Cold Aim

by Janice Cantore

  Another horrific coincidence.

  “I believe all these murders are the work of a man who is employed by Beck now and probably was associated with Cross back then.” Bass pulled out a composite sketch of a man. “We call this guy the Piper.”

  She picked the sketch up. “Like the Pied Piper?”

  “Yeah. Based on what the girls we just rescued say, he’s the recruiter. He picks up women—girls really—and delivers them to Beck. And when Beck is done with the girl, the Piper takes care of things.”

  Studying the picture, Tess saw a strong jaw, steady gaze, and chiseled features that indicated this guy was probably good-looking. But it was also a generic drawing, could be made to fit a lot of men.

  Bass nodded, seemingly reading her mind. “I know, I know. It’s not a perfect ID. But I’ve been on Beck’s trail for practically my entire career. Chevy has helped fill in a lot of blank spots, and we’re close, finally, to putting a true predator and his entourage in jail.”

  She pushed the drawing back across the desk. “That’s a goal I can get behind.”

  9

  All evacuation orders were lifted a little before 1 p.m., shortly after Tess dropped Oliver back at the church after the Faith’s Place visit. Power had been restored to all of Rogue’s Hollow, and while it saddened Oliver to see anyone lose a home, it was truly a miracle no more than four homes had been lost. And it was wonderful that no lives were lost. The families who still had a dwelling to go to packed up their belongings, grateful their houses were spared. Oliver helped several people gather their things and leave the church as soon as he’d heard.

  One family that was not so lucky, Oliver was working hard to help in any way he could. Janie Cooper was inconsolable about the loss of a home that had been in her family for a hundred years. Once all the evac orders were lifted, Oliver and Garrett had driven out to the Coopers’ property to take stock of the damage. If you didn’t know a house had been on the lot, you certainly wouldn’t have been able to tell.

  Garrett cursed and kicked some charred wood around. “This was everything we had, Pastor. Everything.”

  Oliver chose his words carefully. He knew Garrett was a hothead, in and out of jobs, and that the only reason he hadn’t lost the house to the bank was because the paid-off home had been willed to his wife when her mother died. The family scratched out a living mostly on Janie’s small but steady paycheck from Walmart.

  “We’ll help all we can to get you back on your feet, Garrett. You can stay at a property the church owns until something more permanent is found.”

  “I never should have left. I should have stayed and fought that fire with my own hose and well water.”

  “The house can be replaced—”

  “Stop saying that!” Garrett turned, fury etched on his face. “Everyone keeps saying that, and it’s not true! You can never replace what I had in that house. I should have died trying to protect it.” He stalked past Oliver, brushing his shoulder as he did. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Praying silently, wondering at the fury and whether or not there was something else at the bottom of Garrett’s rage, Oliver followed Garrett back to the car.

  –––

  It was after 2:30 p.m. before Agent Bass and Tess got his witness, Roberta Impala, aka Chevy, comfortably, if reluctantly, ensconced in Faith’s Place. The girl was small and slight, but there was a strength about her that surprised Tess. Nothing about her posture or attitude said victim. She had long, brown, smooth and sleek hair pulled back into a ponytail. It shone as if she spent a lot of time brushing it. She wore dark tights and a hoodie with Denver emblazoned across the front. She had with her a backpack of belongings and a new Kindle Bass had given her. She was discouraged from using the Internet at all, and Bass requested Bronwyn purchase any books that Chevy requested.

  There was also a simmering petulance that Tess sensed in the girl. She was wound tight with anger and frustration. Her large brown eyes, her expression, and her entire visage looked more mature than eighteen years, and that saddened Tess. Chevy’s youth had been stolen from her. In spite of how together she looked, how much unobservable damage was present and permanent? And surprisingly, Chevy was not happy with the situation she was now in.

  “I’m going from one prison to the next,” she groused.

  “We’ve been through this,” Bass said soothingly. “You’re doing the right thing, and with luck, it will all be over soon, and you’ll have your life back.”

  Chevy gave him a look filled with teenage cockiness and then announced that she was tired and wanted a nap.

