Meanwhile, Mike and Rick systematically worked their way around the outside of the cabin, prying loose the heavy plywood sheets that covered each window and handing them to Max, who then placed them in a stack beside the porch. The most difficult task, however, was finding access to the second floor windows. Out of pure laziness, Max had suggested that they leave those windows boarded, but Mike, in his usual determination, swiftly solved their dilemma, with his discovery of an old wooden ladder that was hidden in the underbrush by the foundation of the cabin.
All this, and still their auburn-haired guest slept upon the couch where Rick had laid her hours ago. She had not moved, but to breathe.
Now the sun was directly overhead, burning a white-hot hole in the blue summer sky. The morning mist had long since evaporated, revealing the details of the mountains in the distance, their jagged granite faces and piney scalps.
Sitting on the porch steps, Rick felt at one with nature. Dragonflies flitted across the meadow, rattling their brittle wings, while butterflies glided silently, like leaves dancing in the breeze. He sat alone, watching two young squirrels play hide-and-go-seek in a nearby grove of balsam firs, listening to the birds play their pennywhistles as they flapped about their daily routines. His gray T-shirt was stained black with sweat under his armpits and between his shoulder blades, and his dark hair was sprinkled with dust.
“Looks like we're done, man,” Mike said, stepping out onto the porch.
Rick looked up at him, took a long drag from his cigarette, and nodded.
Mike went over and stood at the railing, eyes tracing the course of the river in the distance. A moment later the others joined them outside.
“Can I bum a smoke off someone?” asked Max.
Rick gave him a funny look, tossed him a pack of Marlboros.
“Thanks, dude,” Max beamed, lighting up a cigarette.
“So...what now?” asked Karen.
“Hmmm,” Mike started. “Well, to start, I think we should take turns going into town for supplies. It will be harder to identify us if we're not in a group.”
“Assuming anyone's even looking for us,” Max said.
“Oh, they're looking for us, alright.”
Rick stamped out his cigarette on the walkway. He looked up at Mike. “How can you be so sure?”
Mike shrugged. “I dunno. The way that cop acted on the phone...like he was talking to a criminal. The fact that they were at my house before we even called them. Not to mention what Trisha Saunders told Karen she'd heard about us on the police scanner.”
“Alright, alright,” said Max. “So what're we gonna do?”
“Two of us will go into town, get some supplies to last a few days,” Mike said. “I say our best bet is canned food. Stuff that won't go bad, maybe some burgers or hot dogs for tonight. And a cooler with ice. We should also pick up a couple flashlights, and some batteries.” He paused to collect his thoughts as he paced back and forth across the porch, wringing his hands and running his fingers through his wavy brown hair.
“Unfortunately,” he continued, “our budget is extremely limited for the amount of people we have, so if there's something you want, as long as it's within reason, then write it down, especially if you think we'll need it later on. Once the money's gone...well, I guess we'll worry about that when the time comes.”
“What about my ATM card?” asked Karen. “There's got to be a bank machine around here somewhere, right?”
“I don't think that's a good idea,” Mike said, shaking his head.
“How come?” asked Max. “You said yourself we could use the money.”
“The cops can trace that stuff,” remarked Rick. “Credit cards, bank cards, gas cards ...the cops will be keeping an eye out for those things.”
“Okay,” Karen said. “So we get some groceries. Then what?”
“Then we'll settle in. And eventually we'll call home and see if everything has blown over.”
“And what if it hasn't? Then what?” Karen hugged herself despite the heat.
“We wait,” Mike answered matter-of-factly.
“That's it?” Lou asked nervously, his brown eyes widening in disbelief. “That's your big plan?”
“What about calling the cops and telling them what really happened?” asked Rick. “Once they dust for fingerprints, they'll know we weren't the only ones in that house, right?”
Mike shook his head. “I already thought about that. The only problem is, how will we know if they're telling us the truth? I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't wanna wind up in jail while that...that bastard is still running loose. Until we sort shit out, it won't be safe to go home.”
