Primal Obsession

by Susan Vaughan

  Frightened, hurt—or worse.

  He’d seen every one of the Hunter’s recent victims. The image of Annie suffering the same horrors and mutilations wouldn’t leave him. The lead ball in his gut wouldn’t dissolve until he knew she was safe. Until he saw her. Talked to her. What could he tell their parents? Or Thomas? He should’ve protected her better. He should’ve—

  His pencil snapped in two.

  He looked up to realize the lieutenant had spoken to him. Watson summoned him and the other detectives to a central table. “Tavani has an update on our suspect.”

  The FBI agent tapped a key on his laptop. A wry twist to his mouth, he leaned back in his chair. “Not much of an update. Do you realize how many Smiths there are in the U.S.?”

  “Can’t be too many Holden Smiths,” Peters said, peering over his shoulder.

  “We’re narrowing it down.” He tapped the down-arrow key. “This will help. The subject’s home was clean of prints, except for two. Techs found two fingerprints—right index and thumb—inside the suspect’s refrigerator. I’m running them through the system now.”

  “I hope to hell he has a record or was in the military,” the lieutenant wished aloud. “Anything else?”

  “Only an observation.” Tavani drummed his fingers on the table. “Targeting Annie—targeting anyone—is an aberration from his MO. He’s been opportunistic. I believe his previous victims were selected for their vulnerability. They were in isolated spots or were women he could con and then subdue. Ms. Wylde is small enough for him to muscle around, but he’s put himself in jeopardy in the midst of the camping group.”

  “But they don’t know who he is,” Justin said.

  “So he’s invisible, so to speak?” The agent paused as if pondering that insight. “That could be part of it. It looks damned cocky, as if he believes he’s superior, bullet-proof enough to take on a bigger challenge. That’s assassin thinking, not the mind-set of a typical serial killer.”

  “So this guy’s not typical.”

  “He has been up to now. Smith left his habit of random selections for an obsession with one potential victim. His fascination with weaponry and hunting pointed to the possibility, but metamorphosis from serial killer to assassin is extremely unusual. I can’t name another one, except in fiction. Assassin personalities tend to be paranoid, delusional, and obsessive.”

  “You mean he’s crazy.”

  Tavani shook his head. “Not in the sense you mean. His seems to be a methodical system of fantasies. Maybe he resents your sister abandoning his story. Or he could have some new delusion about her. But obsession is the key factor. That and his ability to camouflage his personality and identity.”

  “What difference does this make in what we have to do?”

  “Maybe none. Just be aware that you’re facing an intelligent, organized paranoiac who won’t hesitate to kill. This change in his MO says to me that Holden Smith has become a whole lot more dangerous.”

  The lead ball careened around inside Justin, and he forced a deep breath.

  Ben Kincaid strode into the room. “I hate to interrupt, but the call from the caretaker’s cabin came in.” His mouth was tight, his expression guarded.

  “Yeah?” Justin prompted. They must have news of Annie and the others. She had to be all right.

  “Detective Wylde, it’s your brother. He won’t tell me anything. He wants to talk to you.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Northern Maine woods

  Half sliding on his ass and swearing, Sam hurried down the steep incline in the same mud that swept Annie away. He found her in what probably had been a dry streambed earlier.

  “Don’t you dare laugh.” She glared at him from her ignominious position—on her butt in rushing, muddy water.

  He sucked in his cheeks and schooled his voice, biting back a comment about Mother Nature’s tricks. He opted for another brand of humor. “A water slide’s not the usual way to make it over the Hump. Did you learn that maneuver from the movies, Joan Wilder?”

  “You bet your ass. In case we find a gemstone at the end of this damn adventure.”

  Good. If she could join him in the comic side of her calamity, she was all right.

  She tried to push herself out of the water, but her pack overbalanced her. She slipped on a rock and fell backwards.

  “We don’t want to damage those delicious freeze-dried meals. Do you need a hand?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What do you think?” She reached a hand toward him.

