by Linda Ladd
“Oh God.” I kept my face hidden in his chest and kept my eyes shut. Maybe if I did, it’d go away. Why isn’t life like that, like a videotape, just rewind and start over? Go in a different direction, don’t open a basket of French goodies, don’t get nailed by a deadly snake.
“Tell me again what happened. You were pretty shaky over the phone.”
“Somebody put a rattlesnake in the picnic basket you brought from Paris. I stuck it in the backseat. I was going to give some of the stuff to the guys at work but kept forgetting to take it inside. McKay did this, Black. I just don’t know when or how.”
“He found a time when you were gone. Probably when the car was in your garage. If he’s smart enough to handle poisonous spiders and snakes, he’s smart enough to sneak that snake in without anybody knowing about it.”
“It’s got to be McKay. Everything points to him. I’m going to get him for this, Black, I swear I will.”
“Yes, you will. And soon. Booker called me about an hour ago. Guess who’s got a warrant out in L.A. on a child abduction case?”
That brought me to attention, along with a wave of pain that knocked around inside my skull like a steel golf ball. I clamped my jaw against it. Black picked up a strand of my hair. “You’ve got blood in your hair.”
I pressed my palm down on top of my head and felt the stiff, caked blood. But I was more interested in what Booker had dug up.
“He snatched a child out in Los Angeles? Now, that fits. There was a snowman in his yard. How old is the missing kid?”
“Eighteen months. A little girl named Elizabeth Duncan. Lived in some big apartment complex in Anaheim. They issued an Amber Alert a couple of months ago, but she just dropped off the face of the earth.”
“That would be about the time McKay showed up here. What about a rap sheet? Did Booker find any priors for sex crimes or kiddie porn?”
Black shook his head. “McKay’s records are clean. Nothing like that, nothing that linked him to Classon’s murder. No arrest record. No misdemeanor pranks with spiders or snakes or anything else, not since that one time here when he was eighteen. Booker says the guy served in the Marines, got a chest full of medals and an honorable discharge. His superiors commended him highly, used him for lots of special ops when he was in, sometimes even Black Ops, which makes him top of the heap, militarily.”
“Yeah, all that may be fine and dandy, but now he’s slipped up and we’ve got him on a California warrant. I thought I heard somebody inside his house. It could’ve been the little girl. And the snowman means she’s probably still alive.”
I stood up, blood pumping. I pressed my fingers to my temples and tried to think straight, tried to will the throbbing to stop. “Charlie’s in Jeff City but he’ll let us serve the warrant when he hears about the missing child.”
“C’mon, Claire, you need to go home and get some rest. You’ve been up all night. Bud’s stable at the moment, under sedation. Get some rest. Somebody else can pick up McKary and the little girl.”
“I’m going out there now and confront him before he disappears with the kid again.”
“How? Your Explorer’s still out on the highway.”
“Yeah. Buckeye and the guys are out there processing it. Let me take your car. McKay can’t disappear if I’m sitting on his doorstep and surveilling him. Charlie’s going to give me the go-ahead as soon as I reach him, I’m sure of it.”
“McKay’s probably already halfway to Mexico by now.”
“Look, Black, I’m going out there. You can go, or not. He’s not getting away, not after doing this to Bud.”
Black did not look pleased, but hell, I wasn’t pleased, either. Why did there always have to be an argument? Who’d he think he was? My mother?
“And if Bud crashes?”
A hard hit of hesitation rocked my conscience, and for the first time gave me pause. I had to make sure Bud was okay but Black had hit the nail on the head a few minutes ago. What good was it doing for me to sit here and hold my head in my hands? Bud would want me to get McKay instead of wasting time outside his hospital room. He had a whole staff of doctors and nurses to take care of him.
“They’ll call me if . . . anything happens, and I’ll head right back here.”
Black put his fists on his hips and stared at me with one major displeased expression. One that made his employees jump down, turn around, and pick a bale of cotton. I wasn’t much the jumping type. I wasn’t the trembling type either. I didn’t even say “how high.” He was dressed for work, in a custom-tailored navy suit, crisp white shirt, and burgundy-and-gray striped silk tie. His heavy overcoat was black cashmere lined with silk, and expensive. He shook his head. He looked really, really frustrated. He did that a lot when we knocked heads. “Okay, I’ll take you out there, but I’m going, too. No argument.”