“What about Mom and Dad?” asked Lou. “What if he goes after them?”
Mike shook his head. “Don't worry about that. It'll be all over the news that we skipped town. It wouldn't make sense for him to go after any of our parents.”
“So who's gonna make the first trip?” asked Max.
“Me and Karen.”
“Well, let's start a list,” Karen said. “Anyone got some paper?”
Before anyone could reply, Max farted and grunted at the same time. “Speaking of lists,” he said, “I gotta drop a mean friggin' bomb. Who’s got the toilet paper?”
The others looked at each other and shrugged.
Mike chuckled. “We don't got any. You'll have to wait until we get back from the store.”
Max took a step back, made a sour face. “Aargh! You gotta be shittin' me! You don't got nuthin' in your car? Napkins? Paper? Anything!”
Mike shook his head, laughing. “Sorry, dude. Looks like you're shit out of luck.”
“Look out!” Max grunted. He pushed Lou out of the way and vaulted over the porch steps, shouting out obscenities as he made a beeline for the nearby woods.
His friends laughed as they watched his desperate flight for privacy.
“HEY, MAX!” Mike hollered after him. “WATCH OUT FOR POISON IVY!”
They all laughed a little harder.
“What about the girl?” Karen asked, after their laughter had died away. “Shouldn't we get her to a hospital?”
Mike stared off into the mountains while he considered her question. “Honestly, I don't know. What do you guys think?”
Lou chewed his bottom lip and shrugged.
“She could be seriously hurt,” Karen said.
Mike turned around to face her. He was frowning. “I know. I've been thinking about that.”
“She sure as hell didn't act like she was hurt,” Rick said, remembering her wild behavior in the back of the Thunderbird. His fingers went to the scratches on his face. “Then again, we can't hold her here against her will. That's kidnapping.”
“How 'bout this,” Mike said. “We wait until she wakes up and then we'll decide.”
If she wakes up, thought Karen. But she kept that thought to herself.
And so it was decided.
“Good,” Mike said, sounding rather pleased. “Now let's get going on that list.”
~Fourteen~
The road leading back to the center of Willow's Creek was both a speedster's dream and a trucker's nightmare, an endless ribbon of steep inclines, rapid declines, and hairpin turns.
Mike Swart drove slowly, fighting his natural thirst for speed. He did not want to get pulled over. Besides, Karen was with him, and it made her nervous when he drove too fast, especially after Lori's fatal crash. Mike eased up on the gas pedal as gravity pulled them to the bottom of a tall hill. He glanced down at the speedometer and saw that they were already going 65 mph. Even the Thunderbird seemed eager for acceleration.
“You're awfully quiet,” Karen observed, brushing the hair back from her face. “Is there anything wrong? Well, besides the obvious?”
Mike squinted for no reason. “No,” he said too quickly, “I'm fine. How you holdin' up?”
Karen gave him a look.
Mike bit his lip. “I was just thinking...”
“About what?”<
br />
“About last night. I still can’t get that dead girl out of my mind. It was horrible. Just fuckin' horrible, what he did to her. Everything happened so fast. I didn't really have time to think it over, us coming here.”
She squeezed his arm. “Better to be safe than sorry.”
“Uh-huh. But still, maybe it wasn't such a good idea. I mean, who knows what's going on back home, what kind of shit they're saying about us.”
The road flattened out, and they soon arrived at a traffic light. The light was red, and Karen turned to him as they came to a stop. She took his hand and held it.
“You didn't have much of a choice,” Karen whispered, as she lovingly stroked his hand. “You were forced into making a decision. So you made one. Nobody should have to make those kinds of decisions, Mike. Nobody. But think about it: Everyone's together. Everyone's okay, thanks to you. Just remember, your friends trust you. You didn't force them to come here. They believe in you. I believe in you.”
Mike smiled, looked deep into her eyes, and gave her a kiss on the forehead. “Thanks,” he said. “I mean that.”
Just remember, your friends trust you.
They believe in you.
I believe in you.
That's what scares me the most, he thought.
