Shadow Moon

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  Brandi’s voice whispers in her head. “But you. You’re not good.”

  How can she possibly tell someone like Jamie the truth? The things she’s done… he would recoil from her in horror if he knew.

  No one will ever know her. Not if she can help it.

  No one should have to share this darkness.

  Chapter 54

  Portland - 2009

  Matt

  Snyder walked the study. He took his time before he finally answered Matt.

  “It does look like you’re on to a serial offender. But we’re talking about a substantially different pattern of assault from the one on Young John Doe. That boy was savaged in a particular way. The killer’s intent was prolonged torture—it was only the boy’s death that circumvented that. The beating you’re describing is savage—

  “And Lombard was arrested for a savage beating. On a trans kid.” Matt could hear his own voice rising.

  Snyder turned to face him. “All right, what’s bothering you?”

  Matt tried to moderate the intense emotion going on inside him. “There’s something here. I can feel it.”

  He would never have said those words to anyone besides Snyder. But from the first day of their acquaintance, Snyder had encouraged him to trust his intuition. And Snyder didn’t criticize him for it now. Instead he answered with calm reason.

  “You know that chances are, whoever attacked Brandi, this person is not going to be out there tonight doing the same thing again so soon.”

  “Unless the killer is decompensating,” Matt argued.

  In the syndrome known as decompensation, the cooling-off period disappeared, and killers were known to go on sprees, with little or no time between attacks.

  “True,” Snyder acknowledged. “But the fact remains, Brandi Hughes was not killed. Viciously attacked, yes. But not murdered. Rape and beatings like this are terribly common in the street life.”

  Matt understood. And it was Snyder’s case, Snyder’s call. Yet the feeling remained. Something was happening, something he needed to prevent.

  Something now.

  He stood suspended for what seemed like a lifetime.... then Snyder half-laughed. “All right. Obviously your gut’s talking to you. What do you want to do?”

  Matt felt a tidal wave of relief. “I think we should interview Lombard.”

  “You have the address?”

  “Yes.” Matt had to fight not to shout. “Yes. Thank you.”

  He was already moving for the door.

  Chapter 55

  Portland - 2009

  Cara

  She spots the car cruising about eleven-thirty pm. Exactly as Brandi has described it: a dark blue Honda Civic. About as non-descript as a car could be.

  The car slows as it passes her. The driver is hunched on the far side of the car and obscured in shadow. Her heart beats faster, and she shifts languorously on her feet, as she has seen so many street children do, inviting scrutiny. The car doesn’t stop, rather makes a left at the corner and disappears into the dark.

  She stays as she is, waiting, keeping up her pose.…

  As she anticipated, the Honda returns from the same direction, obviously having circled the block. This time it slows to a stop at the curb in front of her.

  She thinks of Brandi’s strutting swagger, and mimics it as she teeters over to the car. The driver lowers the passenger side window. She places her arms, encased in elbow-length evening gloves, on the roof of the car, leans down to look inside….

  And sees the gleaming eyes of It. The jagged teeth, the salivating mouth.

  She hides her recoil, makes her voice low and husky, like Brandi’s sultry contralto. “Want a date?

  He reaches across the front seat and pushes open the door. She lowers herself into the seat, pulls the door closed.

  He drives.

  Chapter 56

  Portland - 2009

  Matt

  Matt sped Snyder’s Jeep on the downtown street. On the seat between him and Snyder was a search warrant for Lombard’s house, newly signed by a judge. Since the discovery of the bodies of Denise Vickery and Young John Doe, the Portland PD and DA’s office had kept a judge on twenty-four hour call in order to get emergency warrants signed as quickly as possible.

  Matt was sweating from tension—and an inexplicable, unshakeable certainty of mortal danger.

  For Brandi Hughes? For any one of the hundreds of teenagers sleeping on the streets tonight?

  But the feeling was so overwhelmingly intimate.

  “Turn here,” Snyder ordered.

  The houses on this residential block were fairly large, though most had seen better days. Lombard’s address was down a long driveway, behind one of the bigger homes. Not exactly a cottage—it looked more like a converted garage with its own fenced yard and privacy. According to the DMV, Lombard was the registered owner of a 1997 dark blue Honda Civic, but there was no car parked in the long driveway running beside the main house.

  And there were no lights on in the little house.

  The agents got out of the Jeep and approached.

  Snyder took a position beside the doorstep with his service weapon drawn while Matt knocked, then pounded on the door. But there was no answer and no sound from within.

  The warrant authorized entry, and it was no great feat for Matt to kick the door open. The impact was a welcome release of tension. The agents went in, weapons leading. The adrenaline rush of entry hit Matt like a speeding train as the agents swiveled, shouting, “FBI!” “Drop all weapons and come out with your hands up!”

  Their search was short. The house was just two rooms, a cluttered living area with a kitchenette, and a stale-smelling bedroom with a small bathroom. There was clearly no one home here, just a lingering, greasy presence.

  The bed was unmade. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink. Which judging by the state of the house in general, could mean Lombard was just out for an hour, or had been gone for a week. It didn’t look like he’d packed anything. Matt highly suspected that what they were seeing was how the man lived.

