He wore a small backpack to hold the other things he would need after he used the air rifle. He was disappointed he wouldn’t have time to punish Bradley properly. To hold the child-beating son of a bitch accountable for his transgressions.
Angela’s welts and bruises flashed in his mind like violent neon, all deep purple and ugly yellow-green. He felt like a shit-heel because he’d given her another sedative in her chocolate milk. The blame didn’t really lie with him, though.
He wasn’t Smiley tonight. Tonight he was the Hunter. The patient one who waited and watched and thought and planned. Unfortunately, the Hunter would have to leave this particular trophy behind. Then again, Bradley wasn’t much of a trophy, alive or dead.
Smiley peered through a gap in the weathered boards of the barn doors. Bradley stood in front of a digital scale, weighing out some kind of red powder. He had a large flask over an open flame, with fluid boiling inside the thick glass.
A gentle test of the door. Loose, with a two-by-four across the latches on the inside. Smiley breathed in the sharp cold air and prepared himself for action.
Calmly, he stuck the rifle barrel through the gap between the doors and raised the two-by-four until it cleared the latches. He anticipated the clatter of the board when it dropped and was already using the rifle to swing the door open.
Bradley heard the commotion and spun around.
Smiley fired the air rifle and the dart hit the younger man in the gut.
“Ow! Smiley, what the hell?” Bradley appeared to suddenly realize what the dart was. He yanked it out and threw it across the barn. He hurled an empty chemical flask by the neck like one of those German potato-masher grenades. It shattered against the wall by Smiley’s head and pelted his face with glass shards. Bradley followed the beaker, charging across the barn. Smiley dropped the empty air rifle and reached for the knife in his jacket.
Too slow. Bradley covered the distance and hit Smiley with a looping right to the face, knocking him flat on his back. Bradley was on him instantly, choking Smiley with his own bunched collar. “You old asshole, are you crazy? I will fucking beat you to death for that shit.” Bradley emphasized his words by shaking Smiley on the syllables.
In the next second the ketamine started to hit Bradley. The dart stayed in long enough to give him a good dose. He shook his head like a dog with a burr in its ear.
Still rattled by Bradley’s punch and fighting for air, Smiley’s right hand closed on the haft of the filet knife under his jacket. His thumb popped the snap holding the knife in the sheath.
Drooping a little, Bradley hit Smiley with a weakened slap. “You hear me, old man? You are fucking done here. You stay away from my family, you piece of—“
Bradley cut off short when the blade punched through his raggedy sweatshirt. Slim, sharp, and long, the steel entered under the sternum and angled upward.
Smiley had practiced this stroke as often as he practiced the subclavian stab. A variation on the bullfighter’s estocada. The final stroke straight into the bull’s heart.
Sitting astride Smiley, Bradley stared down at him, confused. “S-Smiley? Did you...”
His methamphetamine-accelerated heart thrashed against the mean blade, slicing itself to pieces, spewing blood into the chest cavity instead of pumping it to the oxygen-deprived brain. Bradley slumped to the side and Smiley pushed him the rest of the way off.
It took ten minutes of sitting with his head between his knees gulping deep breaths before Smiley could stand again. Wouldn’t that have made for a great headline? Over-the-Hill Killer Arrested While Catching Breath.
He glared at Bradley, inches from his dead eyes. He felt cheated of his clean kill. In his younger days, he would’ve handled Bradley like a heavyweight taking a bantam.
Now he had blood all over him and Bradley had a hole in his heart. Smiley had to hope for a combination of luck and small town justice. Hopefully, the fire would burn the body too badly for an autopsy. If not, he counted on folks around here not looking too hard into the death of a meth cook whose lab went up.
Smiley spent a couple of panicked minutes searching the barn floor, but he found the dart Bradley pulled out of his belly. It rolled under a table holding scales and boxes of plastic baggies. He tucked the dart away in his coat and got down to the grim details.
