The Naturalist (The Naturalist Series Book 1)

by Andrew Mayne

  Those are questions that will haunt me for the rest of my life if things don’t work out the way I need them to.

  All of this preparation and planning was a distraction from the real problem. Assuming things do work out and I create a convincing suicide, that still leaves one very large problem: I still have no idea who or where Clark is.

  He told me to kill myself because he feared I was close. But the truth is, I don’t know any more than what he suspected I’d already told the police.

  I’m at just as much of a dead end as they are.

  My only hope is that Clark feared me, not because of what he thought I knew, but what he thought I was close to knowing.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  BREAKING

  At 7:22 a.m. a body was found in a car parked in an unfinished housing development northwest of the city. Unconfirmed reports say the victim, a man in his midthirties, may have died from a self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head. While no motive is immediately known, we can confirm that earlier this morning our news bureau received a link to an alleged confession on YouTube from a person involved with the string of alleged murder victims that police agencies across the state had previously identified as animal attacks. This video confession was made in a vehicle in what appears to be the same area where the body was found. Developing.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  DEAD MAN

  I sip my stale coffee and watch the parking lot of the motel from my second-floor room. I’m not paranoid yet. I’m just tired of looking at a computer screen for hours on end.

  A big rig pulls up to the diesel pumps, and a stocky man in a tan leather overcoat gets out and walks into the service station. He’s about the eighth guy I’ve seen do the same thing. It’s like there’s a casting office down the road they’re sending them from.

  The news announced my name and death eighteen hours ago, along with the video confession I sent to the stations. I’ve spent the last twelve holed up in this motel two hundred miles from Helena, trying to crack Clark’s pattern. As each hour goes by, I nervously check the Internet to see if they’ve caught on to me yet.

  I keep the TV on in the background with the volume low, anxiously awaiting another “breaking” report. I’ve seen parts of my confession air three times on the evening news as well as footage of the scene of my fake death, shot from a distance. There hasn’t been a press conference yet, just a graphic of police letterhead saying that the investigation is ongoing.

  Ongoing . . . It certainly is.

  I try not to think of what the news has done to Jillian or Gus, let alone my parents. I’ve had to stop myself several times from picking up the phone and telling them I’m okay.

  I can’t just yet.

  I have to find him.

  I know he won’t make a move on Jillian or Gus so soon after my death. It would attract attention and let the authorities know there’s another killer out there. He’s smart and patient. He’ll wait it out—then go after them and close that book.

  Constantly checking the news was getting distracting, so I created a little script that searches the web for my name and sends me a text update any time it appears in the Montana newspapers.

  I also have a police scanner that lets me know what the cops are up to around here—the ones that aren’t using an encrypted channel. If they’ve seen through my ruse and are closing in on me, I think it might give me some heads-up.

  The van is parked out back, near the fire escape. I can get to it from the front door, or through the back window that I already have open, with a coil of rope tied to the toilet. Probably overcautious, but the cops aren’t the only ones I’m afraid of finding me.

  Clark is a skilled hunter. While I don’t doubt his threats toward Jillian and Gus, I’m sure he’ll come for me if he thinks I’m on the loose.

  That’s why finding him first, while I’m dead, is so critical.

  Unfortunately, my hunt has been a bust.

  Joshua Lee Clark vanished in the 1980s, not long after the Cougar Creek Monster sightings stopped. The next time I know he reared his head was when the oldest victim I found outside of Red Hook was killed six years ago.

  I suspect he was active before then in the state, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he went somewhere else for a decade or two.

  Using some anthropology software designed to reconstruct facial features from bone structure, I created an adult version of his face and then used that as a comparison to scan through online mug shots. Then I sorted through thousands of possibilities and discounted ones that had traceable family connections.

  This narrowed the field to just under two hundred people. To sort through these, I looked at their arrest records and the crimes they committed, and went on instinct.

  This yielded a dozen maybes, although none of them felt right. I knew that wasn’t exactly a scientific thing to go on, but I suspected that Clark might be too clever and focused to get busted for the simple things, like robbing a convenience store or selling meth out of his car. However, given his violent tendencies, I considered it highly possible that he might have been arrested at some point when his temper got out of control, so I kept checking.

  When this line of attack began to seem less likely to find him, I started trying to think out of the box. For the last two hours I’ve been hypnotized by his purple band of activity that MAAT singled out for me.

  Watching all the big rigs pull up, I have an inspiration and try to find a trucking route that lines up with the killings. Nothing matches.

  There’s also the problem that MAAT insists overwhelmingly that Clark’s hunting ground is based on victim availability. This suggests that he adjusts his route to the victims, which would be hard if he had to drive a proscribed route. I’d see clusters around specific dates, but I don’t.

  My sense of dread is growing with every dead end. I’m running into the walls of the public data sets I have access to. I’ve paid for dozens of background checks, but that’s just not enough. If I had FBI-level resources and an unrestricted warrant, maybe I would have better luck.

