The Shadowkiller (17 page)

M
ac poured the last few drops of the Veuve Clicquot into Kris's glass and realized his initial misgivings about her had vanished. Her vulnerability earlier had surprised and even touched him. There was a lot more to Kris than he first imagined. It had been a while since his last sexual encounter and he suddenly felt a little rusty. A tingle went up his back as he looked into her face. He had a feeling that it would be just like riding a bicycle. He also didn't think Kris would allow him to be rusty.

Kris's attraction to Mac was beginning to transcend the value he represented to her in terms of information. On the way over to his place she had decided they would get the food and small talk out of the way and then have sex. Kris prided herself on a raw sexual appetite she felt exceeded that of most men, and as the champagne tickled her nose, she had already visualized the steps that would put them into his bed. They leaned toward each other and began to kiss. It quickly became passionate, fevered. Just as Mac undid her bra and had a nipple softly trapped between his fingertips, a pager beeped. They stopped kissing and looked around.

“Is that yours?” asked Kris.

Mac started to look for his pager while Kris jumped up, rummaged through her purse, and found her pager. “Shit,” she said. “It's work.”

She pulled out her cell phone and punched buttons.

“This is Walker. What is it?” There was a pause as she received information. She looked at her watch. “It's only six. Can't you get someone else?” Another pause, and she replied with slight resignation, “All right. I'll be there.”

She flipped her phone closed and reconnected the front snap of her bra. As she adjusted her breasts, she looked at Mac and shook her head. “Chain reaction car crash on the five a little north of Lynnwood. Fog rolled in, thirty, forty cars involved. Gotta go. Sorry.”

Mac sat back and gave a wry smile. “Yeah, but not half as sorry as I am.”

He sighed while she worked the buttons on her blouse.

“This page was prearranged, wasn't it?” he joked. “Look, I know you're pissed because I served beef instead of turkey. It's still early. We can go out, pick up a turkey—cheap I'll bet—and have it in the oven in no time. While it's cooking, we can…” He trailed off as those perfect rises of creamy flesh bunching under her bra vanished behind the last two buttons.

She looked around. “My coat?”

“Bedroom.”

“Right.” Kris nodded and headed back to get it. As she came back down the hall from the master bedroom, she peered into his darkened office, then quickly stepped in, snooping about in the shadows. On the desk were books, mostly anthropology it seemed.
Guy's kind of an egghead.
Like she first concluded, not your typical cop. She quickly exited, having learned little.

Mac walked her to the parking lot and kissed her delicately one last time before she got in her car. From that parting kiss she knew he'd be an attentive lover.

“Watch me on the news,” she said, and closed the door.

He held up his hand. “Well then, thanks for stopping by.”

She smiled back, allowing herself a brief fantasy that they might end up together. As she drove away, she flashed on a college philosophy class and something Karl Marx said, and she paraphrased it to fit her own beliefs:
relationships are the opium of the people.

Thanksgiving at the Greenwoods had gone well. For Ronnie it was a magical few hours, just like the good old days. She thought Ty seemed in high spirits, buoyed by the moment, the wine, and maybe even the attentions of their young Swedish au pair. But Ronnie didn't concern herself with the reasons as she and Ty settled into bed.

She knew he'd played hooky from work, and although the whys were in the back of her mind, she didn't want to spoil the moment with an interrogation. She resolved to take the good times when they presented themselves. At that moment all their problems seemed played out in another lifetime. She felt they had a real chance at gluing their eggshell back together. Ty put down his book and turned off his bedside lamp. Ronnie leaned over to kiss him good night.

“'Night, sweetheart. It was a great evening,” she whispered as she kissed him.

Instead of doing what she expected him to do, which was to receive the kiss and roll over, he surprised her by kissing her back, hard.

“The evening ain't over till it's over,” he said, with a mischievous smile.

Ty wanted things to be like they'd been in the good times and regretted that this one important piece of their past had been missing lately. He also knew Ronnie had picked up on signals from their naïve young au pair, sent via glances, body language, and overreactions to his few jokes. He wanted Ronnie to know he was a one-woman man, so he proceeded to finish what he had left undone the previous Sunday.

