Flexing my fingers and working the cramping from the muscles, I imagine the next steps as I hurry to the car, open the trunk, and reach for the gas can and green trash bags.
We are alone on the trail, but this area is chock-full of hikers and cyclists, and it is still possible for us to be interrupted. I rush back to her, gasoline sloshing in the can and releasing an invigorating scent.
Kneeling beside her, I check her pulse. Her heartbeat still taps faintly, as if vainly pumping like the Little Engine That Could.
In the distance I hear the crunch of a mountain biker’s wheels against the dirt path fifty feet below. As a precaution, I place my hand over her mouth and still my body, hoping the vanishing light hides all traces of us.
“Shh,” I whisper. “It’s okay.”
Finally, the mountain bike wheels roll away down the mountainside. As if she understands all hope is truly lost, her heart stops, and the faint puffs from her nostrils cease.
I pull her away from the rock, lay her flat, and quickly strip the blood-soaked Big Sky Country sweatshirt from her and then unsnap her jeans and pull them off. Next, off comes her underwear. Mind you, all this is done in a professional manner and not in a sexual-deviant kind of way. There are killers who enjoy humiliating their victims pre- and postmortem, but I am not like that. I am not sick. I have a purpose.
Pocketing her cell, I shove the clothes into a garbage bag. They will go in the trunk of her car to be used at a later date.
The heady scent of copper wafts as crimson silhouettes the body in ever-widening shadows. In the distance, an animal howls as if the blood scent stimulates its hunger. Soon it will be circling. My unfamiliarity with this wild country and the creatures stalking the night prompt me to hurry.
Grabbing a fresh, finer-point knife from another pocket, I flick it open and carefully trace the outline of her face, which she uses to manipulate men.
I nose the blade tip under the skin along her hairline. It takes several minutes of angling and gently probing until I can grab a flap of skin. Once I have a fingerhold, the process quickens. With a tugging, blade-swiping motion, I work around the outline of the face, ripping away subcutaneous fat and fascia. Several times the skin catches, threatens to tear, and forces me to stop pulling and let the knife do its work.
The process takes ten minutes, longer than I had anticipated, but experience has taught me if I rush, my trophy will be ruined, because facial skin is thin and prone to ripping. Around the eyes is the tricky spot, because that area tends to snag and tear.
Skinning, like any task, improves with repetition.
Practice makes perfect.
Finally, I lift the skin mask from her skull and pull a bag from my pocket, snapping it open so it catches the air and inflates. Carefully, I tuck my trophy inside and lay it flat on the ground. Though satisfaction lurks close, I do not dare acknowledge it.
At her side, I kneel and carefully angle her body toward the sunset, because she had loved it, and then I douse the body with gasoline. When the can is completely empty, I jog back to her car. I strip my own clothes off, and the cool evening air sends gooseflesh rippling. From the trunk I grab fresh clothes, and I dress as efficiently as I kill. Thirty seconds later my bloodied clothes are in another garbage bag. I place the can, the bag of clothes, and my trophy in the trunk before fishing a box of matches out of my pocket.
It is growing dark as I dig a flashlight from the trunk and shine it on the path to make the final trip up the hill under the half-moon sky. The ground is wet from last night’s rain, and several times I slip and stumble in the mud or on a rock.
Her body is saturated in shadows as I strike the match. A familiar sulfur scent, which I have loved since I was a child, rises up seconds before the flame appears and grows tall and bright. I toss the match onto the body.
The gas fumes light with a sudden hiss, illuminating the dark sky. A fire out here will be a beacon for the curious as well as the do-gooders. It will not be long before people come. But that is the point. I do not want the animals to consume her. I want her found.
The clock ticks in earnest.
The gravel shifts under my feet as I race down the hill and slide behind the wheel of the car. I start the engine, using the keys I told her not to bother carrying to the overlook. Smoke and flames, fouled with the scent of burning flesh, climb in the night sky. Forgoing headlights, I nose the car toward the old road marked with potholes and switchback curves.
In the rearview mirror the fire burns. Steady Montana winds whisk its embers toward the dry scrub brush hugging the hills. The damp ground will corral the flames, keeping the mountainside safe. No sense damaging the earth.
I settle back into the driver’s seat, and my thoughts turn to the next town. And the next name on my list.
Flipping on the headlights, I press the accelerator, switch on the radio, and drive faster. This is more fun than I ever anticipated.
CHAPTER ONE
Forty miles east of Missoula, Montana
Wednesday, August 18
7:15 a.m.
When Sergeant Bryce McCabe of the Montana Highway Patrol received the call from the local sheriff in Deer Lodge County, he was at his ranch, stringing barbed wire along a hundred-yard stretch of pastureland. He hoped to be stocking cattle by next spring, but days off had been rare in the last few months, so progress was slow. The cattle might have to wait another year or two.
He cradled the phone between his head and shoulder and tugged off his work gloves. “Bryce McCabe.”
“Bryce, this is Sheriff Harry Wexler.” Anxiety sharpened the lawman’s voice. “I need your help with a case.”
Bryce dug his bandanna from his rear pocket and rubbed the sweat from the back of his neck. “What do you have, Sheriff?”
“Homicide. And as much as I’d like to tell you about it, seeing is believing.” Wexler was a steady-as-he-goes kind of lawman, and for him to request assistance meant trouble.
“Is it like the last one?” Bryce asked.
“Seems so.”
Bryce shoved the bandanna back in his pocket. “I’ll be there in about an hour. Text the directions.”
“Will do. Thanks, Bryce.”
Bryce climbed into his ’86 Ford ranch pickup and drove the dirt-packed road to the homestead he and his brother, Dylan, now shared.
The two-story house was constructed of hand-hewn logs resting on a stone foundation and sealed with chinking wedged between seams joined by notched corners. A weather-rusted red tin roof arrowed to a sharp peak to keep hefty winter snows off load-bearing beams. The eastward-facing front porch was shaded by a ten-foot overhang and outfitted with two handmade rockers made of lodgepole pine.
The house had been left to Bryce and Dylan by their late stepfather, Pops Jones, a former rodeo rider. Their mother had spent most of her life dragging her boys from job to job and town to town until she had hooked up with Pops. No one gave the union much hope, but as it turned out, Pops had been a real ray of sunshine for twelve-year-old Bryce and ten-year-old Dylan. And when their mother passed, the three had remained together on the rodeo circuit, wintering here at the cabin, until Bryce turned eighteen and joined the marines. Dylan remained with Pops two more years and then followed his brother into the service.
Coordinated holidays were rare, but both brothers had made it to the ranch three Christmases ago and enjoyed the last holiday the old man would see on this earth. There had been a good bit of barbecuing, bourbon drinking, cigar smoking, and more than a few jokes about the lady friends Pops had juggled.