  Once away from the narrow torrent, he took stock. Not just a wet owl, she was now a drowned one. And no less sexy for her condition. Her shirt oozed brown, her sneakers sloshed and the waterproof pack’s guarantee may have expired, but Annie’s gray eyes gleamed with steel.

  “Your chin is dirty.” He dabbed at it with a paper towel from his pocket. How she could look kissable covered with mud amazed him.

  “Sam, I—”

  What he saw in her eyes echoed his feelings at that moment. Still holding her chin, he covered her mouth with his. Hunger erupted in him. He was starving for her honeyed taste, for her curvy little body, for her. She gave a breathy moan and mated her tongue with his. It was all he could do to keep the kiss gentle. To keep from ripping off their clothes and taking her there on the wet ground. Panting as if he’d just climbed back up the slope, he released her and stepped back.

  “I guess that’ll help warm me up.” Owl-like, she blinked at him. “Sam—”

  “Not now. We have to keep moving.” Beyond his desire for her, he felt respect he couldn’t have imagined. And friendship, a comfortable feeling, not having to act a part. He didn’t want to examine what that might mean. He sure as hell didn’t want to discuss it now. Back to business, he swiped a mud-and-stick daub from the pack. “Your wind pants should dry quickly. How about the sneakers?”

  She squeezed a tea-colored dribble from her shirt. “Fine. Just fine. Let’s keep moving, okay?”

  They set off again toward the southeast.

  Sam glanced back at the bedraggled female slogging along behind him. After only a few minutes hiking, her slacks were showing dry patches. Unfortunately her sneakers squelched with every step. Her shirt still dripped, hugging her breasts enough to reveal peaked nipples. He nearly tripped on a root.

  She wasn’t shivering, but she would be when the next batch of black clouds dumped its load. On summer nights this far north, temperatures could drop close to freezing. They’d need shelter for the night. She needed to put on some dry clothes. Maybe they could warm each other. He grinned.

  The only other silver lining was that the intermittent rains would wipe out their trail. Once the Hunter realized they’d left the others, he would have no clue where they were headed. They could build a small fire after dark.

  He checked his compass. Hoped to hell he’d remembered the correct location of their destination.

  ***

  By the time the CID crime-scene team had finished at Ted Wolfe’s cabin, the afternoon had cooled. Thundershowers booming farther south swept eastward and a gentle downpour blanketed the entire wilderness.

  Justin surveyed the devastation inside. No matter how many homicides he’d seen, each one sickened him. The waste of human life. The brutality. The horror of the tragedy suffused the walls, the very air.

  If he had to marshal every damn helicopter in the state and all the radar and heat-sensitive detection the Feebs possessed to find Holden Smith, he’d nail the killer’s balls to a fucking tree.

  Overturned chairs and splintered tables littered the area around Wolfe’s remains, now secured in a body bag. Mangled rifles and handguns covered the floor next to the smashed gun case. Strewn like a sick game of fifty-two pickup were the contents of drawers and cabinets. Rotting food mingled with the cloying decay of death. It looked like some of the trashing happened during the struggle, some was deliberate, like disabling the radio and guns, but some might have been intended to camouflage what the killer took away.


  Thomas had made the right move to preserve the crime scene. Once he and the Universal Paper security guys opened the cabin door and spotted the body, he backed everyone out. They’d used their portable radio to reach Moosewoods.

  Justin gazed out the window. The door to the kennel stood open, and there was no sign of Captain. Everyone who knew Ted knew the yellow Lab. They were inseparable. The dog wouldn’t have willingly left his master’s side, even dead. What could have happened? Did Smith take him? Or did the loyal canine trail his master’s killer?

  No answers came from the empty kennel, so he turned back to the room.

  Breathing into his handkerchief, he unzipped the body bag for another look at the caretaker’s mortal wound. The man had been dead a couple of days, judging from lividity and dried blood. Ben Kincaid said the canoe party had planned to arrive here on Friday. So the murder likely occurred not long after the group left.

  This killing was no ritual hunt and not part of the killer’s signature. No chase, no mutilation, no sodomy. A precise cut incised by a professional’s blade. This was a deliberate means to an end—proof of a criminal mind, not an insane one.

