by Andrew Mayne
“Hikers? I hadn’t heard about that.”
“Before we went up, there were at least two people, out-of-towners who were seen going up but never came back. After, there were three hikers, flower children or something, who hitchhiked their way to Red Hook and then went up the mountain. Nobody saw them again, either. There was never a missing-persons report in the area. I think a ranger did a search. But that was the end of that.
“Although I’ve heard that others—some of the people who came looking for the Cougar Man, again, out-of-town people—weren’t seen again. But who knows. You’d think their cars would be piling up at the trailhead parking lot. Right? Probably just talk.”
“What do you think grabbed you?”
“I’d say it was a man, but it didn’t smell or act like one. Scott still had the claw marks on his chest. Although he started telling people it was a mountain lion shortly after. He got tired of telling people what really happened. He died in a car wreck a few years later. Drinking. Poor Scott.”
We fall quiet for a minute, looking away off opposite ends of the porch. Then Elizabeth faces me.
“What was it? The devil. None of us were the same after. Reese ended up shooting himself with the same gun he shot Scott with. Alex got into drugs and started dealing and was in and out of jail. Carey Sumter started having nightmares and moved away. So did most of the others.”
“And you stayed?”
“The devil can get me anywhere he pleases. No point in running. Besides, I married a cop.”
There’s a distant look in Elizabeth’s eyes I recognize. I see the same confused, haunted girl on the couch in that old photo.
The similarities between this Cougar Man and my killer are too strong to ignore. It might be coincidence, but I suspect these early encounters could have been the killer testing himself in his younger years, learning how to hunt.
“Were all of the missing persons in the same area?”
“As far as I know. The valley around the spring. Why?”
“Could you show me on a map?”
“Sure, but there haven’t been any missing persons or sightings there in decades. I know, I still pay attention.”
“I understand. But I want to go there.”
“Why? He’s long gone.”
“But that might be where he started. I have to see for myself.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
GEOSPATIAL
Back in Jillian’s diner, I hunch over a table full of maps and charts, my half-eaten cherry pie pushed to the side as I try to make sense of the data, as if something will leap out at me and connect everything together.
On the surface, the Cougar Creek Monster sightings have nothing to with Juniper’s killer. The man who murdered her, and the others, is invisible, to the point the authorities still doubt that he even exists. Whereas this Cougar Man almost wanted to be seen, popping up to the point of becoming southern Montana’s Bigfoot, then abruptly vanishing the night he attacked Elizabeth—assuming that was him.
The more I think about it, the idea that this was the killer in his Batman Begins phase makes sense. After nearly—or actually—getting shot, he had to change up his tactics and learn how to hide. Which he did all too well.
This younger killer was clumsy and brazen, attacking in the middle of a crowded campsite. The later killer became much more selective of his prey, probably watching them for considerable amounts of time before striking. The patience that must take—or is that the thrill of the hunt? Does he get as much pleasure from stalking his victims as he does from killing them?
“Planning a hike?” asks Jillian, leaning over my shoulder.
She would have startled me, but I could smell her perfume before she spoke. It reminds me of wisteria.
“Kind of . . .”
She slides into the booth across from me. She’s not wearing her apron. Instead she has on a white-collared blouse that suits her figure well.
“You look . . . nice,” I say.
“You should see me in hiking shorts.”
I give her a weak smile.
She taps the map. “That was a hint, Theo. Every now and then a girl drops one. But don’t expect many more.”
“Oh.” I gather the map and charts together. “It’s not that kind of hike.”
“You’re looking for bodies. I know.”
“Actually, not in this case. It’s more out of curiosity.”
“You’ve been coming and going for two weeks. Your curiosity has taken you all over. Maybe you could use some company on this one?”
I’ve thought about her more than I realize. As I’ve gone into darker and darker places, I’ve found myself looking forward to coming back to this table, eating pie and enjoying some semblance of normalcy.
Sometimes I watch her across the restaurant, the easy way she smiles and how she deals with a variety of human emotions while not losing her own sense of being. Part of me wants to have that presence with me in those dark places. While another part doesn’t want to contaminate her with all that evil.
“I don’t know how good of company I would be.”
“That’s why you need company.”
“It may not be safe.”
“I’ll protect you,” she replies.
“Ha. We’ve seen how effective I’ve been at doing that for myself.”
“Gus says you’ve been taking well to his training.”
“You mean his six a.m. sessions where he swings a laundry bag at my head?”
“Call it what you want, but I can see a difference. Your face is leaning out; you’re not as hunched. He’ll make you a man yet.”
“I don’t think there’s enough time in the universe.”
“All the more reason you need company in the big, bad woods.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“Will everyone at this table who has actually been trained for combat raise their hand?” Jillian lifts her arm. “Right, thought so.”
I forget she was in the army—she’s so . . . feminine. I’d protest again that it wasn’t safe, but I have no reason to think she’s any safer here. And the Cougar Creek Monster hasn’t been seen in decades. I doubt he’d revisit a haunt that almost got him killed. Still . . . nothing about this makes sense.
