Blood Ties

by Sigmund Brouwer

  “How about him? Was he any trouble for you?”

  “The best behaved five-year-old anyone could ask for. You’re a lucky mother to have someone so sweet.”

  His mother, his real mother, kept smiling. “I think so too. I missed him so much. You know, I wanted to call every day to see how he was doing, but

  my husband told me I’d have to learn to let him be a little man.”

  The boy wanted to throw himself at his mother’s legs. He wanted to clutch her and sob and cry with relief. But he didn’t dare. She might ask him what was wrong. And if he told her the secret, his mother would die. Just like the kitten.

  “Did you miss me?” his real mother asked, squatting and opening her arms to him. “Did you miss your mommy?”

  The boy allowed himself to nod, but he didn’t run forward to her.

  “Then come to Mommy,” his real mother said.

  The boy looked at the old lady to see if it was all right. She nodded her head slightly.

  The boy took hesitant steps forward and let his real mother wrap her arms around him. Before, he would have hugged her back. But now, remembering how the old lady clutched him in her arms in the darkness of the night and remembering the hated smell of her rose perfume, the boy had the sensation of being trapped.

  Trapped...

  The McNeills, the ranch workers, and most of the local people referred to the cabin as Mad Dog’s Doghouse, partly because of its size and partly because of the hermit trapper who had built the log structure at the turn of the century, long before horseless carriages had invaded the valley. It was set in a natural hollow facing a stream; its roof line was almost invisible against the hillside, especially since its remaining split-wood shingles were gray and mossy and blended into the alpine grass and low shrubbery of the hill itself.

  The cabin had weathered well, a testament to the painstaking labor of the trapper, who knew his life depended on how well his shelter bore the brunt of long, lonely winters. He had chosen his lumber so well and built it so solidly that the cabin walls were still strong and whole. The only concession to time, in fact, were the gaps between the logs where the mud chinking had crumbled over the decades.

  The cabin’s doorway was barely larger than the entrance to a doghouse, designed not for convenience but to block as much of the harsh winter as possible. The cowhide flap that had served as a door had long since rotted, and now the short, square entrance seemed like the entrance to a dark tunnel.

  The cabin had served the trapper well. Winter was the time for prime fur, and he had used it as a base camp, which allowed him to run traplines in all directions, the length of one day’s snowshoe travel. The trapper had made it a habit to camp overnight at the end of a trapline, returning to the cabin the next day, through each winter until 1905, when he went crazy and earned his Mad Dog nickname.

  There was no one living, of course, of the men who had found him in the cabin that winter, but the story had been passed on again and again with ghoulish satisfaction, usually at campfires. Because the truth of the story was bizarre enough, little of it had been distorted over the generations.

  In short, the trapper had chosen a poor location. Although the cabin faced south, had the north winds blocked by the hill, and had easy access to water, the hills formed a gigantic natural funnel, something the rescuers were clearly able to see as they looked upward at the path of the avalanche that had covered the cabin.

  The rescuers had been summoned by another old trapper who had stopped by his friend’s cabin with mild concern over a missed rendezvous. The friend had seen the tons of snow and wisely gone for digging help, with no idea how long the cabin had been buried.

  As the searchers dug, so the story went, a strange, faint noise grew stronger and stronger until they recognized the sound as howling. It took them thirty more feet of digging to reach the cabin, and when they pushed aside the last of the snow, they realized the howling was coming from the man they were rescuing. They later guessed his candles had run out long before his food and that by the empty jars and cans, he’d spent five to six weeks trapped in the complete sensory deprivation of darkness and silence, his only company the carcasses of dozens of yet-to-be-skinned animals he’d trapped.

  Whatever demons the howling man had seen, he never shared with anyone, for he never spoke again. No one knew what to do with him, so they eventually returned him to his solitary cabin, where, during the next full moon, he hung himself, designing the noose as an identical match to the noose he’d used to snare rabbits and mink over the years.

