Dark Places

by Linda Ladd

  “He’s hanging in. There for a while it was hit or miss. I saw the snake strike him. Close to the throat. Right about here.” I touched my clavicle and shivered when I remembered how the fang marks had looked.

  “You pretty sure McKay’s the perp?”

  I nodded. “Killing this many victims takes time, unless he got them in groups.”

  Buckeye grimaced, pulled up his fur-lined hood, jammed his hands into his pockets, and did some more stamping around in the snow.

  Shag said, “How’re we gonna handle this many freakin’ bodies down at the morgue?”

  Buckeye said, “Charlie’s already requested help from the State Highway Patrol labs. But that’s not the worst of it. Most of these bodies are gonna be frozen solid.”

  I said, “Have you found any viable evidence yet, Buckeye?”

  “No, and we probably won’t until we get them all downtown. It doesn’t appear any of them are in sleeping bags like Classon was, so I doubt if he went to the trouble of torturing them with widows and recluses. I guess that was a special nightmare designed just for Mr. Classon.”

  Shag said, “Snow’s let up some. That’ll help get them down and tagged.”

  I said, “Hate to tell you guys this, but another storm’s incoming. Black’s pilot had to change flight plans to go around it.”

  Shaggy squatted down and examined the icy tree trunk with gloved fingers. He turned to me and said, “Hey, Claire, look at this. I think I just figured out how he gets ’em up the trunk and tied off without a line to the ground.”

  “How?”

  “You know my bud, Steve Granger? How he’s always on me to go out deer huntin’ and stuff?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Well, I finally went with him the other day so he’d get off my back about it, and he’s got this cool deer stand thing he bought down in Springfield at the Bass Pro Shop. He says it’s a climbing deer stand, or something like that. And guess what? It makes these same kind of notches.” He aimed his flashlight on some small chunks cut into the bark. They were identical to the ones at the Classon crime scene.

  “What’d you mean, climbing deer stand?”

  “It’s pretty awesome really. You carry it in the woods on your back, you know, folded up like a regular backpack, and then you unfold it and stand up inside it and make it walk up the trunk with a strap you put around the tree trunk. You know, sorta like those lumberjacks you see having races up to the top of those big redwoods out in Oregon.”

  Buckeye reached down and touched the scarred bark. “I’ve used those things. It’d work just like Shag said. But the perp’d have to put the body inside, between him and the tree, or he could carry it on his back, I guess. Then he’d only need a rope to tie the victim onto the limb then climb the whole rig back down. He’s strong as hell to do something like that.”

  I gauged the distance up to where the body had been hanging. “Unless he hoisted the body up first, then climbed up and tied it off up high. Maybe we oughta get your friend out here and see if he could do that with a hundred-pound sandbag.”

  Shag said, “Cool. I’ll give him a call.”

  I said, “I guess you’re going to open the bags down at the morgue.”

  “None of these vics are going to wake up like Classon did. They’ve been out here a very long time, years, maybe. I bet he quit for a while, gave up the killing spree for some reason, then gave in to temptation again when he came back home. That’s my best guess.”

  “Right. Or there could be a fresh killing field just like this one somewhere in California. God only knows how many he’s done.”

  That thought was chilling. I gazed around, thinking the scene looked like something out of Dante’s Inferno, with all the smoky lights and silhouetted men and women bending over corpses and lowering them with ropes and shadows passing in and out of the trees and over the bright snow cover. A scene from hell, all right. And the devil made his escape in a four-wheeler.

  By dawn my Explorer was released back to me, swept clean, and sans any other rattlesnakes. I drove straight to the hospital and checked on Bud. He was sleeping, still in CCU, still doped up, but they took mercy on me and let me go in. I hardly recognized him. His face looked purple and black and grotesquely swollen. His lips were dark, too, and about three times their normal size. He opened his eyes, and I tried to keep it light.

  “You look like crap, Davis.”

  “Thanks.” He mumbled something else through those horrible, thick, engorged lips, and I finally realized he’d said, “You should see the snake.” He attempted a grotesque grin, and so did I. Neither of us quite made it work.