~Fifteen~
Later that morning, after a brief tour of the Moody house, Officer Bailey and Agent Ferren were sitting at a corner booth in Donut Hevven, an all-night coffee shop nestled in the heart of Hevven. Bailey was watching Ferren, who sat hunched over a notebook, going over the notes he had taken while at the crime scene.
“Let's see,” Ferren continued. “So far, your detectives have taken several blood and urine samples, as well as several sets of fingerprints, and casts of the tire marks which were presumably left by our suspect's car. Hmmm. What does that leave us with? Oh, yes, the fingernail fragment we found, which may or may not...”
While Agent Ferren continued, an attractive young blonde rollerbladed by the window, seemingly oblivious to the wandering eyes that followed her. On the opposite side of the street, a greasy-looking man in a beat-up Datsun turned his head to watch her, unaware that the cars ahead of him were slowing down. At the last possible moment he slammed on his brakes, stopping three inches from the car in front of him, his face turning the very same color as the light for which the traffic had stopped.
“I was thinking about what you said before,” Bailey spoke softly. “About there being more than one victim. What, exactly, did you mean by that?”
Ferren flexed his jaw. He gave the young officer a hard, penetrating stare. He closed his notebook. “This is purely speculation,” he explained. “So if you tell anyone about this I'll deny this conversation ever took place. This is just between the two of us. If the media gets a hold of this, both of our asses will be in the same sling. Understand?”
Bailey nodded deliberately. This was the closest he'd ever come to real police work. Besides, he never much cared for reporters anyway. He watched as Ferren withdrew a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket and spread it out on the table. It looked like a map of New England, if New England had been stricken by a bad case of the chickenpox. Bailey took one last sip from his coffee and bent over to study the map. “What do all those red dots mean?”
“Those are all the places where people, mostly young women, have vanished over the past ten or so years.” Ferren tapped his finger on the map. “Five years ago, in Connecticut, nineteen year-old Darlene Wiggins disappeared without a trace just two miles from her home.” His finger continued across the map. “That same year, three other girls vanished from various parts of New England: Maine, Rhode Island, and northern Mass. A year later, Carla Peteit, eighteen, vanished from her parents' farm in Vermont. The same month, two girls, one from southern Vermont, the other from New Hampshire, disappeared as well.”
“Runaways?”
“Their parents would like to think so. Hell, I'd like to think so. Then we could all sleep a little easier at night, couldn't we? But it gets worse.”
Officer Bailey felt a tingle in his spine. He glanced out the window.
Several minutes earlier three young boys had parked their bikes in the bike rack, and they were now standing outside the window, munching on chocolate frosted donuts and looking at Pokémon cards.
Agent Ferren continued, “Skipping ahead to this past month, and we have three more unexplained disappearances. The first was twenty-one year-old Julie Tarring, a waitress from Brockton. She disappeared from her employer's parking lot after her shift ended at eleven o'clock in the evening. She left her car, her purse, her driver's license; everything. Then, a little over a week ago, nineteen year-old Anna Hartsoe, a local college student, vanished on her way to Martha's Vineyard, where she was supposed to be spending the summer with a friend. She packed her bags, said goodbye to her roommate, and no one has seen her, or her car, since. Judging by the description her parents gave when they filed her Missing Persons Report, Miss Hartsoe could be our victim from the Moody house, which would probably mean that fingernail we found was hers. We won't know for sure until the results come back from the crime lab.”
“And the other girl?” Bailey asked.
Ferren sighed, but his eyes remained steady. “The other young lady, Stacey Ann Mackinnon, was attending the summer semester at Quincy College. She was last seen jogging, roughly one mile from her apartment. She was last seen wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt similar to the one that was found in the room with the victim. I doubt if she's our vic, though, because the timelines simply don’t match. Besides that, the descriptions of the two girls are nothing alike. Ms. Mackinnon’s parents also filed a Missing Persons Report. That was just a few days ago. But so far, nothing.”
“So,” Bailey asked nervously. “If that's not her body we saw, then where is she?”
