The Last Victim (A Ryker Townsend Story)

by Jordan Dane

Justine smiled. She knew I’d changed the subject on purpose.

  “Not far,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  ***

  An hour later

  I’d let my body get into a rhythm as I pushed up the mountain. The muscles in my legs burned with the exertion as if I were on a long punishing run. I liked the challenge. Justine walked ahead and led the way to an isolated cabin she knew well. I got the sense she had pressed harder to test me. I caught her looking over her shoulder and saw her amusement. Her subtle smirk only made me stick tighter to her heels.

  It’s what John Wayne would’ve done.

  There were a lot worse places for a guy to be than staying close to Justine. At the last stop, she’d stripped off her windbreaker and tied it to her pack. She wore a blue tank over khaki shorts. Her arms were toned and tanned and her long legs were hard to ignore.

  If Lucinda Crowley had been with me, she would’ve noticed my interest in the trooper and given me flack over my idea of subtlety. I didn’t have much of a life outside the Bureau and Crowley knew it. Sometimes she made fun of the way I acted around women, her idea of encouragement. I considered it a priceless gift to have people in my life who never hesitated to tell me I was full of bat guano.

  Crowley was the gift that kept on giving.

  When my cell phone rang for the first time on the island, I smiled and reached back to pull the phone from a zippered compartment in my pack.

  “I’ve gotta take this call.”

  Justine stopped and turned with a surprised look on her face. “How are you getting reception? It’s usually hit or miss up here. Mostly miss.”

  “It’s a smart phone with satellite capability. I get global reception in remote areas because the phone doesn’t need a cell tower signal.”

  Sinead had picked a global service provider that integrated with any smart phone device and app—using orbiting satellite signals instead of cell towers—to provide reliable service in remote areas all over the world. Our new SAT capable phones were encrypted for privacy and could also be tracked using Doppler shift calculations, between the satellite picking up the signal and the phone location, the way cell towers triangulated GPS positions. Given the remote areas we traveled to investigate crime scenes, we were testing the usage based on Sinead’s recommendation.

  “This won’t take long.”

  I backed down the trail and headed for a boulder that overlooked a valley. Justine was a state trooper, but I considered her an outsider to the investigation. I put distance between us out of habit and answered the call, without my usual greeting.

  “Tell Sinead thank you. SAT phones were a stellar idea.”

  “You’re welcome, but was that a pun? Ryker, you made a funny.” Sinead said. “Just remember your extreme gratitude come review time.”

  “Done.”

  “We’re all together in a conference room.” Lucinda’s voice came over the line. “Everyone’s here. We have a prelim on the Applewhite autopsy, but what are you doing? Where are you…exactly?”

  “I’m on a mountain, earning macho points on my man card.” I looked out over the valley. “Have Sinead track my location coordinates, if it’ll help you sleep nights. She could use the practice. We’re almost to Applewhite’s cabin. Talk about off the grid. If he left the Prince of Wales Island for Seattle, he had to have a damned good reason. I’ll call if I find a laptop or anything else interesting.”

  “You said, ‘we.’ Who’s with you?”

  “Sergeant Justine Peterson. She’s a State Trooper and lives on the island. She knew our vic and she’s taking me to his cabin.”

  There’d been a long enough pause to make me wonder if the call had been dropped, but eventually Crowley came on the line.

  “You got time for an update from our end?”

  “Yes. Shoot.”

  “Lab work isn’t final,” she said. “No toxicology or DNA yet either, and we’re still working on the identities of the others, but I wanted to update you on the autopsy of Nathan Applewhite. Doctor?”

  Dr. Julian Martinez came on next and briefed me on the preliminary findings of the autopsy. The ME went through a litany of observations, as if he were mentally filling out his official report, until he got down to the core of his initial conclusions.

  “We found a trace of powder residue on the body. The residue is consistent with the powder found on the inside of latex gloves, the same as the others. Nothing new there, but here’s where things got interesting.”

  The sound of papers rustling came over the line until Dr. Martinez went on.

