Just as she tossed the files in her lap onto the sofa and stood up, her cell phone rang. Maybe Griff’s calling. Now why had his been the first name that came to mind? Several times today, she’d thought about him, wondered if he might call her, had even hoped he would call and share some new insight he had gained about the case. She reached down and picked up her phone off the coffee table, noted the caller ID, and held her breath when she answered.
“Hello.”
“If you’ll promise to do something for me, I’ll give you another clue.”
Nic released her breath. Her heartbeat accelerated. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to call a press conference—you and Griffin Powell—and tell everyone that the Hunter is giving you clues to solve the mystery of his brilliant Murder Game.”
Nic swallowed. The arrogant, egotistical son of a bitch! He wanted publicity. He wanted the whole country to become fascinated with his diabolical game.
“I can’t do that,” Nic said.
“Don’t you want another clue?”
“Your clues aren’t worth much,” she told him.
“It’s not my fault if you and Griffin and your teams aren’t smart enough to figure out the clues in time for them to be useful.”
“Give me a really good clue and maybe I’ll think about calling a press conference.”
Laughter.
God, how she hated that sound. How dare he take such sick pleasure from playing his evil game.
“I’ll tell you what—I’ll give you and Griff a really big clue, just to show my faith in you both. Then when you two hold a press conference, I’ll call you back next week with another clue.”
“I’m listening.”
“You have sixteen days to find her before the day of the final hunt,” he said, his voice filled with excitement. “But you won’t find her.”
The Hunter is giving you clues. The day of the final hunt. Hunter. Hunt.
Did he realize that those two words were clues?
Of course he did.
“I’m waiting for the clue. That’s why you called, isn’t it? To hear me plead with you for a clue, for any tidbit of hope.”
“There’s nothing I like more than hearing a woman beg.”
“If you don’t give me another clue, I’ll hang up and I won’t take any more of your calls.”
“Threats, Nicole? You shouldn’t make threats you don’t intend to follow through with. We both know you’ll take my calls. You want to save Amber Kirby, don’t you?”
“You know I do.”
“I’ve already given you two clues—I am the Hunter and Amber is the Prey.”
She didn’t reply. But she didn’t hang up, either.
Waiting for him to speak again, she heard a muffled sound, then a cry and whispered words. “Tell her where you are, Amber. Talk to Special Agent Baxter.”
“Hello? Hello?” Nic’s pulse pounded, her heartbeat going wild. Was he actually going to put Amber on the phone?
“Help me,” a female voice cried out in panic. “There are woods everywhere. And water. Streams of water …” A loud gasp and then a thud, followed by faint whimpers.
“Amber? Is that you? Are you Amber Kirby?” Nic asked.
Then she heard him whispering. “That’s enough. Don’t want to tell her too much and end all our fun too quickly.” Then he spoke directly to Nic. “How was that for a clue?”
Before she could reply, he hung up.
Goddamn it!
Nic stood there trembling from head to toe, the sound of Amber Kirby’s terrified voice replaying over and over again inside her head. Nausea threatened as images of the young woman filled her mind. Tall, slender, blonde. And young. So young. Only twenty. Little more than a child, really.
His game of killing—his heinous murder game—involved some type of role-playing where he was a hunter and his victims were prey. Was he actually hunting down these women as if they were wild animals?
Oh, God, that’s why he scalps them.
Griff had been right—their scalps were trophies. In the same way a hunter had the heads of the animals he slaughtered preserved and hung on the wall, this sick son of a bitch was taking scalps and probably displaying them somewhere in his home.
Nic wanted to call Griff immediately, but she needed to wait and give the Hunter time to contact Griff with another clue.
Griff will call me. All I have to do is wait.
Twenty minutes, two shots of Johnnie Walker, and five miles of pacing later, Nic’s cell phone rang again. She didn’t bother checking the caller ID before answering.
“Just tell me what he said.”
