by Hadena James
the Columbia branded fleece and revealed another Columbia branded fleece. “I don’t actually give a shit what I dress in, left to my own devices it is jeans and t-shirts. But I’m a living doll for lack of a better term. I have a personal shopper who picks out my clothing, takes me to get my hair done, the works. He is meticulous in both dress and appearance, picking out clothes that are flattering in cut and color and of the latest fashion. He says I look like a bum when I pick out my own clothing. He has even color coordinated my dresser and closet.”
“You think you can bait him out if he’s involved in the investigation?” Arons asked.
“Ace has a way of getting under the skin of men and women who like to kill. If he’s met her, he’s already had his thoughts about her,” Lucas said.
“And when she gets going, there is really no stopping her,” Xavier smiled. “It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had a serial killer give himself away by coming after her. It happened on a couple of months ago on a case as a matter of fact.”
“Are you guys really as crazy as they say?” Arons asked, giving us a look.
“Probably more so,” Gabriel answered. If he was going to say more, it was lost to the knocking on the door.
Six
Two hours later and all of us were back at the crime scene. Lucas and I had already seen it. However, someone had put a rope, a stake and a hammer on the ground. I frowned at them.
“You are so not hanging me upside down,” I told them.
“You’re the right build,” Xavier told me.
“Uh, and Doctor, what if it causes an aneurism to burst in my brain?” I pointed out.
“That’s your concern? An aneurism? Really?” Xavier laughed.
“Serial killers I can see, aneurism I can’t,” I told him.
“We aren’t hanging you,” Gabriel told me. “Someone left these here while we were gone. During a shift change of the state police.”
“That’s disturbing,” Xavier answered.
“You’re telling me,” I said. “But does that sound like something our killer would do?”
“Not really,” Lucas said. “As a matter of fact, I’d say it was very out of character for him.”
“So a fan?” I said.
“But whose?” Gabriel gave me a pointed look.
“Hey, I haven’t heard from mine for a while, not since Christmas,” I said.
“Yes, but it is hard to rule him out,” Lucas said.
“True, this is theatrical enough for him,” I admitted. “But it’s terribly cold, would he follow me to Alaska?”
“I think he’d follow you anywhere, but this doesn’t strike me as him,” Lucas knelt down.
Xavier knelt with him, pulling on a pair of gloves, he picked up the rope. For several minutes we were all very quiet. Xavier moved every piece around, examined every piece. Finally he dropped it all and stood up, pulling the gloves off.
“My guess, teenagers,” he said.
“Why?” Gabriel asked.
“There’s part of a joint under the pile and most of it smells like pot,” Xavier answered. “If I had to bet, I’d say some stoned teenagers got the idea after watching the news last night and dumped these things afterwards.”
“Drugs definitely do not sound like either our killer or Ace’s fan,” Lucas said staring at the rope.
“What do we do with it then?” I asked.
“We have it sent to the lab and processed,” Gabriel said giving me a dumb look.
“Ok,” I looked around.
The pristine snow was no longer pristine. A few animals had dared to venture into the area. I wasn’t a master tracker nor could I identify the tracks, but that wasn’t really the point. The point was that I had been right. With the Pine-Sol body safely tucked away at the morgue and the smell dissipating, the animals were coming back.
I pointed. Lucas caught the gesture and stared through the evergreens and the few struggling non-evergreens. His eyes found the tracks and locked onto them.
“Moose,” he said after several minutes.
“Really?” I had seen a moose in the zoo, but never up close and personal outside a cage.
“Really,” Lucas’s eyes continued to stare into the abyss of the snowy wilderness.
“What’s on your mind?” Gabriel asked him.
“I just hate when she’s right,” Lucas gave him a smirk.
“We all do, but that’s bullshit, you have something on your mind,” Gabriel was trying to see where he was looking.
“What if he watched?” Lucas slowly started turning in a circle. “What if he climbed one of these trees and watched through a scope?”
“You don’t think we would have noticed?” Special Agent Arons asked.
“I don’t know,” Lucas was still looking thoughtful into something I couldn’t see.