  Or maybe not. I might still be looking at this the wrong way.

  I’ve had a few exciting leads that have given me hope, but they quickly faded.

  When I was in the gas station bathroom, I realized for the first time that there were vending machines selling condoms and breath mints. I’d seen these all over the state.

  I ran back to my room to see if I could find a connection, thinking that maybe the person who refills them is Clark, but came up empty-handed. MAAT gave that as much probability as Clark just being a random person driving long distances from his home to kill.

  It’s obvious. I’m sure of it. I just don’t know what that connection is. I’m going to make some assumptions and see if MAAT comes up with something that jumps out at me.

  Clark is familiar with his victims in some way. He sees them, he knows their routines. He has opportunity to watch them and wait until they’re vulnerable.

  I type these factors into MAAT, converting them to code. Familiarity with the victim would imply that he has a chance to see most of them more than once. Knowing their routine means he has some idea of their circuit—their own work and social patterns. Vulnerability is coded for by looking for when he could be alone with them in a professional situation—like being a taxi driver or a mailman.

  It takes MAAT a fraction of a second to come back with a high-probability suggestion that chills me. Under those criteria, the likeliest occupation for Clark is highway patrolman.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  REALITY CHECK

  It’s a wonderful theory and would explain so much. Yet it only works in the limited reality that I programmed into MAAT. Clark would have to be close to sixty now. There aren’t any Montana State troopers out on the road that old.

  He might be senior law enforcement, but that seems doubtful. I’m not sure if he would want to risk the background checks that go with that. I’m not ruling it out entirely, but putting
that under the maybe category.

  I’m getting stir-crazy and decide to go for a drive. It’s risky going out on the road. But so is hunting a serial killer.

  In the back of my mind, something tells me I need to start where this began. I do a U-turn and head toward Filmount County, where Juniper was murdered.

  That was the last location I can place Clark. He was there the night Juniper got murdered.

  Something brought the two together. Had he been watching her for days? Was it an impulse?

  As I drive into the night, I assess the other patterns MAAT created when I inputted known serial killers. A strikingly obvious fact came to the surface, something I should have considered earlier.

  MAAT saw three distinct killing patterns. There was the wide-ranging type like Ted Bundy, who had a cross-country murder spree. He was a drifter and moved often from place to place. Even still, he sometimes stayed too long and attracted attention—to the point of getting arrested, only to escape and keep killing.

  Drifters like Bundy aren’t very cautious. They rely on law enforcement not catching up with them before they move on.

  Clark isn’t a drifter. He frequents the same areas over many years. Killers who stay in one place are able to do this if they’re invisible, somebody in the community you wouldn’t suspect, and if the bulk of their victims are socially ignored: hookers, drug addicts, the homeless.

  Really prolific killers who stay in one place either prey upon one group exclusively, such as prostitutes, or have elaborate means of concealing their crimes.

  Jeffrey Dahmer lived in a poor neighborhood, and his victims were largely young male homosexuals who were separated from their families.

  For over two decades, the Grim Sleeper, a Los Angeles serial killer named Lonnie David Franklin Jr., murdered mostly African American prostitutes with drug problems.

  John Wayne Gacy broke this mold, preying on victims from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds. Some were young men that worked for his construction company; others were gay men he picked up cruising and took back to his house to kill.

  Both the Grim Sleeper and John Wayne Gacy were well known in their communities, which had the paradoxical effect of contributing to their invisibility. Even as people were disappearing or being abducted, sometimes literally in front of their houses, they remained above suspicion.

  One recurring theme in these cases is that the culprits were people the police spoke to early on. Bundy was stopped multiple times. Police returned a teenage Laotian victim to Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment, afraid to interfere in what they thought was a lovers’ quarrel. The parents of one of Gacy’s victims called the police more than a hundred times, imploring them to investigate him further after their son disappeared in connection with Gacy. They didn’t. Three years later, the boy was one of twenty-seven victims found buried under Gacy’s home.

  It’s extremely likely that Clark has already spoken to the authorities in some capacity, either as a witness or someone ruled out as a suspect.

  Given the fact that nobody even acknowledges that there is a serial killer operating in Montana, it’s possible that the parents of some missing girl have pointed to Clark but have been ignored.

  I’m missing something . . .

  Something important.

  I need to go back to basics.

  When they thought Juniper was murdered by a human, before the bear nonsense, they had two suspects: me and the mechanic, Bryson.

  They discounted both of us readily. I know why they did in my case, but what about Bryson?

  Did he have some airtight alibi? Or did they not do their due diligence?

  Bryson seemed pretty fit. I remember him to be in his late fifties, close to Clark’s age.

  This is too much. I take the next exit and pull into the parking lot of a defunct gas station ten miles away from Filmount County.

  I look up the property records for Bryson’s repair shop and get his full name. Philip Joseph Bryson. A background check reveals that he’s had the shop for twenty years. He’s married to his second wife, and he has a mother still living in Missoula. He also has two sisters.