  “The carvings on the skin were done over time. Some cuts had even started to heal. Lucinda is sending you digitals. Prior to Nathan Applewhite, I haven’t seen this in other victims. Applewhite was held and tortured for days longer.”

  I heard my phone signal that I’d received a message. I punched up key images of the autopsy as the ME continued.

  “Something else. There was evidence of anal tearing and blood, but what we didn’t find might be more telling.”

  “What was that?”

  “There was no pubic hair, other than from our victim. No epithelial traces and no evidence of condom use. We found traces of sperm and a lubricant on his genitals, but nothing inside the anal cavity.”

  “We’ll have to revise our profile for the sexual assault. We could be dealing with a sadist,” I said. “The kill and dismemberment aren’t the only things that get him off.”

  “Already done,” Lucinda agreed.

  The most inventive, vicious, and elusive serial offenders were ritualistic sexual sadists. They were cunning predators, like the Great White shark, and the biggest challenge for law enforcement. Stunningly brutal, they were meticulous planners. The carvings on the bodies and the evidence of prolonged torture, coupled with the autopsy findings on Applewhite, had changed my thinking on our UNSUB. We had to stay open to the possibility he was a sexual sadist.

  That would mean he could spend countless hours in his own head, perfecting his fantasies. Many rehearsed their crimes with great patience. I had no doubt that this one had indeed created a schematic of how to construct his Totem for aesthetics and ease of assembly. Sexual sadists didn’t like surprises and they hated failure, especially after obsessing over the details.

  “Our killer has been careful about leaving evidence. He’s meticulous. Odds are that the sperm will be from Applewhite. The blood too, but I see your point.” I didn’t wait for the ME to confirm. “The body wasn’t wiped down to remove trace evidence, because there wasn’t anything to get rid of that wasn’t from Applewhite.”

  “Exactly. Tissue damage might’ve been caused by a foreign object inserted into the body. No trace of lubricant.”

  The sexual assault wasn’t about physical gratification. The killer tortured his victims for other reasons and had found another way to get off or punish them. The violence itself could be a turn on.

  When I heard about the sexual aspects of our case, a random flash hit me. I thought of Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, convicted of killing forty nine women and girls, confessed to seventy one deaths, but law enforcement speculated he had severely underestimated his body count. The words of Gary Ridgeway came from a dark corner of my mind when he said, I’m a murderer, not a rapist.

  Apparently even serial killers had standards.

  “TK wanted to humiliate him, and he wanted it to hurt, before he took away everything that mattered to him,” I said.

  “Everything that mattered? You mean his life?” Crowley asked.

  “No. He cared about something more. The trooper I’ve got with me, she knew Applewhite. She said his son meant everything to him. The killer stole his life and degraded him. With a knife shoved into his heart and the days of torture, this feels personal. The killer wanted to see his face—look into his eyes—when he took everything from him…a future with his kid. Applewhite is the key. He’s important to our killer, in a way that none of the others were. He could even be the reason for all o
f this.”

  “We came to the same conclusion, but I’ve got a question for you, Ryker,” Lucinda’s voice cracked. “You made the call to stay behind two days ago. How did you know?”

  “I didn’t know anything. Call it a gut feeling, but that last crime scene felt…different to me. I had a feeling about Applewhite being special and I went with it. Let’s hope it pans out.”

  The call lasted another few minutes with promises made for updates. I hated being apart from my team. I liked the energy of our dynamics and missed it, but my instincts to follow the Applewhite lead to the island felt solid.

  After I ended the call, I heard the sound of boots behind me as I returned the cell to the zippered compartment in my pack. Justine had followed me. She looked worried…and unapologetic.

  “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help it. I had to hear what you found out…about how Nate died.”

  A tear drained down her cheek.

  “We’re gonna catch this guy,” I said. “I promise you.”

  She surprised me with a sudden flash of anger, softened by fresh tears welling in her eyes.

  “We both know you can’t promise that. Nate was number fourteen. If the FBI has met its match, with all its resources and fancy phones, what makes you think you can stop this guy?”

