The Trophy Hunter

by J. M. Zambrano

  Jess frowned. “That was the last time you noticed anything … not as you left it?”

  “Except for tonight. Something set off that motion sensor. And I heard banging on the side of the house.” Diana paused as she watched Jess take a similar-sized black device out of the other case she’d brought from her car. “What’s that?”

  “That’s my VCD-42,” replied Jess, heading for the stairs.

  “I thought you said there were no bugs in the house.” Diana followed Jess up the stairs at a rapid clip.

  Jess topped at the hall door to the master bath. “This where you kept the perfume bottle?”

  Diana nodded and watched Jess push into the room, then sweep the VCD-42 back and forth as she moved. To Diana’s horror, the device began to flicker. Then as Jess held it higher, toward the ceiling, it emitted a steady, bright orange glow.

  “VCD,” whispered Diana, hating the logic that was coming at her like a Mack truck. “Video camera detector.”

  Jess stood on the commode, then reached up to the ceiling and detached a small object no larger than a button. She held it out in the palm of her hand for Diana to see.

  Diana eyed the thing warily, as if it might bite.

  “Jesus!”

  “I’m going outside for a minute. There has to be a monitor somewhere fairly close.”

  As Jess left the room, Diana huddled on the commode, trying to compose her thoughts. The idea that someone had recorded her image in the bathroom made her want to vomit.

  There was no way that she could imagine Joe Flannigan doing something like that, much less Darren Rogart. Not by the remotest stretch. Did she have a disgruntled client somewhere? More likely, the ex-spouse of a client whom she had represented successfully. Or a batterer whom she’d had locked up while she’d whisked his wife to safety.

  But, why? Why take pictures of me? The vision of her surgical scar, now dimmed in comparison to what it had been, constricted her throat like a snake. She gagged, and then swallowed several times to clear the sensation.

  Jess returned to find her still hunkered down, trying to figure out a motive. “Can we move to another room, if you don’t mind?”

  In the kitchen, the first stray wisps of dawn filtered through the opaque honeycomb blinds. “There’s nothing around or under the house. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t something there. It just means that the peeper was careful,” said Jess. “Could be the monitor was in his vehicle. That limits his range to maybe a couple of miles.”

  “Could the range be longer than that?” asked Diana, alarm in her voice.

  “Maybe three. Why? What’re you thinking?”

  “That Greenwood Village is practically next door. Joe Flannigan could be sitting in his living room, watching me in the bathroom. But that makes no sense. It also seems out of character.” Diana paused at the realization. “Flannigan hates my guts. I doubt that my naked body and toilet habits would interest him.”

  Jess seemed to consider this. “Revenge can take some pretty circuitous routes,” she mused.

  “Like what?”

  “Posting you on the internet to embarrass you … on the john or whatever.”

  “Jessie, that’s sick!”

  “We agreed that Flannigan’s a sicko. But I don’t think it was him either. You sure about the truck you saw being a Ram?”

  Diana sat on a kitchen stool and cupped her head in her hands. “As sure as I can be about anything right now,” was her muffled reply.

  “Then I need to find that HUNTER 2 Ram,” said Jess. “And you need to file a police report.”

  Diana picked up the phone and pressed in the non-emergency number for the Cherry Hills Police Department.

  “They’re on their way,” she said after the brief conversation.

  Jess rolled her eyes upward, as if she was recalling something. “Didn’t you and Greg have a security system installed when you moved in?”

  Diana gritted her teeth. “Don’t ask.”

  “I know you did. Why wasn’t it working?”

  Diana screamed at her, “Because Greg is an idiot when it comes to anything mechanical. He broke it.”

  Jess seemed to consider this. Then Diana watched the sly twitch at the corners of her friend’s mouth. “Well, there are some mechanics he sure had a handle on,” Jess began.

  “Like where to shove his prick? Ha! I beat you this time,” gloated Diana.

  “Just get the damn system fixed.”

