The Shadowkiller (8 page)

S
o with this big front moving south, it looks like Puget Sound will be in for plenty more rain,” cheerily intoned the stunning blonde who had just snagged the attention of the two detectives. “Reporting from a very soggy Bothell, I'm Kris Walker, Eyewitness News. Back to you guys in that dry studio. Jerry, Trish?”

A tinny male voice issued from their small monitor speaker.

“Thanks, Kris. Looks like you could use a blow dryer,” observed Jerry.

Kris gave a ten-thousand-watt smile, her icy pale blue eyes sparkling despite the fact her fine flaxen hair had wilted like lettuce in the rain. The cameraman chopped his light and Kris Walker lowered her mic.

“We off?” she asked, still holding a smile, but now a notch lower.

“Yeah,” said the cameraman, quickly striking his equipment to get out of the rain.

“Fuck yourself, Jerry,” said reporter Kris Walker to her now disconnected associate in the dry studio twenty-five miles to the south. In one second Kris's stunningly pretty face had evolved into a cloud of anger. “Now get me the fuck out of here.”

The news crew was fearfully silent as she tossed her microphone to the umbrella assistant and headed for the van. Climbing into the passenger seat, she pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. Her cameraman, Rick Kititani, a stocky man of around fifty, was at the sliding door with his assistant, stowing their gear.

“Hey, Kris, I've asked you before, please don't smoke in the van,” Rick pleaded. “It stinks and it's bad for the equipment.”

Kris took a big pull off her cigarette, then exhaled into the van toward Rick.

“It's raining. You want me to stand outside and smoke? You've had me outside for twenty goddamn minutes already. My hair's flatter than shit and now you want me to stand outside? I don't think so.”

“No,” gritted Rick patiently, “I just don't want you to smoke in the van. If you have to, I'll pull around the corner, we'll find a building, and you can smoke under the eaves.”

“Yeah right,” she snorted, “and that'll
ever
happen.”

At that moment, Rick wanted to strangle this girl. When he first met her, the seemingly humble, supposedly green recruit from the Fox affiliate in Tacoma, he concluded she was the best-looking woman he had ever seen in person. From her soaring cheekbones to her ruler-straight teeth and hair, Kris had a genetic endowment which others paid fortunes to replicate but never quite realize. But if the eyes were the windows to the soul, those limpid sapphires betrayed a powerful, aggressive, and perhaps even malevolent intellect. Now, three weeks after being charged as her cameraman, director, and occasional mentor, he couldn't stand her and had discreetly begun referring to her as “the Asshole Goddess.” Very discreetly, of course. She was the kind, he feared, who would file a harassment suit in the blink of one of those hypnotic eyes.

Kris was tired of the bullshit happy-talk stories they gave her.
“Go up and report that it's raining in Bothell, Kris.” Fuck that. Of course it's raining in Bothell. This is frickin' Seattle. It RAINS here! What a waste of my talent. Give me some hard news.

She fancied that a big crack bust in the Central District would give her more credibility. Or the powerful theater of a guy crushed by a crane down on the docks that would show off her talent for verbally recreating the horrific. Better yet, her imagination conjured a family of six killed in a horrible, bloody collision with a cement mixer. She pictured the emotions of the moment and how she would wring out every last drop in her report. Now those were stories she could sink her teeth into.

She knew Rick hated her, so she'd already begun laying the foundation for his demise with a few choice comments here and there to the right people. And as far as the “right people,” she was actively cultivating her connections to them. Soon, she felt, she would have the power to drop the boom on anyone when the need arose. In her short but meteoric career Kris had evolved into quite a tactician in undermining fellow employees, then making them go away. She recalled her favorite
Twilight Zone
episode, during which an evil boy, when displeased, sent people to the “cornfield,” a kind of horrific limbo where you ceased to function as a living entity. Kris enjoyed knowing that when crossed, she would find a way to send the offender to the cornfield. And it took very few slights for her to begin mobilizing a plan.

The slamming door of the Eyewitness News truck jarred her from her reverie of revenge. Rick plopped into the driver's seat, angry that Kris had lit another cigarette while lost in thought. She took another luxuriating drag and exhaled it toward her middle-aged, Japanese-American cameraman. She pondered the day when Rick entered the cornfield.