  Justine didn’t say anything more. She wiped the tears off her face and walked away, leaving me alone with the start of another headache.

  Chapter Eight

  Prince of Wales Island, Alaska

  Forty minutes later

  Ryker Townsend

  Under a dense cover of trees, I left the river gorge behind and followed Justine through a meandering and worn path. The forest floor had a thick layer of decaying pine needles and fallen leaves that gave a pungent rich smell to the soil. The path buckled under my weight as if I were treading on a mattress. The sensation was unsettling at first, but knowing the cushy feel had been caused by years of decay, layer upon layer built up over centuries, I felt lucky to be walking on it. It was like treading on history.

  After the sun broke through the clouds and made a brief appearance, a microcosm of insect life had been drawn and suspended in the sun’s rays. Spears of light filtered through green leaves and daylight dappled the ground in colors that reminded me of light shining through the stained glass of a church.

  The solitude and the quiet touched me in a way I’d never expected.

  With half-lidded eyes I relaxed into the moment and dropped my gaze to Justine’s boots as she walked ahead. I listened to the hypnotic sounds of the forest and let the subtle noises close in. A light breeze jostled the treetops and birds flitted in the branches over my head. My boots made soft thuds on the decomposing sod under my feet. Nature had a palpable and soothing rhythm.

  Nathan Applewhite had been where I stood now and I knew why he would’ve chosen to make his home on the island. There was a soul quenching refuge I sensed in my bones. I knew Applewhite must’ve felt the same. Perhaps like Henry David Thoreau, Nathan had sought the nurturing solitude of the woods because he wished to live deliberately and get the most of his life.

  Nate had chosen a quiet, simple life. The fact he was dead now—after being tortured and murdered—struck a harsh blow in me. It was an odd feeling to miss someone I’d never met, but the more I saw of Nate’s life, the greater I sensed the wake of his absence. Violent death was never fair. The haunting words of David Richard Berkowitz, Son of Sam, seeped from my brain. I didn’t want to hurt them. I only wanted to kill them.

  Making sense of those words would be unfathomable for most people, but it was my job to try. No, I had to do more than try. I had to crawl into the heads of killers like Berkowitz. If I didn’t, other people would die and I couldn’t live with that.

  The UNSUB had picked Nate and killed him. It hadn’t been random, but when a guy’s number was up, apparently there wasn’t a place to hide. Not even in the secluded mountains surrounding Point Baker.

  As Justine crested a hill in front of me, she pointed.

  “That’s it. Nate’s place.”

  A rustic log cabin was nestled in a clearing below. A small creek cut through the trees and made the setting complete. Justine didn’t move. She clutched the shoulder straps of her backpack and stared at the home where Nate had lived. Knowing she’d shared nights with him here, I realized that her decision to come with me had not been an easy one to make.

  “You okay?” I asked her.

  She took a deep breath and let it out. Her eyes were fixed on the cabin as if she expected to see him there.

  “Yeah, I will be. Come on. Last push, city boy.”

  ***

  As we neared the log home, Justine held out a hand and ducked fast. Her quick move took me by surprise. She gave me a tactical hand signal to stop and I reacted on instinct. It didn’t take long for me to understand why she’d gone silent.

  Noise came from the cabin. The front door was open wide. Someone was rummaging inside and tearing up Nate’s place. A metal pot hit a wall and dropped hard to the floor and something heavy got shoved with a loud angry grunt.

  No telling how many guys were in there.

  Justine slipped off her pack and retrieved her service weapon in steely silence. By the time she racked the slide of her Glock and chambered a round, I had followed her lead. With weapon in hand, free of my gear, I crouched low beside her.

  “My turf. My play. Understood?” she whispered.

  I nodded, without a word.

  Justine signaled her plan. She had me cover the back, but she wanted me to keep her in sight, in case she had to move fast. To do that, I’d have to take a position that would put me at a distance. I’d have ground to cover if she needed me, but if the guy inside bolted, she knew the cabin layout and the points of egress. I had to trust her instincts as if they were mine.

