The Shadowkiller (13 page)

“Okay, that's the wrong reaction, Mac.” She looked back at the footprint. “Don't even tell me…Don't even frickin'tell me.”

Mac squatted next to the track. “Carillo thinks it's fake.”

Suzy got down on her hands and knees. “Jesus, now Carillo's the voice of reason? I'm not sure what's scarier, that or this being real.” After she examined it for moment, she looked up at Mac. “What about you? You think it's fake?”

Mac nodded. “Yeah, definitely,” but his voice betrayed his lack of certainty. Suzy stared at him for moment trying to read his face, then looked back at the track.

“Well, all I can say is, somebody's got a sense of drama. Could this thing be any bigger? I mean if you're gonna fake it, at least try and make it believable. You really want me to cast this thing? I hope I have enough plaster.”

As Suzy readied to make the pour, Mac pointed at the other, partial print. “How do you explain that one?”

Suzy got up and examined it. She touched the ground in several places. “That's easy. The ground is soft there, not soft here. The guy could only get one print to stick and luckily the tree boughs protected it. Plus he tried to stretch and it looks like he slipped or something.”

“Or something? Aren't you the track expert?”

Suzy laughed. “Tracks? Not really. Give me blood, biologicals, trace, I'm scary. Tracks, no.”

“So,” Mac asked cautiously,“you think it's fake?”

Suzy looked over the print. “Of course.” There was a pause. “But I'd like to know how the guy got the impression so deep. That's wild.”

Mac was circumspect.
Wild is not the word I'd use.

T
he Monday before Thanksgiving, Ronnie set the wheels in motion to find an au pair. She left work late in the afternoon and headed home for her first au pair interview. Hurriedly parking her Lexus, she left the garage door open and walked to the house. She had barely had time to hang up her coat and sort through the mail when the doorbell rang. She opened the door to find a creamy-complected redhead, probably four inches taller than her own five seven. A classically attractive, brown-eyed Valkyrie, the young lady beamed warmly as she held out her hand. Ronnie thought she looked a whole lot like some actress, whose name didn't come to her immediately.

“Mrs. Greenwood? I'm Greta. Greta Sigardsson.”

“Hi. C'mon in.” Ronnie detected the slight accent. “Swedish?”

“Yes, I am. You have a very beautiful home. It's really…uh…uh…huge.”

Ronnie smiled at the young woman, amused by her stumbling to find an adjective. They both giggled and felt an instant bond. Ronnie liked a woman who could laugh at herself. Ronnie pressed the intercom and summoned her kids. Ronnie introduced them all, then excused herself to make a business call. When she returned, she saw that Greta was truly the Swedish Mary Poppins: the three were already playing.

Ty walked in, looking tired, his soiled Forest Service uniform—at least to an outsider—incongruous for the owner of such an immense, sparkling house. It represented a long story that Ronnie could never summon the energy to tell anyone. Ty pecked Ronnie, tousled Chris's hair, then leaned down and kissed Meredith's head. He and Greta made eye contact.

“Hi,” he said, moving to the fridge for some juice.

“Honey, this is Greta,” said Ronnie. “The agency sent her over. She and the kids are getting to know each other.”

Ty turned and shook her hand.

“Hello, Mr. Greenwood,” she said, her face flushing as she giggled nervously. Ty smiled tightly and left the room, while Ronnie's eyes enlarged ever so slightly as she woke up and realized this was a beautiful young woman who obviously found her husband attractive. Ronnie suddenly saw Ty as the other woman did, a handsome, virile man with Redfordish dirty blond hair, in a snug uniform, his face rendered just a bit more rugged by two days' stubble.

That's when Ronnie noticed it was seven twenty and the next recruit was on the way to their home. She quickly ushered Greta to the door, thanked her, and said they'd be in touch. When the next au pair arrived, Ty was upstairs showering. This young lady was Danish but shorter and zaftig. Ronnie wanted to like her, but this one didn't really hit it off with the kids as well as Greta. Then her presumption did her in: “I can't wait to drive the Lexus!”

Ronnie thanked her as the door hit her in her zaftig ass.