  No one had lived in the cabin since. Even though it was on the McNeill property, only two miles above the ranch house, it was rarely visited. Most of the cowboys and ranch workers believed it to be haunted and stayed away.

  One person, however, regularly enjoyed the solitude and ghostly echoes of imagined howling. The Watcher.

  He especially enjoyed it at night. And on this night, walking to the cabin beneath a full moon that decades earlier had witnessed Mad Dog’s final night, the Watcher thought of the legend of the howling, insane man. And smiled.

  Soon there would be another man to add to the legend of this cabin, a man who deserved to die.

  Day 5

  5:30 a.m.

  Clay slept poorly. The fishing rod in the department store had reminded him of another fishing rod, back in West Virginia, set on the front porch alongside his tackle box, thermos, and paper-bag lunch He’d stood at the front window, staring at the sheen of green leaves and mist cloaking the holly trees. Sherry had come up behind him and run her hands up and down his chest, teasing him to stay at home for a romantic, cozy day under a roof sounding of steady rain instead of going out with Bud to get wet and cold chasing after slimy fish. Samantha was in the crib, Sherry had said, and how long had it been since they’d lost themselves in each other like newlyweds. If he’d have turned to kiss her, he might have stayed, sending Bud on alone when he arrived. But Clay had been unwilling to make up so easily from their fight the night before, and when Bud had turned into the drive, honking the horn of his ’65 Valiant, Clay pushed away his wife’s arms and went to the fishing rod and his friend. If he’d have turned and kissed her and allowed his stubborn heart to show his love, Sherry wouldn’t have loaded Samantha in the car an hour later to go into town to get groceries. If he’d have turned and kissed her, there would have been no loaded coal truck missing a turn on slick asphalt. If he’d have turned and kissed her, there would not have been the stricken horror on the lieutenant’s face as he came to deliver news they all dreaded giving after a fatality crash, only this time it had to be delivered to one of their own. If only he’d have turned and kissed her...

  Clay slept so poorly, when the alarm rang at 5:30 a.m. he was awake and staring at the ceiling, wallowing in images and memories and wondering why he was in a run-down motel room thousands of miles from the mobile home in West Virginia where in another life he’d slept every night with the woman he loved, unaware in his complacency that God would savagely and abruptly take her and their baby away from him.

  Clay punched the alarm clock off with gratitude at the excuse to begin another day and hurried into the shower, putting his thoughts and energy into the phone call he planned to make.

  “This is pretty early. Even here on the East Coast,” Flannigan said as a greeting. “Bucking for overtime? Or a GS-11?”

  “How about both?” Clay said into the telephone. Moving from GS-10 upward meant an annual salary raise of $1,000. “Can you arrange it?”

  Flannigan snorted. “You have me mixed up with someone who has pull around here. Like I said before, because of Hoover, everyone thinks we practice voodoo – you know, a process difficult to fathom, with questionable results. You’re one of the few who takes us seriously, and from what I hear, you don’t have any other straws to clutch.”

  “I’m not sure how to take that.”

  “It’s nothing against you,” Flannigan said. “It’s what you’ve been thrown into.”
<
br />   “Thrown?” Clay felt stupid, echoing Flannigan.

  “Notice there’s no team of investigators on your train derailment? Politics, my young friend. I’ve been around long enough to have my own little grapevine. This one’s a token investigation. No people killed by the derailment, only a couple of cars derailed, no special media attention. Thus, no showboating by the FBI. Why else pull a rookie – again, no offense intended – out of Great Falls and let him sniff around for a while? If this was a priority, you’d be flooded with leeches, trying to look good from the disaster. So don’t sweat it. As long as you file lengthy reports, your butt is covered.”

  “What about a, serial killer? Cover my butt there?”

  “I finally got your package with the autopsy report and forensics,” Flannigan said, not committing himself. “It’s interesting. The sadism is there. But it also could be just a one-time thing. Someone may have hated Doris Samson. Find me something else, and I’ll be prepared to believe this was more than just an ugly murder. Tell me more. I assume that’s why you called.”