C
arillo was at his desk when Mac entered the office at eight forty that morning. Mac could tell Carillo was excited about something because he rarely got animated before nine a.m. Carillo sailed a piece of paper toward Mac. “Check this out.” Mac reached for it but it hit the floor. “Another MP. Mountain biker. Took off yesterday afternoon and his girlfriend says he never came home. Same general area as the others.”

Mac picked up the missing persons report. “Two hours old. Is there another search?”

Carillo stood to pour more coffee. “Yeah. S & R's up there now.”

Mac continued reading. “Where is this?”

“Just above the two,” Carillo said, referring to Highway 2. Mac's wheels were turning, given the proximity to the other incidents. He read the report, trying to find a reason to relate it.

“Live-in girlfriend said he's a pro biker. Maybe he pushed the envelope too hard.”

Carillo rode motorcycles and considered bicycles to be for wimps. “How bad could you get hurt on a
bicycle
?” he asked, as if the potential level of injury were a gauge of a sport's merit.

“Those things get going pretty fast. I've watched downhill bike racing on ESPN.”

Carillo took a slug of his coffee and set down his cup. “You would. Let's go.”

Mac grabbed his coat.

They saw the search and rescue trucks as well as two patrol cars and some civilian vehicles before they saw Skip Caldwell's blue Ranger. They got out and approached a burly man in his late forties.

The man turned to them. “Hey, it's Larry and Moe. Where's Curly?” he quipped.

“You're Curly. So that's the thanks we get?” said Mac.

“Thanks,” said search and rescue head Mel Benedict. “Because of you two I had to put up with my in-laws. Anyway, looks like I did you two a favor. This guy plus your hikers and the logger makes four people in about a week. I'm no detective but this smells like a pattern.”

Carillo scanned the area. “Whaddya got?”

Benedict pointed at Skip's truck. “Guy left it there, 'proximately three forty yesterday afternoon. Pedaled his bike up that trail”—he pointed his finger—“and how the fuck he could ride a bike on that is anyone's guess…Anyway, he heads up there…” His hand swept upward indicating the mountains looming above them. “That's it. No sign of him returning to the truck. We've got people looking but so far, nada.”

They spoke to Benedict for a few moments, then headed up the same trail as the rest of the search team. After a few minutes they found a trail branch that followed the horizontal curve of the hillside. Neither said anything as they moved in that direction.

About five minutes into the trail, Carillo's foot slipped in some mud and his dress shoe got caked. “Shit.” As he reached for a stick to clean off the mud, he spotted something. “Well goddamn…”

Mac looked and felt an electric jolt up his back. Carillo just shook his head and laughed. “Sonofabitch…”

“This is some kinda joke, right?” was Sheriff Rick Barkley's reaction when Mac set the huge casting on his desk. Mac and Carillo shook their heads in unison.

“Well, could they have made it any bigger, for Chrissake?” asked the sheriff. Barkley was a former major in the Airborne Rangers and a Vietnam vet. A rough-hewn sixty-two, he had crisp, steel-colored hair and a jawline that could give you a paper cut. Rarely raising his voice, he was one of those men who by their strength of personality could instantly command respect. Mac, Carillo, and Undersheriff Tom Rice watched as Barkley hefted the slab of plaster and examined it. “So, you found more of these just now? This is the one you pulled from the hikers' scene?”

Carillo nodded. “Right. Two hours ago we found probably three good ones and a couple smeared. Whoever he is, he's good. Seems to be trying not to be too obvious. We didn't bring in another CSI because—”

“Well, I'm glad as hell you didn't waste any more of their time,” grated Barkley. “So let me get this straight: men are disappearing and now it seems some asshole is planting these things in the vicinity. Why?”

“We don't know yet, sir,” agreed Carillo.

“Mac, whaddya think?” asked Barkley.

Mac was as unsure as he had ever been. And he wasn't so sure about sticking his neck out either. He decided to float a trial balloon to gauge their reaction. “I'm not necessarily sure someone is planting these.”

Barkley did an uncharacteristic double take. “What? Mac, don't tell me you think this damn thing's real?”

Mac looked at Barkley. “There's a way to find out.”