“Oh, sorry, Rick,” she said mockingly, “I guess I couldn't wait for that shelter you promised.”

As Rick pulled away from the curb, while formulating a comeback that would in no way be perceived in a court of law as sexist, harassing, or otherwise offensive, the radio connecting them with the station in downtown Seattle squawked.

“Hey, Mobile Five? Rick? Kris? Pick up,” said a female dispatcher's voice.

Rick and Kris exchanged a glance. She was smoking, he was driving. A test of wills. Rick caved, grabbing the microphone. “Yeah, go ahead.”

The woman's voice crackled over the speaker, “We've got a story for the eleven. Two missing lawyers. Went on a hike early this morning. Sheriff found their car. Rumor is they or their boss are good friends with the mayor of Seattle. You're the closest field crew. It's up Highway Two, above Gold Bar. Head that way, we'll get the exact location and feed you. Kris there?”

Rick handed the mic to Kris, who rarely exchanged pleasantries.

“Anything you've got, shoot to my Palm Pilot. Then get somebody in graphics to do a map. Who's on scene?”

Despite the energy she put into taunting, intimidating, and eviscerating her coworkers, first and foremost, Kris Walker was a newswoman.

“Yeah,” the dispatcher replied, “Snohomish sheriff. You're slotted for a live at around eleven ten, so shoot your tape to us by ten fifty or you'll have to feed your own. I'll call back when I get the exact locale.”

Kris put the mic back.

“Now we've got something,” she said, looking heavenward to a Higher News Authority. “Oh please don't let them be found till I get my story.”

Rick shook his head slightly but certainly not enough so she'd notice. God forbid.

Although Carillo hadn't been too thrilled about working in the mountains in the rain, when the Eyewitness News van arrived and that beautiful newsgirl alighted, he brightened considerably. Nudging Mac, he nodded toward the approaching blonde in the rain slicker. Mac had no time to react as Kris held out her hand.

“Kris Walker, Channel Seven. You in charge?”

Mac took her hand. “Yes.”

Despite the wet chill her hand was warm and soft and she allowed it to linger in Mac's a bit too long.
She's even better-looking in person.
Mac forced himself out of his trance.

“You looked in charge.” Kris smiled slowly. “Your name is…?”

“Mac Schneider, detective, Snohomish County Sheriff's Department. This is Detective Karl Carillo.”

Kris shook Carillo's hand. His grip and eyes told Kris he was married and on the make. She warmed to the other guy, the strong, quiet alpha dog.

“I'm doing a live report”—she looked at her watch—“in about twenty-five minutes. I need to get some background, shoot a tape piece, then get ready to go live with an interview. Is that okay?”

“Interview? Who?”

“You.”

“No. Talk to our PIO.”

“Oh, c'mon. I just want someone to confirm some of the facts that are known. I can't wait for your PIO.”

Procedure was to have the public information officer make any press statements, but to Mac this seemed pretty simple. And that she was so damned good-looking helped.

“There's not much to tell.”

“Maybe.” Kris pulled out her Palm Pilot. “‘Mitchell Roberts,” she began, “and Jack Remsbecker, litigators, Addison, Olinka, and Cothran. Big law firm. Connections to the mayor, governor, yada, yada. Roberts, married, two kids, Remsbecker, single, both thirty-six.' Okay, so these two guys get lost, not one or the other but both, and there's no snow for an avalanche, so what happened? How do two guys, lawyers of all things, just get lost? I mean, the map shows there's only one way up and back.”

Mac and Carillo's eyes met briefly as they realized she knew more than they did. Kris noticed their reaction and decided the situation might allow a more ratings-friendly interpretation, since so few facts were known.

Ronnie sat at the kitchen counter sipping herbal tea. It had been a long day. When she got home a little after noon, Ty was nowhere to be found, Amy the babysitter was on the phone with her boyfriend, and six-year-old Meredith was launching sponges in the pool with two friends. The so-called retracting pool cover was broken at half-retract, exposing a lot of open water—a natural but potentially deadly playground for unsupervised kids. After rushing out and scolding the little girls, Ronnie shuddered as she pictured one or more of them falling in and getting trapped under the cover. That clinched it: Ronnie decided they needed a live-in.