“Fine,” she says. “It’s settled. You’ll pick me up in the morning.”
“I didn’t agree to anything.”
“Too late.”
I know arguing with her is pointless. And to be honest, I like the idea of not having to share her attention with a restaurant full of people.
“Some men came by yesterday asking about you,” she says.
“Really? Who?”
“Didn’t say. Looked like cops. Not ones I recognized. One of them had a watch that was two hours ahead. Maybe from out of town.”
“Cops? I’m not hard to get hold of.”
“It may have just been a casual thing. I hear they’re looking for a mountain lion now?”
I groan. “Yeah. Five claws. Polydactylism in cats usually results in six or more, not five. I haven’t heard of this happening in large cats, not that it makes a difference. They’ll make up whatever theory they want.”
“What are we looking for tomorrow? Not bodies, right? I mean, I’d be up for that. I guess.”
“No. We’re looking for the Cougar Creek Monster, or the Cougar Man, as he’s sometimes called.”
Jillian raises one eyebrow, waiting to see if I’m joking. “I’ll bring my gun.”
“I’m sure he’s long gone.”
“The gun isn’t for him.”
“Ah, you trust the mad professor to go off on a hike alone with him, but only if you’re packing heat?”
“More or less. Also, like I said, wait until you see me in hiking shorts.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
THE RAVINE
I let Jillian keep a few paces ahead of me, mostly because this part of the ravine is too narrow for us to walk side by side. Mostly. She wasn’t exaggerating about t
he hiking shorts.
As distracted by her as I am, I still can’t keep my mind off the unsettling feeling this trail is giving me. Certainly part of that is the vivid imagery of Elizabeth’s story and the dreadful thought of what else happened here, but another aspect is geography.
The trail follows a gradual incline between two steep ridges. At one time there was a stream here, but it has been cut off for years, leaving a dry rock bed that winds its way through the hills.
The trees along the sides are so tall, the only time the ravine isn’t in shadow is near noon.
“This place feels off,” says Jillian.
I’m relieved to hear her say it, because I didn’t want to cause her any unnecessary unease.
“It’s because we’re vulnerable. Nobody feels comfortable pinned down in a tight crevice.”
“That’s what he said,” she replies with a small laugh.
I get the joke a beat too late and have to settle for grinning when she checks over her shoulder to see how it landed.
“Right . . . Some evolutionary psychologists think that we’re hardwired to feel more comfortable in certain landscapes than others. That’s what goes into park design. They’re not meant to recreate nature, but to soothe us. A small body of water in a wide-open space with a few clusters of trees to hide in if there’s a large predator. This is what we looked for when we left the jungle for the savanna. It’s what medieval landscape painters tried to represent and how manors and country estates were designed for hundreds of years. This place? It’s the opposite.”
“Yeah, but I think I can see why a bunch of teenagers would want to come up here. It feels very far away from authority. Especially after graduation.”
I keep my eyes on the shadows, trying to imagine how I’d react if I looked up and saw someone . . . or something . . . watching.
There are a thousand places to hide, and undoubtedly we’re being watched. This place got its name, Cougar Creek, from some settlers who lived nearby a hundred years ago. Statistically, the number of mountain lion sightings here is lower than in other areas, probably from excessive hunting due to the name. That said, I’m sure more than one carnivore knows we’re here.
Jillian stops to tuck a strand of dirty-blonde hair behind her ear, then takes a sip from her canteen. “How you holding up, city boy?”
“This city boy was trekking through Belize when you were holding pom-poms.”
“Pom-poms? Softball and volleyball. I liked to hit things. What were you doing in Belize?”
“Hunting a killer,” I reply.
“Really?”
“Culicidae. Mosquitoes. We were tracking down a species that had a higher incidence of transmitting malaria than others. I was an undergraduate following a field researcher, collecting specimens while the government tried eradicating them from danger spots.”
“How did that work out?”
“A slightly less infectious species filled the niche. Statistically speaking, we saved eleven lives. Eventually, better eradication methods made a more significant difference.”
“Interesting.” She keeps walking for a while. “This is the same to you?”
“Pardon?”
“The way you found the other victims and what you’re doing out here, it’s like hunting a disease.”
“I’m not really an epidemiologist, if that’s what you mean. It’s outside my area. I build mathematical models based on biological systems.”
“A generalist.”
“I guess you could say so. Even biology felt too constraining, so I had to figure out how to make it more exotic.”
“Like how?”
“For my PhD thesis, I created a fifth-dimensional environment, inhabited it with synthetic life, then introduced disease vectors.”
“I’m not even going to pretend to know what that means.”
“It was a little ambitious. What I was after was trying to find common traits between very different systems. The way a funny cat picture spreads on the Internet isn’t all that different from how the flu virus might spread. I wanted to create a very complicated model, really bizarre, and then look for similarities.”
