by A P Morgan
Aries
Leslie
I knew better than to glance back over my shoulder while I was running, but it was hard to go against my natural instincts. I ducked barely missing the arrow that thunked into the tree inches from my head.
Terror raced through my body. He knew exactly where I was. This was a game to him and I was his prey. I knew that I wasn’t the first one he’d chased through these woods because I’d seen the bodies of those who hadn’t made it. I wasn’t sure about everything that he did to his victims, but I wasn’t going to be one. Not tonight.
The moon shone through the trees giving just enough light for me to see a path, but that meant he could follow me easier through the less vegetative area.
A scream pierced the night and instead of heading to safety for myself, I turned back. I couldn’t let him have another girl. He wasn’t going to win this game, not if I could stop him.
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Three Weeks Earlier
A dog barked alerting the hunter of his find. His owner ambled over assuming that he’d found another dead squirrel, until he saw the hand sticking out of the dirt. Fumbling to grab his dog’s collar, he managed to keep him away from sniffing the finger pointed up.
The leash clipped into place as he pulled out his phone to make a call. “Sherriff, you need to get out to the wooded area over off the highway. Fred found a hand sticking out of the ground.” The hunter looked around self-consciously, “No, I didn’t check to see if there was a body attached. Yes, it looks real and Fred went crazy trying to get to it. I don’t think he’d act that way if it was fake.”
“Sure, I’ll wait here, but hurry. I’m all creeped out now.”
Twenty minutes later, I pulled up behind Leroy Blake’s vehicle and parked. It wasn’t hard to follow the path he and Fred had made through the woods.
I had barely left the squad car behind when I heard Fred barking.
“That you Sherriff?” Leroy’s voice echoed through the wooded area.
“Yep. Make sure you don’t shoot me.” I chuckled knowing that he was very careful when out in the woods. We didn’t have much in the way of woods near the beach highway, but there was just enough on the inner side for tourist to get lost in.
“Hey, there Leroy. What have you got for me?” I put my hand down near Fred to sniff before trying to pet him.
“Well, now, Fred’s the one that found it. We hadn’t gotten far when he just took off and I had to chase after him. Then I find him sniffing this hand and it was all I could do to get his leash on and pull him away to call you. Good thing it was out here on the edge because if we’d have gone much further, there wouldn’t have been much cell reception.”
I pulled on a pair of latex gloves and bent down to examine it. When I touch the finger that was pointed upward, the hand stayed steady so I was going to assume that it had been buried and might still be attached to the arm. Wiggling the dirt away from the wrist, I could see there was more of arm underneath. Green paint decorated the nails and the fingers looked a little soft with few to no wrinkles on the back of the hand. I was going to say they belonged to a woman probably younger than twenty-five.
This was going to take more than just me to find out what happened. I’d done my part checking out a call from a friend, now it was time to make it official and call in the crime techs.
“Leroy, can you do me a favor?”
“Yeah, need Fred to help track down the body?” Leroy asked eagerly.
“Uh, no. I’m afraid that it’s not very exciting.” I stood up looking at the area around the hand sticking out of the ground. “I need you to cancel your hunting trip for the day and call my office when you get out to the road.”
“Aw, Sherriff. That’s not fair. I’m the one that found it, well Fred did, but we’re a pair and he can’t have his picture taken or be interviewed by the news channels, but I can speak for him.” Leroy groaned in dismay.
“Now, Leroy, you know I wouldn’t want you to miss out on all the fame this could bring. If you can keep quiet for about twenty-four hours, I’ll make sure to call the news myself and tell them that you were the first person on the scene.” I held up a hand in warning, “But, I’ll only vouch for you if, you don’t tell anyone about it until I tell you to. If I catch wind that you’ve gone and told the whole town before I say you can, then I’ll tell them we might suspect you of having done this to the hand and any body that we find.”
Panic filled Leroy’s features, “Nah, that’s not fair. I won’t say anything unless you tell me to, but how am I supposed to call your office if I can’t say anything?”
“Just tell my office where I’m at and that I need a crime scene team. This way if nothing important comes to light then they won’t laugh at you down at the barber shop. If we find something, then you’ll be the town hero.”
Leroy scratched at his stubbled chin, “I guess that makes sense. You want to keep from letting the killer know about it. I’ll do just what you say, Sheriff.”
“Thank you, its people like you that make police work easier.” I watched as he straightened just a little before pulling on Fred’s leash.
“You can count on me.” Leroy called over his shoulder, hurrying toward the road.
Exhaling the breath I’d been holding, I scanned the area around the strange finger pointing hand noting four other mounds that looked like burial plots as well. I’d been worried that I had one body on my hands, but if these others were similar then we had a serious problem.
This was going to bring the Feds into my town and that wasn’t good for the tourist business just as we were getting into spring. One of California’s major tourist highways ran through our town and drew people to stop for the night or to take advantage of the beaches that went crowed with college students on break.