  “The killer left a note,” Clay said.

  “What?” All casualness left Flannigan’s voice. “To you?”

  “No, to a girl.”

  “You have the note?”

  “Yes. But by the time I got it, she’d handled it plenty. My fingerprints were on it too. I doubt –”

  “Clay, cut the forensics stuff. Our job is to get into his mind. Understand? We try to think like them, then anticipate them. It’s his words that are important, not the ink and paper. What’d he say?”

  Despite the seriousness of their conversation, Clay smiled. Flannigan had come to life, had dropped his defenses of cynicism and banter. The hunter was on his quarry’s trail.

  Clay reached for the paper on his desk and turned it to the lamp to be able to read clearly. “Kelsy, I have been watching you with the love that our souls have been destined to have since before time began. Why do you hurt me by looking at others? I am the only one for your affections...”

  He finished reading the note.

  “Again,” Flannigan said. “Read it once more.”

  Clay complied. When he finished, Flannigan was silent, and Clay decided not to break that silence. He knew Flannigan was hooked on this now. He didn’t need prompting or pulling to keep him involved.

  “It’s the part where he tells her that others will come to harm,” Flannigan finally said. “That’s enough for me to believe he might kill again. In other words, you’ve got my attention.”

  “It has her attention, too,” Clay reminded Flannigan. “She’s scared to death.”

  “You’re right,” Flannigan said, chastised. “Sometimes when I’m dealing with information, not people, this becomes a game. Gruesome, but a game.”

  Flannigan took a deep breath, clearly audible over the phone. “I’ve got another concern, but let’s spend some time with the note. It had bad grammar. How’s the spelling?”

  “Poor.”

  “How? Which words?” He spoke with impatience, as if he wanted the note in his own hands on the other side of the country.

  Clay explained the spelling errors.

  “All right, Clay,” Flannigan said, hardly pausing after Clay’s answer, “now tell me who you think did this. Not his name – that would be too much to expect – but what kind of person.”

  “Young unmarried blue-collar worker,” Clay said.

  “Why?”

  “Why did he kill? Or why is that my guess?”

  “Why is that your guess? What makes you say he’s young?”

  “This is a first-time kill. From what you said in your lectures, most begin in their late teens, early twenties. Also he’s young because he shows stupidity. By telling Kelsie he’s been watching her, it narrows our search considerably.”

  “And he’s a blue-collar guy because –”

  “Bad spelling and bad grammar,” Clay said, feeling this was an exam. “White collars and professionals would write differently.”

  “Obvious conclusion, but not necessarily correct. What if he’s so young he still isn’t out of high school?”

  “Then he’s a big kid. I’m guessing him for a worker for two other reasons. First, he had to be strong enough to subdue Doris Samson without hitting her across the head. That suggests someone physical. Second, is where the letter was delivered. No postmark, left in the mailbox at an isolated ranch. If he’s been watching her a lot, I’m guessing he works on the ranch. Or at least he has work that takes him to the ranch frequently.”

  “Interesting,” Flannigan said. “We’ll get back to that and the narrowed field. Why unmarried?”

  “He had no one to report to. They’re saying Doris Samson was killed early in the morning. If he has a wife, chances are he wouldn’t have that kind of freedom. He’d have to explain why he was gone.”

  “I like your thinking, Clay. Although I want to disagree with you about your guess on his age. I believe you’re right, but not for the reasons you said. When you get another chance, look at the crime-scene photos. You’ll notice the buttons on her shirt.”

  “Cross-buttoned,” Clay said. “Like when you start the bottom button in the second from the bottom hole, and every button after it is wrong all the way up.”

  “Glad you noticed,” Flannigan said. “Now tell me what it means.”

  “She buttoned herself in a hurry. He walked in and surprised her, and she didn’t want him to see her body. Which means they weren’t intimate partners.”