She was also beginning to regret her insistence on having the pool. When they planned the house, she wanted a pool and Ty reminded her that in this climate they'd be lucky to use it two months a year. She found a solar heating installer and handed Ty the brochure, assuring him the pool would be cozy year-round, costing next to nothing to heat. Ty used his proposed wine cellar as a bargaining chip. He wanted a formal, fully stocked cellar under the house, with a secret passage, just like one they had seen in a castle in Bavaria. Ronnie dismissed the wine cellar as pretentious, citing the marginal amount of wine they consumed per year, but Ty held firm. So Ronnie got her pool and Ty got his wine cellar.

Now the pool was ice cold ten months of the year because the solar heating system lacked one critical item: continuous solar radiation. Meanwhile Ty stocked the cellar with more than $40,000 worth of wine, and in three years they had cracked open exactly sixteen bottles. But the kids loved popping open that hidden door just off the kitchen, running down the stairs, and hiding from each other among the Château Margaux and Lafite Rothschild.

She glanced at the clock on the microwave, saw it was 11:05, and picked up the remote for the plasma TV on the kitchen wall and clicked on channel 7. She'd focus on someone else's problems for a few minutes.

T
he fridge was empty and that pissed off Russ Tardif. Back when he was married, it was always magically full of Cokes and Miller Lites. He shut the door on the apartment-sized cooler and contemplated that long walk to the house. He decided he'd do without a soda. It was a little after eleven, raining cats and dogs, and he wasn't up to the hundred-yard uphill trek for one lousy soda.

He could tell how hard it was raining because Cold Creek was roaring below. His little utility shop was perched so close to the edge of a fifteen-foot-high cutbank that Russ was afraid the creek would someday eat away the bank and topple the shop and all of his treasured equipment into the water.

A tattooed, thirty-one-year-old machinist, Russ commanded either a precision gap bed tool room lathe or a CNC bed mill at Boeing's Everett facility eight hours a day. The massive aircraft plant, the birthplace of the 747 airliner, was a collection of outsized buildings encompassing nearly one hundred acres
under roof.
After work, Russ would make the long drive home, then trudge down the hill to the ramshackle shed he called his shop to operate even more machines, changing his medium from aircraft aluminum to wood.

Russ's obsession with woodworking led to the undoing of his marriage, but married life wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Regular marital sex turned out to have more disadvantages than jerking off, and on top of that his wife's constant nagging about going into Everett or Snohomish for some damn thing like dinner with people he couldn't stand or stupid swap meets eventually got on his nerves. He'd heard time heals all wounds, and truth be told, the only thing Russ really missed was the full fridge.

He shrugged it off, picked up a two-by-ten and reached for the switch on his DeWalt table saw. That's when something on his ten-inch television grabbed his eye. This total knockout reporter was talking and the little map above her left shoulder looked like his neighborhood—if you could call the middle of the woods a neighborhood. He walked over, brushed sawdust off the volume knob, and turned it up.

“…were last seen this morning around five a.m. I'm with Snohomish County Sheriff's Detective Mac Schneider, who is heading the search. Detective, what efforts are being made to find the hikers?”

The camera panned slightly and a man stepped into the frame next to the pretty reporter. She held out the microphone to him as a superimposed graphic identified him. Streaks of light sparkled as rain traced through the bright light mounted on the camera.

“Search and rescue is on scene and we also have a canine tracking team,” said Mac.

“What are the odds of the men surviving overnight?” Kris asked.

“Hopefully they'll be found before that, but we understand they're experienced hikers and dressed warmly, so we feel the odds are good.”

“You also have another sheriff's detective on scene, right?

Mac nodded. “That's correct, Detective Karl Carillo.”

“So why are two detectives in charge of looking for missing hikers?”

“Standard procedure. We're just filling in for search and rescue. That's all.”

“I understand you found a door clicker and some keys. Plus one of your deputies said he may have seen some blood,” she said. “So I assume you suspect foul play.”

