Bullock pursed his lips together. “Think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”
Ben rolled his eyes. “Smart enough to avoid this conversation.” He stepped around Bullock and punched the Down button for the elevator.
Bullock didn’t disappear. “You made a mistake in there today, Kincaid. You set a dangerous man free.”
“Dangerous? He’s an animal lover, for Pete’s sake. He protects chimpanzees! He’s harmless.”
“You’re wrong. I looked deep into the man’s eyes. And I didn’t like what I saw.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
The bell rang and the elevator doors opened. Ben started to step inside, but Bullock grabbed his arm. “Remember this, Kincaid. If that man kills again—and I think he will—it’ll be on your head. It’ll be your fault.”
Ben brushed Bullock away. “Stop being so damn melodramatic. You’re just bitter because you can’t stand to lose a case.” He entered the elevator. “The truth is, we’ll probably never hear from the man again.”
The elevator doors closed and Bullock faded, first from Ben’s vision, then from his consciousness. Only years later would Ben learn that, of his last two statements, although the first was certainly true, the last was altogether, absolutely, wrong.
Present Day
TESS O’CONNELL PUSHED THE thick foliage out of her path, but her hand snagged on a sharp thorn. She yelped, then let go. A tree branch came crashing back into her face, knocking her onto her backside.
Mumbling unrepeatable obscenities under her breath, Tess brushed the dark, dank loam off her pant legs and pushed herself back to her feet. She hated the Great Outdoors. Hated it with a passion. When she found out who volunteered her for this gig deep in the forests of northwest Washington, miles and miles from civilization as she knew it …
She detoured off the path, avoiding the unbreachable thicket of thorns and bramble. She knew there was a clearing somewhere—wasn’t there? It was so dark out here at night, even with a flashlight. Fear began to creep into her brain, making her breathing accelerate and her palms sweat. What if she never found the way out? What if something else found her? She had heard that grizzlies liked to roam at night.
She tried to put all those what-ifs out of her head. First things first: she needed to find the clearing. She couldn’t see where she was going and she was constantly bumping into things that were dirty, squishy, or alive. Her clothes were a mess, and her hair was a disaster. And she itched almost everywhere there was to itch. She had inadvertently stepped into a nest of seed ticks the day before, and she still hadn’t managed to scrape all those tiny black crawling dots off her skin. And trees were everywhere—densely packed huge trees, everywhere she looked. All day long she’d heard the sound of high-powered machinery clear-cutting trees at a breathtaking rate. So why was it she couldn’t see anything but trees?
She should’ve known better than to come out here at night. On a good day, she was—how to say it?—geographically challenged. And this wasn’t a good day. And she had no experience with woods or wildlife or whatever it was that kept making that creepy ooh-ooh noise. Even as a girl, she had never gone in for Girl Scouts or camp-outs or any of that living-off-the-land rot. So why was she stuck out here, lugging two cameras around the Crescent National Forest, all by herself?
Granted it had been a lousy year for the National Whisper. Their circulation figures had been dead last of all supermarket tabloids, and being the lowest of the tabloids was pretty low indeed. Tess had watched the rag sink lower and lower in its increasingly desperate attempts to pump up sales. The paper had gone from covers featuring movie stars and royalty to alien abductions and two-headed babies.
And as the paper goes, so go its reporters. Tess had sunk from stalking celebrities to unearthing freaks, misfits, and mutants.
And then there was Sasquatch. Honestly, did anyone still believe there was some big hairy ape wandering around the timberline? Surely that one had died out with the Loch Ness Monster and the human face on the moon. But there had been a flurry of Sasquatch spottings in this forest during the past month. And no story was too stupid for the National Whisper, right? So here she was—desperately seeking Sasquatch.
She’d been here for three days, and so far all shed managed to discover was sunburn, mosquito bites, and poison ivy. And seed ticks. She constantly wanted to scratch, including some places you couldn’t scratch in polite society. But she hadn’t given up. Every day at sunup, she had stumbled out of her motel room and plunged back into the forest, tracing and retracing the paths from which campers had made their sightings. It seemed like a futile, foolish quest, but by God, if there was a Sasquatch, Tess was going to be the one who found him.
After three days, she was about ready to give up. She had pored over her files, looking for something to give her an edge, something she had missed before. It was the third time through before she picked up on it—all the sightings had occurred at night. Could it be Sasquatch was a nocturnal beast? More related to the owl than the ape? Or could it be a survival instinct? She had read that grizzly bears now mostly traveled at night—to avoid humans. It was a classic example of natural selection; those that learned to move at night survived, while those that didn’t—didn’t. Could Bigfoot have evolved the same way? Even if it was a long shot, it merited a nighttime excursion. She just wished nighttime in the forest wasn’t so incredibly … dark.
Up ahead, she detected a break in the brush. A few steps closer and she could see moonlight streaming through the tree branches. A few more steps and she was out of the woods.
It was almost as if she had stepped onto a foreign planet. Where before the path had been so thick with green she could barely move, the tableau now before her was so barren a stranger might wonder if anything had ever grown here or ever could again. Only when Tess lowered her eyes did she see the telltale signs of former life—low-cut stumps dotting the ground, the last remnants of thousands and thousands of trees.