“Sure. Fine. Let’s go.”
When I finally got Charlie on his cell and informed him of McKay’s California warrant, he told me to arrest the bastard and search his house for the kid. By the time we left at the ER entrance, a frigid wind was swirling and twirling snow around our heads. I barely noticed the cold air as I climbed into Black’s Humvee.
The late-afternoon sky was iron gray and heavy, the clouds roiling and diminishing light and making everything dark and foreboding, which promised another subzero night. Black’s Humvee caused the usual spectacle, with everybody and their dog staring at us. We sure as hell better not rob a bank in the thing. And it wasn’t the vehicle I’d choose for undercover surveillance either, but hey, we wanted McKay to see us.
“You sure John Booker didn’t turn up criminal convictions in McKay’s past? I give you that he’s clever, but not that clever.”
“The background showed pretty much what Charlie said it was. Joe McKay has no living family; he’s never been married. Been pretty much a loner, even when he was in the military. That’s why they gave him dangerous missions that he had a good chance of not coming back from. Records indicate he never showed fear, never seemed to care if he came out dead or alive.”
“Maybe that’s because he’s got ESP and knows when and where he’s going to die. That’d take the pressure off. Did Booker find any mention of psychic abilities?”
“No, not a word. Apparently he kept his mouth shut about it. If he has it at all, and I have my doubts.”
“Yeah, you and me both. Pretty odd he was so hush-hush until he showed up here. Then all of a sudden, he’s John Edward in the flesh and making sure everybody knows it.” I rubbed my bandage and closed my eyes against the snow glare. I should’ve taken a handful of the painkillers they offered me. I reached in my pocket and found one capsule that they gave me but that I didn’t take. I popped it in my mouth and swallowed it sans water.
“What was that?”
Sometimes dating a doctor gets on my nerves. “A pain pill they gave me for my head.”
“Here, put these on. They’ll help.” He handed me his sunglasses, which I happened to know came from the ski slopes at Turino, Italy. I put them on and presto, the glare was gone. Wow.
Black said, “What kind of pill was it?”
“I don’t remember. Who cares?” I changed the subject. “I know Joe’s involved in Classon’s murder, Black. The others, too. And if he didn’t off them himself, I guarantee he knows who did. And maybe that’s just it, maybe he’s protecting somebody, somebody close to him.”
Black adjusted the defroster as sleet pecked against the wide windshield. “Like who? His family’s gone.”
“That’s what I’m going to find out when I take him in for interrogation.” And I was salivating to get my hands on him.
The sleet made the going slow and the day gloomy, as if things could get any worse. When we reached the spot where the guys were sweeping my Explorer, we slowed and I asked Shag if they’d turned up anything. They hadn’t. A couple of fingerprints was about it. We pulled away, and inside I cursed the snow. Outside, too. Enough already. This was not the frickin’ North Pole.
By the time we reached McKay’s road and headed toward the farmhouse, the ice pellets hitting the car petered off some and turned into soft, silent flakes.
“He better not be gone.”
“He’s not. Look.”
Lights were on in the farmhouse, yellow squares glowing in the deepening dusk. We stopped out front, and I’d barely stepped out of the passenger’s side when I heard the buzz of McKay’s four-wheeler firing up behind the house. I drew my weapon, but before we rounded the corner, McKay was halfway across the open field that led into heavily wooded hills.
“Police! Stop!”
I fired a couple of shots in the air, but McKay didn’t stop. Seconds later he’d disappeared into a thicket of cedars at the far end of his property.
Black said, “C’mon, this Humvee’ll go anywhere.”
We ran for the vehicle, slipping and sliding, but Black was grinning as he fired the ignition. “I’ve been dying to see what this baby’ll do in the woods. Hold on.”