“No, the facts absolutely do not warrant any such conclusion. Contrary to what you may have heard, no blood was found.”

“So,” she continued, “if this is so routine, why did they send two detectives? Wouldn't such a show of high-powered investigators be more in keeping with a homicide investigation than a simple missing persons report?”

Mac angrily set his jaw. He didn't need to tell her on live television they'd been sent because of politics.

“Two people,” Mac said, grating each word, “are overdue from a hike, and yes, the car door opener was found. They might have simply dropped it. There
may
be blood, but so far there's been no sign of it. Extrapolating foul play from those thin facts would be the height of irresponsibility.”

Mac turned and walked away.

“Do you suspect foul play, detective?” she yelled as he walked away.

Mac kept moving and didn't look back.

“Detective Schneider, do you suspect foul play?”

Kris was impressed. She'd never heard a cop use the word
extrapolating.
This guy was different from the cops she'd met. She gave Mac a few more dramatic moments to retreat from her interview, then repressed a huge cat–who-ate-the-canary grin and turned back to the camera as grim as she could fake. “So, apparently the search team will work for at least a few more hours to locate the two missing men. If they are not found by then, the search will resume at dawn, although we hope they're found soon, safe and sound. Kris Walker, Eyewitness News, reporting live from the mountains high above Gold Bar.”

Russ Tardif turned down the sound. He wondered why the cop had been so rude to the gorgeous babe reporter. Then he thought about the hikers. They seemed to have gotten lost just a few miles over the hill, and around here that was damn near next door. He flipped the switch on the saw. Maybe they'd show up at his door.
Well, I sure as hell got no sodas or beer to offer 'em.

Mac turned away from Kris and headed up the hill toward deputy Bill Alexander, the discoverer of the Cherokee. Mac was angry for two reasons: first, he'd been set up by the reporter, and second, he had a funny feeling she might be right. He'd arrived on the scene with an attitude of irritation almost as bad as Carillo's, knowing they were just babysitting the scene while S & R did their thing. But now that they were here, Kris Walker's supposition suddenly didn't seem so completely out of the realm of possibility. It made him mad that he'd been asleep at the switch when she abruptly reminded him things might not be what they appeared to be. The deputy said he may have seen some blood, but whatever he may have seen had long since been washed away in the rain. Mac was irritated with the young deputy for leaving the scene before securing the evidence but shrugged it off after recalling the frequent mistakes that fellow cops made when he was with the LAPD.

Kris watched Mac walk away. She handed her microphone to the soundman and set off on the detective's heels. She was delighted he'd played into her little drama, but she realized she also had an opportunity to act the victim. She wasn't sure he'd fall for it, but she had nothing to lose.

“Hey, what the hell's with you, walking out in the middle of my interview?” she yelled.

Mac didn't slow his pace, nor did he look at her. “You asked me before we went on the air and I said your theory was irresponsible. Then you asked me on camera.”

“You walked away.”

Mac stopped and she caught up with him. “You blindsided me,” he started. “Two detectives from the Snohomish Sheriff are here heading a standard department search. The head of our search and rescue team was unavailable, that's it. Normally he'd be here running this search, not us. We're here as a courtesy. Maybe you don't realize this, but ‘missing' is a helluva long way from ‘presumed dead,' or worse, ‘presumed murdered.'”

“I can surmise anything I want,” she returned.

“And I can refuse to acknowledge your idiotic speculation,” he shot back and started walking again. “You're only hurting yourself, lady.”

“Look,” Kris said, following and radiating as much sincerity as she could summon. “I'm sorry, but I was just looking for a story. Missing hikers, important guys, two detectives checking it out…What am I supposed to think?”

“Don't think, report,” he snapped.

“Give me a break,” she said. “Listen, I'm not stupid. If I think there's something you're not telling, I have to speculate.”

Mac stopped again and they stood toe to toe. He was aware there had been what many considered a degradation in the quality of news reporting in the past ten years. If the lead story wasn't big enough, make it big enough by lots of hyperbole and speculation. This reporter had an incredibly irritating approach, but as she brushed the hair out of her face with her left hand, he saw she was not wearing a wedding or engagement ring. Mac set his jaw.