Barkley stared back at Mac for a moment, reading his expression, then the tight seams in his craggy face loosened as he burst into laughter. This caused Rice and Carillo to follow with guffaws. Mac seamlessly joined in. Barkley set the casting down and slapped Mac's shoulder. “Jesus, you had me going there for a minute, Mac. I thought we were gonna have to transfer you back to La La Land.”

After the light chuckling subsided, the sheriff fixed the other men with his intense slate gray eyes. “Okay, here's what we're gonna do. Investigate this for what it is, or what it's starting to look like: abductions. You guys were smart to keep this casting under wraps; that was heads-up police work. We absolutely do not need this piece of the puzzle getting out. First of all, we don't need the media making a big goddamn joke outta this, and worse, we'd have every nut between here and Cle Elum comin' in with everything from tips to confessions and all kinda shit. There's not enough hours in a day for you boys to sort through all that crap. Keep it clean, and work this by the book.”

A few minutes later Mac and Carillo returned to their desks. Mac handed Carillo a manila folder. “Newspaper articles I dug up. A local guy. If this thing”—Mac looked around to make sure no one was listening—“is going in this…weird direction, he might be able to help us figure it out.”

Carillo set the file on his desk. “Thanks.” He grabbed his coat.

Mac put a file in his briefcase. “Where you going?”

“Wylie, the logger, his wife. Lives in Monroe. May be some connection with the lawyers, maybe the biker too. Probably talk to the biker's girlfriend too. You?”

Mac shrugged. “A lead. May be nothing.”

Carillo turned. “Later.”

Mac was relieved Carillo hadn't pressed him about his “lead.” Given the climate of the meeting they'd just come out of, Mac didn't want the substance of his next interview to get around…just yet.

D
r. Wade Frazier took the call from the department receptionist that Mac had arrived and told her to send him up. The university had instituted high security in the building a few years earlier after a disgruntled student arrived for an unscheduled meeting with his professor to discuss the low grade on his anthro term paper. The student decided a convincing argument for a higher mark was a wasted effort and instead came armed with a nine-millimeter pistol in his quest to lobby for an A. The crazed young man got off three wild shots before another professor came to the rescue and brained him with a half-sized plaster bust of Aristotle. The blunt force of Aristotelian logic saved the other professor, the unconscious student went to the pokey, and the bust-wielding Dr. Frazier became something of a darling in the local press. Mac recognized the older man as they shook hands. He decided the guy looked every bit the classic professor—salt-and-pepper beard, unkempt hair, and eyes like an owl—overly alert and very wise.

“Thanks for meeting with me, Doc.”

Dr. Frazier eyed the standard packing box Mac held under his arm.

“Brought us a lunch, huh?” cracked the doctor.

“More like lunchtime conversation,” Mac retorted.

He followed the doctor into his office, observing the three walls of overflowing bookshelves, windows with Post-it notes stuck to them, and every bit of available floor space stacked with books, files, and paperwork. The desk was somewhere under piles of paper.
So this is how genius works.

Mac recognized the famous Aristotle bludgeon resting on the computer monitor, a chunk missing from the back of the philosopher's head. His trained eyes swept the bookshelves and quickly scanned myriad titles, many regarding cryptozoology, the paranormal, and the unexplained, some of which the good doctor had authored.

“How may I assist the Snohomish County Sheriff, Detective?”

“I need some advice.”

“Fair enough. I am always ready to render it, requested or not.”

Dr. Frazier gathered up a mass of books and paperwork from a chair and motioned Mac to sit. Instead, Mac set the box down on the chair and withdrew something wrapped in newspaper. He pulled off the paper to reveal a thin plaster cast of a normal human foot, about half an inch thick. He handed it to Dr. Frazier, who pulled out his eyeglasses, took the object, and quickly glanced at it.

“I'll go out on a limb, detective, but my guess is human.”

Mac's even expression told Frazier to play along.

“Hmmm. Very well, I'm no ichnologist, but I'd say
Homo sapiens
male…, slight pronation, axial eversion. The medium was damp soil; I see a matting of marginal litter and evidence of arboreal accumulation. Perhaps forest floor loam with a silty subsoil?”

Mac nodded. “Bingo.”

Frazier continued,“Eighty kilos, probably around one point eight five meters.”

Mac shook his head. “Sorry, Doc, as a cop I know kilos, but the rest of my metric's rusty.”