  “I shot the hell out of that frickin’ snake. It didn’t know who it was messing with. All this medicine and stuff making you feel any better?”

  “Just peachy,” he rasped out. “And just when I was makin’ time with Fin.”

  I did smile then. “Nurse said she’s been down here to see you five times already. You were just too out of it to know.”

  He shut his eyes as if too tired to hold them open. I said, “It was McKay, Bud. We found more victims in the woods behind his house. Everybody’s out there tonight processing the scene. Buckeye’s bound to find enough evidence to nail him.”

  Bud peered at me. His right eye was blood red. “You get him?”

  “Not yet, but we will, sooner or later. Everybody in the state’s in on the hunt.”

  Bud’s eyes drifted closed, and he didn’t move again. I sat beside the bed and watched him sleep, then I listened to the steady beep and watched the lights on the monitors, just to make sure he was still breathing. Then, when I couldn’t hold my head up any longer, I lay my cheek against the mattress beside his hand and slept hard until a nurse woke me and told me I had to leave.

  I drove straight home but stopped at Harve’s first to tell him what had gone down and make sure he was all right. He was fine and invited me to stay with him until the evil spider meister was behind bars. The offer was tempting, especially with Black gone. I told him maybe, then got in the car and headed to my cabin, not as thrilled to be going home as I’d been just after Black had remodeled the place. Deadly critters had that effect on me, just took the sweet out of home sweet home.

  I ignored the garage and pulled up out front. I sat looking at my house. It looked the same, not at all as if a psychopath with a pouch of spiders and a basket of rattlers was on the loose. I was loath to go inside, which means I was scared as hell of what I’d find now, even after exterminators had treated the place. McKay’s surprises were getting deadlier.

  There were no motorcycle or four-wheeler tracks, no footprints. I took time to walk around outside the house but saw nothing in the snow under my windows and doors but an undisturbed, beautiful carpet of white. No crawling spider tracks, no curvy snake trails, which was a good thing. The front walk was cleared, so I climbed onto the front porch and peered into the window. Everything appeared normal. I looked for Jules Verne but didn’t see him. I didn’t hear him either, which was not normal. The ramification of his silence sent a massive shudder undulating up my spine. Spooked, I turned the key and pushed open the door.

  Everything seemed fine, normal, warm and cozy, the light I left on glowing in the early-morning gloom, except for one thing. My feisty little puppy dog was nowhere to be seen, no excited yapping, no little white face watching for me out the front window or barreling down the stairs to greet me. Don’t panic. Maybe Black dropped by and took him to Cedar Bend so the exterminators could sweep the house. Somehow I didn’t believe that.

  I swallowed hard and knew what McKay had done before I saw one of my white kitchen wastebasket bags laying on the kitchen floor. A thick lump rose and clogged the back of my throat.

  I pulled the Glock out of my shoulder holster and stood very still. Not a sound, but my sixth sense was screaming like a banshee. Filled with utter dread, I went down on one knee beside the bag. I pulled open the yellow ties affixed in a bow. When I saw a little body covered with arachnid sil
k , I backed away against the kitchen counter, shut my eyes, and tasted bile, caustic and terrible.

  “Damn you, McKay.”

  Sidestepping the bag, I didn’t touch it again, couldn’t bear to look at poor little Jules Verne. Black should’ve left him in Paris; even animals aren’t safe around me. Then, like a lightbulb going off, it dawned on me that even a hundred spiders couldn’t have killed and cocooned a pup that fast. I had been here yesterday. Black had been here later that afternoon and so had the Orkin men. I moved back to the bag and dumped the rotting carcass out on the floor. Most of the spiders were dead but I had to smash two or three under my boot before I examined the body. It was a squirrel. I could see the bushy tail.

  Breathing easier, hopeful now, I searched the house, looking for the dog, cautiously, back to the wall, finger near the trigger, careful not to open any baskets. I found myself shivering with revulsion, and, yes, fear. Never in my life had I been afraid of spiders and bugs, that was Bud, poor disfigured Bud, but the horror of how McKay’s victims had died was having a strong, negative effect on me now, and the arachnophobia had kicked in and was growing stronger by the minute. Lots of other phobias, too.