“Let me help you think through it,” I said to him.
“How far do you think you could see out here?” He finally turned his striking, icy blue eyes to me.
“I don’t know, I think snow-blindness would be a problem during the day,” I answered.
“You’ve never been hunting,” Lucas smiled at me.
“Can’t say I have,” I admitted, “but that doesn’t change the thought process behind it. Sitting in a tree where you could see the investigation going on for hours on end, I would think that would be problematic. Back home, they hunt in blinds, I don’t know if it’s different up here, but they don’t sit on a tree branch all day.”
“That’s true,” Lucas looked back out into the woods.
“Besides, we would see his tracks somewhere,” I told him.
“Not if we weren’t looking for them,” he pointed to the ground.
He was right, outside the path to this spot and the spot itself, there weren’t any other footprints. This meant that no one had bothered to secure an outside perimeter. This seemed like a major oversight. There weren’t even footprints leading past this spot. We were in a natural clearing and outside the clearing was the rest of the world.
“We should search the area,” Gabriel said.
“Damn,” I looked at my feet. I was already ankle deep in the white powdery crap. I hated snow.
“Put ten feet between you and begin walking forward, we’ll go one way until I say to stop,” Gabriel shouted.
“Between us,” Lucas said to me. I knew he meant between him and Xavier. I didn’t think this would help with a sniper, but you never knew.
Xavier flanked me on one side. Lucas took the other side. Gabriel gave them a look, but said nothing. It had become somewhat obvious since I joined the group that Lucas was protective of me. That didn’t mean he walked in front of me everywhere we went, quite the opposite. He helped me prove myself, making sure when I took point, I was calm and firing straight and fast.
We began walking. The snow proved deeper once we got off the path. It went above my snow boots, spilling into them. I could feel it squelch under my feet, soaking my socks.
There were other factors to contend with though. I didn’t have the men’s long legs, I was the shorter by at least half a foot. The snow was nearly up to my knees in some spots. I struggled to move my legs.
The cold air didn’t help. The wind was blowing and the forecasted high of thirty-one degrees hadn’t hit yet. The cold air burned in my lungs. Together, they tired me faster. Two hundred yards in and I was already panting. My feet were cold and nothing I could do would warm them.
I’d had hypothermia before, only a mild case, but a mild case was still hypothermia. It hadn’t felt like this. It had been instantaneous after jumping into Lake Michigan in late October.
“Stop,” Xavier said. We’d made it maybe another hundred feet. He walked over to me.
“Go away,” I huffed at him.
“Still have smoker’s lungs,” Xavier pulled off his gloves and felt my face.
“Then why isn’t Gabriel panting?” I asked.
&nbs
p; “Doesn’t matter,” Xavier pulled down my eyelids. I had no idea what that was going to show, but he frowned at me harder. “She’s going to have to go back. The snow’s too deep for her here.”
“I’m fine, just needed to catch my breath,” I pushed him away.
“Look She-Ra, I’m sure you’d be fine if it was fifty degrees, but it isn’t. You’ve got snow in your boots which means your feet are getting wet and you are cold. You’ve had hypothermia before, I am not risking you having it again,” Xavier said.
“He’s right,” Gabriel said. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but you should probably go back, get your shoes off and turn the heat on.”
“I’m fine,” I repeated, my breath no longer escaping from me in ragged plumes that hovered over me.
“Come on, Cain,” Lucas marched over to me.
“If I have the strength to get back to the vehicle, I have enough to continue forward,” I pointed out. “Besides, I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to sit in the car alone when there is a serial killer out there, picking women like me.”
“I would be more worried about you attacking him,” Gabriel chuckled softly as he walked over to me.
“Let’s just get on with it,” I told them.
“The doctor thinks you should go back,” Gabriel looked me over.
“I don’t think we should risk her,” Xavier repeated.
“Give me a minute,” Gabriel walked away. He dug out his phone. Xavier went back to examining me. He put his hands on the back of my neck and adjusted my head.
“What do you hope to find out by doing that?” I asked.
“I am checking your muscle control along with your awareness,” Xavier told me.
