Cutting Edge

by Robert W. Walker

  But Lucas wanted to take some measurements. He created a hooked line to fit through the holes in the window where the arrows had penetrated. The string was then attached to the ends of each arrow still protruding from the decaying white torsos. Each arrow had hit its mark, directly through the heart. A side window had been smashed and a dirt trail led from there to the phone and to the torsos.

  Walter Hindman, the local sheriff, walking them through, said, “The alarm was set off at exactly 10:49 P.M. the night before the bodies were discovered. But the alarm company got a call from the doctor's wife at 10:53 to say it was triggered accidentally, so nobody came out here.”

  “It was a woman's voice on the phone?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who discovered the bodies?”

  'Tourists... day after the alarm call.”

  'Tourists?” asked Meredyth, swinging around, confronted by the awful torsos.

  “Well, actually, it was one tourist at first, one tourist with a pair of expensive binoculars. There's a favored picture stop and scenic viewing area right over there, if you look just beyond that stand of juniper trees. Anyway, this fella from New York, eighty-one years old he was—traveling by bus coach—he'd decided to use his binoculars this way, to take in the house. When he sees what he sees, he tells the tour guide, a fellow I know who comes through all the time. Anyway, Tony contacts me, tells me this bizarre story, and, of course, I don't believe him for one moment, because Tony's forever pulling my leg. But he pleaded so much, I told him I'd come out and have a look, let him have his fun, you see.”

  “But it didn't. work out that way,” finished Stonecoat.

  “You got that right, son.”

  Lucas again studied the two shiny, steel-alloyed shafts.

  They were of the same make as those found in Oregon.

  “Don't touch nothing,” suggested the sheriff.

  “Rule number one of criminal detection,” countered Lucas.

  “And rule number two?” asked the sheriff. “Don't touch nothing.”

  This made the sheriff laugh for the first and only time during their meeting.

  Lucas saw that Meredyth was turning pale as she stared at the filthy work of the crazed killers, one now possibly a female.

  “You okay, Dr. Sanger?” he asked.

  She swallowed as if unable to get air. “Fi-fine.”

  “Return those sheets to the bodies and get 'em to the coroner,” suggested Lucas.

  “Yeah, well, FBI's done finished, too, so you're right.”

  “How long has the FBI been here?”

  “Very interested in the case. They came straightaway when I called, yes, sir.”

  “When did they arrive?”

  “Yesterday. Seems they were in Wyoming on some other matter. Said their Pierre office buzzed them to make the stop.”

  Lucas mentally chewed on this information before saying, “Nothing more we can do here. We've got the angle at which the arrows entered. We trace that back, we might find the spot where the assassins were standing when they fired.” This meant outdoors and air. Meredyth was pleased, and she was the first to go through the door, but the stench of death had already permeated her nostrils and clung to her hair, and not even the cleansing South Dakota winds, so clear and sweet, could eliminate the odors now clinging to them both.

  “Don't you find it curious that the FBI has become so interested in our cases?” he asked her.

  “Well, the sensational nature of the killings... might attract any law enforcement agency.”

  “I wonder.”

  “You wonder what?”

  “I wonder what they know?”

  “Probably about as much as we do, like you said. Why? Are you having second thoughts now about pooling our resources and information with Bullock and Price?”

  He grunted and began his search for the position from which the arrows began their journey, once again figuring on more than one assassin.

  She followed, anxious to get away from the house. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw the sheriff's men and paramedics working to remove the arrow shafts and placing the headless, handless, footless torsos into body bags.

  “Why do you suppose they cut them up so?” she asked Lucas.

  “No feet, the dead can't walk. Old Indian belief.”

  “Really?”

  “It's also true of Transylvanians, so... take it for what it's worth. Still, if you cut off an enemy's head, hands, feet and genitals, it's for a purpose. Whoever's behind this may be involved in some sort of cult that believes an enemy's power can only be eliminated by scattering his parts to the four winds. I dunno.”

