Hell. Everyone was looking to him for answers, for leadership. All this before he was fully awake.
A coffee mug was shoved in his hand. The aroma permeated his fog and he gulped greedily. Damned good. Plenty of sugar. In a minute the caffeine would kick him in the head. “Thanks.”
Annie nodded, her mouth grim. She folded her arms and waited. She was counting on him too. Damn.
He swallowed more coffee, then cleared his throat. “Frank, I agree about raccoons. A bear would’ve torn through the camp like Attila the Hun and all his pillagers.”
Frank straightened his shoulders and basked in the praise.
Practical jokes, mind games, and now the food. The expedition was going down the tubes, but the kid was thriving. The silver fucking lining. “Anybody hear noises during the night?”
Shoulders lifted and voices muttered demurs.
“Yesterday wore everyone out.” Ray pulled a garbage bag from the supplies. “A 747 could have landed beside me and I would’ve slept through it.” He began tossing ruined foodstuffs into the bag. Nora bent to help.
“I’ll see what we have left.” Carl hefted the logs weighing down the other cooler’s lid. He began rummaging through the contents.
Concern knotted Annie’s features. “What does this do to our food supplies?”
Sam injected more coffee into his system. The supplies kit held freeze-dried meals and reconstituted milk that he hadn’t told anybody about. Breakfast was in the other cooler, along with fruit and cheese for sandwiches. The situation wasn’t hopeless.
Was the plundered cooler another prank? Had their saboteur known which cooler was expendable? More mystery with few clues. He pictured himself at bat, blocking out everything but the job at hand.
He set down his mug and rubbed his hands together. He manufactured a jovial expression. “Okay, Frank, you wanted some adventure. You too, Ray. It starts today. When we get to Upper Otter Pond, we’ll be living off the land.”
Frank’s eyes widened like two dinner plates. “Hunting?”
Sam ruffled the boy’s hair. “I should’ve said living off the water. No, sport, I mean fishing. You know how to cast a line?” He heard Annie groan.
“I used to fish with my dad.” Frank’s demeanor morphed from glee to gloom. His shoulders slumped. “Guess I remember something about it.”
Nora placed a hand on her son’s shoulder. “He’ll take you again. He’s still your dad.”
“Whatever.” He dragged his feet toward the shore.
“Nora, the kid’s coming around.” Compassion filled the eyes beneath Ray’s jutting brow. “He’ll be all right.”
She bit her lower lip. “As long as what I said comes true. His dad’s not long on promises.”
“You want to go talk to him?” Ray reached out to take the garbage bag from her.
“No. He has to work it out himself.”
“A guy needs time alone for that,” Sam agreed. He knew first hand the truth of that. He just hoped Frank’s anger and resentment weren’t taking a destructive course. “You’re right to give him space. And Ray’s right. Frank’s a good kid.”
Annie gave Nora’s shoulders a squeeze. “He knows you’re here for him.”
“Thanks for your help, everyone. It means a lot.” Nora went back to helping Ray clean the cooler mess.
“The other cooler’s still right and tight,” Sam said to Carl. “You can whip up those pancakes. Too bad we’re minus the sausages. We’re going to need a hearty breakfast.”
The plastic egg container in her hands, Annie halted. She eyed Sam with suspicion. “Just what do you mean by that?”
He poured himself another cup of coffee. He inhaled the aroma. Took his time stirring in the sugar.
“Sam?”
He grinned. Damn, he loved to get this woman going. Annie, as much as the caffeine, was reviving him, lightening his mood. “After breakfast we’ll have lessons on paddling rapids.”
***
While Sam, Ray, and Frank washed themselves and the emptied cooler, Annie and Nora helped Carl with breakfast.
The simple chores and the scent of the wood fire revived the feeling of normalcy. Nora wiped down the plastic tablecloth with water heated over the fire. Each camper had his own utensils and plate, so setting the table was simple.