He dragged Bradley by the ankles and left him near a table full of beakers and jugs of chemicals. Good thing Bradley was a skin-and-bones tweaker. If he’d been built like a linebacker, Smiley would have had to leave him where he died.
Once he had Bradley in position, things went quickly. A little grain alcohol from his backpack would start things off. Smiley was no chemist, but even if they did run tests on what was left, he didn’t think this would seem out of place in a meth lab. He splashed the alcohol over a table filled with chemicals and a plastic tub marked Red Phosphorous.
One last look around. He had his knife back in the sheath, his pack on his back, the dart in his pocket. Nothing left behind.
He used a cheap plastic lighter to start the show and got the hell out of the barn. His old knees complained about how quickly he moved back to his snow machine, but the flames had already climbed into the loft, making the barn look like a macabre lighthouse sending a warning no ship would ever see.
Running the snowmobile flat out, he made it halfway back to his place before the barn went up completely. His whole body trembled with the need to see, so he stopped to look back. Seen from the frigid field, the blaze created a warm glow, friendly and inviting. Up close it would roar and snap like a giant’s hearth, the fire destroying flesh, wood... and evidence.
Smiley got back on the throttle and raced home through the woods.
Leaving the hot engine running, he pushed the barn doors open in a frenzy, the coppery smell driving him mad. He turned back to his snow machine and stopped moving like the puppeteer cut his strings. His mind slipped into neutral and so many years of his life in this town spun out like fragile webs with tonight’s decision at the center.
Nadine Pearson stood in his driveway holding a cherry pie. And Bradley Wentz’s blood marked the front of his clothes like a flashing advertisement for Murder.
***
The sunrise had warmed the day enough for her to work in oils. Garrett watched Tracy paint until the sun climbed to a position that made the oak tree’s shadow in the snowy clearing “too short to be interesting anymore.”
He helped her pack the easel and the worn leather case housing her paints and brushes. The pink spots on her cheeks and the wisps of hair curled around her delicate ears distracted him. Her flushed skin reminded him of snowball fights when they were kids. It also made him think of her as a grown woman and the same flush across her neck and chest. Guilt fought with desire.
The silence was comfortable for them, and they started the walk back to her house without saying anything. He figured she was still thinking it all over.
He’d spilled his guts about his dad and the prostitute on the hike out— wouldn’t the old man be mortified— and then stood and shivered while Tracy painted and thought on it.
They followed their own tracks all the way back to her place before she spoke. “So,” she said. “Aside from the girl being a prostitute, let’s ask what was wrong with your dad seeing her. Your mom passed years before, and he wasn’t seeing anyone else I ever heard of.”
“Did you know about him and Shirley?” Garrett said.
“Nope. I’ll say this for your Pop; he had a poker face built to clean out Vegas. I saw him and Shirley around each other at church, and it was all Chief and Dispatch Supervisor, no sign of hanky or panky.”
“And in your opinion, it was okay that my dad had some young chick in a cheap motel room?” Garrett said.
“First off, I believe the La Quinta qualifies as a hotel, and it’s not that cheap. And second— Really? Chick?” Tracy said.
“Excuse me, Gloria Vanderbilt.”
“Steinem.”
“Whatever. We su
spended the hooker bit to see what else might be wrong with it, but it’s still there,” Garrett said.
Tracy stopped outside her front door and looked into his eyes. “Okay, I’m going to ask you something and I want you to answer yes or no. Just that. As quickly as you can, first thing that pops into your head. Got it?” Tracy said.
“Do your worst, Dr. Freud,” Garrett said.
“Are you implying that I’m fascinated by penises?”
“Gross. Ask your question.”
She took a deep breath. She actually looked nervous. “Is the fact your dad apparently cared so much about her the real thing that’s upsetting you?”
Garrett waited too long. “No.”
Tracy simply arched an eyebrow at him and went into the house. He followed, and when they were in the kitchen he took out the only picture he’d brought and threw it on the table. The picture the girl obviously took when his old man’s guard was down.
“He’s laughing,” Garrett said.