Yeah, I admit it, sometimes Black’s giant, expensive toys come in real handy. Like now. Dark was falling over us like a big, black blanket, making it hard to follow him, but our headlights reflected off the white snow as we veered and bounced across the back yard. My adrenaline was pumping out of control.
“Floor it, Black, don’t lose him!”
Even if we did, the four-wheeler would leave a nice wide track to follow. We hit the tree line, and Black didn’t even slow down. The big tank slammed through the slender cedars, mowing them down indiscriminately and dumping lots of snow and slapping evergreen boughs across the windshield. I held on tightly to the dash and tried not to remember how much this rampaging ride was hurting my rampaging headache.
The solitary track was easy to see in the jouncing Humvee’s headlamps. We got about thirty yards inside the woods before cedars gave way to ancient oaks with two-foot-diameter trunks that didn’t mow quite so easily. Black stopped and idled the Humvee. The windshield wipers swished back and forth with wet, sloppy sounds. “Can’t go any farther. The trees are too close together. Either we follow him on foot or get out an APB.”
“He’s heading for the nearest paved highway. Count on it. The State Patrol’ll already be out in force on a night this bad.”
I didn’t want to give it up, but I wasn’t stupid, either. Neither of us was dressed or physically prepared to track a fugitive through the woods at night in a brewing blizzard. McKay had gotten away for now. I stared at the shadowy woods, then went tense when the “Mexican Hat Dance” sang alive inside my leather purse.
Black and I stared at each other, and I let it play. Truth was that I was afraid to answer, afraid it was news about Bud. Bad news.
Black finally fished out the phone. “Nick Black.” He listened a few seconds then said, “Okay. I’ll tell her.”
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Felt sick to my stomach. Then Black smiled, and my entire body went limp with relief. “He’s responding better now. They say he’s probably going to be okay.”
My eyes burned like fire, and I set my jaw, sure as hell not going to cry in front of Black like some kind of little baby. Get a grip. This was good news, not bad. I nodded. “I knew he’d be okay. Great. I knew it all along.”
Black squeezed my hand. I took a couple more cleansing breaths, pulling myself together. I didn’t like people seeing me all weak and sappy. It didn’t happen often but when it did, it had been with Black when he was trying to analyze me.
“Okay, that’s good news. Now let’s get every damn cop in the state looking for this bastard. I want him behind bars tonight, and then I want him alone in an interrogation room.”
Black laughed. “Poor guy. Glad it’s not me. I’ve been there.”
I managed a charity smile, but I was not in a joking mood. I was in a bloodletting mood. I stared out through the shifting, drifting snowflakes, where the Humvee’s twin beams lasered smoky trails through snow-covered trees. I could see the four-wheeler’s tracks and wondered where he was headed now. Maybe he had another lair somewhere. What about the poor little girl he’d snatched? Where was she? Was she in the four-wheeler with him? Or had he killed her, too? I gritted my teeth and made my head pound worse and I wondered what kind of stupid, ineffective painkiller they’d given me until I saw something high up in the trees that looked out of place in the stark black-and-white tableau of tree trunks and falling snow.
“You got a spotlight on this thing, Black?”
“Yeah, a custom job, nice and bright.” He flipped on the one outside the driver’s window, and I pointed to a giant oak tree about thirty yards off to our left.
“Look up there, real high. See it? The fork of the biggest branch?”
Black moved the bright light slowly across the ground and bushes drifted in deep snow. He steadied the high-powered beam on the target, and said, “Oh my God.”
It was a black trash bag hanging from a limb. The wind was buffeting it back and forth but I could see the head clearly visible at the top, just like Classon’s had been.
My stomach took a forward roll. “He’s a serial. Scan the rest of the trees.”
Black maneuvered the brilliant spot from tree to tree and gradually revealed one swinging black trash bag after another. Deadly cocoons, rocking from snowy limbs like babies in cradles. A macabre dumping ground stretching into the woods as far as the eye could see.
TWENTY-FOUR
Less than two hours after Black and I found the killer’s dump site, the woods behind McKay’s house were awash with gigantic floodlights. Parka-bundled officers traipsed around in the frigid night, in a gallant but futile effort to preserve a crime scene encompassing several acres of snow-crusted, forested hills. Charlie was back in town, angry as hell, and had the entire department mobilized.