“I think you are making shit up,” I told him.
“It gets all of us out of the cold,” he smiled at me.
“Asshole,” I smiled at him.
“Believe it or not, you are at an elevated risk in this weather with this sort of snow, considering you are a city girl,” Xavier shrugged.
“Really?” I gave him a suspicious look.
“If you had been born here or conditioned here, then no, you’d be fine. You weren’t and no matter how bad Missouri winters get, they aren’t Alaska,” Xavier told me.
“Ok, we’ll go wait in the car, we have a search team on the way,” Gabriel came back over.
“Come on, Ace,” Lucas made a motion towards me.
“If you pick me up, I’ll shoot you,” I told him.
He threw his head back and laughed. The sound was loud in the silence and seemed to make the snow crackle. He caught me with one hand on my coat.
“No you won’t,” he tossed me over his shoulder and we began moving out of the woods.
I was less than happy about being fireman carried out of the snowy woods. It was embarrassing enough to be the reason we turned back. This was just adding injury to insult. I watched his footprints as we moved.
“Wait!” I cried, hitting him gently on the back.
“What?” He asked.
“The women, how is he getting them in? We aren’t finding any clothing out here. No shoes with the bodies, but freezing didn’t start in the limbs until after they were dead. So how did he get them out here?” I asked.
“You thought of that because he was carrying you?” Special Agent Arons tried to look at me. I righted myself, towering over Lucas as I did. His hands adjusted to hold me better.
“Well think about it,” I looked at Xavier. “If he is carrying them out here then hoisting them up using that wrapped around the tree branch method, that’s tiring. Lucas could do it to me all day long and never think twice about it, but most men are not Lucas and a woman being carried nude into the woods is going to be fighting.”
“She has a point,” Xavier walked over to me. “You think he carried them?”
“No, I think he made them walk out here and then stripped them down. He has to secure them while he either scurries up the tree to wrap the rope around the branch or he is doing something different than our original thought and is dropping them back,” I paused. “I think I just confused myself.”
“You got that because he was carrying you?” Special Agent Arons asked.
“I have weird thought processes,” I told him.
“He’s tied their feet and hands,” Xavier said.
“So? If it was me, I’d be trying to crawl away. I know what comes next in the horror story and I imagine they do too. Yet, I didn’t see any marks where our victim had tried to crawl away. Sure there were tons of footprints, but no knee prints, no rope marks, nothing to indicate that our victim tried to escape. Why not?”
“Too scared?” Lucas asked.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But, I’m not so sure. I mean, you know there is a guy skinning women alive in your area. You’ve been brought to the woods and tied up. The dots get connected. Is anyone too terrified to try to escape at that point?”
“Hog tied?” Xavier suggested.
“I can wiggle while hog tied, probably better than with just my hands and feet bound,” I told him.
“You know that how?” Special Agent Arons asked.
“I’ve been hog tied by a serial killer; I flopped onto my side and managed to get to a table where I knocked off a knife. I accidentally stabbed myself twice, but I got out of the ropes,” I told him. That had happened in December. I hadn’t been the target; I just happened to be at the right place at the wrong time and was kidnapped instead of Gabriel. I haven’t driven the company car since. The windows are too darkly tinted for serial killers to accurately guess who is inside.
“But most women aren’t you,” Lucas pointed out.
“That’s true, but I can’t imagine a woman going without a fight knowing that she is going to be skinned alive,” I could only think of one death that was worse and I had faced it already.
“Yes, but that’s you,” Lucas said more pointedly.
“You honestly think and want me to believe that faced with her fate, she just accepted it and let it happen?” I put my hands on his shoulders to look down at him.
“It wouldn’t be the first time a victim has given up, Ace. Remember, you are never a victim,” he said to me.
“That horrifies me in ways you can’t begin to imagine,” I told him.
“I’m sure it does, but lack of evidence suggests she didn’t struggle,” he looked up at me. “If I put you down, do you think you can walk back on the path?”
“Yes, but go ahead and toss me over your shoulder again, I might think of something else useful along the way,” I told him with a snicker.