  When he went out to the porch, he spoke to the crime-scene techs waiting there. They hustled inside to carry away the body. They would transport it by ATV to the helicopter and return for Thomas.

  The Universal Paper security men were keeping out of the way, sitting on the child’s swing set, and talking to their UP boss on their radio. Busy on his own radio, the FBI agent sat at the far end of the porch.

  Justin sucked in deep breaths of the afternoon air, tinged with the scent of cleansing rain.

  On a rocking chair, Thomas sat bent over, head between his knees. “I don’t know how you do it.” He raised bleak eyes.

  “First time you see death like that is the toughest. I won’t say it gets less horrific, but you get used to it. If it’s any reassurance, it was over quick. One swipe of that knife, and...” The amount and spatter of blood and the location of the wound indicated the blade severed an artery.

  “What about Annie and the canoe party? Do you know anything?”

  Justin’s stomach clenched. He couldn’t whitewash it. “I know damned little.” He tipped his head toward the equipment beside the porch. “I can speculate from what I see. Judging from the canoe damage, there was some kind of accident, maybe an injured party they left behind.”

  “Why do you say that?” Thomas leaned back in the rocker.

  “On the couch are a towel and two gel ice-packs.”

  “Did you find any personal gear with the dented canoe and other equipment?”

  Justin shook his head solemnly. “Good question. We’re waiting for background checks on the other campers to find out whose place he took, who else he killed. My suspect is probably the one who stayed behind. He may have engineered an accident for that purpose.”

  At that, Thomas shot to his feet. “Faked it, you mean. Then he killed poor old Wolfe and disabled the radio.”

  Might as well lay it all out. Nothing would get by his big brother anyway. “And stole at least one weapon and the Boston Whaler. Looks like that’s the scenario.”

  Thomas stared through the mist curtain toward the empty boat dock. “Armed and supplied, the killer’s gone after Annie and the others. God help them.”

  Thomas wasn’t accusing him of negligence or incompetence, but Justin almost wished he would. By all rights, Thomas ought to take a swing at him for not seeing this coming, for not protecting their sister. But he was the steady one, the quiet one. Justin didn’t know what to say, so he borrowed a page from Thomas’s book and held his tongue.

  “You have to find him,” Thomas said. “Stop him. What will you do? Send in search teams and helicopters?”

  Justin had to choose his words carefully. Although Thomas was in the Maine Warden Service, he had no official capacity in this situation. “The Maine MCU and the FBI are working together. Our suspect may be wanted in connection with more murders in Virginia, so the Feds are sending in resources—men and high-tech equipment. We’re working out a strategy.” He nodded toward Special Agent Tavani, still on the radio.

  Another detective, clad in field attire of dark blue trousers and shirt with the MCU insignia on the sleeve, approached the porch. “We’re ready to head out.”

  “That’s my ride,” Thomas said. The UP security men were staying to close up the cabin after the police left. “I’ll be right along.”

  The man sketched a salute and jogged away.

  Thomas stuck out his hand. “I know you’ll bring our baby sister back safe, bro.”

  Swallowing hard, Justin clasped the proffered hand. When Thomas clutched him in a bear hug, Justin held on as if he could absorb some of his brother’s steadiness.

  “I’ll do my damnedest to bring her back and stop this fucker once and for all. Meanwhile, Annie’s in good hands. Ben Kincaid says Sam’s the best.” Justin hoped that was true. He remembered his friend only from school days.

  “I’m counting on it. Mom and Dad are driving to Greenville to wait for news. We’ll all be at Moosewoods Resort.” Thomas headed down the porch steps.

  On a wave, he ambled around the cabin toward the ATV that would convey them to the field where the helicopter waited.

  After Thomas disappeared, Justin stared into the trees. His heart drummed and his insides twisted. He wanted this killer with every fiber of his being, and he didn’t care how he did it. He had to bring Annie back safely. Returning to his parents and Thomas without her was no option.