“You’re letting him get to you,” Griff told her. “Pull yourself together, honey. I can hear the panic in your voice.”
“Screw what you think you hear. Did he or did he not give you a clue?”
“He wants us to call a press conference and make an announcement about his game. He’s calling himself ‘the Hunter’ and his victims are his prey.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, something he didn’t share with me.”
“He put Amber on the phone and—”
“Yeah, he did that with me, too.”
“All she got out before he ended it was a plea for help and to tell me that there were trees and water. Not much to go on.”
“Was that it? He didn’t give you a different clue, something to add to what he told me?”
“Not really,” Griff said.
“You’re not telling me everything.”
“He ended the conversation with a cocky announcement.”
“Which was?”
“He said that we’d find Amber, in two and a half weeks. All we had to do was find the one tree in Knoxville where he planned to hang her body.”
Chapter 9
Maddie Landers screamed. And screamed. She wanted to move, but she couldn’t. It was as if her feet were glued to the ground. She stood there staring at the body hanging upside down from a tree in her grandparents’ apple orchard. She and her cousin Sean, who at seven years old was six months older than she, had been playing hide-and-seek after school. She’d known that the first place he’d hide was out here somewhere in the orchard.
It seemed like the longest time before Grams called her name. Maddie tried to answer her, but she couldn’t. When she opened her mouth, nothing came out but a weak little squeak.
“Maddie, child, where are you?”
“Maybe she got snake bit,” Sean said.
“Hush up and help me find your cousin,” Grams told him.
“There she is, just standing there staring at the trees,” Sean said. “What’s that hanging in the tree? It looks like somebody hung up a dead animal.”
“Mercy Lord, boy, that ain’t no animal carcass. That’s human.”
Maddie felt Grams’ soft, fat arms wrap around her and lift her off her feet. Finally, as if she’d been frozen in stone by an evil spell and was now set free, she gasped and flung her arms tightly around Grams’ neck.
“Run to the house, Sean, and tell Pops to call the sheriff.”
“Is that a real human body?” Sean asked. “Sure don’t look human to me. It hasn’t got any hair. And it’s all bloody and—”
“Hush up and do what I told you to do. We need the sheriff out here right now.”
Even with her eyes closed, Maddie could still see the body. It sure was an odd sight. Turned upside down, the feet tied together and all the hair on its head missing. She buried her face in Grams’ shoulder and cried.
“Shh … Hush up now. It’ll be all right. Your Grams has got you. You’re safe. Ain’t nobody gonna hurt my gal.”
Maddie opened her eyes and saw that Grams had carried her away from the tree where the body was hanging. They were halfway out of the orchard and she could hear Pops hollering, telling anybody within hearing that he had a shotgun and damn well knew how to use it. She supposed Grams wouldn’t fuss at him for cussing, not this time, anyhow.
&
nbsp; He drove to Chattanooga and went straight to the downtown Marriott. He checked in with a fake ID, paid cash, and as soon as he locked the door to his fourth-floor room, Pudge removed the mustache and stored it in his suitcase, along with the clothes he would later dispose of before he returned home. After taking a shower and putting on a silk shirt and tailored trousers, he picked up his suitcase and headed for the elevators. Completely unnoticed, he walked outside, caught the downtown shuttle, and rode to the other end of town, where he promptly checked into the Chattanoogan Hotel, using a different fake ID.
God, he loved these little games of cloak-and-dagger. He really felt that under the right circumstances, he would make a brilliant spy.
After settling into his room at the Chattanoogan, he ordered dinner, and while waiting for his meal he removed his lightweight laptop from his suitcase and set it on the desk. He opened the file on the woman he had chosen as the object of his seventh hunt. She was older than any of the others, but not too old. Only thirty. And from looking at her toned body, the muscles in her arms and legs well defined, he knew she was in excellent physical condition. And why shouldn’t she be? After all, she made her living teaching other people how to exercise.