Her eyes were diverted by faint traces of life, down the slope about five hundred feet or so. She saw a large tree cutter, one just like the dozens she had seen since she came to the forest. And beside the tree cutter, she saw two silhouetted figures. One was much larger than the other. Both were moving slightly; one had his arms raised above his head.
Tess strained her eyes, trying to see more clearly. Were they talking or arguing or what?
She started moving down the steep incline. She had to move carefully, one cautious step at a time. The ground was covered with branches and debris, and there was nothing to hold for support.
The larger of the two figures turned sideways as she approached; its profile was backlit by the moon. The silhouette was massive and irregular, wild and hairy—
Sasquatch?
Tess moved faster down the incline, still watching the spectacle below. She could hear a voice now, loud and angry, shouting, but she couldn’t pick up any of the words.
Tess hit something—she never knew what it was—and started to tumble. She was rolling down the hill feet first, unable to stop herself, her camera bag alternately pounding the ground and her head.
She reached around on all sides, desperately grabbing for something to stop her fall. Her hands finally managed to light on a thick tree root half protruding from the dirt. She clamped the root and braced herself.
She felt like her arm was being ripped out of the socket, but fortunately, the root held. She stopped sliding. Slowly she lifted herself to her feet.
Sasquatch and the other silhouetted figure were definitely fighting—and not just with words. Blows were being exchanged. Sasquatch seemed to be getting the worst of it; the other figure was landing punch after punch. It was almost as if the poor beast didn’t have his heart in it, didn’t want to fight back. Sasquatch was getting creamed.
The other man landed a sharp blow, sending Sasquatch reeling backward against the huge mechanical tree cutter. The man picked up a long metal object—a crowbar, she thought, or maybe a tire
iron. Sasquatch was pinned down and trapped. He was a goner—or so Tess thought.
Out of nowhere, Sasquatch raised his hairy arm, and this time it was holding a gun. She winced as the sound of a shot echoed through the clearing. She heard a sickening cracking noise as the other man crumpled to the ground. He must be dead, she thought, shot at such close range. But no—the fallen figure was moving, if slowly. He was still alive.
Sasquatch started running, away from both his opponent and Tess.
Tess kept moving cautiously forward. She didn’t know what was going on, but there was bound to be a story in it. Maybe even a story for the National Whisper; after all, it did feature Sasquatch. And besides, this was a heck of a lot more interesting than traipsing through the woods.
The man left behind slowly climbed up to the cab of the tree cutter. What on earth? Tess wondered. Was he planning to chase Bigfoot in the tree cutter? She kept moving forward and was less than a hundred feet away when the man turned the ignition.
The night sky was suddenly illuminated by a hot white flash. An instant later, a huge booming sound rocked the clearing. The force of the explosion knocked Tess off her feet, left her clutching red dirt for dear life. She kept her head down while smoke and metal debris flew through the air.
What is happening? she wondered. She felt the radiant heat of the explosion warming her, and for the first time became frightened. What was she doing out here all alone, separated from police, doctors, any semblance of civilization?
Up on the tree cutter, she heard the man scream. He was still alive! She looked up, and her eyes widened with horror. He was burning, flames radiating from every part of his body. He stumbled away from what remained of the tree cutter and began running in circles, as if desperately searching for something, anything to take him out of his misery.
And then all at once his howling stopped. The burning man stood still for a final moment, then crumbled to the ground. The human being was gone, replaced by a heap of charred flesh.
Tess pulled herself out of the mud, trembling. What happened? she asked herself. What have I stumbled onto? And—as her reporter persona reasserted itself—why the hell aren’t I taking pictures?
Idiot. She pulled the Nikon .35 millimeter out of her camera bag, turned it on, and peered through the viewfinder. It was much too dark. She knew the pictures wouldn’t come out, even with the flash.
She also had a palm-size Sony camcorder in her bag. She remembered that when she had checked it out, Chuck, the guy in Property, had explained that it had a twenty lux rating—meaning it could take decent pictures in candlelight.
Maybe it could do some good here, she reasoned. She yanked it out of her bag and started recording. The tree cutter was still burning, like a fiery funeral pyre. She videoed the destruction, then panned over to tape what was left of the burning man.
She almost had the corpse in her viewfinder when she saw Sasquatch reappear. He was moving forward, making a beeline in her direction.
He’d seen her.
Tess turned and ran. She avoided the slope and moved in the other direction, barreling past the burning metal and heading toward the safety of the woods on the other side of the clearing. If she could just make it to the woods, there was a chance she might be able to lose him. Might make it back to civilization to file her story.
She couldn’t be sure of much, but one fact was abundantly clear. Hairy Neanderthal evolutionary throwbacks didn’t pack pistols. Plus, when he had run at her, Tess had seen a face illuminated by the light of the flames. The mask was clenched in his hand. The conclusion was inescapable—Sasquatch was a human being.
A human being she’d just seen kill someone.