  “It makes sense. There's something there. Always strike the heart, like a stake through a vampire's heart, then dismantle the pieces. Isn't that how the belief goes?”

  “You think we're dealing with vampire-hunters?”

  “I dunno. I don't know much of anything anymore.”

  “Hang in there,” he said, placing a firm hand on her arm.

  She nodded. “I'm okay.”

  “Here, right here, is where they stood when they fired. They had a direct shot, and those two inside never knew what hit them.”

  She looked up and saw that it was true. This was the perfect angle from which to fire. It was close enough, within range, and all the killers needed to do was step from behind the boulders to their left, where crushed cigarettes told the story of how long the assassins had waited for just the right moment. Meredyth thought this must have been exactly how Alisha Reynolds was killed in Georgia.

  Lucas began scooping up butts into a plastic bag. “Maybe we'll get lucky. Maybe we'll get a print.”

  “But you doubt it.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Why didn't the FBI take the butts?”

  “Because they know it'd be a useless waste of time, most likely. These guys don't leave prints.”

  They walked back toward the house, the cars and the waiting sheriff.

  On their way back to their hotel, Lucas asked her what kind of weapon she carried.

  “Weapon? You mean gun?”

  “Yeah, what caliber? A .38 or what?”

  “I'm a police psychiatrist, not a police officer. I don't carry a gun.”

  “What?” He was amazed. “You're tracking killers— predators—without a gun? I thought so, when I saw no sign of a bulge under your arm. Who do you think you are, Jessica Fletcher of Murder, She Wrote? Get real. If these assassins decide to turn on us, how do you hope to defend yourself?”

  Frankly, she told herself, she hadn't given it a thought, but she wasn't about to tell him that. 'That's what I have you for.”

  He smiled at her little joke and then suddenly turned off onto a solitary, winding, and isolated dirt road. The sky was a deep cerulean blue, like the bluest of oceans, the sun brilliant, and the thick clouds like whipped cream piled high. It was what every boundless western sky in every Gregory Peck western was supposed to look like. The clouds seemed posed, even fake, yet they were real, and the mountain backdrop appeared painted on, yet it was actually there, not to be denied.

  The road snaked like a river, deeper and deeper into a hidden crevasse, and soon they were driving alongside a sparkling river that cascaded over a rocky bottom. Nature here was rampant with casual beauty, so that even the leaves on the trees fluttered enchantingly elf-like in the sunlight.

  “This place is lovely, beautiful.”

  “I know. I own a little piece of it, kind of a retirement place. One day, I plan to build on it, if I don't die first.”

  She recognized the fatalism of both Indian and cop. “One day? Why not now?”

  “Perhaps you hadn't noticed, but currently my cash flow is not quite as strong as the creek there.”

  “What's it called? The creek, I mean.”

  “Elk... Elk Creek. There are several reservations around here, and I'd be welcomed on any one of them, but I don't want to spend my retirement on a reservation; I'd like to own my own place
.”

  “That's a fine goal.”

  He pulled the car to a halt just off the road on an overlook near the creek. He got out and stretched. He seemed in his element here, she thought.

  When she got out of the car, he pointed to a clearing opposite her. 'There is where I'd put the house.”

  “It is beautiful, really.”

  “I'd be snowed in winters, but I could handle that.”

  “I'm sure you could.”

  He walked around to her, and for a moment she worried he was going to propose she spend those winters here with him, too; instead, he surprised her with a gun, pushing it into her hands. 'This is yours. I'm going to teach you how to load it, how to handle it, how to fire and hit your target.”

  It wasn't a matter of what she wanted; it was what he wanted. Still, she held the gun up by the trigger guard and said, “I don't know about this.”

  “You will, when I'm finished with you. Now, let's get started. If you're going to be my partner, I need to know I can count on you in a fight.”

  This challenge issued, she grimly brought the gun back under her control and said, “All right. Show me.”