Amber had disappointed him. She’d been too whiny and instead of fighting him, she had begged and pleaded for him to let her go. She’d been nothing like Kendall Moore. Kendall had made every hunt an adventure. Up to the last breath she took, Kendall had fought him, as had Angela Byers and Candice Bates. Dana Patterson had been as big a dud as Amber so that when he’d killed her, he had felt more relieved than triumphant. Gala Ramirez had been somewhere in between. At first she had posed a real challenge, resisting him, trying to outsmart him, doing her best to escape. But after two weeks, she had lost hope and stopped resisting.
He ran his fingertips over the pretty redhead’s photo, one he had taken from her website. I’m coming for you very soon. By the end of the week, you’ll be mine.
He hoped she proved to be as feisty as she looked.
Sheriff Gene Hood had known in his gut the minute he saw the scalped woman hanging from the apple tree in the Landers’s orchard that she was that missing UT basketball player, Amber Kirby. She fit the general description and everything about the situation told him that the same man who’d killed those other women, in five other states, had committed this crime, too. Of course, the only reason he knew the basic details about those other murders was because his cousin Shaughnessey worked for the Powell Agency. Only last weekend when he and Shaughnessey had gone fishing, his cousin had told him all about how Griffin Powell was taking a personal interest in what was sure to become an FBI matter.
After contacting the state boys, Gene had debated whether to call Wayne Hester at the FBI field office first or to call Shaughnessey. In the end, he had done his duty. He’d called SAC Hester, but he had told one of his deputies to call Shaughnessey. So, it hadn’t surprised him one bit when Special Agent in Charge Hester and Griffin Powell had shown up within ten minutes of each other. Gene and his deputies mostly manned the situation, keeping onlookers, who had swarmed in like a bunch of bees following their queen, away from the scene while the CSI team did their thing.
He had met SAC Hester a couple of years ago and felt he was an okay kind of guy. He’d never met Mr. Powell, but Shaughnessey had spoken highly of the man. As soon as the FBI agent saw Griffin Powell, he bristled, but he didn’t say anything to Gene, even though he had to know Gene had contacted Mr. Powell or someone in his organization.
Wayne Hester actually shook hands with Mr. Powell.
“Looks like you and Nic Baxter were right,” SAC Hester said. “It appears Amber Kirby was abducted by the same man who killed those other five women.”
“Have you positively identified the body?”
“No, but I took a damn good look at her, as did Sheriff Hood”—SAC Hester hitched his thumb in Gene’s direction—“and we agree that the woman is Amber Kirby.”
“Have her parents been notified?” Powell asked.
“Yes, sir, they have,” Gene replied. “But all they were told was that a body had been found that could be their daughter.”
“I understand that a little six-year-old girl found the body,” Powell said. “Is she all right? Something like that could traumatize a child.”
“That poor little thing hasn’t said a word since her grandma found her. But her cousin, a seven-year-old boy, said he didn’t see nobody around, just the body hanging from the tree and his cousin screaming.”
“More than likely the killer was long gone,” SAC Hester said.
Powell nodded.
They all stepped aside and watched in sad reverence as the medical examiner and his crew carried away the body.
“She was shot in the back of the head and also scalped, right?” Powell asked.
“Yes, sir, she was.” Gene shook his head. “I’ve never seen anybody scalped and I’m here to tell you that it’s not a pretty sight.”
Griff followed the path out of the orchard and back to where he’d parked his Porsche in the Landers’s family’s driveway. He opened the door, slid inside, started the engine in order for the air-conditioning to work, and then placed a call on his cell phone.
Nic answered on the second ring. Apparently, she’d been expecting to hear from him.
“It’s bad news, isn’t it?”
“I’m a few miles outside Knoxville, in Wayside, at an apple orchard,” Griff said. “A six-year-old girl found a woman hanging upside down from a tree. She’d been shot in the head and scalped.”
“It’s Amber.”