Frazier sighed at the failings of the American school system. “Approximately one seventy-five and six feet or so,” he said. Then leveling his gaze at Mac and tipping up his glasses to his forehead, he continued. “You have back problems, Detective. Your foot turns in and puts pressure on your lumbar plexus. I suggest you see a chiropractor for an adjustment. So, did you venture all the way from Everett to get my osteopathic diagnosis?”

“Not exactly,” Mac said as he rewrapped the cast of his own foot and set it on the floor. “By the way, I'm impressed. Now tell me if this one has back problems too.”

Mac reached into the box and pulled out a far larger object, also bundled in newspaper. He unwrapped the enormous plaster foot impression and watched Dr. Frazier's eyes widen slightly, his demeanor changing instantly from restless to rapt. Mac handed the heavy casting to him. This plaster mold was more than three inches thick, but like the other had been poured to the ground level of the indentation.

Dr. Frazier looked at it closely for a few moments. “My my, this is a big boy, detective.”

Dr. Frazier set the casting down on the paper-strewn desk and hurriedly rummaged, quickly producing a small tape measure. “Five hundred twenty-two millimeters…a very big boy…,” his whisper trailing off. After taking several measurements, he hefted the massive plaster foot and examined it again.

“A fairly competent casting. Police issue?”

“One of my people.”

“My compliments,” Frazier said, then picked up a magnifying glass. “A credible pour. Hmmm, you even captured some dermal ridges and sweat pores. Impressive.” Without taking his eyes off the object in his hands, he asked,“Where did you pull this?”

“The woods.”

Dr. Frazier smiled sardonically. “As they say, ‘classified police business'?”

“Something like that.”

“And you had the presence of mind to make a casting of a known foot for comparison.”

“Uh-huh. So what is it?”

“You tell me. You're the police officer.”

“Let's not play games,” said Mac. “You're the expert. What is this thing?”

Frazier's guard was up since he'd been ambushed once by what turned out to be a tabloid reporter, with the wildly misquoted article causing him embarrassment. But after handling the largest casting he had ever seen, he was torn between caution and candor. He had seen the sketch of the Pitt Lake, B.C., footprint, which was purported to be sixty centimeters, and he once examined both Bossburg castings, that unique crippled right foot and the four-hundred-thirty-seven-millimeter left foot casting, but this one…this one was
magnificent,
in not only its detail but its size.

And it was authentic.

“Well, Doc, what is it? Is this thing fake or not?” Mac repeated, his tone conveying a tinge of frustration.

Dr. Frazier relented. “Very well, no, it is not. Fake, that is.”

“How can you tell?”

Frazier pointed to parts of the casting and began a stream of thoughts. “These sweat pores, these ridges…whorls, these anatomical structures, the toes for instance, their sizes and relationship to each other, the heel impression, the ratio between the length and the width, the leverage point of the ankle, the pads on the ball of the foot, I could go on and on, but show me the man who manufactured this foot and I'll show you a gifted colleague, because no one having anything short of my credentials would know how to re-create such structures. No, Detective, this is a casting of a real, living foot, the foot of an unidentified and very, very large hominid.”

“Hominid?” Mac queried, having read the term but wanting Frazier's description.

“Hominid,” Frazier repeated, condescending as if to an Anthro 101 class. “Man or manlike, bipedal, that is, non-knuckle walkers. Currently the only known members of that club are us, Detective. Humans.”

Mac's hope that Frazier would pronounce it fake and he'd be happily on his way had just been crushed. He took a deep breath and asked the question he'd been fearing. “Okay, so what made the print? Describe it. What have I got here?”

The doctor was still wary. “What part of ‘unidentified' did you not understand, Detective Schneider?”

Mac respected the man but the coyness was wearing thin. “Is this Bigfoot?”

Dr. Frazier crossed the office and closed the door. “I truly abhor that term.”

“Look, people are starting to turn up missing, I've found these prints nearby, and I can't explain why. I need to rule out—or rule in—all possibilities.”

“So, your superiors have yet to hear your…theory?”

Mac smiled wryly. “Oh, they've heard it.”

Frazier looked at him. “Hmmm. Interesting.”

