Thriller (36 page)

He stood beneath the big conifers in front of his cabin picking huckleberries as Matty arrived with Jack Mix. A very curious combination. She an old woman, and he a former FBI agent.

Matty approached and Kier sensed the tension in her frail body

as she gripped his wrists with a grandmother’s love. Mix kept

back a respectable few paces.

“Jake, my grandson, has gone off into the mountains, to the

caverns, with Carmen,” Matty said. “They left three days ago before daylight and were returning late the same day.” She stared

at her feet. “And there’s another thing.”

He waited for her to explain.

“Jake was going to the cliffs, at the top of the caverns.”

“Below Universe Rock? The sacred place?”

“It’s wrong. I know.”

“And they were to return the same day?”

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She nodded. “The next day was my birthday. Jake would never

miss his grandmother’s birthday.”

He knew that was true.

“You will go?” Matty said, desperation in her voice. “Everyone knows you’re descended from the last Spirit Walker. It’s in

you. You can find them.”

His grandfather had indeed been a Spirit Walker, one of the

tribe’s mystics, revered men who came along once in a hundred

years. They guided the Talth, advised the tribe, communed with

spirits and discerned the hearts of men. Kier intimately knew the

forest and taught the young its secrets. He was an ordinary man,

half Anglo, half Tilok, but also a veterinarian trained in science,

so part of him required the comfort of reason.

“You’ll go get them,” Matty said again, her voice breaking.

“Please.”

“I’ll go,” Kier assured her. “Spirit Walker or not.”

“It’s where the ghosts are. Raccoon says he saw a ghost. Robes

white as bleached sheets. Jake and Carmen thought maybe Raccoon would be there with the ghosts. That’s why they went.”

Kier had heard the rumors of ghosts and murder. Fantastical

stories that grew under their own weight.

Mix seemed to be waiting for Matty to leave, but she didn’t. So

they walked up on the porch and Kier invited them both to sit.

Kier was curious about Mix. He seemed to be hanging around a

lot lately. Under the eave, Mix removed his straw hat, revealing

cropped brown hair that matched a neat mustache. Mix had made

a fine transition from law officer to owner of a local feed store and

wildlife photographer, even if he had never quite fit socially with

the stranger-shy locals. Like Kier’s wife, Jessie, also an ex-FBI

agent, Mix had gladly given up the big city for the backcountry.

“Some of my friends from the FBI called,” Mix said. “I recommended that they ask for your help. You’re the best forensic

tracker around.”

He caught Mix’s real message. “The FBI isn’t looking for Jake

and Carmen. Or ghosts.”

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“You’re right,” Mix replied. “They want to talk to Raccoon. Just

yesterday they spoke with me. The couple over in Lassen County

a year ago, they never found the girl, and the boy was a cooked

pile of meat. That boy’s father was a state senator. Then we had

a couple from Humboldt just disappear off the face of the earth.

The press is starting to use the words
serial killer.
”

“That’s got nothing to do with Raccoon.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. What can you tell me about him?”

“We call him Kawa We Ma. A gentle man inside a big body.”

He pictured Raccoon as he’d last seen him, wearing a leather

flight jacket over deer hide. The man had been born Josiah Morgan, a part-Tilok orphan adopted by the tribe. The nickname

came from the port-wine stain on his face that gave him the look

of a raccoon’s mask.

“The tracks the sheriff found, and some other things, were suspicious,” Mix said. “Raccoon disappears for days.”

“You disappear for days in the woods, too, with your photography.”

“I come back out. Talk to people. Run a store.”

“Raccoon talks to the forest,” Kier said. “People don’t understand him, so they fear him. You and I have no idea what it would

be like to see a miracle in every blooming flower. Raccoon is a

man distracted by miracles. He’s incapable of hurting anyone.”

“If he isn’t doing anything, then why not track him for them?”

Mix asked.

“Because I don’t want to.”

Matty faced him. “Raccoon told Carmen that above the caverns, in the cliffs, there’s a cabin with a ghost. Right above Man

Jumps.”

Carmen was Raccoon’s daughter, whom Kier knew the man

worshipped. So he believed the information.

Mix produced a bag of shelled pistachios and offered some.

Kier scooped a few, as did Matty. “A cabin would show up on aerial photos,” Mix said.

Kier shook his head. “It wouldn’t be visible in a cave or hol-
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low. And since it is sacred, no one goes there. Not even rock

climbers.”

“Who would you say Raccoon really cares about?” Mix asked.

Kier smiled. “That’s a perceptive question for an ex-bureaucrat who sounds like he’s returning to his old ways. My grandfather used to say the difference between a good and an evil man

is what he loves. I’m not sure what Raccoon loves, other than

Carmen. But, like I said, Raccoon is not a killer.”

There were more questions, but Kier found that in answering

he was repeating himself in a manner he disliked. Finally he said

to Mix, “I thought you gave the FBI a flunking grade. Said they

didn’t protect the country the way they should. 9/11. The anthrax

killer, and all that.”

“I’ve got my beefs with them, but when it comes to a psychopath, I figure everyone has to pitch in.”

Kier nodded, as if he understood.

Kissing Jessie and his children goodbye, dispatching hugs all

around, and receiving the benedictory “be careful,” Kier left for

the woods. Three hours later he studied the tracks of Jake and

Carmen, which told him a story. From their separation and angle

he was certain these two were friends, not a couple. But it was

the third set of prints, following theirs, that consumed his attention. They were made by a heavy man in good physical shape.

Given the weight, the tireless stride, the smooth of the sole and

the way it rounded at the toe, they could have only come from

a handmade hide boot. Only a few Tiloks wore them and none

were this size, except perhaps for Raccoon and himself.