  Bronwyn showed her to her room. When she came back out, she shot a bemused glance Tess’s way.

  “You might have your hands full,” Tess said.

  “I can handle it,” she said with a smile. “Nothing like a teenage girl to electrify a home.”

  Tess gave a wry smile before her attention was directed elsewhere.

  “She’s tucked away safe and sound. Why is there a need for me to stay here as well?”

  The protest was coming from Alonzo’s partner, Mia Takano, a small, compact woman. Tess could read the agent’s tense body language.

  “Mia, we’ve had this discussion before.” Bass pulled her to the side. Tess tried not to eavesdrop, but she bet the issue was that the assignment was basically glorified babysitting, and Takano did not want to be stuck out in the wilderness like this. Takano thought Bass was overreacting, that there was no need to keep the witness away from the US Marshals.

  Tess could sympathize. There were a lot of exciting, challenging duties in police work, but there was also plenty of grunt work: standing perimeters, waiting for coroners, babysitting prisoners. Most cops would rather get the challenging duty. And the trafficking case was big and challenging. If Tess were Mia, she’d prefer to be somewhere else, in the thick of the investigation, rather than sidelined with a teenager, even though all of the duty helped make the case. Takano would have to bend to authority and settle into the job.

  Bass was the senior agent, and he won in the end. It was an unhappy Agent Takano who dragged her suitcase into the shelter as Tess and Bass left the area. Before Bass left, he gave Tess a thumb drive—“The sum total of my investigation into Cyrus Beck.” Tess hoped to have time to look through it all carefully.

  While the decision to house the girl had been Bronwyn and Nye’s, and they were both more than capable, Tess felt a rising anxiety and a strong premonition that she should have tried harder to talk them out of it.

  After all, Isaac Pink was a trained cop, and look what had happened to him and his family when he’d tried to shelter a witness. Tess prayed history would not repeat itself and vowed she would do all in her power to keep everyone safe.

  10

  Bass had been gone about an hour when a familiar face knocked on Tess’s door.

  “Got a minute, Chief?”

  Tess looked up and smiled at Sergeant Steve Logan, a man she had dated when she first came to Rogue’s Hollow, and someone she still considered a good friend at the sheriff’s department. But Tess was wary. What if he’d heard about the witness? She was not about to lie straight to his face.

  “Sure, Steve, what’s up?”

  He stepped into her office and she saw he wasn’t alone. Behind him came a fish and game officer Tess knew but didn’t like. Win Yarrow was taciturn and disagreeable. He was also old-school and chauvinistic. Tess hadn’t had much contact with him but got the distinct impression that he did not care for her. Besides, she could never compete with him when it came to knowledge of the outdoors and the issues he dealt with on a daily basis.

  “It’s because you aren’t a native Oregonian,” RHPD Officer Bender had told her. “Don’t take it personal.”

  She tried not to, but at times the man was openly hostile.

  “Win and I have had a busy morning,” Steve said.

  “I can smell that,” she said, making a face. Both men were smudged with soot, and they brought with them the sm
oky odor of fire and burning wood. They’d been in the burn area for some reason.

  Tess knew Steve had been tasked with assisting Yarrow. Over the summer there had been a spike in poaching on BLM property. Somebody very good with a hunting or sniper rifle had been killing and butchering wildlife. Yarrow had his hands full. He’d even gotten fish and game to offer a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the poacher.

  While Tess didn’t respond to any of the poaching because it was out of her jurisdiction, there had been two disturbing calls in the Hollow at small family farms, where in one incident two lambs were shot and in another, two lambs and a calf were killed. All the animals, domestic as well as wild, were killed by a high-powered rifle according to Yarrow, so his theory was that the poacher was killing the farm animals as well.

  Yarrow’s poacher was prolific, with kills all over the county, but most of them on BLM land bordering the Hollow and Butte Falls. Coincidentally, the man Yarrow suspected of being the poacher was Rogue’s Hollow resident Ken Blakely, the one and only man who’d tried to break into Faith’s Place to get to his wife. Right before the fire Yarrow had informed Tess that he planned to serve a warrant on the suspect’s home. He’d asked that she stand by.