“Two guys are missing a few hours—”

“Twelve hours.”

“Okay, twelve hours, and you want to make this into a much bigger story than it is,” he said. “These men have families and friends, and until we have something solid, I don't want anyone scaring the crap out of them with their half-assed theories.”

Kris felt he was stonewalling her. That's when she noticed he had no wedding band.

Married and hiding it, or divorced? My guess is divorced.

“Okay,” she said, “then just tell me why you're here.”

Mac turned quickly to avoid her question and almost ran into Deputy Bill Alexander.

“The search team's been up a couple miles and got zip,” Deputy Bill reported eagerly. He'd never done a TV interview.

“How many trails could they have taken?” Kris asked. “I thought there was only one.”

Mac shot her a “Don't talk to my guy” look, but she ignored it and turned to Deputy Bill.

“Yeah, only the one,” said Bill. Then he added, “There's a Y up a ways, but it all goes to the same place. The top.”

“Have you searched off trail?” she asked.

Bill looked to Mac, unsure how to answer since they hadn't. Mac didn't want to answer the reporter's questions but also didn't want to look like they were hiding something.

He sighed. “It's too dangerous. It's pitch-black and even with flashlights the trail's dicey. If they don't show by first light, we'll bring in a chopper and a much bigger team.”

“You been up there to confirm that the trail's dangerous?” she asked Mac.

Mac fixed her with an impassive gaze and said nothing.

Kris turned to Bill. “So you tell me why two detectives are running a search for hikers.”

Bill squirmed as if it were a trick question. Then Kris started laughing, breaking the tension, and Bill followed her lead and broke into nervous laughter although he had no idea why. Mac smiled to show she didn't scare him. He knew that Kris Walker was nothing but trouble, made all the worse by his attraction to her.

Carillo joined them, shaking his head. “No sign of them. We're waiting on the last search team and the dogs before we check out. Looks like we'll be back at seven or so if something doesn't happen pretty quick.”

Mac didn't relish rising early on what would have been his day off.

“Call in and see if they've shown up anywhere,” he said. “The map shows some roads on the other side of the mountain. Maybe they got to a house.”

Carillo left and Deputy Bill snugged his jacket around him, feeling the chill, partly from the cold, partly from the memory of the very unsettling feeling he'd had a few hours before when he'd stood alone on this very spot.

“This is kinda like the other guy that went missing Tuesday,” Bill offered.

Mac and Kris lit up at the remark.

“What guy?” Mac asked. He didn't like the fact that a pushy reporter was privy to this information but at least she didn't have a camera running.

“A Weyerhaeuser guy. This timber cruiser. I found his truck. Keys in it, door open. Engine had been on but it had run outta gas. Guy just disappeared. Real strange.”

Kris smelled a story. “Where was that?”

“Oh, a valley or two east of here. Just this side of the National Forest.”

Mac wasn't surprised he hadn't heard this. His department had more than three hundred employees and covered a piece of northern Washington that was in between Rhode Island and Delaware in size. The county stretched from the ocean to remote mountain reaches and within its confines lived more than three-quarters of a million people. That some guy had disappeared and he didn't know about it wasn't all that unusual.

“You do any follow-up? Any reasons why?” Mac asked. “Personal problems, maybe?”

“No, doesn't look like it. Talked to the wife. Seemed like a happy family. Kid had a nose ring, though.”

“Huh?” Kris tripped over the non sequitur.

“The missing guy? Son had a nose ring.”

Mac guessed this young deputy sheriff didn't see a lot of nose rings and found it worth throwing into the equation as a possible reason a man might leave his family.

“Was there evidence of foul play?” Kris asked.

“Foul play? No, not a thing.” Bill paused a moment. “'Cept maybe the trees.”

“Trees?” Mac repeated.

“Yeah.” Bill knew he had a good story going when a reporter for a major TV station and the top detective in his department were hanging on his every word. “The trees around where I found the truck were all busted off. Up high, maybe ten feet. Snapped in two like a freak wind or something.”