Walking in a small circle around the five mounds, I didn’t see anything that stood out. This person hadn’t left a gum wrapper behind which told me that this wasn’t their first kill. This part of the woods had a few regulars that came out to hunt birds or squirrels. Not much wildlife beyond that and the hunting rules were pretty strict if it wasn’t in the correct season for that license.
Leroy, a town local, was one of the few that still went out hunting on a regular basis, but he always returned with very little to show for it. I felt pretty sure that he just went out with his dog to get away from people who weren’t quite sure what to do with him and his quirky behavior.
My radio beeped meaning that other squad cars were in close enough range to communicate.
“Hill, that you?”
“Yes, sir. We’re pulling up behind your vehicle now.”
“Did you request the cadaver dog?”
“I sent Sam out to borrow one and he’ll be back with it shortly.” Hill answered.
“Great, follow the path and you shouldn’t have any problem finding me.”
“On our way with the equipment.”
“Roger, that and keep off the radios with information.”
“Yes, sir.”
Patience wasn’t one of my strong suits when it came to this type of thing, but thankfully this wasn’t a stakeout because I hated those with a passion.
Most of my team was used to working in the woods or on the beach, but hauling the tools needed for this job would make the ten minute hike take longer. I leaned against a tree wishing that I hadn’t quit smoking because it would at least give me something to do while I waited.
Standing there it was easy to see that the five mounds were laid out in a row, each one at the foot of a tree. I wasn’t more than ten feet away from them, but it appeared that something was etched into the tree about six feet up from the ground.
Carefully walking around the mounds which I was certain were graves, I pulled another pair of gloves on to trace the
symbol that was carved into the tree. It looked like two circles with a v in between them. I’d seen it somewhere before, but at the moment it escaped me. The carving looked fairly fresh and now that I was looking for it I could see that both of the other trees had the same symbol etched out of the bark.
A branch snapped behind me and I had my gun halfway out of the holster when I realized that it was my officers.
“What have we got Sheriff?” Hill asked out of breath dropping the bags he was carrying on the ground.
“Five murder victims and the killer left us his sign.” I turned confident that our quiet little town was about to become anything, but quiet in the coming days.
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There had been five bodies of young women. Damn, I hated to be right about something like this. We’d sent them to the county coroner, but since we didn’t normally have things like this in our county, I wasn’t sure that we’d get all the evidence. I’d asked them to hold off on doing anything with them while I made a few phone calls.
Pat Hill was my second in command and he was going to stay with the bodies until I could work out some sort of protective detail. We didn’t have the work force for something like this and I already had everyone out in the woods searching for signs of the killer.
I fingered the business card that I’d been given at a training meeting two years ago by the speaker, Ava Perez. I really didn’t want to dial this number, but it wasn’t about me. It was about the town I protected.
“Hello, this Is Ava Perez.”
“Hi, this is Vance Turner. We met at the sheriff training two years ago.”
“What can I do for you Sheriff Turner?”
“We just found five bodies of young women buried out in a patch of woods. I’m afraid that we don’t have the skills to process the bodies appropriately and might miss crucial evidence.”
“Ah, so you need a little extra help from our labs?”
Holding my breath wasn’t going to make this any easier, “You said if we need help to call. Well, I’m calling. We have a killer on the loose and it’s not going to go over well when this gets out. I don’t have the man power to watch over the overflow of people and try to find this killer.”
“I’m glad you reached out. I’ll have a team headed your way in about an hour. How long before the media gets wind of this?”
“I’ve given strict orders to keep it quiet so maybe a few hours before the entire town knows what went down.”
“Can you make reservations for someplace quiet for about ten people?”
“Yes, I can do that.”
“Don’t let them touch the bodies and our autopsy guy will do those on site.”
“I’ve got the bodies under guard right now. We’ll hold down the fort until you get here.”
“Thank you, Sheriff Turner. See you soon.”
Wearily sinking back into my chair, I felt relieved that someone else was going to handle it. This was going to cost me the election in the fall if I didn’t play things very carefully. Picking up the phone, I called the only bed & breakfast in town that could handle that many people to make the reservations.
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Things moved quickly once the FBI showed up with Agent Perez heading things up. Before the day was out, we had a call to come to the morgue to find out how the five women had died.
“What have you got for us, Foster?” Agent Perez asked as she walked through the door barely noticing the body laid out on the table.
“This is the second one, but I’m going to give you a preliminary cause which is most likely going to be the same on the other three. I’ll have those reports to you in the morning.”
“Foster?” She raised her voice slightly, “How did they die?”
“Oh, yeah. From the rate of decomposure, I’d say they were all about a day apart when they died. They haven’t been dead for long either. I started with the two that seemed the oldest and I’d say they’ve been in the ground less than a week.”
“How did they die, Foster?” Agent Perez reminded him again.