Searching for the maple syrup, Annie discovered a tub of margarine in the cooler. “Eureka!” She handed it to Carl and placed the syrup on the table.
“Great,” he said. “This beats salad oil for greasing the griddle. He smeared some across the griddle, heating atop the two-burner camp stove. Carl poured reconstituted milk into the pre-measured pancake mix and stirred.
“Gratifying to see a man who’s competent at a stove.” Nora winked at Annie.
“At least I’m competent at something.” Carl jerked his chin toward the others at the shore. “Can’t say as much for our friggin’ Maine Guide. One disaster after another, and I blame them on his incompetence.”
A second before Annie would have exploded with words as hot as the fire, she clamped her mouth tight. Why in the blue-eyed world should she defend Sam? He wasn’t her responsibility. There was a certain chemistry between them, and she did like him, but that’s where her involvement with him ended. It had to. He was too much like Ian, a charming jock.
She couldn’t blow up at Carl’s assertion for another reason, a better one. Beside her, no one but Sam—and the saboteur—knew about the altered compass numbers. She couldn’t blurt that out. But she could try to elicit what Carl—and Nora—did know. “We’re in as uncontrolled an environment as you can get. You can’t blame our guide for everything. How do you figure the bushwhack navigation was his fault, Carl? After all, I plotted that course.”
Carl spooned pancake batter onto the sizzling griddle. “He should’ve checked the figures. In my company, it’s my responsibility as the boss to check the specifications for every job we contract for. The success or failure of a project comes back to the boss, every time.”
Whether Sam checked the figures or not mattered little in light of the fact that someone changed them.
“It wasn’t so bad.” Nora was washing containers soiled by the midnight marauder. “No one was hurt or lost.”
“We’ve lost half our food, Pollyanna, and we’ve got more than half the trip left. It’s only Friday, and we have to make it four more days.” Carl flipped the pancakes deftly. His ire and his work over the griddle were deepening his rubescent complexion. “That cooler should’ve had a load of logs on top like every other night. Why the hell didn’t it?”
“Who was camp manager yesterday?” Nora said.
“It was Ray.” Annie shrugged. They rotated daily the responsibility of visually sweeping the campsite morning and evening, ensuring the fire was out, checking for articles left behind. “He might’ve noticed. We can ask him.”
Carl gave a snort of dismissal. Or disgust.
Sniffing the buttery aroma of browning cakes, Annie smiled. “I don’t know about camp manager, but those are some prime pancakes. Your wife’s a lucky woman.”
“Too bad she didn’t see it that way. The bitch divorced me.” Carl’s bland expression never wavered. He might as well have been describing the weather.
No mystery why a divorce. The man’s glass was perpetually half empty. Working for him would be a downer. Annie’s boss at the Messenger had exacting standards, but thankfully he wasn’t hypercritical. With a few exceptions, Carl found fault with most aspects of the trip.
Or was this dissension the result of their saboteur’s activities? Was discord the goal?
Suspicions tumbled in her mind like beach pebbles before the waves. She let her gaze drift toward the dark cedars behind the campsite. Was someone out there laughing at them, playing them like puppets? The Hunter, some other nutcase or one of the campers?
Or was she crazy for having such thoughts? Her stomach twisted. Any pancakes she ate now would go down like cement.
***
Sam swished his toothbrush around in the mug, then dumped the water under a bush. Thank God, a moment’s peace. Dark clouds brooded on the southern horizon, but overhead the sky offered only summer blue. Thunderstorms had danced around the canoe expedition for the last few days. He couldn’t count on them holding off much longer.
Ray deposited the dripping cooler at Sam’s feet. He swiped a wet hand through his light hair. “If raccoons dumped the logs and the cooler, they must be into weight training.”
“Yeah, I can just see the furry critters pumping iron.” Frank dropped his towel and contorted himself into a body-builder pose.
“You’re the next champ.” Ray smiled at the slender boy’s less-than-ripped biceps.
“Here,” Frank said, “I’ll help carry the cooler back to camp.”
