“No, I’m not that clear, but I’ll know the cabin when I see it.”
“Which isn’t going to happen.” Hayden pulled the car into the parking space in front of the three-legged elk. “I’m calling for backup.”
* * *
Friday, June 12, 10 a.m.
Danaville, Nevada
“What the hell happened to your lip?”
Hayden ignored Hatch’s question and lowered the binoculars. No signs of life in the hunting cabin, and there hadn’t been for the past hour.
“Time to move in.” Hayden slipped the binoculars over his head and set them on the hood of his rental car, which sat atop a hill overlooking the cabin Kate ID’d as her brother’s reclusive getaway. He turned to Hatch Hatcher, his SCIU teammate who’d arrived an hour ago along with his teammate Evie Jimenez, a SWAT team from the Las Vegas Division, and six deputies from the Churchill County sheriff’s department. “You ready?”
Hatch stroked the stubble along the side of his jaw and pointed to Hayden’s swollen lip. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say someone nailed you a good one.”
Hayden reached for the two-way radio.
“Not so fast, Professor.” Hatch popped him on the arm. “If I’m storming that place with you, I need to know where your head is.” Hatch, with his shaggy blond head and lazy Southern drawl, appeared easygoing, but the agent was a pit bull, the kind who locked jaws and didn’t let go. “What happened to your lip?”
Hayden wanted to collar Jason Erickson now. He’d been patiently waiting for this moment every minute of every day for the past five months, but Hayden knew Hatch was right. People putting their lives on the line with each other needed to be in sync. “I got into a little scuffle when I first got to Mancos. I’m a hundred percent now.”
A slow smile spread across Hatch’s face. “Kate got to you, didn’t she?”
Hayden stared at the radio in his hand. Kate had gotten to him in more ways than one. She got him mad as hell and worried when she took off on her own, and she got him thinking about handcuffing her to a bed, but that’s not what Hatch was referring to. “Kate butted me in the head after I caught her trying to escape from Joseph Bernard’s cabin.”
Hatch chuckled. “Someone finally messed up that pretty face, and a woman at that. Now that’s a first.”
Hayden didn’t tell his teammate that Kate had struck twice. His side still ached from the elbow she’d planted in his side yesterday during her escape from the Denver field office. Right now she was down the road about a quarter mile with Evie and two sheriff’s deputies, all fully armed.
Hatch took off his own set of binoculars and set them next to Hayden’s. “Let’s sail.”
Hayden held the walkie to his mouth. “Carranza,” he said, addressing the SWAT team commander, “get your men on the service road. Martinez, you and Arnold take the perimeter. Reisenauer, go ahead and set up for the long shot. It’s time.”
Hayden and Hatch unholstered their sidearms. “It’d be a hell of a lot easier if this place had a phone,” Hatch said. As the SCIU’s crisis negotiator, Hatch had a proven track record of talking down everyone from hijackers to suicide jumpers.
Hayden agreed. Making contact by phone would enable them to determine first if Erickson was indeed in the cabin. Plus it would give Hatch the flexibility of negotiating in private, which would be less threatening to Erickson.
One of the deputies who just walked up to the car offered a bullhorn.
Hayden shook his head. “Too dictatorial. Erickson is the type who needs to control, not be controlled. Anyone shouting at him through a horn would just get him worked up.”
“You think he’s really in there?” the deputy asked.
Hayden patted the paper in his suit coat’s inner pocket. “Search warrant says we can find out.”
The hunting cabin was a small, slump block structure with a high-sloped metal roof surrounded in the back and along one side by scrubby pinyon pines. To the other side sat a ramshackle shop with splintered paint and a sagging roof.
He and Hatch left the top of the rise and hurried down the hill toward the pines. Upon reaching the trees, Hayden bent low, scrambled across the driveway, and flattened himself against the front of the cabin while Hatch looped around to the back. He inched toward the door and looked in the window. Single room with a small bathroom. No visible occupants.
A long whistle then a short sounded in the air. Hatch’s signal. Clear. Hayden answered with a long and short whistle.