“Did you?”
“Lots of them. None of them were built in to the system, but certain things are inevitable. That’s how I found where the other victims were. My model picked up patterns that were nonobvious.”
“Clever.”
“Half-clever. I could discover a lot about what their burial locations and potential interception locations had in common, but it doesn’t tell me anything about the killer.”
Jillian thinks this over for a moment, then replies, “That’s why we’re here. If this is your killer in his early days, that will tell you more about him.”
“Maybe. It might not even be connected to him, but there could be some data point that helps me better understand that kind of behavior.”
We reach level ground and continue hiking under a dense canopy of trees. After a half hour, we reach the small spring where Elizabeth and her friends made camp.
The pool is dark and twists around a bend. At one side there’s foamy discharge. Occasionally a bubble gurgles up from below. The sulfur smell isn’t overpowering, but it’s clearly there.
Rocky outcroppings surround the location, creating a kind of steep caldera. The presence of the steaming spring suggests some latent volcanic activity, implying that this may actually have been a volcano in the past.
I point up. “See the way the jagged edges of the cliffs cut into the blue sky like black teeth? In other places I’ve been, a geological feature like this would be called a hell mouth.”
“Creepy,” says Jillian, eyeing them with suspicion.
I take out the satellite printouts of the area I brought with me. It takes me a moment to place where I’m standing with the map, but I find what I’m searching for.
“This way.”
Jillian follows me as I cut through brush to get to a rock fall. We climb up it until we’re a good sixty feet above the spring. I find a narrow ledge where we can both sit.
From up here, the clearing is a grassy circle with the tiny pond in the middle. In my mind’s eye, I can imagine the tents spread out across the glade: small, almost toylike, the people insignificant.
“How do you feel from up here?” I ask.
“Like a god.”
“Or a devil.”
Jillian nods. “Do you think he watched them from here?”
“I think he watched them all the way up the trail. And the others. This spot below us . . . it’s special. It would have been his place.”
“His killing ground?”
“Probably more than once.”
I take a thermal map from my backpack and orient it with where we’re looking.
“What’s that?”
“Rangers have been all over this area and never found anything. But there are a dozen places you can’t see from the ground.”
I line up the cooler section on the map with a precipice about twenty yards away. There’s a sheer face about ten feet tall with several cracks in it. Above it is a small ledge.
“Hold my pack?”
“What are you doing?”
“I was looking for a place where a cat or a bear couldn’t get to, but a primate might.”
“What, a ledge?”
“No, a cave.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
LAIR
I have to wedge my foot into a small crack in the rock wall and grasp the upper edge so tightly my fingers turn white in order to pull myself up onto the ledge.
I could imagine a mountain lion making the leap or a bear doing a chin-up if they were really inclined, but I don’t think they would do it with any regularity if there were better places to reside.
“Theo?” calls Jillian.
“Just a second.” I roll over and catch my breath while ignoring the still-healing wounds all over my body. “Fine,” I say after I sit up.
The thermal image suggested there migh
t be a deep passage here. Sure enough, there’s a gap in the rocks like a sharp triangle. Just wide enough for a man to slide through.
I take my flashlight from my pocket and shine it into the chasm. The wall veers to the right after about ten feet, indicating that the cave twists to the side.
“If I don’t come out in ten minutes . . . um, go get help?”
“Why don’t I come with you?” she shouts from the base of the wall.
“Just hang. Let me see what’s here.”
“Fine. But I’m coming after you in ten, not getting help.”
I get an anxious feeling and look out at the clearing. I’m not sure if it’s nerves for what’s inside or the thought of leaving her alone.
I take my gun out and lower it down for her to take. “Here.”
“What are you going to use?”
“Common sense?”
“How has that worked out for you so far?” She waves the gun away. “If I need it to go after you, then it would be better if you had it in the first place.”
There’s no point arguing with her. I tuck it back into my waistband and step inside the cave.
A scent washes over me. Acrid and moist, I can’t quite place it. I’ve smelled plenty of dead bodies in the past few weeks. This is something different.
I go deeper into the cavern, past the twist in the passage, and the walls begin to widen out. The roof gets lower, but I can still walk with only a slight hunch.
The floor is a layer of dirt covering a flat rock surface. I search for any sign of habitation but only find rocks and a few dry branches a storm probably blew in here.
It’s certainly deep enough for someone to live in, or at least spend a few days on a murder vacation.
I keep going farther, looking for something. I really don’t know what. It’s been over thirty years since Elizabeth had her encounter. And assuming the Cougar Man did hang out up here, I’m not sure what I should be looking for.
Okay, that’s not honest. I think I was expecting to see a pile of bones from those missing hikers. All I have is a dirt floor.
After another ten yards, I reach the end of the cave. Just to be certain, I double back and aim the light at all the places where the floor meets the wall, searching for small passages into other chambers.