  Chapter 29

  Back in his old studio, the Hunter curses as he plays the video disc he retrieved from the recorder in the crawl space under the redhead’s house. She had finally turned on her ceiling fan, dispersing the clouds of steam. But his disappointment is so intense that he smashes the little piece of plastic. She’s no collector’s item. Damaged goods. Flawed beyond belief. He only knew about the miscarriage, hadn’t a clue that she’d had surgery.

  But her friendship with the black—and that one he wants—could prove troublesome. They tell each other everything. Almost everything. This hadn’t seemed a problem before. Now, if he wants the black, he’ll have to make sure the redhead is out of the picture. In her line of work, the bitch has probably made lots of enemies. Should she suddenly disappear, his will not be the first door they knock on. If they knock on his door at all.

  Anger is never his friend. It holds the potential of making him careless. To feed his need, he relives the processing steps he performs at his new studio. He can almost feel the touch of the cold stainless steel table on which he beds each in her turn. The picture evoked sends tingles through his fingers—then, elsewhere.

  The redhead fades from the center of his focus. What’s one bad apple? There will be many perfect ones, each unique in ethnicity and physical attributes that he finds aesthetically pleasing. He realizes that many who know him would be surprised that he has aesthetic tastes. This amuses him.

  When he discovered the process, he’d been wise enough to practice first. Throw-aways he’d plucked from dark bars and seedy street corners. Though these were women nobody looked for, he’d carefully burned his mistakes. Another attribute of his new studio: the crematorium.

  The process had felt strange the first time it mattered, with someone he knew so well. And his meticulous plans had nearly been thwarted.

  As he was collecting her after the one fatal shot, Larry had appeared unexpectedly. The Hunter had quickly eliminated that problem. Realizing the serendipity of the event, he’d left Larry behind the shack and put the body of his beloved in Larry’s truck where he removed her little gloves and placed her dainty fingers around the truck’s steering wheel. Then, wearing gloves of course, he drove the silver Ram a short distance and hid it where it would surely be found, before removing her body and carrying it back to his own vehicle. In his ecstatic state, he’d found her virtually weightless.

  In the privacy of his new studio, he’d washed her gently, as one might a sick child, feeling a stealthy relief. No more worries over losing her.

  As her body stiffened, he’d commenced a tender massage to loosen the effects of rigor, knowing there’d be no uttered protest no matter what he chose to do to her. And as her body relaxed, his had stiffened. A part of it, that is. He’d made his choices. Again and again. While she lay silent beneath him, he groaned with pleasure.

  Then he hooked up the plastic tubes and watched them darken as her blood spilled through into the drain below. A deep calm blanketed him as his hands kneaded her still form.

  He replaced her leisurely departing blood and body fluids with a mixture of formalin, alcohol and thymol. This first successful procedure had taken four days to complete. The next phase, molten paraffin immersion, had taken considerably longer.

  As he’d labored to make her conversion a perfect work, he concluded that the small bullet hole at the base of her throat was a flaw he wouldn’t repeat on his next project.

  A wise decision. When he’d last checked on the Asian project in her paraffin dip, he marveled at her unblemi
shed beauty.

  Almost done.

  Then he remembers the black’s proclivity for rare meat and smiles at the irony. Soon she’ll be well-done.

  Chapter 30

  Diana’s news about Rogart’s having the missing Strickland girl gave Jess the excuse she needed to pay another visit to Westcliffe. A visit to the widow Strickland on the pretext of bringing news of Patty might get her a line on what happened to Larry’s HUNTER 2 truck.

  In the uncharted waters of deep thought, she drove I-25 south, with its usual weekday morning traffic.

  Jess tried to mentally dissect what she knew. Make some use out of this fucking boring drive. The camera that she’d jerked by the roots out of Diana’s ceiling was generic. The Cherry Hills cops weren’t too happy with her handling the evidence, but what the hell. When they said they’d do their best—whatever that meant—she’d warned Diana not to hold her breath.