Sam trailed behind the odd pair, who seemed to have formed a friendship of sorts. If either of them pulled the recent stunts, he was covering his ass with a good act.
As soon as they reached the picnic table, Carl pounced on Ray. “You were camp manager yesterday. Was your head so full of your stupid damned computer games that you forgot to cover the coolers?” Features sunset crimson, the burly contractor confronted the smaller man.
Sam lunged between the two. “Ease up, man. You don’t know that’s what happened.”
Ray held his ground, brow beetled and mouth grim. “I was camp manager yesterday, but I piled logs on both coolers.”
“You can say that now. Who’s to know what you did last night?” Carl backed off to go flip his pancakes, but his grimace said that he’d believe nothing the other man professed. The last cake flopped over so hard it slid onto the ground.
“Maybe somebody wanted a snack later and doesn’t want to admit removing the logs,” Nora suggested, wringing her hands.
Frank shook his head. “Not me. But if Ray says he covered the coolers, he did.”
“There are other possible reasons the cooler was left unsecured.” Sam looked around the tense group. “There’s no point in berating Ray. Let’s get ready to enjoy the adventure of fishing at our next camp. In the meantime, I smell pancakes.”
“Yeah, let’s eat.” Frank held up his plate.
Hands in her back pockets, Annie stood by the crackling campfire. Her expression suggested that she’d expected this outburst of dissension. Carl’s temper had apparently been building while Sam and the others were on the shore.
Their saboteur had managed to ratchet up the tension so they were at each other’s throats. Nora, being the peacemaker as she must be in her school, had jumped to Ray’s defense. But the tension was affecting them all. How much longer before another temper reached a boiling point?
Frank started out angry enough to destroy them all like the robots he blew apart on his now-dead electronic game. The kid had issues with his old man. Who didn’t? But he’d hauled himself out of his constant funk. Most of the time he pulled his weight. Cheerfully.
Ray the computer geek had barely set a sneaker outdoors before the expedition. Why would he want to destroy the expedition that he said would give his life reality? Maybe he left the coolers uncovered. Maybe he didn’t.
If it was accidental, it didn’t matter. No raccoons upset that heavy, insulated box. No raccoons tipped it just so on its back. Someone upset it on purpose. Someone who also guillotined a chipmunk.
What the hell could Sam do about it without laying it all out and confronting the group? Maybe ending the whole expedition? The last thing he wanted to do was to declare his guiding a failure.
He’d have to decide by the time they reached Ted Wolfe’s cabin.
THIRTEEN
Augusta
Between the state police and local jurisdictions, dozens of cops were working on the Hunter case. On Friday morning, Justin gazed around the command post. Most detectives had gone out on interviews, but a few sat writing reports or poring over files. Detective Bess Peters was making notes with a phone at her ear. She’d worked with him on the case night and day since it broke. Wanted a resolution as much as he did.
Frustration gnawed at him. The search of companies with business trips to the crime areas was a process slow as Maine State House legislation. Having a profile had made no difference yet. He was counting on VICAP finding similar crimes in another state, but even that dragged more than rush-hour around the rotary. At least they’d received no new missing-person reports. They had to get this character before he snatched another one.
Peters put down the telephone and strode to where he sat at the conference table. Her eyes were bright with excitement. “We might have a breakthrough. So far we got three companies who send personnel to the abduction sites. And—”
“What do you mean? You didn’t ask about the drop sites?”
“We were getting nowhere asking about the whole list. I wondered if he abducts them, then stashes them someplace until he has a weekend or time off. So his hunting ground might not be related to his work. I removed those and went back to the same companies.” She grinned and tapped an index finger on the folder. “Bingo. Three companies matched up. The managers still have to check the sites with dates in their records.”
“Good work, Detective Peters.” He stood and delivered a military salute.
She returned it. “I’m outta here to go talk to the managers, sneak a peek at personnel files if they’ll let me.” She glanced at her notebook as she adjusted her belt holster. “One in Waterville, one in Lewiston, and one in Portland. It’s gonna be a hell of a long day.” She hooked her waist pack from the chair and headed out.