  “Is this about the warrant? I’m so sorry, but with the fire—”

  Yarrow held a hand up. “I understand why you missed our appointment. I know you’ve had your hands full the last few days. Sergeant Logan was there, and I had a couple of state cops with me.” He grimaced. “We came up empty. Nada. Zip. Zero. I’m still certain Blakely is our guy, but he outplayed me this round.”

  “I second that,” Steve said. “I wouldn’t put it past him to have hidden the evidence somewhere else. He’s sneaky and mean, especially since his release from prison, so he’s not a novice.”

  “He’s my only suspect. I have no choice but to keep after him,” Yarrow said.

  “He’s savvy—that’s for sure—knows how to play the system,” Tess said. She and Blakely had crossed paths several times, usually because someone was complaining about him or something rude that he’d done. He lived in Rogue’s Hollow’s only apartment complex, a couple of streets behind the station. He was the neighbor nobody wanted to have. “Does not play well with others” applied to him in spades. His hatred of cops was not even thinly veiled. Poacher or no, since he was an ex-felon, he could not legally own a firearm and certainly not a high-powered rifle. She felt it was best to keep an eye on him, but not to crowd.

  “He’ll be here filing harassment complaints if you’re not careful.”

  “I’ll be careful, but I won’t back off because we found some more kills.” He handed Tess some photos. “Turns out the fire uncovered more poached carcasses.”

  Tess glanced at the photos, trying with all her might to fight the shock and nausea. Born and raised in Southern California, a region not all that hunter friendly, Tess was new to the hunting culture. At first, the animal lover in her had screamed for Bambi, but hunting friends like Victor Camus clued her in to the sport and to the fact that 99 percent of the hunters in her jurisdiction hunted not only for the sport, but for the meat. They ate venison and elk, and if they didn’t, they found someone who did. Poachers were the one percent who wasted and killed for the wrong reasons. Yarrow had been trying to catch this particular offender all summer long.

  Whether the pictures before her were the work of poachers, Tess couldn’t say; she’d have to take Yarrow’s word for it. From what she could see—and she wasn’t certain because the animals were charred and burnt—there was a headless deer, a headless elk, and what looked like the body of a dog.

  “He shot a dog?”

  “It’s a wolf, one of my marked wolves. He killed him and skinned him. These photos were taken up on the ridge around the boundary of Rogue’s Hollow and BLM land. This guy kills whatever crosses his path.”

  Tess glanced from Yarrow to Logan, remembering the poor dead lambs. “So does this confirm that he’s also responsible for the dead livestock?”

  Steve nodded. “Some bullet fragments taken from poached bears were similar to fragments taken from one of the dead lambs.”

  Tess shook her head. “Any idea why he’d target domestic animals as well?”

  Yarrow shrugged. “I think the guy is just plain mean.”

  “Hard to tell his motive for the farm animals,” Steve said. “But it could be spite. Blakely is the most disagreeable man I’ve ever known.”

  “Yes, that’s Blakely,” Tess conceded. “Is there a lot of money in poaching?”

  “The wolf pelts maybe. But he’s killed five black bears, gutted them, and removed their gallbladders. There’s a heavy black-market demand for those.”

  Tess had read something about that. Bear gallbladders were supposed to be a cure for many diseases.

  “He might leave an online trail for that. He’s not selling bear gallbladders in the Hollow.”

  “He claims he doesn’t own a computer or a cell phone. Says he doesn’t know how to use them. In our search, we didn’t recover a computer. And unfortunately, I don’t have the resources or the tech skills to dig around online.”

  “What’s good about finding these old kills—” Steve held up an evidence bag—“is we recovered more bullet fragments. They can be compared against everything else we’ve recovered. There will be a landslide of evidence when we catch him.”

  “All you need is the gun,” Tess observed. “What exactly is the profile of a poacher?” she asked.

  “Blakely.” Steve and Yarrow spoke in unison.