  She hadn’t shared this with Diana, but installing surveillance stuff was more up an ex-cop’s alley than an all man’s. Diana could have figured this out for herself if she wasn’t so hung up on Darren. But Jess had to admit, Flannigan made sense. He was angry enough about losing his grandkids to go after both of the women he held responsible. The bulky, faceless man behind the wheel on Colfax couldn’t have been Darren unless he was wearing Santa Claus padding. But the license number on the Colfax truck was wrong for Flannigan. Jess had saved the picture on her cell and looked at it a dozen times.

  What was missing was a motive for the bathroom surveillance of Diana. And neither Joe nor Darren had any that was apparent.

  For the first time since they’d met in college, Jess was worried about her friend. Diana used to be the rational one, the perfect one who always had her shit together. But since the baby thing and the Greg thing, Diana just hadn’t gotten back in gear. It was like something had sucked all the good sense out of her. Why in God’s name should Diana be cooking candlelight dinners for the likes of Darren Rogart and simpering about his innocence in this unholy, fucking mess? Jess shuddered, the Camaro strayed left, barely missing a semi in the next lane. She quickly corrected. Gotta straighten up. Her shit’s rubbing off on me.

  Finally the junction of I-25 and Colorado 96 loomed in front of her. As Jess headed west out of Pueblo, into the mountains, the traffic was sparse and the weather was with her. Her little Glock rode comfortably in the ankle holster inside one of her smart-but-sensible black leather boots that fit. The Halloween boots had gone the way of the trash.

  How the hell did Darren get her to play the fool like that? She knew damn well how and it was really making her want to get him big-time. Was part of it jealousy over his attention to Diana? Jess shivered at her own vulnerability.

  But no matter how she twisted the picture, it still came back Darren and Death behind the wheel of HUNTER 2 on Colfax. No good reason. Just a flash of intuition that had one-eightied her away from that truck. Sometimes you just had to go with your gut.

  Westcliffe lay between the Sangre de Cristos and the Wet Mountains, in the Wet Valley. It all looks pretty damn dry to me, thought Jess. In a town with a population under four hundred, Larry Strickland’s home wouldn’t be hard to find. Good chance to try out her new GPS unit.

  Just to sow some seeds of good P/R, she stopped off at the sheriff’s station to exchange pleasantries. She parked in the one and only guest slot and entered the weathered wood-sided building, noting the light-skinned brother behind the front desk. She’d met him before on her original visit.

  “Hey, Jessie,” he greeted her.

  Must’ve made quite an impression. Guess the fact that we’re the only black faces for miles has something to do with it. Jess smiled, straining to read the name on the kid’s badge.

  “Hey, umm, Trent. How’s it going?”

  “Troy,” he corrected.

  Goddamned if I’m going to get glasses. Contacts, maybe … She glanced at his surname. Flick? Plick? Flack? Then, decided to keep things on a first name basis. “Anything new on the Strickland case?”

  “You still working for Joe Flannigan?” The Plick’s tone was guarded, not nearly as chummy as his initial greeting.

  “Why do you ask?” Jess smiled broadly.

  “Flannigan’s a person of interest. Which means, much as I’d like to,” here the kid batted long, almost girlish lashes at her, “can’t share.”

  “Didn’t stop you my last pass through here. My recollection is that Flannigan was a person of interest then, along with a few others.” Jess’s brow wrinkled in a frown. “And for the record, I don’t work for Flannigan, so you can share all you like.” She raised an eyebrow invitingly.

  “What’s your interest in the case?”

  “A family friend hired me to look into Patty Strickland’s disappearance. Can’t be a coincidence. What do you think?”

  “The Feds are on Strickland ‘cause it overlaps the Rogart girl kidnapping. They fill us in on what they want us to know … when they want something from our end. And for the record, they’ve eliminated some names from the list, including Patty Strickland. Flannigan and his daughter now top it.”

  “No shit? How about Darren Rogart? Did he make the short list?”

  “He’s been dropped. That’s about all I can tell you.”

  Jess shrugged to deflect any red flags. Too much interest in Rogart could lead to unwanted questions from Troy and perhaps shut down their communication. She’d have to pursue other means of finding out why Rogart was dropped as a suspect. “So, I don’t recall seeing anything in the report about a vehicle for Strickland. How’d he get to the cabin?”