Lucas didn’t put me down, just adjusted my position again. This brought me more level with him, cradling instead of tossing me over his shoulder like a caveman. Xavier walked next to us. His face pinched in thought.
“If you aren’t thinking about sex, I’ll give you a quarter for your thoughts,” I said to him.
“And if I am?” He continued to look at our feet.
“Then you owe me a quarter,” I teased.
“Well, I’m not. I was thinking about the best way to drag someone into the woods. An average sized guy and an average sized girl,” he said.
“If she had given up, it would be easy,” I said.
“Yes, but they can’t all have given up, some of them must have had the spunk and will to survive to fight back,” Xavier responded.
“A gun,” Lucas said.
“It’s nighttime,” I looked at Xavier. “I get where you’re going. It’s night, it’s dark, it’s been snowing like hell and it’s Alaska.”
“This isn’t the northern part of the state,” Arons interjected. “Not everyone carries a gun.”
“No, but Alaska has the highest gun ownership per capita of any state,” I told him.
“Do you know everything?” Arons asked.
“No, if I did, I would win the lottery and buy an island where there were no serial killers,”
I told him.
“If you bought an island, it would be attacked by pirates who just happened to also be serial killers,” Gabriel said.
“Ok, I’d buy… I don’t know… I’d buy something. Anyway, so how do you get a woman who doesn’t want to go into the woods in the dark?”
“A gun,” Lucas repeated.
“I’m not intimidated by a gun, especially if I am pretty sure something worse than death is going to happen first,” I answered.
“You are not an average female,” Lucas said.
“True, but there must be average females that will fight for their lives. I’d run into the trees,” I told him. “Zig-zag my way around so that as he is firing shots, he doesn’t have a good line of sight on me.”
“You couldn’t walk through the snow, Ace,” Xavier looked up at me.
“Well hell,” I couldn’t argue that.
Seven
Two hours later, the search team had come up with nothing. Only our tracks and a few animal prints. My feet were wrapped in fleece and Xavier had them against his chest. Everyone else had gotten hot and climbed out of the SUV. Xavier was shirtless and the entire thing probably looked ridiculous. However, it turned out he was right. I was not built for cold weather. He was demanding a circulation test when we got back to Missouri. My feet had started turning colors by the time we reached the SUV. They were now warm and no longer weirdly shaded, but that didn’t seem to stop Xavier from keeping them elevated and pressed, soles first, into his chest.
“Talk to me some more about getting the women in the woods,” he said after he checked my toes again.
“I don’t think I can help there. You’re right, I couldn’t run through this snow any more than I could fly,” I said.
“But you aren’t a native,” Xavier said.
“Does that matter?” I asked.
“Yes, a native, even a city girl, would be more acclimated to the climate. They would have more practical snow boots, for a start. Be him, how do you do it?”
“Honestly?” I frowned at him, uncomfortable lying down in the back of the SUV with my feet on his chest. “I tie them to me. It keeps them from getting away and it helps them keep their balance. I don’t drag them that would be ineffective in such weather conditions. I keep pace with them. If they start to stumble, I can grab them. I don’t want them face-planting in this stuff. The cold comes later.”
“How?” Lucas opened the door and stuck his head in.
“What do you mean how?” I looked at him as he let some of the heat escape.
“What you said just now, you tie them to you? Do you tie their hands?” He looked at me. I could tell he knew the answer, he was testing me. He did this from time to time.
“No, that would result in jerky movements. I tie the rope at their waist and put them in front of me, especially if I have a gun. If I’m using a knife as my threatening weapon, I have to keep them pinned to my side. That seems impractical.”
“What other weapons could you have?” Xavier asked.
“Beats me. We know he uses a knife, but what do you threaten a person with to get them to go with you? You use a gun, because in theory, it is scarier. They don’t have to be close to kill you,” I said.
“True, but there has to be other weapons that would be as effective,” Xavier said.
“How about a crossbow?” Lucas asked.
“Uh,” I gave him a look. As a medievalist, I found crossbows to be great for hunting, not so great at