Mac leaned forward. “I was hoping to get a world-class expert to back me up.”

Dr. Frazier motioned for Mac to sit as he waded around book piles to his well-worn leather swivel chair. The scholar sat down, found a half-finished bottle of orange juice in an open drawer, and took a pull off it.

“First, there are no experts on this ‘thing,' as you call it. Since we've never actually found one, there are many people who speculate about what it might be. A few of us are formally educated in related fields, most are not. Which leads me to my second point. Since I am a scientist, my standing in the scientific community, ergo my livelihood, is dependent upon one thing, my credibility. And that credibility stems from my degrees, my published works, and years of exacting research. Though I have written many books and papers on the subject we are discussing, I have never once officially written or uttered the phrase
they exist.
Officially I have said they
may
exist.”

He drained the juice and pegged the bottle into the overflowing trash can. “If you perceive my actions as overly cautious,” explained Frazier,“then understand that unscrupulous pseudojournalists caused me great embarrassment among my peers. I am comfortable speaking to you, as you might say, off the record, but I will not be quoted nor marched over to your headquarters to bolster your position with your superiors. If you need such involvement, there is a very competent and respected man in Idaho, a professor like myself, who might be able to help you. As for me, what I tell you goes no further than this office, and should it do so, I will deny it heartily. What I am about to tell you is to be used solely as an aid in your investigation and for your own edification. It is not the solution. Are we clear?”

“Yup.”

“Very well. Now, what made your casting? An exceptionally large hominid, uncatalogued by science. It is a relative of ours but is neither man nor pongid. That's a great ape to you, Detective.”

“Is it the missing link?” asked Mac.

“That's a discredited term that has been bandied about by laymen. There is no ‘missing link,' per se. This is something else. Though bipedal like ourselves, it has pursued a wholly different evolutionary path, tangential to its relatives, that is to say, us and the other great apes.”

“So you're saying this thing is—”

“Our first cousin. And as with the other great apes, this creature possesses intelligence probably approaching our own yet has been blessed with the advanced mesomorphic characteristics of our mutual cousin the ape. That is to say, it is muscular in the extreme, resulting in a density that renders it proportionally quite heavy for its stature in comparison to us puny little
Homo sapiens.
Did you read the story from a few years back, Detective, where two male chimpanzees nearly tore a grown man to pieces?”

Mac nodded.

Frazier continued. “At the time the press credited an average chimp with having five times the strength of an average man. That is absolutely true. These chimps were large but weighed no more than one hundred fifty pounds, and yet the man was as helpless as a kitten with them. As to our beast, he's omnivorous—”

Mac interrupted,“You think it's a male?”

Frazier nodded. “Yes, yes, I think that's safe to assume, given the size and what seems to be a predatory pattern. As I was saying, he does not hibernate, has no known form of speech or communication—
known
being the operative term there—is more or less nocturnal, and generally, and I say that with a grain of salt, avoids contact with human beings.”

Mac absorbed this for a moment. “So to capsulize, you're saying they exist?”

“Absolutely. There is sufficient fossil evidence to confirm that an immense hominid known as
Gigantopithecus
actually existed in recent evolutionary history. So the question is not do they exist, but do they
still
exist? That such a formidable apex predator could have survived until today is well within the realm of possibility. Some of my colleagues argue it was a homi
noid—
that is, an ape—while others, like myself, say it was an actual hominid, a full biped like ourselves.”

“So this
Giganto,
” said Mac, thinking out loud,“you're saying he's probably Bigfoot?”

“Anthropologically, he is the proverbial dead ringer. In regards to
Gigantopithecus,
all the evidence for their currency is far too compelling to dismiss. I believe there are colonies of them in very isolated locations around the world. Sometimes we stumble onto them or their spoor. But science is the ultimate doubting Thomas, Detective Schneider. We must put our hands in the wounds before anything can be said to exist.”

A puckish smirk crossed Dr. Frazier's face. “And since I am being completely candid, allow me to put forth that there is compelling anecdotal data, however slight, suggesting these beings may control some form of enhanced reception to the electrochemical emanations of other creatures, human beings included. It may help explain why they are so elusive.”

“You're saying they're psychic?” Mac's brow furrowed.
Now we're getting out there.