  'That's the spirit. Now, this gun is what we call a police special, a ,38-caliber weapon. Very efficient and light-weight.”

  “Lightweight?

  I'd hate to see what you call hefty.” He offered her his Browning automatic, his hand almost large enough to conceal the big weapon, and she compared the two firearms, saying, “I see.”

  “Now, let's talk about how you load a .38,” he suggested. “Yeah, please, begin with the basics.”

  “Before we leave here, I'll have you shooting with some grace and ease,” he tried to assure her.

  “I'm just not certain I could shoot another human being, ever,” she confessed.

  “You will if your life depends on it.”

  Maybe... maybe not, she mused as he thundered the words, “Pay attention, now!”

  When they got back to the lodge, there was a message light blinking on Meredyth's phone. The message was left by Randy Oglesby. She made the call, using her calling card, and when Randy came on, he sounded out of breath and excited.

  “What's up, Randy?”

  “Something big, really big. Doctor.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  She listened in rapt attention, her eyes widening with the new information.

  “I know it sounds crazy, but when I was a kid, we played this computer game called Helsinger's Pit. Remember Stonecoat's having told us the guy said it had to be Sanger's way? Well, I listened to the tape again, and he actually might have said, Hell-singer's way... Get it? Helsinger's way, Helsinger's Pit, the computer game I told you about? It got me to thinking and muddling over that game, and damned if that game isn't precisely what's happening — murder by crossbow. It's a game that sets you up as a kind of religious fanatic, out to rid the world of... of vampires, you see?”

  “Vampires? No, I don't see...” She didn't want to believe it, but at the same time, she recalled the earlier discussion she'd shared with Lucas on vampires. In the car coming back to the hotel, he'd also added that vampires existed in every culture as part of the antireligious icons necessary to preserving order.

  “The hero, this Helsinger guy, and his followers tracked down and killed practicing vampires. It was the hottest role-playing game around after Doom Lotta demonology stuff, very hostile environment, easy to get whacked either by the vampires or by law enforcement.”

  “Law enforcement?”

  “Yeah. According to the game rules, no self-respecting cop's going to believe in vampires, see? That's how come it's so easy for them to get away with murder, but it makes it tough when the good guys kill a vampire, because they're taken as citizens, so the cops intervene wrongly all the time throughout the game.”

  “Back up there a second, Randy. What'd you mean when you said locating practicing vampires?”

  “Sure. FBI keeps a known list on people who claim ties to the vampire life.”

  “People who claim ties to the vampire life?” She realized that she was repeating everything Randy was saying, but she couldn't help herself. This sounded simply too off the wall. “Sure! Even if you're just a kid on a PC, you start talking that you're a vampire, enjoy nightlife, shun the light, crap like that, and then you start keeping vampire hours and drinking goat's blood or some such shit, and they begin to track you.”

  “They?”

  “FBI.”

  She wondered anew about Bullock and Price, and their business in all of this. Maybe they had long since seen the vampiric nature of the killings? Maybe they were well aware of this bizarre computer game called Helsinger's Pit... perhaps?

  Randy continued. “Anyway, the object of the game was to hunt down and destroy these self-professed demon types, to kill them before they could completely taint the world. But it wasn't easy, because they had demonic powers.”

  “Sort of an electronic witch-hunt, you mean?” she suggested.

  “As a kid, you'd get addicted to it.”

  “You played the game, then, a lot?”

  “I got so into it, I became a screen zombie for one entire summer. My parents had to literally dismantle my computer to detox me. It was that mesmerizing.”

  “What're you saying, Randy? That there's some connection between these murders and a... a computer game?”

  “You got to play the good, pure guy, the avenging angel, the soldier of God, while at the same time—”

  “You got to destroy all these evil characters.”