Justin rolled his shoulders. Something had to pay off soon. Maybe these employer interviews were it.
Special Agent Tavani ambled over from the computer printer and slapped a printout in front of him. “I didn’t want to be right about this, but VICAP came up with a match on the Hunter’s MO.”
Justin scanned the five pages. “Virginia?”
“You know those killings along the Appalachian Trail several years ago?”
“I thought the cops solved those.”
“All but five of them. Over a four-year period, there were five female hikers murdered. Their naked bodies were later found in the woods not far from the Trail.”
Justin tapped an index finger on the report as he read. “Some were covered with leaves, and their bodies mutilated and sodomized after death.” The rush of adrenaline buzzed in his ears as another piece of this hellish puzzle clicked into place. He could almost smell the stench of death ground into the forest floor. “The Hunter.”
Tavani nodded, his features grim. “I think our guy started in Virginia. When things got too hot, he moved north.”
“To the end of the Appalachian Trail. To Maine.”
“Where he learned to be more discreet. He figured out easier ways to abduct his victims, then transport them to the woods for his fun and games.” Tavani pulled up a chair. “I expect his first murder was opportunistic. He may have been stalking animals in the woods near the trail or playing at stalking the hikers.”
“Acting out his fantasy?” When Tavani nodded, Justin continued, “Maybe a lone female hiker spotted this guy lurking in the woods and screamed bloody murder.”
“So he killed her to shut her up. And dragged her off the trail.”
His mouth wry in thought, Justin grabbed his car keys and stood. “Time I got started on my interviews. College kids on a nine-month-old sighting.” He shook his head in doubt.
At the doorway, he turned back to Tavani, who had opened the profile folder. “Fit, tanned, between thirty-five and forty-five, might be known as a hunter or outdoorsman. And now we have more to add to the profile. A Virginia accent?”
“A definite possibility.”
***
Northern Maine woods
After battling through their first rapids, Annie was wheezing.
The three red canoes arrowed swiftly down a smoother, deeper part of the Eagle River. “Okay, team. That was first base,” Sam called.
Everyone laughed. Everyone but her. First base meant there were three more to conquer.
“That’s it, Annie. Second base is coming up. Get ready to plant that paddle,” he said from his steering position in the stern. “We’ll aim for vees ahead. Watch for them!”
She turned halfway to look at him. His expression was that of a small boy on a roller-coaster ride. His grin spread as wide as the stream, and his hibiscus-flowered shirt, unbuttoned and flapping in the breeze, he looked good enough to scoop up with a spoon. He slipped back into his life jacket, fumbled in a pocket, then scarfed down a Double-Stuff Oreo.
She grinned in spite of her nerves. Maybe his nonchalance meant the approaching rapids were as mild as the ones she’d just lived through. He said maybe better than Class II, but not as high as Class III. Whatever that meant.
She’d donned her Speedo and a T-shirt. Most in the group usually wore swimwear beneath sun-shielding shirts, ready for a swim at any moment. Sam swore the canoes were too loaded to tip over, but if white water happened to dump them, she was prepared. Clothing-wise.
Mentally, it was a tossup. She felt much more at home with her keyboard or ferreting out a story, not whipping through rapids with protesting shoulders. Though admittedly, her body was adjusting to the demands of canoeing. She’d learned to power her paddle with her upper body, not her arms.
This portion of the Eagle River narrowed to about five canoe lengths. Sam said it was waist deep and shallower where the fast-moving water swirled around the rocks. He’d canoed this river many times, but every time was different depending on the level of the water.
Riverbanks rose abruptly on both sides—low mud cliffs held together by a snarl of roots and grasses. The cloying odors of clay and mud mingled with pine scent. Thick stands of trees and underbrush curtained the view beyond the river. Here and there, countless thirsty animals had worn trails down to the water.
Primal Obsession Page 9