  When he turned around, he found Tavani clicking off the radio. Hoisting a yellow pad, the agent wagged his head side to side. “Too bad I couldn’t get all this with a computer. Tomorrow I might not be able to read my chicken scratches.”

  “What do you have? Anything more on Smith?” Justin hitched a hip on the porch railing.

  “Classic background. I’m surprised he’s kept himself in check as much as he has.” The agent ran his index finger down his notes. “Computer search tracked him down through a security clearance. He has a juvy record that’s sealed, and his mother disappeared from a trailer park in western Pennsylvania about fifteen years ago.”

  “Disappeared. She might’ve been his first victim.” Justin plucked a broken geranium stalk from the clay pot beside him. The flower had no sweet scent, only a sharp, green pungency. Without Wolfe to tend them, the plants would die. “What’d the old gal do to him?”

  “The agents were able to get a story from neighbors and the local cops. Apparently Lila Smith was a hot ticket in her day. Worked as a cocktail waitress in a bar frequented by coal miners and hunters. That rural area has hunting camps rented for deer and turkey seasons.”

  “Hunters.” Justin flicked away a withered petal. “Did some of these hunters go home with Lila?”

  “And young Holden was in the way. The kid was sickly, had asthma and coughed a lot.” Tavani glanced up, cynicism twisting his mouth. He flipped over the finished page of notes.

  “What the hell did she do to the kid?” Another blossom bit the dust.

  “Sometimes she shut him in a closet. Or the coal bin, if it was empty or near empty. Neighbor said she used to slap him around—discipline, she called it—punishing him for wetting the bed, exhorting him to be a man, to be like the he-man hunters she bedded.”

  Bed-wetting and abuse, common denominators in serial killers’ backgrounds. Justin would bet animal torture was next. Or arson. He saw where young Holden was bound. “So that’s what he did. He became a hunter.”

  “Hunting his mother over and over.”

  “What’s the juvy history, or would she spill that?”

  “What you’d expect. One of Lila’s men gave him a B-B gun, so he began by shooting animals—squirrels, the neighbors’ cats, a puppy. After he stole a rifle and ammunition, he spent some time in a juvenile center. That’s where he first learned computer skills.”

  “Our boy’s no dummy. I’ve known that all along.”
<
br />   “Sharper than many of the authorities who dealt with him, I’d wager. Get this. Agents interviewed the juvy center’s former director, now retired. Apart from computer expertise, the director remembered the boy turning himself around, becoming his therapist’s star success and charming everyone.”

  “Fooling everyone, you mean.” Justin had enough psych background to know that sociopaths would say whatever therapists wanted to hear, play their part so well that even to other prisoners they seemed remorseful and reformed. He’d seen it himself, in hardened criminals who left a cell to return to drug dealing or con games—or murder.

  Tavani flipped to a new page. “He might not’ve fooled them all. The former director mentioned the librarian had expressed concern that young Smith checked out so many gun and hunting magazines.”

  “Preparing himself for his future avocation,” Justin said. He tightened his fist around the ruined stem, then tossed it to the ground. “Anything else?”

  “There’s a gap of a few years, but Smith surfaced again in the Virginia suburbs of D.C. about ten years ago. That’s the same time as the unsolved Appalachian Trail murders. He worked as tech support like he was doing in Portland and belonged to a local sporting club.” Finished, Tavani set his papers on the railing. “On that end, agents are investigating Smith’s possible connection to the Virginia murders.”

  “So for over ten years,” Justin mused, “Holden Smith has been systematically hunting and murdering young women. He’s smart, glib, sometimes charming, a good shot, and skilled in the woods. As you said before, he switched to assassin mode with one target in mind, wherever she is in this damned wilderness. That doesn’t help us much in stopping him now.”

  “You’re not going to like what else Quantico said.” Tavani spread a map on a wicker table. He gestured at their surroundings. “The much-touted high-tech equipment won’t work here. Too many trees and hills with no high point to set up a tower. The only way to find the suspect is the old-fashioned way. Send in teams from all directions and close in on him. In my estimation, overhead scanning with helicopters has two problems. Dense trees make spotting anyone near impossible. And the noise would only alert him.”