  And he was gripped by an overwhelming dread that he and Snyder were somehow too late.

  Chapter 57

  Portland - 2009

  Cara

  There is a smell to this “John,” like stale grease or unwashed sheets.

  Sitting in the passenger seat as he drives, Cara takes shallow breaths to conceal her terror and loathing.

  He makes a right turn down an unlit street. She stares out the windshield. Dark cars at the curb. Dark buildings, closed, empty. No one walking on the sidewalk. Advantageous to him, he thinks. It will be to her as well.

  In the murky dim of the car, she stares into John’s lap. He is already aroused, thinking about what will come next.

  Good. More blood to the area means he will die that much faster.

  He slows the car, looking ahead to a space at the curb.

  Now. While he is distracted.

  She reaches between his thighs with her left hand, while she slips her right hand down her right leg toward the knife she stole from the thrift shop, now concealed in her right boot. The steel is cold, razor sharp. As her left fingers stroke his bulge, she closes her fist around the sheath of the knife, straightens in one smooth motion, and stabs the knife into the crease at his hip, where his leg is attached.

  The femoral artery.

  In the same movement as the stab, she twists the knife, opening the cut, making it deep and jagged to prevent the artery from doing its lifesaving trick of contracting to close off the cut.

  She hears Its hiss in John’s sharp intake of breath, feels the car swerve with John’s shock. His first instinct is to grab the wheel to correct it. His second is to snarl a curse at her.

  Both fatal mistakes. Because with every anger-elevated beat of his heart, blood spurts from the wound in his thigh as if from a cut garden hose. A severed femoral artery means unconsciousness is only thirty seconds away. Already he will be feeling drowsy.


  She presses back against the passenger door, out of his reach.

  The car is slowing, drifting. He no longer has the strength required to depress the gas pedal.

  And only now does he grab for the wound, a late attempt to apply compression.

  She reaches for the steering wheel, turning it toward her to keep the car marginally straight on the road. The bumper grazes another, parked car, which effectively stops the Honda.

  “You… bitch…” he says. Barely able to keep his eyes open, now. Systemic shock. She leans back against the passenger door and watches the pumping blood slow. He writhes sluggishly. Slow, useless movements.

  His eyes close. His bowels release.

  Three minutes, total.

  She stares out the windshield at the dimly lit street. There is no one moving, no sound but the wild beating of her own heart.

  She uses the lever on the side of the passenger seat and lowers the seat to a nearly horizontal position. She leans toward the corpse and grabs its arms, pulls its torso across the console out from under the steering wheel and half into the passenger seat beside her. It takes some effort, but she is flying on adrenaline and the body seems much lighter than it is.

  She opens the passenger door, gets out of the car and shuts the door behind her, walks around to the driver’s side. She reaches inside the car to manipulate the lifeless legs over onto the passenger side, arranging the body to look as if “John” is asleep in the seat. She turns to the back seat, grabs a rain jacket she’d spotted earlier, and lays over the bloody, stinking mess on the driver’s seat before sitting behind the wheel herself.

  Then she restarts the car and drives.

  Chapter 58

  Portland - 2009

  Matt

  Lombard’s computer was right there, as if he had just been on it.

  Adrenaline was burning through Matt’s veins and it was almost unbearable to have to sit, to force himself to focus and read, rather than break heads.

  The first screen that came up was the Backdoor website. Lombard’s bookmarks list showed other sex forums. But Matt’s eyes were fixed on the log in.

  Lombard was Devil Dawg.

  Matt’s brain was racing to reconcile the contradictions. Lombard is online flaunting expertise with female sex workers, and warning other mongers off trans hustlers. At the same time, he’s been accused of sexual assault on a male hustler…

  He turned as Snyder entered the room, and stopped, seeing Matt’s face. “What is it?”

  “I’ve been watching this guy online. I had no idea it was Lombard. He posts under the name ‘Devil Dawg’. He’s an active poster, what they call a pooner. Always holding forth, warning other johns against law enforcement on the street, boasting about being able to spot trannies. But we know Lombard’s assaulted a transvestite sex worker before, a sexual assault. He puts on this front of being aggressively heterosexual, when his tastes are something else altogether.”

  Snyder finishes, “So he’s been creating character witnesses—a virtual alibi for himself.” The other agent raises his arm and only now does Matt notice that he is holding an oversized book. “And it gets more interesting.”

  Matt stands as Snyder puts the book down on the desk and they look down at a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings. News articles about the Street Hunter.

  We’ve got him, Matt thought wildly. “He’s saving his clippings.”

  Snyder shook his head. “I’m not so sure. He’s highlighting details of the murders in the news articles. But the questions he’s jotting in the margins read more like he’s trying to figure out who the Street Hunter is. And there’s this.” He turned a page to a later article, pointed to a notation in the margin. A name, underlined several times: Hammerhead.

  Snyder looked up from the article. “That sounds like one of those forum handles to me.”

  “It is,” Matt said, through a mouth gone suddenly dry. “I know that name.”