  “Ken’s no dummy.” Steve cast a glance at Yarrow. “He was born and raised here, probably knows the terrain better than anyone. I grew up with him. He killed his first deer when we were twelve.”

  “He worked at the butcher shop before he got arrested and sent to prison,” Yarrow added, “so he knows how to cut up an animal. I’m convinced he has his weapon or weapons stashed somewhere. There’s also a good chance that he’s set up a hunting blind in the forest, and that’s where he’s hiding stuff. I’ll find it if it’s the last thing I do.”

  Steve hooked his thumbs in his belt. “I can’t say I know everyone in Rogue’s Hollow, but no one name jumps out at me like Ken’s. He came out of prison a different man, more angry and difficult. Living on disability now, claims he can’t work because of headaches. Poaching would supplement his income. Just to cover all the bases, we’re going to talk to Victor Camus. He might have heard something different, or maybe he’s noticed something off. He’s in the forest a lot.”

  Tess agreed with that. As a local hunting guide, Victor knew the forest even better than Yarrow. “What should I be looking for?”

  “Someone like Ken who doesn’t work suddenly having money,” Yarrow said. “That’s an expensive truck he drives around. Someone good with a gun—the newer kills were spot-on; the guy’s aim is dead-on.”

  “Ken was always a good shot.”

  Yarrow nodded in agreement. “I want to put up some trail cams.”

  He walked to the map of Jackson County hanging on Tess’s office wall. He pointed to a couple of spots on the border of Rogue’s Hollow and BLM property. It was rough country and had partially escaped the fire. “Because of the fire, he’s lost some hunting ground. If he is based here in the Hollow, odds are good that he’ll make his way along these trails eventually. They lead to bear territory.”

  “Fine, I don’t have a problem with that.”

  “Thanks,” Yarrow said.

  “Is there anything else I can help you with?” Tess asked.

  “I’ll be sure and let you know if I think of something,” he said and left.

  Logan lingered. “How are you doing, Tess? That fire was something.”

  “Oh yeah. It could have been much worse. We were lucky that the resources were close, and it was a freak late-season fire.”

  “I hear you met the hermit.”

  “Ah.” Tess smiled. Just about everyone wanted to know about Livie
Harp. “The Rogue telegraph spreads the news. I did. She’s impressive, but quite the enigma.”

  “I remember when she moved up here. The telegraph was on fire. I would have bet that she was in witness protection, but—” he arched an eyebrow—“I’m not sure that makes sense. You have any thoughts?”

  “To be honest, I’ve been trying to dig into her background, figure out what gives. I haven’t had any luck. She certainly is off the grid and self-sustained. But she doesn’t cause any problems for me, that’s for sure.”

  “Well, if you get a chance to visit her again, think of your old friend Steve Logan, okay?” He spread his hands. “I’d like to get a read on her. She takes prepping to the next level.”

  “You got it.”

  Steve gave a thumbs-up and left her office.

  Tess brooded. She’d wanted to tell him about the witness being sheltered and hoped he’d forgive her if he had to learn about it in a different manner.

  11

  Ice cooled his heels in Reno for a few days. While he waited for the incident in San Jose to calm down, he’d changed his appearance. He studied his face in the hotel mirror as if memorizing his new look. He’d buzzed his hair and then dyed what remained jet-black and left his beard to grow a bit. He didn’t care for this look, but it was necessary. He’d changed his appearance many times over the years, ever since he’d shed the name Royal for Ice. He wasn’t even averse to makeup or color-tinted contacts. He’d gotten good with makeup and fancied himself a master of disguise. It had to be done, so he’d live with this new change as long as he needed to.

  From what he read on the San Jose news sites, the girl he’d left next to the dead cheater had given the police a good description of him, but not perfect. It helped that the cheater had drugged her enough to make her unsure of just about everything. He didn’t like to waste time on regrets, so he didn’t go down the road that said he should have killed her too. At any rate, that was miles behind him now. He was hunkered down at a cheap hotel in downtown Reno. The secret to staying free was to move fast and without hesitation. It always took the cops a while to catch up, so he was used to moving along. And he never used credit cards; his life operated on untraceable cash.