At the moment he stood near the tree where Black and I saw the first body bag. He was beating his gloved hands together for warmth while a consulting captain from the Missouri State Highway Patrol filled him in on their end of the search. So far, there was no trace of Joe McKay, his four-wheeler, or the abducted child. He had not left her behind in the farmhouse, dead or alive, but some of her clothes and a white teddy bear were there. Chances were she was his next, or worse, his latest victim.
Black was gone. Confident, I guess, that I’d be safe enough in the midst of twenty or thirty well-trained officers of the law, all armed and collectively pissed off. He was on his Learjet by now, a late flight concerning some emergency with a high-profile patient at his New York clinic. Obviously he still worried about me but this was something he couldn’t ignore, so he’d asked me if I wanted to go, to which I’d replied, “Yeah, right.”
Black didn’t bat an eye. He knew I took my job seriously. He took his job seriously, too. That’s why he left me by my lonesome. He did spend about fifteen minutes insisting that I spend the night at his place while he had my house checked out for creeping or slithering secret-pal gifts. I told him maybe, but truth was, that remained to be seen. If my house was thoroughly fumigated by Orkin, I didn’t have to worry, but you can bet the farm I’m shaking out my black-and-orange-hightop Nikes before I step into them.
I tromped through the snow to where Buckeye Boyd was watching a couple of firemen lower a victim into the hands of a waiting forensic team. Buckeye’s maroon parka was unsnapped. He had on green lab scrubs underneath. Not exactly snow attire. He had on fur-lined camo hunting boots, though. He was hatless, his white hair blowing back and revealing a receding hairline that was usually hidden by Captain Kangaroo bangs. His eyes looked spooked. “This vic looks like a youngster, Claire, possibly female, but the body’s been out here awhile, I can tell you that. A lot longer than Simon Classon was. After I get her on the table, I’ll know more.”
“Jeez Louise.” That was Shaggy. He came up beside me and stared into the treetops. Glaring lights carved dark planes in his young face and sent our elongated shadows chasing back into the woods where other forensic technicians stared up into other trees
with the same horrified expressions. “The lake’s getting worse than that town in Halloween. What’s the name of that guy who killed everybody?”
Buckeye said, “Michael Myers, maybe? Jamie Lee Curtis played the girl.”
Shag said, “Yeah. Well, maybe Michael’s set up camp here.”
I said, “Yeah. Lucky us.”
Shag turned to me. “Hey, I heard about Bud getting bit. How’s he doing?”
“They think he’s gonna be okay.”
Shag looked at my bandaged stitches and the ugly bruise on my forehead. “You got knocked a good one. Concussion?”
“A little one, maybe. It still hurts like hell, but I’ll live.”
“Thank goodness about Bud. This perp’s just full of nasty surprises, ain’t he?”
“Yeah. Nasty’s a good word. Buckeye, did they come up with a final count on victims yet?”
“There’s twenty-seven bags on what we think might be McKay’s property, which is about two acres, I’d estimate, but there’s a couple of other houses nearby which might own some of this land. And there are national forests on two sides that we haven’t had time to canvass yet. One good thing, I think some of these trash bags contain animal carcasses. Dogs and cats, maybe, and some other small mammals like squirrels and raccoons.”
I stared off into the distance and watched another team working on the ground underneath a tree. Gloved, cameras in hand, they were placing a trash bag on a stretcher. “I can’t believe he’s gotten away with this for so long. Why hasn’t somebody stumbled over these bodies before now?”
“Private property, and so far out in the boondocks you need a map to find it. If he’s been gone and the place closed up, there’d be no reason for anyone to come around here. Especially not out back of the house in the woods.”
I said, “Wonder if he’s been back to town on and off to use this place as his own private hunting and dumping ground.”
“Yeah, could be, I guess.” Buckeye stomped his booted feet, shivering. He should’ve dressed warmer. “Did I hear you say Bud was still holdin’ up?”