“I see. Are you mad because he didn’t show that side to you after you mom was gone?”
“Hell, I don’t know. If I could just call the problem like that, I’d probably make millions on a self-help book,” Garrett said.
“For the moment, why don’t you concentrate on why you found all this to begin with? He was looking for her, and looking for patterns, right? You think he was onto something? Did he find something he didn’t like?” Tracy said.
“The patterns are there. But it’s all still a whole lot of conjecture right now,” Garrett said.
“Maybe Whit would be willing to do some poking around out of respect for your dad’s memory. You could leave out certain stuff.”
“Please. Whit Abercrombie would be hard pressed to spit on me if I was on fire. And I probably gave him a reason to feel that way. Besides, he’s knee deep in shit with the Bradley Wentz thing.”
Garrett almost grinned at the thought of Whit Abercrombie heading an investigation like the one at the Heideman’s farm. He kept a straight face by remembering the charred thing they found in the burned-out barn.
Tracy seemed to be reading his mind this morning. “Do you think Misty was involved in the lab? Honestly.”
“I have a hard time believing she didn’t at least know. Her mom, too, most likely. But that kind of money is hard to turn down. She’s had her hours cut at work, shortcut looks good to her,” Garrett said.
His pocket chirped and he pulled out his phone with an apologetic shrug. It was LaSalle.
***
She had a cherry pie in her hands and she was walking toward him. “Goodness, Smiley, I was getting worried. I knocked and knocked.”
And her eyes opened wide.
“Oh my God, Smiley what happened? You got blood all over you.”
Nadine sounded like she was at the bottom of a rain barrel, all hollow and echo-ey.
He stood there for what felt like a long winter’s night, his breath hot on the air, snowflakes big as quarters flying between them, his brain going round and round with all the possible outcomes of the burning barn and Nadine seeing him like this.
None of them added up to anything good for him. The Hunter.
Which was unfortunate for Nadine.
The mean blade flashed out and she dropped the pie in the snow.
It went easy for her; he’s a merciful matador.
Surprise. Her eyes were wide with it. Oh, how he shivered to stare into bottomless black pupils as their owner bled out her last seconds of life. But he couldn’t really savor it. He had other work to do.
His insides warm with the memory, Smiley touched the tacky blood in the trunk of Nadine’s Lincoln. Putting her in there to move her into the barn worked out perfect. There’d be blood in the trunk when they found the car later.
The screw-up at the Heideman barn with Bradley had turned into something useful. With his bloody shirt, Smiley wiped just a touch of Bradley’s blood inside the trunk and a drop or two on the steering wheel. Nothing else. He’d read books about people getting caught because they left what the police called “an orgy of evidence” when they tried to throw people off.
Smiley’s eyelids drooped and he felt more exhausted than he ever had. Even back in boot camp. He left Nadine in the side chamber down below for the time being. He’d have to figure out something else later. She didn’t deserve to be in the trophy room with his prize beauties.
He’d already put his bloody clothes in his special room and showered while Angela slumbered on the couch. By the time Misty picked her up, the blonde terror was a little more subdued than usual, but none the worse for wear.
Smiley closed the Lincoln’s trunk and dragged the tarp into place over the car. He left the barn to keep its tarp-covered secret and latched the door tight. He would call out sick and collapse onto his bed for a few hours. Then he’d deal with this mess.
He was halfway across the barnyard when he heard Papa’s voice.
Idiot!
He spun around, saw nothing but the dead water pump and the snow-covered hump of the well cover.
Worthless fuck-up!
“Shut up,” Smiley said.
They’ll find out. You screwed the pooch, boy.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up.” Smiley stopped and smelled the bloody tip of his finger. The Hunter came to the front of his mind.
“I ain’t afraid of you. And I ain’t stupid.”
He waited, but heard no reply aside from the wind blowing through the elders on the sunny side of the house.
“No, sir,” Smiley said. “I ain’t afraid of you.”