  “Yeah. At the outset, you have a list of vile characteristics to choose from to create the most awful creatures ever to masquerade as human beings. You gave them careers, traits, families, but they were all, you know, devil worshippers, cultists, vampire types who made their fortunes and got their kicks, you know, from feeding off others. So, you always got this double rush: You got to waste people, like Rambo, or G. I. Joe, but you sorta got God's pat on the back for fighting His war.”

  “Electronic vindication from God, huh? Justifiable homicide.”

  “Well, it was only a game, but I'm telling you, the overtones, the similarities to the crossbow deaths are unreal.”

  “What similarities besides the crossbow?”

  Lucas knocked at her door, asking if she'd like to join him for dinner. She moved to the door, phone in hand; she then told Lucas to come in and sit, and then she returned to Randy. “Well? I'm listening.”

  “There were scenes in the game where the stalker fired directly through a window, and the target was always the vampire's heart.”

  She looked up at Lucas, recalling his earlier, cogent comment about the hearts of the victims here having the look of stalked vampires. “Go on,” she said. “You only scored if it struck the monster's heart.”

  “I see.”

  “Furthermore, you had to dismember the parts and bury them in secret places so the demon could not collect up its parts and revive it self and come for you.”

  “It's too mad, too far out,” she told Randy. “Perhaps one person might fall prey to the game, confusing virtual reality with reality, but now we know there is more than one assassin at work.”

  “But there's only one spiritual leader guiding them,” countered Randy. “Every cult has a leader, and nowadays every PC in the country can be turned into a pulpit or altar from which any maniac can rant. Oddly enough, Helsinger's Pit was a networking game. No one played it alone.”

  Meredyth was having trouble taking all of it in. “I see...”

  'Thousands upon thousands, hell, hundreds of thousands of kids were playing that game, and part of the game was this conspiracy of sorts to... to—”

  “Conspiracy?”

  “Yeah, to reintroduce the world to the power and wrath of the god of the Old Testament, you know, the God of Abraham, the one who believed in an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, all that, a god less forgiving.”

  She repeated his words, shadowing him thus,
trying to follow Randy's convoluted, Generation X, paranoia-laden thinking. “A god less forgiving of what?”

  “In particular? Less forgiving of lesser gods to which some mortals prayed, say like coin and money, arrogance and pride, sloth, gluttony, Satan and Satan's minions, you name it.”

  “I can't buy this, Randy. It's just too damned... weird and unimaginable.”

  “All I can say to that, Doctor, is think the unthinkable. I knew some guys so plugged into this game they never came out. Then imagine some nutcase, religious gung-ho type who decides there are real vampires screwing around among us, having their way with our women and spawning little devils everywhere they go. Get the picture?”

  “But Mootry and Palmer and these others... they weren't practicing witchcraft or vampirism or anything. Nothing points to any sort of occult connection with the victims.”

  “They're all on the list.”

  “What list?” she asked, blinking, wondering what else Randy had to pull forth in his magician's manner.

  “It's a list compiled by the FBI.”

  “What FBI list?”

  “FBI started doing checks on professed vampires and practicing demonologists over forty years ago. J. Edgar was fascinated by it; believed it was a communist plot to infiltrate and weaken the moral fiber of the country from within.” Meredyth held her breath. “My God... How many people are on this witch-hunt list?”

  “It varies from year to year, but usually in the neighborhood of three hundred.”

  “Three hundred?”

  Randy almost asked about the echo he was getting over the wire, but thought better of it. “There are, of course, thousands, but the ones who make the list have, you know, gotten in trouble with the law at one time or another by taking their beliefs too far.”

  “Do you have a copy of the list?”

  “I do.”

  “God, how'd you get it?”

  “I used a computer at Circuit City. The salesman really wanted me to buy.”

  “And you're saying Mootry's name is on that list?”

  “A young Mootry dabbled in the occult, yes. Maybe he got over it, maybe he secretly continued with it, I don't know, but yes, he's on the FBI's list of three hundred and nine practicing vampires. Don't ask me how often the FBI updates the list.”