“FBI!” Hayden hammered the door. No answer. He lowered his shoulder and pushed, leading with his Sig. The back door burst open, and Hatch rushed in.
They searched under the bed, in the tiny closet, behind the shower curtain.
“The shop,” Hayden said.
Outside they ran toward the small, windowless building with the sagging roof. Locked door. On three, he mouthed to Hatch. They lowered their shoulders and pushed open the door and dropped to the ground, shouting in unison, “FBI!”
A cheesy, sweet odor rolled out on a wave of moist heat. Sharp lances of light sliced the shadowy interior. In the center of the shed on a long table was a mound, completely black but vibrating and making soft clicks, like hundreds of miniature metal scissors snapping.
Up close he could see the shiny dark lump wasn’t a single item but a mass of hundreds of small beetles. He waved them away, and like a blanket of black, they lifted, revealing a pile of flowers. Roses. In every shade of pink, from the palest blush to a deep magenta.
Below the sea of pink lay a grossly decomposed body.
Chapter Eight
Friday, June 12, 11 a.m.
Danaville, Nevada
The cheesy odor of decayed flesh rolled in thick, hot waves through the shed. One of the deputies stood twenty yards away, puking up his breakfast, while another stood at the door wearing a sickly shade of green. The smell didn’t bother Hayden, nor did the click of flesh-eating beetles or the sweltering heat. Right now all that mattered was the gathering and analysis of information. He straightened one cuff, then the other.
“What can you give me at this point?” Hayden asked the tech from the coroner’s office, who stepped in after the crime scene team had photographed, measured, and bagged physical evidence, including the shriveled remains of seventy-two long-stemmed pink roses.
“Female, between forty and sixty years of age. Caucasian.”
“How long has she been here?”
“She’s in the final stages of butyric fermentation, so I’d guess around fifty days. But there are burn marks on the torso, indicative of freezing, so given the cold winter and cool, dry spring, decomposition could have been delayed by as much as three or four months. At this point, I’d say death occurred between late January and April of this year. We’ll have a better idea after we run labs. Do you think it’s one of his broadcasters?”
Hayden shook his head. While CSU processed the scene, he had stood quietly in the corner and slipped on the Butcher’s shoes. In those shoes, he walked through the dark, airless shed, stood over the body, even placed fresh pink roses on rotting flesh. “The broadcaster murders are all about the show, a public statement of power and control. This body wasn’t meant to be found or viewed by anyone but the killer. Given the elevated body and flowers, the presentation of the victim is ceremonial in nature. This has a very different signature than the broadcaster killings.”
“Do you think it’s a different killer?”
The hands. It came back to the hands. This woman’s hands were clasped, thumbs interlocked, and centered on her chest. “Same killer or someone with intimate knowledge of the killings.”
“I wonder who she is.”
A shadow moved across the door, blocking the sun. “I know.”
Hayden’s jaw clenched. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be on the hill with Evie.”
Despite the smell, Kate didn’t gag, nor did she gaze in horror at the flesh-dotted bones. Her face was oddly composed. �
�Hatch needed Evie to look at something they found in the cabin.”
Hayden reached for her elbow and tried to turn her around. “You need to get out of here. This is no place for—”
“Agent Reed, didn’t you hear her?” the tech asked. “She said she can identify the body.”
The sunglasses on Kate’s nose slipped as she nodded once. “It’s Kendra Erickson.”
For the first time that morning, the hairs on the back of Hayden’s neck stood on end.
“Who?” the tech asked.
“My mother,” Kate said with a hollow but steady voice. “I recognize those pink shoes.”
* * *
Friday, June 12, 11 a.m.
Colorado Springs, Colorado
“That is one butt-ugly pair of shoes.” Lottie jabbed Detective Traynor in the ribs and pointed to a pair of lace-ups the color and texture of chunky peanut butter.
“Ugly to the eyes, but heaven to the feet,” a deep voice said behind her.