  “Maybe not. And that’s why I think he’s young. My guess is he wanted to look.”

  “Look?”

  “Maybe before he started stabbing her. Maybe after she was dead. Probably after. He undressed her to take a look and then dressed her again. That tells me he’s young. It also tells me something else. He’s curious enough to look, awkward enough about it to dress her again. He’s inexperienced. Sad to say, but we're in a society where kids get experience in a hurry. If he’s missed out on all this free love that the hippies are into, he’s either a loser with psychological problems or a kid with religion. I’d choose the first, obviously.”

  Flannigan spoke rapidly. Clay realized the older man had spent a lot of time thinking about this.

  “Anything else?” Clay asked.

  “You can generalize serial killers into two types. Unorganized and organized. Unorganized killers tend to have low mentalities. They blitz-attack, killing quickly because they don’t have any sense of control, often don’t want to know the victim, and hide or mutilate the face to make them an object. An organized killer is smart, able to control the victim, wants the victim to remain alive as long as possible. It’s power over the victim’s life he wants.”

  “But the poor spelling in the letter...”

  “A bad writer is not necessarily a dumb person, Clay. Education and background play a big factor. That supports your theory he’s in menial labor.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Clay glanced at the motel curtain. Dawn had arrived. “I’ve taken plenty of your time. If you need to go, I understand.”

  “If I need to go, I’ll let you know. Trust me,” Flannigan said. “I want you thinking about a couple of things. The biggest is the trigger factor.”

  “Something to set him off.”

  “Exactly. Think of a time bomb ticking. This is someone with violent fantasies. There’re plenty of potential young offenders like that, kids who come from bad homes and have been abused themselves. But not many of them step over the line and commit their fantasy. Usually what it takes is something to trigger them, say, loss of a job or a ‘Dear John’ letter – maybe even a humiliating experience on a date.”

  “It’s safe to say this person is obsessed with Kelsie, right?” Clay said.

  “Definitely.”

  “So if this person saw Kelsie with another man, it might be a trigger factor.”

  “More than definitely.”

  Clay began to feel some of the hunter’s exciteme
nt he sensed from Flannigan. “What I learned from her was that she spent time with one of the ranch workers. She wrote about it in her diary, and she believes the person who is watching her has read the diary.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Two words,” Clay said. “Eagle feather.”

  “Feather!” Flannigan couldn’t keep his excitement hidden.

  “That answers my other concern. The biggest one. I was wondering how you were so sure that the person who wrote the letter to Kelsie was also Doris Samson’s killer. The eagle feather is the link.”

  “Which is why I’m taking all this so seriously,” Clay said. “And there’s more. Kelsie not only wrote about her feelings for her new boyfriend. She let me know she spent time with him – moonlight time. Doing some innocent kissing.”

  “If the killer had not only read the diary but followed her that night...” Flannigan said.

  “Exactly. I gather from Kelsie this is her first boyfriend. If she’s never kissed anyone else, this watcher would never before have had a reason to be jealous. But this would trigger him.”

  “Who’s her boyfriend?” Flannigan asked. “Maybe it’s one and the same. Maybe they argued after kissing. Maybe –”

  “A guy by the name of Nick Buffalo. Who was also Doris Samson’s boyfriend. You see how it all falls together?”

  “If Nick isn’t the killer, his girlfriend was offed as revenge. If Nick is the killer, he could have done it, then sent the letter to make it look like some weirdo’s in on this. Which might explain the handwriting, like someone took pains to disguise it.”

  “I’ll be looking into the timing,” Clay said. “From what Kelsie was saying, Nick was with her the night Doris died. But maybe he had enough time to make it into town after.”

  “Good start,” Flannigan said. “See if you can get all the names of the ranch workers. I’ll do what I can to pull records, look for anyone with violent histories, jail time, that kind of stuff.”

  “I take it you’re in,” Clay said mildly, smiling on his end.