Several hours later Ronnie climbed into bed. She looked over at her husband as he read a book and visualized him back in uniform.

Ty took a break, set his book on his chest, and closed his eyes for a moment. It wasn't that late but he was tired, mentally tired. Suddenly he felt Ronnie's hand slide over his chest, and his eyes opened, his passion of yesterday morning now replaced by the old, poisonous feelings of insecurity. After some uncomfortable kissing, Ty gently pulled Ronnie's hand away.

“I'm beat, baby. Maybe in the morning,” he said, then rolled over.

She picked up a book, read for a few minutes, then got up and left the bedroom.

Ty felt bad about turning Ronnie down. He knew she was going downstairs to work on her computer for a while, then lock herself into one of the five main floor bathrooms and find her own satisfaction. He thought about the au pair and her schoolgirl reaction to him. He knew Ronnie had also seen it and he didn't need any more tension between them. It did massage his ego slightly to know a girl of nineteen or twenty found him a hunk, but with the tension between himself and his wife he took little satisfaction from it.

The next evening Ty got home, showered, paid the babysitter, then went to his office. He was irritated that another day had passed with no progress. Maybe he'd quit the Forest Service and secretly set up an office in Snohomish. Ronnie would probably never know the difference. Problem was he'd never lied to his wife and wasn't about to start. Sometimes he didn't tell her the whole story, but lying? No. He couldn't go there, even for this.

When the dark time came, he followed the stream for a while and saw more signs of the small two-legs. He found a few scattered wood caves, all larger than the one he had destroyed, and some hardshells waiting near the caves to do the bidding of their small two-leg masters.

He came down from the hills to learn more about his enemies, their habits, their ways. He was curious. He found pleasure in the kill, and knowing them better would make him stronger. His feeling that there were probably many, many small two-legs was strengthened by the spread of their signs the farther into the flat land he went.

The mountains were his but it seemed the flat land belonged to the small two-legs.

He crossed several hard black trails, the paths of the hardshells. He knew the small two-legs had made these black trails and there were many of them. He had never been this close to the places of the small two-legs and he could see their marks, their spoor, everywhere. That they left so much to show their presence told him they felt no fear, yet they were weak.

He passed by a large wood cave, this one burning from within by the special fire that the small two-legs controlled. This firelight came from many openings in the wood cave. Though the small two-legs controlled it, he knew well that they sometimes allowed their fire to escape.

He thought of the Great Fire, and how he had survived, clinging to
the rocks. He thought of his tribe and how they had all died that day—his mate, his offspring. He could still see them, consumed in the flames, their death cries drowned out by the roar of the fire. Now he was left with nothing but rage.

His journey had taken him over many mountains and he had continued until he came to this place. His desire for revenge knew no limits, and with his discovery that the small two-legs were a good source of meat, he knew he had found his new home.

Passing through a stand of trees, he entered a clearing near a large wood cave. From the openings in the side of the wood cave he saw fire glowing within. The small two-legs were the Keepers of Fire and he sensed them inside, their chaotic mind voices noisy in his head. Nearby were two smaller wood caves but he felt no small two-legs inside them. Three hard-shells waited near them. Never having been that close to a hardshell, he approached the largest of the three.

Its skin was harder than he had imagined and cold to the touch. He sensed no emotions from it and, after examining it, was convinced that it was not a living thing. Pushing gently on the skin, he rocked the hardshell slightly. The upper parts of its flanks were open but the openings were hard, like air that had frozen into ice. He touched this phenomenon, trying to understand.

It was also cold, but not as cold as ice. Looking into the guts of the hardshell, he saw it was hollow. He pushed on the warm ice with his fingers and it broke. This told him more about the warm ice. He looked at the inhabited wood cave and realized the openings through which the controlled fire glowed were also covered in warm ice. He reached inside the hardshell and grabbed a round thing and pulled. It also broke. After a few more minutes of poking at it, he decided to leave.

But first he would let the small two-legs know he had been there.

Ricky Allison was getting ready for a date pretty much the way any other seventeen-year-old did. Once dressed, he'd gone into the bathroom to prod a pesky zit. After failing to pop it before making that telltale red welt, he was now trying to cover up the damage with some of his mom's foundation. It had only been a few seconds after his mom yelled he was going to be late when he heard it.