“Yeah, I’m afraid it is.”
“Maybe we should have called that damn press conference,” Nic said. “If we had—”
“Nothing would have changed, not for Amber. He would have killed her no matter what we did or didn’t do.”
“But if we’d done what he wanted us to do, maybe he’d have called back with more clues.”
“You’re doing just what I was afraid you’d do,” Griff said. “You’re beating yourself up again when what happened wasn’t your fault and there was nothing you could have done to have prevented it.”
“So, this happened outside the Knoxville city limits, huh? Does this mean you’re dealing with a county sheriff?”
“Sheriff Gene Hood, a man with twenty years of experience. He’s no dummy. He called one of your boys, SAC Wayne Hester, who is, as we speak, on the scene.”
“And?”
“And he’s saying that Amber Kirby was killed by the same man who murdered the five other women.”
“Thank God, he’s finally seen the light. I need to call him, but not tonight. He needs time to process everything. I’ll call him in the morning, but I won’t say I told you so. I want him backing me, not taking charge himself.”
“You now have six different states involved, six different local law enforcement agencies and six different FBI field offices, each with equal input into the investigation in their territories. Take my advice and don’t try to steamroll over these guys. You’ll catch more flies with honey than you will with vinegar.”
“Is that your not-so-subtle way of advising me to use my feminine charm to get what I want? Damn it, Griff, you know I don’t work that way. I’m a first-class agent, not some eyelash-fluttering femme fatale.”
“All I was suggesting was that you play nice.”
“Humph.”
“I’ll call you again later,” he told her. “I’m going to head back out to the orchard and talk some more to Sheriff Hood.”
“I wonder where the killer is and what he’s doing. I keep picturing someone who looks like Cary Maygarden, all soft and round and pink, and he’s smiling. He’s cocky and confident. He believes we can never catch him. And I hate him for being so smug. I want him to know he isn’t invincible, that it’s only a matter of time before we bring him down.”
“Nic, honey, are you getting any sleep?”
“What?”
“You
sound tired.”
“I’m fine. You don’t need to concern yourself with my health.”
“Look, you need to take a step back and put things into perspective before he starts his game all over again,” Griff said. “He’s going to call us before he goes after his next victim. He’ll want to give us our clues and draw us into the game with him.”
Nic groaned. “If only I could get my hands on that sick, sorry-ass—”
“Are you eating?”
“What?”
“Are you sleeping? Are you eating? Are you reading or watching TV or going out on dates?”
“What sort of stupid questions are those?”
“Answer me.”
“Those are personal questions,” Nic told him. “The answers are none of your business.”
“Don’t let capturing the Scalper become the sole focus of your life. It’s unhealthy for an agent to become obsessed with something like this.”
“Go to hell, Griffin Powell. Go straight to hell.”
Nic hated admitting that Griff had been right, that he had sized her up accurately. For the past few weeks, she hadn’t slept all night through, not even one night. If she wasn’t having nightmares about the Scalper, she was obsessing about various details in the reports she had scoured over dozens of times. And she’d lost her appetite. She hadn’t weighed herself, but her clothes were fitting looser, so she figured she’d dropped four or five pounds. Usually she had a healthy appetite, sometimes too healthy.
She wasn’t watching TV, but then it was only mid-September and the fall shows hadn’t started yet. She had been reading, just not for pleasure. Her only reading material was the thick file of reports on the dead women.
Had she been dating?
No, not recently. As a matter of fact, her last date had been … Jeez! Back in April sometime, right after Easter. He’d been a friend of a friend. A really nice guy named Eric. Or had it been Derrick? Maybe just Rick? Anyway, she had liked him just fine and actually had been glad when he’d called her for a second date. Unfortunately, the second date had ended badly. Apparently, Eric—or whatever his name was—had thought a second date meant he got to spend the night. When he’d found out that she was one of those women who did not have sex on a second date, he never called her for a third.
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