  After I nodded once, she stood with her weapon in a two-fisted grip and shuffled toward the front of the cabin. Treading lightly on the wood porch, she kept her back to the wall and crept toward the open door.

  Whoever had done damage inside hadn’t stopped. They cursed and created enough noise to mask any sound Justine made as she approached. She made eye contact and gave another signal for me to back her up.

  “Alaska State Troopers,” she cried out, in a stern voice. “Inside the cabin. Come out with your hands up.”

  The noise stopped. Dead silence. I tensed as Justine raised her Glock and aimed at the open door.

  “Alaska State Troopers. Come out. Hands up. Now!” she yelled.

  “I told you what would happen, bitch.” A man’s voice came from inside. “Death set him free. What was his, is mine now.”

  Justine braced her body when she heard the man and cocked her head, listening.

  “Grady Matson? Is that you?”

  The scuff of boots on a wood floor forced Justine to take a step back.

  “I won’t go to jail for protecting what’s mine,” the man said. “Back off!”

  “Can’t do that, Grady. Come out with your hands up. We can talk.”

  When the man gave her nothing, Justine glanced toward me, but a loud bellow erupted inside and we both braced for a fight. The heavy thud of boots echoed to break the stillness of the standoff. A big man shoved through the door—yelling like a lunatic—and didn’t stop. He headed for the tree line and shoved through the thick brush. I saw the flashing glimpse of a red plaid shirt, dark bushy hair, and a full beard. Over six-feet tall, the guy had to tip the scales toward a meaty three-hundred pounds.

  Justine didn’t hesitate. She took off after the man who’d ransacked Nate’s cabin.

  “Damn.” I backed her up, without question.

  The man had crashed through the trees and became a hulking shadow. All I saw was Justine’s back as she raced after him. She cut through bushes without stopping. Branches slashed her bare skin, but she didn’t slow.

  She picked up speed.

  When the trail split, I slowed, unsure what she�
�d do or where the guy had gone, but Justine didn’t stop. Over her shoulder, she called out to me.

  “We can cut him off, but you gotta move.” She shouted and waved a hand. “You go that way. Our paths will cross. Go!”

  I did as she told me. Up ahead I heard the man trampling through the quiet of the forest. Every crack of wood and heavy thump of boots echoed off the trees and made it hard to tell where the noise came from. Justine had said our paths would cross if I moved fast. Drenched in sweat, I pushed to catch up. I followed the sounds of a foot chase on a trail I didn’t know.

  I heard Justine in pursuit to my left, but couldn’t see her. She wasn’t far. If she got to the guy first, she’d be alone. I ran harder. I spotted a clearing ahead. With the level ground, I could make up time. I hurtled a fallen log and hit the clearing to pick up my pace.

  When one of my boots hit something hard, my ankle twisted. A sharp pain shot up my leg and a crushing vise cut deep into my skin. I heard the heavy snap of clamping steel that held me firm and wouldn’t budge.

  I cried out and slammed to the ground, landing face first. My head hit hard, enough to see stars. In excruciating pain, I lay belly down on the ground. I struggled to stay conscious and smelled blood as a burning agony shot up my calf. With sweat pouring off me, I lay panting in the dirt, unsure I could move. I felt nauseous and couldn’t focus. Everything spun in a blur.

  Stay awake. Shake it off.

  When I looked down at my ankle, I saw a steel trap had cut its teeth into my leg. Blood saturated my jeans. The bone could be busted. Without help, I wasn’t going anywhere. Every move I made, the trap cut deeper into my flesh and closer to the bone.

  Barely able to keep my eyes open, I fought the shadows that edged in. I pictured the night sky, the one I’d seen from Justine’s back porch, except the stars were spinning and falling to the earth.

  Justine.

  She was alone and chasing after a man who’d been desperate enough to run from the law. She’d counted on me to back her up, but that wouldn’t happen. When I heard the distant crack of gunfire, the muffled sound carried through the trees. I couldn’t tell from which direction. Numb and in pain, I closed my eyes and let my body sink into the growing darkness.