Page 18 of A Song for the Dead

“He lives out near the Triple Z Bar in a cabin in the forest.” Rio sighed. “We searched all over but couldn’t find a cabin. Same with Hank Maxwell, the one who called in on the hotline. He said he lives on Twisted Limbs Trail in a cabin.” He threw up his hands. “Rowley knows the forest and we found nothing. There is a Twisted Limbs Trail and we walked two miles and never found a cabin. I called the number from the hotline log and it went to voicemail. I’ve been calling all day.”

Jenna leaned back and sighed. “What about Elliot Cummings? Did you make any headway at finding him?

“Nope, we went by his house on Pine three times during the day and he’s not there.” Rio frowned. “He told his boss he was sick but maybe it was an excuse to go fishing or something?”

“Maybe, but not being able to find any of them is unusual.” Kane stood and filled the coffee machine. “They’ll hold until the morning. We don’t have a body and we only have circumstantial evidence at best. Cummings is only a vague witness to a fast-moving truck, so hardly a suspect, although I’d like to speak to him. Sometimes people see more than they think, and I have ways of extracting information. In the meantime, we had the unpleasant task of exhuming five bodies today. Jo believes Freya Richardson could be a victim of the Halloween Slasher. She’s listened to the tape and studied all the crime scenes attributed to him from seven years ago. If she’s correct about it being the same man, and I figure she is, he’s going to murder two more people over the next week or so before Halloween.”

Nodding, Jenna looked from one to the other. “Get out the map of Bear Peak and grid-search it using the drone. You’ll be hunting down anything that could be a gravesite. It will be walking distance from a fire road, so that will narrow it down. If you find anything at all, get the coordinates and we’ll go look.” She thought for a beat. “If we find Freya Richardson, we’ll need to leave her undisturbed, horrible as it sounds, because if he has another murder planned, he’ll be back to dig the grave. When he returns, we’ll have him and hopefully prevent another murder.”

“How do you plan to do that?” Rowley’s brow wrinkled into a frown. “We can’t camp out there twenty-four/seven. He’ll see us for sure.”

“We’ll set up trail cams with motion sensors. Around the grave.” Kane leaned against the counter with the coffee machine gurgling behind him. “I’ll set them to alert me on my phone. We can position them in all directions and on the fire road as well. If we can get the plate on his vehicle, we’ll have his name.”

Knowing Kane would have a plan, Jenna smiled. “The beauty of it is that we don’t have to charge in making a noise. It takes, what, four or five hours to dig a grave? We can sneak in and surround him.” She pushed papers into a folder on her desk and dropped it into a drawer. “We’ll be heading over shortly to see what Wolfe has found, so if you find anything interesting, call me. You’ve been out all day, like us, so don’t forget to take your regular break. I need you both fresh in case we have a breakthrough.”

Rio and Rowley nodded, stood, and left the room, closing the door behind them.

“The phone they found looks perfect. It hasn’t been damaged by the damp. The killer obviously wanted it to remain intact, but why?” Kane poured coffee and then bent to take food out of the refrigerator. “We have cherry pie. Want me to warm it in the microwave?”

A chilling thought went through Jenna’s mind and she stared at him. “Yeah sure, thanks.” Her mind went straight back to what Kane had just mentioned. “He wanted to keep the phones intact.” She swallowed hard. “You don’t believe he wanted to call the graves, do you?”

“Nothing would surprise me anymore.” Kane slid two wedges of pie into the microwave and then placed two cups of coffee on Jenna’s desk. “When we get more phones analyzed we’ll be able to check, but surely he’d know the batteries would die within a few days.”

Sipping her coffee to quell her clenching stomach, she grimaced. “Unless he’s calling the recently buried body to tell her that she has a friend coming? It’s possible. You know how sick psychopaths can be. I’ll never understand why they do what they do. It’s all part of whatever delusion is playing through their heads. I guess it must be like being stuck inside a game. They have to keep replaying the same stage until they can finish… but they never finish.”

“Until we finish them.” Kane placed the pie and silverware onto the desk and sat down. “If their heads are like that, I’m not surprised how many choose death by cop. Dying would be a relief.” He shrugged. “There are so many different species of the beast. Some like you described, I could pity. The ones who brag about their kills are in a nasty class of their own.”

Jenna shook her head. “I don’t feel sorry for any of them. Call me hard, but when I look at their victims all I want to do is remove their killers from society. They’re the silent pestilence destroying lives and families. That’s why I became sheriff, to stop them.” She looked into Kane’s eyes. “Underneath, we are much the same, Dave. We have a common goal and that’s to protect people, no matter what the cost to our own peace of mind.”

“Amen to that.” Kane dug into his pie.

TWENTY-THREE

I slip into the forest, taking a well-used track and have no worries about being seen. Anyone passing would just see a regular guy hiking and enjoying his day. No one will take any notice. I could carry a gun or an ax without attracting a second glance. Many go in search of dead trees to collect firewood, and being armed is a given when bears are out hunting for food. I can drag things back and forth without anyone calling the sheriff because people carry their kills to their trucks and usually head for the meat-processing plant. It’s nice to be regarded as normal, even if the carcass I carry is human. Who would know? Not in all my years of moving bodies has anyone questioned me or commented on the stink of blood. Why should they? The stink of death around the forest in hunting season is familiar, as is seeing hunters splashed with blood after field dressing a kill.