  Troy the Plick shuffled some papers on the counter.

  “Look, Troy, I know Strickland drove a Dodge Ram. What happened to it? What possible harm could it do to tell me?”

  “It went back to the widow after the Feds finished with it.”

  “Finished with it?”

  “Collecting the evidence.”

  “Evidence?”

  “You know. Like fingerprints, DNA, the usual. Jessie, you playin’ me?”

  “Course I’m not playin’ you, Troy. How come there was no sheet on the truck in the stuff I got the first go?”

  The kid looked hard at her. “Shouldn’t be too hard to figure. DNA results takes time.”

  And the fact that you’re so reluctant to give me anything says a bunch. “Were there any conclusive matches found? Besides the obvious—family and maybe hunting buddies? Joe Flannigan might be expected to have left DNA in Strickland’s truck. They’d been hunting together. What’s so—”

  “Brandi Rogart’s is a tad harder to explain.” Troy whispered the words, after looking around to make sure they were still alone.

  “Whoa, Troy my man, you shittin’ me?” Jess lapsed into dialect and put a hand on Troy’s shoulder. “You mean, like somebody sliced Strickland, threw Brandi in the truck and made off with her?”

  “No.” Troy frowned. “Do I have to spell it out for you?” He looked around again, nervously. Jess could hear muffled voices coming from another part of the building.

  “So, spell.”

  “Nobody made off with Mrs. Rogart. Her prints were on the steering wheel. Her DNA all over the place.”

  Jess did a mental double-take. “Only hers?” Her brow puckered.

  Troy’s eyes rolled back in his head, as if searching for something. “I guess,” he finally said. Then he leveled his glance at Jess. “You know, it was the Feds who done the examination, not us. Like I said, they keep their cards pretty close to the vest, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do, Bro, I do.” Jess nodded as if she understood. But she didn’t. It made no sense that Brandi Rogart’s would be the only DNA in Strickland’s truck. “Strickland’s must’ve been in his own truck. You gotta give me that.”

  Troy nodded, but not very convincingly. “I guess. Maybe they felt they didn’t have to state the obvious.”

  “Why would Brandi Rogart wipe the truck clean, but leave her own tracks?” T
hen she remembered something else. “Hey, there was one mother of a snowstorm that day. How come she didn’t have gloves on?”

  “You got me there.” Troy dug into a drawer in back of the counter. “Here’s Benson’s card. He’s still head Fed on the case. Give him a call.”

  Jess took the card. “I just may do that.”

  She wasn’t about to share her news about Patty Strickland. After all, it was still only hearsay. Only doubtful Darren’s word that the girl was with him.

  As she was about to head out, Jess heard Troy clear his throat meaningfully. “I shared with you, Jessie. What you got for me?”

  She smiled as she fished into her coat pocket. The one where she kept her special needs business cards. The ones that still had Winston’s number designated “home” and a cell number that she’d changed a couple years back. Jess handed one to Troy. Then she winked.

  In her car, Jess found directions to the Strickland residence using her GPS. As she pulled out of the parking lot, her thoughts drifted to Rogart. Why wasn’t he still a person of interest? Her impression of Special Agent Benson, whom she’d met on her first visit to Westcliffe, was that he was a tight-ass who wouldn’t give her the time of day. Maybe she’d mine Troy a bit more, if she thought of some way to slip in the question. As it was, she’d neatly avoided revealing any relationship with Darren Rogart. Already she was planning on how to unburn the Troy bridge. Hey, Troy, I gave you one of my old cards by mistake.

  As Jess drove, she recalled the first time Darren had come on to her. Just showed up at her office shortly after Joe had hired her. Just showed up … like he did with Diana.

  Their first date had been dinner at The Fort, a restaurant notable for its old west theme. With Diana, it was the Buckhorn.

  They’d headed for a motel before dessert was served. But hadn’t gotten any farther than the camper on his truck bed.