Lottie spun and came face-to-face with a man with a rusty mop of hair on his head and an equally unruly red mustache. This must be Rusty Coswell, the manager of the orthotic shoe store. “I’m sure that’s a wonderful shoe,” she said.
“But you’ll be dead before you’ll be caught in a pair of these, right Sergeant King?” He tipped his gaze to her shoes, a pair of denim stilettos with tiny swinging cherries.
She’d taught her grandkids to stand up for and speak their truths. Ain’t healthy for a soul to back off on her truths. “I’m afraid so.” She offered him her hand. “Thanks for meeting with us on such short notice, Mr. Coswell. We have the casts.”
The smile beneath his bushy mustache fell away, and the shoe salesman ushered them to his office. “I still can’t believe something like that happened here.”
Colorado Springs, a town of a half million people, wasn’t a stranger to violent crime, but it had never seen a murder like this. Thomas’s celebrity status combined with the carnage and Butcher’s notoriety had her town on edge. She was hoping orthotic shoe man here could help take off a bit of that edge. She took out the cast of the odd shoeprint found in Shayna Thomas’s terraced garden and handed it to the man, who put on a set of bifocals and studied the print.
“Custom orthotic,” the shoe salesman finally said. “Ladies size eight and a half wide. Manufactured by Ortho King out of Michigan, which distributes nationwide.” He reached into the file drawer of his desk, took out a catalog, and pointed to a big, black chunky shoe.
“This shoe could have been fitted and sold anywhere in the United States?” Lottie asked.
“Yes.”
“Who would wear this type of shoe?”
“Diabetics often wear orthotic devices, as do patients suffering from arthritis, those with some type of foot deformity, or individuals with general foot fatigue or discomfort caused by everything from obesity to stress from rigorous sports.”
“It could be anyone?”
“Probably a woman.”
Traynor made notes on his notebook. “We have a woman with a size eight and a half wide foot. That narrows our search.”
“Numbers, how many are we looking at?” Lottie asked.
“Of this size and brand, probably a couple thousand over the past ten years,” the shoe store manager said. “That’ll be a lot of prescriptions to check.”
“Prescriptions?”
“Patients need a prescription for these types of shoes.”
“And prescriptions are attached to names.” The cherries on Lottie’s shoes jiggled.
* * *
Friday, June 12, 11:05 a.m.
Danaville, Nevada
Hayden placed his hands on either side of Kate so she couldn’t escape his words. “Do not move.”
She nodded and sat on the hood of the sheriff’s cruiser parked in front of the cabin. She’d refused to get inside the car, despite the fact that a body she believed to be her mother’s lay in the final stages of decomposition not fifty feet from her.
He put a finger under her chin and lifted her gaze to his. “Give me a minute to talk with Evie, and then we’ll go.”
Again, she nodded, but he wasn’t sure if she was listening. A part of her had checked out, shut down, but given that Erickson was still on the loose, he preferred shut down to on the run.
He motioned to Hatch to come over to the patrol car. “Don’t let her out of your sight. Cuff her if you need to.”
He walked to the hunting cabin and wondered if that body really could belong to Kendra Erickson. He’d wanted to interview Kendra five months ago when he first went to Dorado Bay, but Jason said his mother was out of town, and Hayden believed him. The young man displayed no signs of dissembling. He’d said his mother had been at…A quick rush of air shot over Hayden’s lips. Jason said his mother was at the family’s hunting cabin, which was obviously the truth. Had Erickson killed his mother as early as January and brought her here? Did he come here regularly and drape her body with fresh roses? Hayden needed to spend some time with those thoughts, move the pictures around in his head, but first he needed to talk with Evie.
Inside the cabin, Hayden found Evie Jimenez in the kitchen, poking into the drawer next to the sink and swearing. Evie was the SCIU’s bomb and weapons specialist. She had a notoriously short fuse and could swear in two languages.
Hayden looked in the drawer and pressed his lips together. “A match?”
Evie nodded. “An eight-inch double-edger, same as the asshole used on all the victims.”