“An arrow through the heart.”
“What?” It slipped out and I didn’t miss the look that Agent Perez threw over her shoulder at me.
“Each one of the women, I’m guessing they are all between 20 and thirty, were killed by an arrow. From the wounds and bruises all over their arms and legs, they were chased through the woods before he shot them. Thankfully they were dead before he buried them.” Foster continued moving things around getting things ready for the next body.
“Were they sexually assaulted?” Agent Perez asked the question that I was dreading.
“No. I don’t think so. Most of the damage is on the outside of their bodies and there isn’t any tearing or signs of forced entry. The women were dehydrated which could have resulted from running from their attacker or that he didn’t give them water before chasing them.”
He moved over to where the other four women were laying out on trays, “If you look over here at the bodies, you’ll see the shots with the arrows pierce their hearts exactly. Your killer is an expert marksman because I doubt that any of these women stopped long enough to present him a still target.”
“I’ll have the profiler come over in the morning, but I’m going to start running this through the database and see if we get a hit. Do we have the prints from the girls to run through the system?” Agent Perez consulted her phone, “I’m going to bet these weren’t run aways. They had to have gotten here somehow. Sheriff, can you have your patrol start looking for places that you could hide extra cars?”
“We can. They most obvious would be for them to be on a farm or junkyard somewhere. He could have taken them over one of the small cliffs if he was going to hide one, but five makes it more problematic.”
“As soon as we have ids on the women, it will help us to find out where they would have come from and what kind of cars we are looking for. This guy has probably been doing this for years and he just happened upon your town. He may have even moved on from the area. Let’s get some dinner while, we get a few of these searches going so afterward we can go over the results this evening.”
I grimaced at the thought of food after seeing the insides of the body. I’d seen horrible things in my line of work, but I didn’t normally eat right afterward.
“Sure, there’s a diner over by the bed and breakfast. City Hall is going to let us use their conference room since it’s the biggest space available that won’t be open to the public.” I grinned, “With the station right next door, it’ll make keeping the reporters out much easier.”
“They haven’t shown up yet and while it sometimes helps to let people know that we have a killer on the loose, in this case it would cause panic. We have no idea where he’s capturing these women before he starts his little game. It could be in Los Angeles or San Francisco or it could be at the gas station up the road. Until we know more about what we’re dealing with I’d rather keep it low key for the moment.”
“Agreed. How quickly will we have an id on those prints?” Now that we were out of the county morgue, the smell of food was bringing back my appetite.
“I’d give it an hour or two for it to run through the California DMV. If we don’t have a match out from in state, then we could be looking at days or weeks. We’re running it through the criminal database, but I’m betting that none of these women had more than a parking ticket on their record. We’ll also run their faces through a recognition program and hopefully it will turn up something between the two.” Agent Perez pursued the menu before giving her order to the waitress.
“I’m just sorry that I had to call you in on this, but there was no way that we could even try to bring justice to these girls without help. I’m just afraid that he’s going to do it again.”
“No, problem. That’s why we give those cards out because we’d rather jump on situations like this early rather than lose evidence or have the trail go cold by the time we’re called in. You did the right thing.” She s
miled at me, “More than likely he will, the question is if having us here will stop him for a short while until we leave or if he’s bold enough to attempt it while we’re here to catch him at it. You can never tell.”
“I wish he would have picked a different town which is horrible because these women would still be dead.” I shook my head at my own short sightedness.
“You aren’t the first one to think that nor will you be the last. It is what it is. We try our best to deter crime, but someone like this actually enjoys it. Sometimes they’ll go for years without being caught and then something will happen like a dog finding something unusual so we catch a break.”
The waitress brought my usual and Agent Perez’s order to the table.
“Let’s eat the hot food while we can.”
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The Killer
I listened from the table behind the FBI Agent and the Sheriff’s conversation. They had no idea what they were dealing with, not only had I been killing for many years, I was really good at it. It was the thrill of the hunt and knowing that my prey couldn’t escape me. These five women had been good sport, but the Agent would make a great contribution to the hunt.
I’d almost become a cop, but I’d been in altercation that couldn’t be reconciled. It had shown me that I needed to have someone to outsmart and local cops weren’t normally enough for me to engage with. I’d learned enough during those first few months that it was much harder to catch me if you could even find my crime scenes.
This match was going to be a lot closer with the FBI hanging around. I still wasn’t sure what the larger game was that had me using a bow and arrow. True it didn’t make any noise and carving the symbols on the trees had been easy. What I didn’t like was how much information my current employer had on my hobbies? I needed to do some more research and find out what made him engage others to do this work for him.
Just wait Agent Perez, I was going to take one of the locals and find out how long it was before anyone noticed that she was missing. This challenge was just getting started. I thought as I took another bite of the delicious homemade pie. There were benefits to moving locations on occasion, local cuisines were always better than all the fancy city food.