  The ground floor was untouched as far as I could tell so I looked up the steps that led to my bedroom loft. Then I moved up one step at a time, leading with my gun. I hoped McKay was hiding up there, I hoped he’d try to get the jump on me so I could open up on him.

  At the top of the stairs I could see into the bedroom. Jules Verne lay on the bed, a strip of silver duct tape wrapped around his snout. More tape held his back and front legs together. He was on top of the comforter, shivering all over, and his muffled whimpers became frantic when I moved toward him. I checked out the bathroom and spotted twenty or so brown recluse spiders crawling around in the bottom of my bathtub.

  I slammed the bathroom door, shuddering uncontrollably, checked out my closet for assailants, then picked up the poodle and headed for my car. Forget clothes, forget toothbrush, forget everything, I wanted the hell out of there.

  Outside, I took time to check out the Explorer again, totally paranoid now. It was clean so I climbed inside, locked the doors, then took out my pocketknife and cut the tape off Jules Verne. The poor puppy whined inconsolably, dug at a spot in my lap where he tried to burrow bodily into my open coat. Like I said, even my pets learn real quick about the existence of monsters. Maybe that’s why I’d never had any dogs or cats. Maybe Jules would want Black to book him a return flight to Paris ASAP.

  I backed out in a hurry and, as a result, slid off in a snowbank. I braked and looked down at the snow lining the lake’s shore. The water was mostly frozen, my dock locked in ice, so Black wouldn’t be coming to call for a while in his Cobalt 360. Then I saw the four-wheeler track running parallel along the bank at the edge of the water until it cut out in to the woods north of my house.

  Anger surged, swift and awful and helpless, and I hugged Jules Verne against my chest as I stared at evidence that fully incriminated McKay once and for all. I wondered when the hell McKay had come to my house with his evil cargo of deadly creatures. I shook with rage for a few minutes, then I got hold of myself, calmed down, and vowed again to get him. He was toying with me, toying with what was mine. Nobody did that and got away with it.

  I sucked a couple of deep breaths like my yoga tape told me to do when spitting mad and ready to murder. I drove up the road and stopped beside Harve’s mailbox. I sat there with the motor idling, the heater blowing lukewarm in my face, and my dog zipped up inside my parka. Involving Harve in this would be stupid. Harve had gotten involved last summer with my case and had almost died as a result. That wasn’t going to happen again. Not with McKay loose and growing more lethal. He’d gotten to Bud and Jules Verne. Tried to get me and Black. Harve wasn’t going to be next.

  I drove on. I’d take Black’s advice and stay at Cedar Bend where security was tight and lots of people were around, where even a black widow spider couldn’t squeeze through the security screen Black had set up after the murder there last summer. And I wasn’t worried about Black. He’d pretty much proved to me that he knew how to take care of himself. The thought of being driven out of my house was like a thorn under my toenail, but at the moment a smarter move was to stay with Black until I got my hands on McKay. And at this point, I was ready to move heaven and earth to get him.

  Dark Angels

  Uriel was in love. He’d found the perfect girl for him, a girl at the school where he worked. He thought about her all the time, longed to be with her all the time. Now Gabriel was so jealous that he was being mean and trying to hurt her. Uriel was frightened. He was afraid Gabriel would get so angry that he’d kill her the way he’d killed Uriel’s other girlfriend.

  Then on a weekend when Gabriel went to an educational conference held in the nearby city of Columbia, Uriel felt safe enough to bring his girl down into the cave and show her all his reptiles and arachnids. She was afraid at first and held back, but after he had explained everything and told her how beautiful and special his creatures were, she had loved it, too, and said she didn’t care and wanted him to teach her how to raise spiders and snakes. She said she loved him and would do anything in the world for him, and they’d made love there in the cave, the very first time for both of them.

  Uriel had never been so happy. But now Gabriel had returned, and Uriel was late meeting him at the cave. So he was in a hurry when he got to the boiler room and unlatched the water heater. He jumped down into the tunnel, terrified Gabriel would get angry and lose his temper, but Uriel had been at his girl’s house and hadn’t wanted to leave her. That’s why he was late, but Gabriel could never, ever find out about it.