“Oddly enough, it seems as though our suspects may have taken her with them.”
“Do you suppose they're looking for a ransom?”
Agent Ferren shook his head. He traced an imaginary circle on the map. “It just doesn't add up. We have one body, and three girls, all gone without a trace within weeks of one another. All within a twenty-mile radius of here. And I have no idea how our suspects fit into all of this, if at all. If they're looking for a ransom, why didn't they leave a ransom note? Why kill the one girl and take the other with them?”
Bailey looked skeptical. “But there must be like, what, twenty marks on this map? And you think they're all connected?”
“Twenty-seven,” Ferren corrected him.
“Shhhit,” Bailey said breathlessly.
“Twenty-seven girls in ten years,” Ferren continued, “all gone without a trace.” He took the map, folded it, and tucked it back into his pocket. “And that's a conservative number. I'm sure there are others, ones we don't know about. And yes, I believe the same person is responsible for all of them. I've been following these cases for several years now, mostly on my own time, and I still haven't found a single piece of solid evidence to convince the STF to open a full investigation. Now, let me ask you something. What do you know about the Hacker?”
Bailey almost laughed in spite of himself. “Rumors, mostly.” He slouched back against the seat, pausing to drink his coffee. After a moment, he went on. “Back in the seventies the body of a local girl was found in a dumpster. She was just sixteen. As the rumor goes, her face had been cut up like a puzzle. Not long after, another body was found. Then another. The town went nuts, and the Department ordered a ten o'clock curfew for anyone under the age of eighteen. A couple weeks later, Moriarty nabbed a drifter from Texas who had a history of violent crimes. Pennington, I think his name was. Something like that. Anyway, he confessed to the murders and was shipped off to Walpole. A week before trial, he hung himself with a blanket. The locals kept the story going by turning it into one of those what-do-ya-call-its?”
“Urban legends?”
“Yeah,” Bailey nodded his head. “Most people don't believe i
t ever really happened. And the folks who were around back then refuse to talk about it. Probably afraid it would lower their property values or somethin'. You think that has something to do with all this? Maybe these kids were actin' out some kinda weird-ass fantasy about the Hacker, copy-catting his murders?”
“No,” Ferren said flatly. “What I know is that, for the past decade or so, someone has been abducting young girls from this area. For lack of evidence these girls have been catalogued as runaways, despite the fact that most of them don't fit the profile.”
“Hold on a minute. I don't get it. If none of these girls fit the profile, how come the STF never bothered to investigate before now?”
Ferren smiled grimly. “You said the Hacker's first victim was sixteen, and her body was left out in the open?”
Bailey nodded emphatically, “Yeah, that's right.”
“He probably didn't plan that murder the way he planned the other ones. That one was spontaneous. You could say it was his practice run. The media probably had a field day with it. It made him cautious. Cautious enough to go undetected all these years. It made him a better killer.”
Bailey nodded thoughtfully and tilted his head back to take a sip of coffee.
“Don't you see?” Ferren said quietly. “That first murder made him smarter. After that, almost all of his victims were eighteen or older. After that, he made damn sure no one would find the bodies.”
Bailey's eyes brightened above the rim of his white Styrofoam cup. “And because of their ages, their parents couldn't report them as being missing. At least not right away, because once you turn eighteen you have a legal right to go anywhere you want.”
“That's exactly right,” Ferren frowned. “Unless there's some sign of foul play, there's not a helluva lot the authorities can do, except to file a report.”
“So instead of leaving his victims' bodies where someone will find them, the way most serial killers do, this guy hides them somewhere safe?”
Ferren nodded. “Which makes him rather unique. You see, most serial killers want to see their stories on the news, and in the papers. They leave their victims where they'll be found, not necessarily because they want to get caught, but because they want to prove to the world that they're smarter than the police. But not this guy. He's possessive of them. He keeps them for himself. And he's done a damn good job up until now. Something must've gone wrong. After so many years, why would he get sloppy now? No. This guy's too smart for that. It doesn't make any sense. This body was practically handed to us.”
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