Never once have I been stopped by a game warden to ask to see my license or my sheet of tags. They are all too busy inspecting kills to bother about me. I’m following a trail that has become familiar now. I hunted down the perfect place to leave my offering, my blood sacrifice guaranteed to keep me safe. It has worked for a long time. I’ve never fallen sick, broken a bone, or had an argument with anyone. In fact, what had happened in Black Rock Falls seven years ago saved my life, and now I’ll pay my debt. If I’d been in the forest over Halloween that year, someone would have noticed me, as at the time the place was crawling with people. Disasters bring people together, and I don’t appreciate onlookers. What I do is private, sacred, and so I’d packed up and hightailed it out of town. Pushing back old memories, I move into the shady clearing and smile at the mound of dirt so carefully concealed with fall leaves and pine needles. “Hey, Freya, I’ll have a new friend for you tonight. Do you know how lucky you are to be selected for my offering? Maybe I’ll call you later and tell you all about it, but right now I have a grave to finish.”

I move into the shadows to retrieve my shovel, hidden beneath a clump of bushes, and set to work. My mind dances ahead and adrenaline races my heart. Later tonight I’ll watch, wait, and then slide into the house of my next offering. She’ll be clean and fragrant just as all the others. That part of the ritual is crucial and it’s so incredible that all the women comply. It’s as if they know it’s their turn and offer themselves willingly. Maybe they do? The fear is essential, the passing over in terror is a crucial part of the sacrifice that ensures my life will remain uncomplicated. My shoulders ache, but I keep digging as the hours pass by and I’m driven to work hard, heedless of the blisters on my hands. How many graves have I dug? The turning of the soil, the hardship is all part of it. I must toil and sweat to prove myself worthy, and each three I offer will give me nine more years. I chuckle. “I’m going to live forever.”

TWENTY-FOUR

After dropping Duke by Wolfe’s office, Jenna followed Kane to Wolfe’s laboratory. When she flashed her card to gain entrance, she found him at a desk. On the desk he had a line of phones all attached to chargers. When he glanced up as they walked inside, she smiled at him. “Hey, Shane, found anything interesting?”

“Disturbingwould be a better description. I haven’t worked on all of the files yet, but I’ve been able to charge the phones—well, one of them. In the oldest grave is an MP3 player. None of the phones had passwords. Maybe they were removed by the killer.” Wolfe raised both eyebrows. “Special care was taken to preserve them and I’ve not only been able to extract all the content on the first three, but I have the names of the owners, and although Norrell hasn’t confirmed the identity of the bodies yet, we have the first four names. It seems the phone we found with each body belongs to the previous victim, so the MP3 player in the oldest grave must come from one of a group of victims we haven’t discovered yet.”

Trying to get her head around the implications, Jenna frowned. “There’s more than six? How far does this go back? The forest overgrows everything. It’s only since the floods we’ve been discovering a ton of things buried in the past. This is why Blackhawk has been grid-searching the forest, but he is only one man. It will take him ten lifetimes to search everywhere.” She stared at Wolfe, not really seeing him. The information was just too weird. “Let me get this right. The killer made recordings of each murder using the previous victim’s phone? Why do you figure he did that?”

“I can only imagine when he began his murder spree, he had the idea to record the murders, but wouldn’t risk using a phone or device he’d purchased.” Wolfe cleared his throat. “There is another very disturbing aspect to this case as well. When we checked the phone logs from Lydia’s missing phone, we discovered she’d made a call to the phone in her grave, which is owned by Josephine Wade. It obviously wasn’t picked up and there was no message. Lydia’s phone hasn’t been used since. If this is the Halloween Slasher, there’s a good chance we’ll find Lydia’s phone in Freya’s grave.”

“You’re saying, the killer called the grave from the victim’s missing phone? He called Josephine Wade’s phone?” Kane frowned. “How could you know it was the killer? People would be calling a missing girl, right?”

“Once we identified the victim as Lydia Ellis, I called the sheriff in Louan to notify the next of kin. The second body is Josephine Wade, as we surmised as she’s the owner of the phone in Lydia’s grave. I called the sheriff’s office again and asked them if the victim’s parents knew a girl by the name of Josephine Wade out of Black Rock Falls. Luckily when Lydia went missing, they compiled a list of friends and acquaintances, anyone who might have seen her. They still had the list and Josephine wasn’t on it. They lived in different counties.”

“They were killed around the same time. How do you know Lydia didn’t call Josephine before she died?” Kane rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe they met and she hadn’t told anyone?”

“Well, this is where it gets creepy.” Wolfe leaned forward in his chair. “The log puts the call hours after the time of the recording of the murder. Josephine Wade was already dead, and from the current evidence, so was Lydia.”

Sickened, Jenna ran a hand down her face. “So, murder isn’t enough for this guy. He has to call to make sure they’re dead? Oh, what type of sick freak have we got in town this time?”

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