At first he wasn't sure what the sound was. It was noisy but didn't track with anything in his audio experiences. Like maybe a sort of muffled crunching metal sound. It came from out back where the cars were parked. He left the bathroom and passed through the rec room, where his parents were just sitting down to eat, the music from the television heralding the opening sequence of
Wheel of Fortune.

“You guys hear that?” he asked his folks.

His dad, Deke, didn't even look up from the pork chops, apple sauce, and potatoes au gratin that had just landed on his TV tray. “Hear what?”

Ricky entered the laundry room and called back,“Some big noise out back.”

Deke looked to his wife, Marge. “You hear anything?”

She shook her head and dug into the food on her plate.

Ricky flipped the switch on the big mercury vapor lamp located at the top of a twenty-foot pole he and his dad had installed the year before. They'd been having a problem with deer eating his mom's garden, so the light, which put out more photons than a white dwarf star, was perfect for scaring off any critters and also illuminating the entire back area, including the garage and utility shed. Deke loved the light but found he still needed a flashlight because the intense, directional light also created jet-black shadows.

While the light flickered briefly before coming to full power, Ricky slammed the back door and leaped over the two wooden steps to ground level. As the light popped to one hundred percent, Ricky took in the parking area and his jaw did a Roger Rabbit. He didn't take another step because what he was looking at both confused and scared him.

Why would anybody do that? Who would do that? How did they do that?

“Dad! Hey, Dad! C'mere. You gotta see this!”

Then Ricky whispered to himself,“Fuckinay…”

Deke and Marge pushed their trays away, alarmed by the urgency in their son's voice. When they stepped onto the back porch, they saw why. Everything was normal save for one thing: illuminated in the ghostly blue-white light was Deke's pride and joy, his metallic indigo blue Chevy Tahoe, with the LT preferred equipment group, the running boards, and the heavy-duty towing package. It was pretty much where he'd parked it that evening.

Except now it was reposing on its roof, tires in the air like a toes-up dead dog.

Ricky, Deke, and Marge were frozen in their tracks. After a moment of nonplussed gaping, Deke kicked into gear and started barking commands. “Son, get the thirty-thirty and my Python. And a flashlight. Margie, get the sheriff out here.”

A moment later Ricky returned, huffing, with the requested items. Deke hefted the rifle and slid the big Colt revolver into his pants pocket. Now braced by weapons and a flashlight, they cautiously moved toward the topsy truck.

Deke waved the light around the shadows as they approached it, sweeping over the vehicle and off into the trees for signs of the vandals. Then Deke flashed on the idea that maybe his son had crossed some bad boys at school.

“Any ideas who mighta done this?” Deke queried.

“No,” Ricky answered, still incredulous. “I mean it musta taken like twenty guys.”

Deke looked over with a cocked eyebrow. “Know who mighta?”

Ricky realized the implication. Ricky was
very
cool with everyone he knew. This was like big-league mayhem, like biker shit.

“No way, Dad,” he denied emphatically. “I don't have any idea who would do this.”

Deke knelt and looked into the Tahoe and saw that someone had literally ripped the steering wheel off its post.
Unbelievable.
Sobered by the thought of the forces necessary to do such a thing, he was nevertheless infuriated by the mindless destruction.

Marge yelled from the back door to report that the sheriff was sending someone. As Deke started to rise, his flashlight revealed something in the shadows beside the truck. The driveway's drainage was pretty good but the rain had softened some parts of the apron where he parked his vehicles. What he made out in the mud sent a powerful chill down his back.

Ricky noticed his dad tremble and it shocked him. “What?”

His dad, even in the unearthly light of their security lamp, suddenly looked bone white. Now Ricky was really scared. “What?” he demanded again.

Deke pointed the light on the track in the mud. It was clear enough: a complete footprint.

Ricky whistled,“Jee-zus…,” and gingerly put his size ten Reebok next to it for scale.

The fresh print dwarfed his shoe.

Without a word, Deke and Ricky headed toward the house to wait for the sheriff.