  Damn. If only.

  He can’t be Clark.

  It doesn’t mean he couldn’t be the killer, but it would throw out the window everything that led me to Lane and the cars.

  The cars.

  The goddamn cars . . .

  Juniper’s car was at Bryson’s service station getting repaired. That’s why she was taking walks through the woods.

  Jesus Christ.

  Juniper’s killer wasn’t someone who saw her in town or just walking along the road.

  He saw her car at Bryson’s.

  He knew she was stranded.

  She talked to him. Bryson might even know him.

  The cars at the Lane farm . . . why are they important still?

  FUCK.

  I understand the pattern now!

  I know what Clark is. He’s everywhere. He’s invisible. He can do what he does in plain sight and nobody would ever give it a second thought.

  Christ, I have to warn Jillian and Gus.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  STALKER

  All the lights are on in Jillian’s house, but she’s not answering her phone. I tried calling Gus as well but only got his voice mail. I try to tell myself that it’s because they don’t recognize my burner phone number. I pray that’s why.

  I almost called into 911 to warn them but decided against it when I realized that, at most, they’d send a patrol car by. And if Clark is watching the house, this might make him suspicious.

  At best, the police might stick around for a few hours and watch her place, but if he wants to get to her, he will. There’s no way Hudson Creek will put in the kind of manpower necessary without more credible evidence. Even then, I don’t know how much faith I have in Whitmyer.

  My fear is that they know Joshua Lee Clark personally and will laugh off my suggestion of what he truly is without more evidence. To make sure they don’t ignore him, I have to yell his name far and wide, as loudly as I can. But first, I have to make sure Jillian and Gus are safe. It’s a dangerous gamble.

  I park down the block from her house, a two-bedroom home across the street from some wood-covered property. This is what scares me. A man like Clark could hide in there like a sniper and never be found.

  The street is quiet. Jillian’s car is in her driveway. Nobody else has their car on the street.

  The woods make me nervous. I’m afraid he might be in there watching. So I decide to take the long way around and approach her house from the back, cutting through the neighbor’s property and her backyard.

  This part of the street is quiet, too. Somewhere in the distance a dog barks, but there isn’t anyone stirring.

  The whole house is brightly lit. I crouch behind a bush next to a woodpile and watch for a moment, waiting to see if she’s up and about. Her porch light is on; so are the kitchen and dining room lights.

  After five minutes of no movement, I decide to give her phone a call again.

  It rings five times, then goes to voice mail.

  Damn.

  I go to dial again but stop when I see a notification from one of my computer scripts.

  BREAKING: SUSPICIONS MOUNT IN ALLEGED SUICIDE.

  No. Not this soon! I click through the article. An unnamed person in the Helena police department says that they’re hesitant to confirm my identity because of “forensic discrepancies.”

  Fuck.

  He knows.

  I call Jillian again. This time I put my phone on silent and listen.

  Across the yard I can hear her phone ringing from inside the house.

  Why isn’t she picking up?

  I can’t wait any longer.

  I rush to her back porch, setting off a motion-sensing light.

  When I get to the sliding door, I press my face against the glass and peer inside. I can’t see into the bedrooms, but this part of the house is empty.

&
nbsp; I try the door, but it’s locked. I want to knock, but I’m worried that the sound might tip off Clark that I’m here.

  I climb over the porch railing and go to the side of her house. The shades are drawn, but I can see light from behind them.

  I creep toward her bedroom window and put my ear to the cold glass.

  I think I hear her voice.

  I raise my hand to tap gently but freeze when something snaps in the woods directly to my right.

  Somebody is out there.

  I press my body flat against the wall and search the shadows for the source of the sound. All I see is darkness.

  If I go out there, he’ll see me. If he has a rifle trained on the house, he’ll drop me before I know what hit me.

  I take my phone out of my pocket and crouch down, using my jacket to shield the glow, which kills my night vision.

  I try calling Jillian again.

  Her phone rings from just a few feet away.

  On the third ring she picks up.

  “Hello?”

  “Jillian! It’s me!”

  “Theo!”

  I can hear her voice through the window.

  “Listen carefully. You’re in danger.”

  Something moves behind me. Still blinded by the glow of my phone, all I see is a distant yard light.

  “Don’t move,” says a voice in the shadows.

  I slide my arm behind me to grab my gun, but a man in a mask runs toward me and fires something.

  My chest explodes in pain, and I collapse.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

  PROTECTION

  There’s a bright light in my eyes, and somebody is talking to me.

  “Are you okay, Theo?”

  I begin to focus and see a male paramedic peeling back my eyelid and looking at my pupil for dilation.

  When I try to move my arms, I can’t. For a moment I think they’re paralyzed, then realize they’re handcuffed behind my back.

  “What happened?”

  “What do you remember?” the paramedic asks.

  “I . . . was checking on Jillian. Jillian! Where is she?”