The wind molesting the trees made him uneasy. He wondered

if the murmur was more of Grandfather’s sense of the presence

of another life.

He allowed his mind to manipulate the puzzle engulfing him.

More unease crept through him. Around him rose the towering

rock faces of Iron Mountain with its caverns and Man Jumps, a

hole in the cliffside. A slow, 360-degree turn brought his senses

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to high alert. Something man-made, a patch of cloth on the

ground, just visible through the trees, caught his attention.

He inhaled deeply and noticed a strange, meaty smell, something like pot roast.

Hair rose on his arms.

He waited, not moving, listening, looking. Then he silently

slipped forward and repeated the exercise. Thirty minutes later,

after steadily creeping forward, he concluded that no one alive

waited for him ahead. The sense taught by his grandfather confounded him. It would not leave him. But he overruled the sensation and entered the camp.

The first thing he saw was the charred remains of Jake.

A groan escaped his lips. He tried to divorce from his thoughts

the agony that must have been Jake’s last experiences on earth.

He searched for signs of Carmen, imagining the terror she’d be

feeling. Anger rose in him, forming a familiar determination.

He studied the fire pit where Jake lay. Given the depth of the

ash, the remnants had burned maybe five hours. Probably the

killer had watched the campers for a while to savor what was

coming. So Kier knew what to do.

Find the watching spot
.

He backed away from the fire and soaked in the scene. Quickly,

he discovered where the killer had waited. Near the stream. And

a fishing rod, probably Jake’s, still leaned against a tree. He stared

at the prints in the earth. Discernible, but blurred. If he hadn’t

seen the same blurs elsewhere in the camp, he would have attributed it to the movements of impatience. If he didn’t know better, he would have said there were two large men making similar

tracks.

Raccoon was here.

But Kier knew he wasn’t the killer.

He surveyed the surrounding ground.

Something small and white caught his gaze. He bent down to

examine it. A tiny flake. No. A chip of something. Not really.

Much more.

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A piece from a pistachio nut.

One thought rushed through his mind. Jack Mix.

He reeled off the possibilities. Mix could have easily made a

print that size. He possessed the requisite weight, but to make

either he would have been forced to stretch his stride to emulate

Raccoon.

What did this mean?

He returned to the camp and searched for a sign of struggle

or a spot where Carmen might have been tied down, but found

nothing. He discovered a blood spatter at the base of the cliff.

Fifty feet up the rock wall he spotted a blood smear. He knew

what both meant. Jake had tumbled down the cliffs. Then he’d

been cooked, like the boy in Lassen County.

But why?

To mask something.

Grandfather’s sense of another life dogged him. But his scientific training reminded him that superstitions achieved nothing. So he circled the camp, searching for an exit track. On the

far side lay a tan sheet of paper. He bent down and saw that the

sheet was a map. Beneath it laid a Polaroid photo of a woman in

her mid-thirties.

It was Jessie.

His wife.

And in her engaging smile he saw the inherent goodness that

would incite any killer to want to destroy her. Fear threatened

to overwhelm him. The message resonated clear. The killer had

known he’d be here and had seized his vulnerability.

Ignore it.

He stuffed the picture in his pocket and studied the map. The

area depicted was the Wintoon River, with an X marking the location of his cabin. He shuddered, but hesitated. Too obvious.

Something flashed in the corner of his eye.

Movement.

He gazed through the foliage.

Someone was there.

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He dived into the brush, but a thump knocked him sideways,

slamming him into the ground. Crawling on one side, a great

river of pain swept down his spine, shoulder and arm. His breath

came in gasps. Pain screamed through his mind. A crossbow bolt

protruded from his flesh just to the left of his chin. It had traveled upward from behind, piercing his left trapezius muscle between the shoulder and neck, exiting just above the clavicle.

He struggled to escape the thickets and developed a sort of

sliding crawl that enabled him to keep his shoulder rigid. Any

movement produced unbearable pain. Finally he slipped into the

forest, away from the camp.

More arrows sliced through the foliage.

He freed his belt and wrapped it around his hand, forming a

leather sheath.

Reaching above the razor-sharp blades of the arrow, he nestled

the leather against the bottom edges, then yanked. The stiff feather

fletching ripped through the meat of his trapezius and came away

clean. For several minutes he did nothing but hang on to reality

and fight nausea. Then his mind started working. He removed

some sterile gauze from his backpack and applied it to both wounds.

The bleeding slowed.

Thank the Great Spirit.

He grabbed hold of his emotions, palmed a compact semiautomatic Ruger .22 pistol from his pack and eased twenty feet away.

The killer was here.

So he waited.

But no one came.

Sweating and in pain, Kier finally slipped warily out of the

bushes and found tracks exiting the camp. One set of large prints,

blurred, and smaller ones—Carmen’s, which showed significant

weight on the front of the foot, an indication that the killer

might be pulling her. No toe tics, tripping, staggering or the like.

She kept up a good stride on a steep incline and the implications

were clear. The killer was forcing her deeper into the mountains.

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His injury slowed him, and the notion that he might catch up

to them vanished. He found that by keeping his upper body

rigid, the muscles in his back bunched and naturally splinted the

wound. But the side effect was cramping, and soon muscle

spasms forced him to adopt an awkward gait.

The trail widened.

He stared down at the prints, but the ground spun from the

blood loss. He blinked and steeled his mind, then tried to focus

again. Carmen and her captor now walked side by side.

Clearly, Carmen was now accompanying the killer voluntarily. Without Carmen’s tracks overlapping his, the big tracks became easier to read and they indeed appeared large, like

Raccoon’s, but blurred and overlain at times with another track.

What had his grandfather said?

Our eyes are guided by our mind. We need both but either can

trick us, so we must rely completely on neither. This is why some-