The heel of her shoe dug into the soft loam of the earth. Her ankle twisted and she fell crashing to the ground. No! she told herself. You may not give up that easily! She pushed herself back to her feet, leaving a shoe behind. She didn’t dare turn her head and look, but she could hear him behind her, hear him running, panting, grunting.
She had to keep moving, had to keep pushing herself. The other edge of the clearing was still hundreds of feet away. She had to make it. She had to. She could not give up.
All at once, she realized she didn’t care about getting a story anymore. She didn’t care about her clothes, she didn’t care about her hair, and she didn’t care whether she ever worked again at the National Whisper.
She just wanted to live.
And she felt absolutely certain that if Sasquatch got his hairy paws on her, she wouldn’t.
One
Paul Bunyan’s Stepchildren
Chapter 1
BEN KINCAID DRUMMED HIS FINGERS on the card table set up inside the Magic Valley Mystery Bookstore. When he arrived, the table had held twenty copies of his first book, Katching the Kindergarten Killer. And now, an hour and a half after the book-signing began, the table still held twenty copies of Katching the Kindergarten Killer.
The owner of the bookstore, Fred Franklin, sauntered over to Ben’s table. He was stroking his pet, a large black and white tuxedo cat. “Slow day for autographs, huh?”
“I don’t seem to be getting much traffic,” Ben admitted. “Maybe if you put me in the back next to the café.”
“Nice try. We don’t have a café.”
“You call yourself a bookstore and you don’t even have a café?”
Fred smiled. “What can I say? Magic Valley isn’t really in the mainstream.” He picked up one of Ben’s books. “So I gather this is nonfiction? True crime?”
“Right.”
He skimmed the summary on the dust jacket. “Mmm. Serial killer. Cut the heads and hands off his corpses. Pretty grisly stuff. Why’d you want to write about this?”
“I wrote about it because I lived it.”
“You mean this really happened? Like, to you?”
“That’s why I wrote it. I thought people might be interested in reading a firsthand account.” He glanced at the unmoving door. “Guess I was wrong.”
“Don’t jump to any conclusions. It’s early yet. Wait till people start getting off work. Folks aren’t too used to book signings here in Magic Valley. I’ve been trying to get those publishers to send me an author for over a year, since I opened. And you’re the first one I’ve gotten.”
Lucky me, Ben thought. “It’s been the same story every place I’ve gone. This is my eighth signing in six days. And every one of them has been dismal.”
“Hey, at least your publisher is touring you. Most first-time authors don’t get that.” He stroked his cat, who responded by curling up against Fred’s neck and pressing her wet nose against his cheek. “You should consider yourself lucky.”
“If you say so.”
“And it’s gotta be better than practicing law, right? Every lawyer I know wishes he was doing something else.”
Ben decided not to comment. “Nice cat you’ve got there. Think he’d like an autographed book?”
Fred laughed. “Margery isn’t really the literary type. She’s more the feed-me-stroke-me-get-out-of-my-way type.”
“Sounds like my cat, Giselle.”
“You an animal lover?”
“Well, the cat was a present from a friend. But yeah, actually, I am.”
Fred looked up abruptly. “Oh, look, someone’s coming in. Let me get out of the way.” Fred skittered toward the back of the bookstore, cat in tow.
The woman who approached Ben’s table was, in a word, bizarre. She was dressed in a helter-skelter, crazy-quilt fashion—wild bright colors, mismatched layers of clothing. Her steel-blond hair was just as wild; it jabbed out in straight lines like she’d just been electrocuted. She was inhumanly thin, almost skeletal—like something out of a grim Grimm fairy tale.
“Are you the author?” she asked.
“I am,” Ben said, holding out his hand.
“Are you sure? You seem so young.”
“Everyone says that.”
“Except for the bald spot on the back of your head, of cour
se.”
“Of course.” He picked up one of the books on the table. “Can I interest you in my new book?”
“Oh, I’ve already read it.”
Ben did a double take. “You have?”
She grinned. “Don’t act so surprised.”
“Well, it’s just—I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who’s actually read my book before. Other than a close personal friend.”
“Oh, I did. I read every word of it.” She gazed deeply into his eyes. “And the whole time I read it, I couldn’t help but think about you.”
Ben coughed. “About—about me?”
She reached out and brushed his shoulder. “You were so brave. Chasing after the maniac the way you did.”
“Well, I had to do something after that corpse turned up in my car. If I hadn’t, they probably would’ve sent me up the river.”
“And that horrible chase sixty feet up in the air—you must have nerves of steel.”
“Actually, I was scared to death.”
“It wasn’t just the story you told. It was the way you told it. It was—inspirational.” She took his hand and clasped it in both of hers. “I just wanted to hold the hand that penned all those magnificent words.”
Ben cleared his throat. “Well … that’s very kind.”
She did not release his hand. She inched closer to the table. “I felt such a magnetism when I read your book. I kept thinking, ‘This man must be someone very special.’ ”
“Oh, not really.”
“I kept thinking, ‘This is the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. This is the man I want to father my children.’ ”
Ben’s lips parted. “This is—you want—”
She sidled next to him at the table, her steel bristle hair tickling his cheek. “So, tell me, Ben. I can call you Ben, can’t I?”
“I suppose.”
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