  Chapter 59

  Portland – present

  Singh and Snyder

  Singh stares at Agent Snyder, realizing. “So you found the Street Hunter…”

  Snyder nods. “Because of what we learned that night in John Lombard’s house. We were extremely fortunate that Lombard wasn’t expecting a police search. And that he was a slob. We’d specifically asked for his computer in the warrant since Brandi Hughes did some advertising online. And what we got off Lombard’s computer led us to Robert Jonah Barker. The Street Hunter.”

  It is well after dark. Agent Snyder has been speaking for over eight straight hours, with only occasional interjections by Singh, to postulate Cara’s part in the action. She can hear the raggedness in his voice. Her own body is cramped from sitting still for so long. Yet she has no desire to leave or even to get up. There is too much swirling inside her head.

  She has been assuming that Lombard would be revealed to be the Wolf. And that while Cara was circling the case she somehow crossed his path.

  But what Snyder is revealing now seems to contradict everything she has been thinking.

  “Lombard had pinpointed Barker’s online identity by following information in the news about the Street Hunter. He’d gone back into old Portland Backdoor forums and found posts that he believed were the Street Hunter’s. He’d even saved printouts of conversations, which we passed on to Seattle PD.”

  He gives Singh a tired smile. “As so often happens in these cases, the takedown was neither action-packed nor glamorous. Barker wasn’t even living in Portland any more. Seattle PD arrested him at his work. DNA tests proved he was the Street Hunter. He was arraigned in Seattle for the murders of four of the six known Seattle victims, including Charlie Laithwaite, and for the Portland murder of Denise Vickery. He pled ‘not guilty’ to all.”

  Singh’s brow furrows as she tries to make sense of it. “I’m afraid I do not understand. Was Lombard the second killer? Did he attack Brandi Hughes, and kill Young John Doe?”

  “Matthew was quite convinced of that. But when Seattle PD arrested Barker, Brandi Hughes came forward and identified him as her attacker. There was no proof that Barker was in Portland, but he had no alibi for the night. So—” Snyder lifted his hands.

  “So the police were inclined to believe Brandi Hughes,” Singh murmurs.

  “There was no reason not to,” Snyder answers. “Then as you know, Barker was killed in jail by another inmate while awaiting trial. Since Barker was dead, Brandi Hughes never had to testify under oath.” He frowns. “I myself thought that Matthew was on track about Lombard being Hughes’ attacker.” He looks at Singh. “But now, knowing that Cara Lindstrom was here… I’m inclined to doubt everything I thought I knew.”

  Singh feels a buzzing in her temples. Perhaps she has not been wrong after all. “What happened to Lombard?” she asks carefully.

  Snyder nods to her. “Ah. That’s the question we all should have been asking. Once you told me that Lindstrom was here, I started an online search. And as far as I’ve been able to determine, John Lombard didn’t just leave town the night we searched his house. He disappeared. There is no further public record of him whatsoever.”

  The two agents look at each other through the shadows of the study.

  “Cara,” Singh says.

  “Cara,” Agent Snyder repeats. “Or—we’ve both gone completely off the deep end.”

  Singh laughs shakily. They both fall into silence, contemplating. Finally Singh asks, tentatively.

  “Was there any evidence at all to link Barker to Young John Doe?”

  Snyder looks at her. “There was not.”

  “Then… did ASAC Roarke believe—do you believe—Lombard was the second killer, the one you called the Wolf?”

  Snyder sighs. “The Wolf was a theory with numerous holes. It’s true that the body of young John Doe was moved, probably from some distance, and that the pattern of attack and killing was different from the MO of the Street Hunter. But the wolf fur found on his body doesn’t prove he was killed in some other state
and moved here. Remember that many, if not most, of the young runaways and homeless teens here come to Portland from other cities and states all across the country. They’re hoping to escape abusive or regressive situations in their home towns and states. Young John Doe could have been a recent transplant to Portland. The wolf fur and mineral deposits found on his body could have come from his own clothes, his own contact with those elements, not from the killer’s. The fur was just an anomaly that we latched on to that never conclusively proved anything.”

  Regret creeps into his voice. “Our best chance at learning the truth about Young John Doe would have been questioning Barker himself. But dead men tell no tales. And the Seattle and Portland police departments closed the Street Hunter case.”

  She looks at him in the firelight. “Yet you believe that this recent child killing, the Idaho case, is somehow linked to the Wolf.”

  He suddenly looks haggard in the low light. “Agent Singh, I don’t know what I believe. Barker is dead. Lombard appears to be dead.”

  She leans forward impulsively, puts both her hands on his. “We will get to the bottom of it. We will sort it. But now I must leave you and we must both rest. Tomorrow we begin.”

  Driving back to her hotel, Singh is in turmoil. Not one, but three mysteries remain.

  What happened to John Lombard?

  Who killed Young John Doe?

  And who broke into Agent Snyder’s house to search his case files?

  And she knows she is not going to wait until morning to find out.

  When she walks in through the cathedral entrance of Church, the club is in full swing. Kennedy is there behind the bar, talking to one of the bartenders.

  He recognizes her instantly, and excuses himself from his conversation to step over to her.

  “I had a feeling I’d be seeing you again,” he says.