  Uriel followed the shaft into the domed cavern but didn’t see Gabriel anywhere. He stood very still and listened. Something about the place seemed spooky tonight, not like it had felt earlier when he’d been there with his love. It was completely quiet, except for faint scratches of the scorpions and the rustle of snakes in the leaves on the bottom of their cages.

  Then out of nowhere, Uriel was tackled from behind and knocked to the ground. It was Gabriel, and Uriel tried as hard as he could to fight him off, but Gabriel was violently angry and fought like a maniac. They rolled on the ground until Gabriel had him pinned underneath him. He doubled his fist and hit Uriel in the head, stunning him for a moment. Uriel stared up at his friend, his benefactor, shocked and horrified at the black rage he saw in Gabriel’s eyes. Gabriel sat on his chest and grabbed him by the throat with both hands. His face was red, his words harsh and low and furious.

  “You brought that little bitch down here, you bastard. To our private place, to our secret lair. I thought I could trust you, but now everything’s ruined. You stupid little fool, don’t you see? She’ll get pissed off at you someday and tell the police what we’ve done. We’ll end up in prison, both of us, and it’ll all be your fault. How could you do this to me, how could you? I trusted you!”

  “No, I didn’t, I didn’t bring her here. I swear.”

  “Liar! I saw you. I knew you were sneaking around with her and lying to me about it. There wasn’t any conference in Columbia. I stayed here. I watched you bring her down to our secret place. I saw you screwing her. And now she’s got to die.”

  Uriel lay still and stared up at Gabriel’s demented face. “No. No way. I love her, Gabriel. And there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s no need for you to be jealous. I love you, too. You’re my blood brother, you’ll always be the most important person in my life.” Uriel felt the tears well up and begin to burn. “Please, just let me have her. I’ll do anything you say, anything, if you’ll let me have her.”

  “No, no, no! We made a pact that we wouldn’t have women. And if we did, then we’d kill them afterward. I’ve always kept up my end of the bargain. Now it’s your turn. You shouldn’t have brought her down here. Now she’s gotta die, and you gotta do it.”

  Uriel fought Gabriel’s grip on his neck, unable to stop weeping. “No,
no, please, Gabriel . . .”

  “Shut up your sniveling, Uriel, you hear me? Shut your damn mouth and listen good. You go get her right now and bring her to my house. Tell her I want to meet her tonight, tell her I’ve given the two of you my blessing, tell her whatever the hell you want. Just get her there, and then you’re going to kill her while I watch. You got that? You can do it any way you want, but she’s gonna die tonight. Do you understand me? Do you? This is your punishment for breaking our code.”

  Defeated, Uriel nodded but couldn’t stop sobbing.

  “If you don’t do it, Uriel, I will. You understand that? I’m gonna do her, then I’m going to put her in a sleeping bag with some widows and watch her die a long, slow, horrible death.”

  Gabriel climbed off Uriel, then jerked him to his feet by the front of his shirt. He shoved him toward the tunnel. “Now go get her and meet me at my house and don’t make it too late. I’ve got to go to work tomorrow. This is your fault, Uriel! How could you have been so stupid?”

  Uriel obeyed, but as he drove to his love’s house he could barely see the road ahead for his tears. He could not kill her. He loved her too much. But how could he lose Gabriel? Gabriel was everything to him, had always been everything to him. And Gabriel would kill her if he didn’t.

  Outside his love’s house, he sat in the car and wiped his tears on his shirt sleeve. Then after a long time, he got out of the car, walked up the sidewalk, and knocked on her door. His heart ached, and he hated himself for what he was about to do.

  It was much later that night when Uriel held onto his love’s arm and guided her up the front steps to Gabriel’s front door. He felt sick to his stomach, really sick inside his heart. She was so young, so happy and smiling, so eager to do whatever Uriel asked of her. She loved him. He felt afraid now that the time was at hand to do what had to be done. She wanted to lift the door knocker and he let her. It fell with a clang against the brass plate. They waited, and she smiled up at him the whole time, her eyes glowing with love.