Hayden studied the razor-sharp length of metal. He’d dreamed about this knife, about the Butcher’s hand holding it, but he needed more than a knife. “Get it bagged and printed.” If this knife belonged to the Butcher, it would most likely be clean. The man he hunted wouldn’t leave prints behind, but Hayden had to be thorough. Obscenely thorough. “And get someone to take the drains apart. I want them sampled.”
If they found Shayna Thomas’s blood in that drainpipe, they had their link, although, honestly, he didn’t hold out much hope for trace blood. The Butcher, being the meticulous sort, didn’t leave blood trails. Hayden needed something more, proof that they were on the right track.
“Did you find anything else?” Hayden asked Evie. “Any souvenirs?”
“Nada. No jewelry, hair, or clothing, nothing we can tie to Thomas or any of the other broadcasters. Place is spotless.”
Which fit the profile. They were looking for a neat freak, someone who thrives on order and routine and…
“The mirrors,” Hayden said.
“What?” Evie asked.
“Did anyone check the mirrors?” Hayden didn’t wait for an answer. He ran to the small bathroom and stared at dull grayish-yellow paint and a faint outline of an oval where a mirror had once hung above the bathroom sink. He yanked open the drawers, checked the small dresser near the cot in the corner. Not a single mirror.
The knife, the absence of mirrors—they both pointed to the Butcher.
* * *
Friday, June 12, 1 p.m.
Danaville, Nevada
“Are you okay?” Hayden asked.
“I’m fine.” Kate felt no horror, no disgust, no loss, and no sadness at the knowledge that her mother’s rotting corpse had just been packed into the back of a coroner’s van. She didn’t even feel a lick of anger. Or triumph, which, on second thought, made her anything but fine. “I’m a monster, aren’t I?” Kate ground the heel of her boot into the dried grass near the sheriff’s cruiser where she’d been sitting, waiting for Hayden to finish in her father’s old hunting cabin.
“Kate—”
“I mean, I can’t be human, right? Because right now I should feel something.” A sliver of panic pricked her midsection. “A normal person would feel something after seeing that, wouldn’t she?”
“You are you, and you feel what you feel,” Hayden said with an infuriating calm. “Don’t fight it. Accept it, along with the fact that your feelings may change when the shock wears off.”
/> She opened her mouth to argue, but he placed a firm finger under her chin and tapped her mouth closed. Her skin tingled at his touch, and she allowed that warm quiver to rush along every inch of her skin. No, she wasn’t an unfeeling monster. That wash of heat from Hayden’s touch was proof of that.
“It’s okay,” he said.
It’s okay. She breathed in the low, deep calmness of his voice, his soft cinnamon scent. Hayden. Hayden was here. For two days he’d been at her side and in her head, and right now she was grateful. She scrubbed her hands down her face. “You think I’m a nutcase, don’t you?”
“I think you’re too hard on yourself.”
“Just picking up where my mother left off.” Despite the midday sun beating down on them, a biting cold crept from the sun-baked earth to her feet.
“Are you ready to talk about her?” Hayden asked.
She kicked at the dried grass. “Will you believe me?”
“I’ll believe the truth.”
“And do you think I’ll tell you the truth?” The words fell sharp and bitter from her tongue. A fight brewed. There was something comforting in the fight, perhaps because she spent the first half of her life fighting the monster in her own living room.
“I know you,” Hayden said with his unflappable calm. “You have no reason to lie.”
“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think. Maybe I lied about the scar on my attacker’s wrist. Maybe you’re wrong for trusting me. Maybe you’re a piss-poor profiler, a sorry excuse for an FBI agent.” Once, just once, she wanted to see him one shade less than perfect, because right now, in the shade of the shed where her mother had been rotting, she felt anything but perfect.
He took both of her hands in his and pulled her away from the hood of the cruiser. Nudging her with his arm, they walked away from the cabin. “Talk to me, Kate.”
Here she was doing her best to drive Hayden away, but he was patiently standing by her side. Smokey was right when he said this world was one crazy place. She rolled her head along her shoulders and squinted at the bright sun flooding the sky. “Where were you three years ago, when I needed someone to believe me?”
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