His words were strong, but he felt weak inside. Wrung out. What would he do when his palsied hands couldn’t work the dart gun, his legs couldn’t pull the sled with its cargo down to the snowmobile?
The urges would most likely drive him insane then.
15
The tarnished silver charm bracelet dangled from Garrett’s fingers. “I mean, I get the coincidence. Girl tells Nadine her name is Taylor; you find a bracelet with a T. But there have been a dozen girls up there in the last—“
“Now you’re trying to talk me out of it? Even after the stuff from your Pops?” LaSalle said. He finished tying his hiking boots and locked his car. There were two big rigs at the far end of the rest stop, but LaSalle’s Volvo was the only car in the lot.
“I’m asking the questions any cop would ask. Will ask.” Garrett leaned against LaSalle’s fender, twisting the bracelet this way and that so the charms rattled against each other. “So I guess we’re not looking for a trucker who takes an occasional hooker. We might as well be honest about it.”
“Seems that way,” LaSalle said.
Garrett glanced at the trucks in the lot. “He’d have to have a route through here for years and years, which would narrow down the list of suspects. But he’d also kill the girls in his truck, you’d think. Even if he had a dump spot nobody could ever find. You and my dad both found tracks out here right after we think a girl went missing. If the tracks are really involved, why would a trucker go to all the trouble of hauling a sled or whatever around with him?”
“You know what that would mean,” LaSalle said.
“Yeah. Somebody local. I don’t like it, but I’ve thought about it,” Garrett said.
“Any names?”
“You ask me about illegal liquor, I got two dozen names; ask me about weed, I got two hundred. Ask me about kidnapping or homicide suspects, I’d tell you to drive back to LA, because that doesn’t happen here,” Garrett said.
“Doesn’t it?” LaSalle said.
“Show me your winter hideaway,” Garrett said.
LaSalle led the way, stopping along the game trail where he found the parallel track marks. They made their way down through the frosty woods to the field’s edge.
Garrett admired the workmanship of the blind. “Took some time. And some knowledge. Whoever wove these branches in did a beautiful job. I bet you can’t even see this thing in the summer when the creeping vi
nes come in.” He looked at the strange crescent-shaped marks in the snow machine tracks LaSalle found.
“Yeah, that’s called a Hacksaw Trail Track. They’re made for high performance in backcountry areas,” Garrett said.
LaSalle glanced back up at the rest stop, checked his watch. “Okay, figure you could move someone on a sled or travois, as your dad called it, in maybe twenty minutes. Hook up to your snowmobile down here. Then what?”
“Run to your spot,” Garrett said. He scanned the open fields south toward more heavy woods. Another half mile beyond and they’d be off public land and back in the city limits. He took a deep breath through his nose, the cold air burning on the way in—
And he’s running down an alley in South Central at three a.m. in January and even in LA it’s forty degrees and the guy he’s chasing trips over a trashcan and his gun skitters across the concrete and Garrett screams at him not to touch it but he does anyway and—
Garrett blew a long column of white frost and noticed LaSalle studiously looking elsewhere. He wondered how long he’d been away.
Nevermind.
“If someone’s killing these girls, then he has the world’s best hiding place for bodies,” Garrett said.
“Public land would be risky.”
“Yeah. Hunters wind up stumbling over murder victims all the time. He could put them in a lake, but even if he only took three or four of the girls we have listed, that’s a lot of bodies not to have one float somewhere,” Garrett said.
He pointed at the heaviest woods to the south. “The other side of those woods would be Artemis city limits. There are a lot of farms along the border, so lots of private property.”
“You know how it’s split up?”
“Dad had some of it mapped out, but not all. If you go west after the woods, you’ll hit the Barclays, Childers, the Heideman place, and then Smiley’s. There’s more public land on the other side, and then Burton’s Truck Stop. We could go to City Hall and ask to see the property lines, but someone would probably call Whit on the sly.”
“Yeah, so? You think if he doesn’t hear your name again he might send you a Christmas card?” LaSalle said.
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