every time she’d take a drink of her hot chocolate, and she’d huff every time she had to push them back up causing him to smile.
But now it felt like a crypt to Colt.
“Who was she?” Emma whispered.
He shook his head.
She exhaled in a huff. “Thank God she wasn’t local.”
Colt looked up at her. “Excuse me? That was someone’s child, their daughter, and possibly a wife or fiancée.”
Emma cocked a thin, black eyebrow. “Don’t look at me like that!” she snapped at him. “At one time that was my damn granddaughter.”
“And that might be someone else’s granddaughter!” he snapped back.
She shook her head. “Maybe, maybe not, but you’ll blame yourself for it just like you did with all the others.”
“Because it is my fault,” he grumbled, burying his face in his hands.
“Like hell it is,” Emma said. “It’s Pope’s fault. The sick sonuvabitch took my grandbaby from me and the grandbabies of four other families...he deserves to die. I can only hope that when you finally find that bastard, you forget the oath you took when you were eighteen and you kill him.” Her light blue eyes burned into his. “You find and kill that sonuvabitch, or so help me, when he finally goes to trial, I will walk into that courtroom with my double barrel and take care of it myself,” she warned.
Colt nodded. “I understand,” he whispered.
Emma smiled wide and got to her feet. “Good. Now get upstairs and take a shower, and, for the love of God, shave and cut your hair. You look like a hippie and I raised you better than that.”
He made a face. “Whatever would the neighbors think?”
Emma didn’t miss his tone.
“That I found you behind a dumpster,” she said and sat next to him on the loveseat and weaved her fingers through his. “I’m glad you came back.”
“It wasn’t intentional,” he admitted. “Jimmy came and then...who is she?”
Emma smirked. “You mean my tenant?”
“Yes,” he said, not amused in the least. “There’s something not right about her.”
“You think?” Emma rhetorically asked with a chuckle. “I like her, she’s feisty.”
Colt groaned. “You mean she’s like you.”
“Perfection cannot be duplicated, Colt,” Emma reminded him and he rolled his eyes. “Cat came six months ago, fixed up the cabin, installed some new wiring and repaired the chimney that crumbled in that blizzard two years back. She’s surprisingly resourceful in a home improvement sort of way, and has been helping me around the house when I need it. Sunday she joins me for dinner, usually accompanies me to church after her morning run.”
“Hmmm... You don’t say? She doesn’t remind me of the church type.”
Emma shrugged. “She isn’t. Cat reads whatever crime book she brought that day and listens to her music thing.”
Colt nodded. “That explains it. She started processing the most recent crime scene before breaking Mickey’s nose when he tried to frisk her...she was armed.”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” Emma said. “And she wasn’t turned off in the least by the body,” she surmised.
“Not at all. It was as if it was an everyday thing...she did freak out and dive through the window when Chelsea came down the road. She was cowering on my lap.”
Emma roared with laughter. “You are horrible!” she said and smacked him. “You scared her with that damn grizzly, didn’t you?”
“In not so many words,” Colt said with the unmistakable sound of a smile in his voice.
Chelsea was a local celebrity in Eureka, Montana. The old Grizzly was the smallest anyone had ever seen and was surprisingly friendly. The locals often fed Chelsea since her small stature made it hard for her to fight for food against bears three times her size. On many occasions, Colt had shared a meal with her while on the mountain. He was hoping that Chelsea wouldn’t have spoiled his fun by trying to nuzzle his hand because he was enjoying the discomfort of the stubborn woman crawling all over him trying to get away from the ‘terrifying’ grizzly.
Emma brought their hands to her lips and tenderly kissed the top of his roughened hand. “Jesus forgive me for saying this, but I’m glad that Jimmy was able to get you off that damned mountain.”
Colt kissed the side of her head. “Me too,” he mumbled. “Me too.”
****
Cat finished drying her hair with a towel before swiping her hand across the bathroom mirror, wiping the steam from it. “You just can’t reel it in, can you?” she asked the woman staring back at her. “All you had to do was call in the body, act scared, maybe hyperventilate a little bit, and get your happy ass back to the cabin. Was that too much to ask?”
The woman absently combing out her long, black hair in the mirror didn’t answer.
“Exactly! And now you have a detective that apparently doesn’t miss anything on the case...on your case,” she continued as she tightly braided her hair back before tucking it under a scalp cap. “Can’t you control your accent?” she asked, her accent flaring heavily causing her to roll her eyes. “Yeah, prove my point.”
Cat removed the lid off of the jar of foundation and used a sponge to apply a thick coat of the heavy ivory makeup, making sure sh
e completely covered her medium-olive skin, including her lips, causing them to blend into her porcelain-like face. She hastily brushed some rosy blush along her cheekbones to give her that Johannes Vermeer clotty Dutch blonde look. She then painted some flat light pink stain across her lips and pressed them together.
“Okay, I’ll be the first to admit, Bigfoot’s interesting,” Cat huffed, and replaced the lip brush in the designated sleeve in her brush holder. “I wonder how his fiancée died. Car wreck most likely since he was hell bent that I buckle up,” she mumbled as she carefully pulled her eyelid down and slipped a muddy brown contact in and blinked rapidly to make sure it was in place and completely covered the light blue before she repeated with the other eye. “He must have been driving and that’s why he’s harboring so much guilt. Drinking and driving? Reckless driving? Just a run of the mill accident?” she speculated.
Carefully she pulled the pins out of one of the four Styrofoam heads sitting on the bathroom vanity, freeing the full hairpiece it was displaying, and slipped the blonde wig on, using a half dozen bobby pins to keep it in place. She pulled a hairbrush through the short, pixie cut wig, making a face as she struggled to get the bangs to fall right.
“Five victims,” she continued, speaking aloud the case that she wasn’t actually working on but would in order to pass the time, “most likely all were carved up and crucified, in a sense. That would make sense for the name they coined him, not very creative, but I expect no less from Montanans. If it is religious in nature, I’d bet a nineteen-forty-seven Chief Indian that each victim was a virgin before the perp got a hold of them, after all, only a virgin would be clean and pure enough to be the Bride of God.”
Cat headed out of the bathroom and across the small living room, stopping to open the door to the fireplace in the corner and tossed her comb, spent toothbrush, and the vinyl gloves she had on between the burning logs, then closed the door and continued to the bedroom on the other side of the cabin.