The Last Victim (A Ryker Townsend Story)

by Jordan Dane

  Chapter Nine

  Prince of Wales Island, Alaska

  Ryker Townsend

  I felt hands on my body. I wanted to open my eyes, but I couldn’t. Someone brushed fingers through my hair and ran a hand over my chest. The touches drifted down my legs. I was content to tread the line between consciousness and a restless sleep until a worsening pain gouged deeper into me.

  “Ryker. Can you hear me?” A woman’s voice.

  I heard a distant moan. It took me awhile before I realized the sound had come from me.

  “Wake up,” she said.

  Fingers patted my face. I cracked my eyes open and a bright light blinded me. I squinted and held up a hand, but when I moved, the agonizing pain shot through my body. I cried out and a hand touched my thigh and held on.

  “Don’t move. Stay still. That’s it.”

  Fingers trailed down my cheek. Cool velvet. Don’t move. Yes, I can do that. I saw a misty puzzle in flesh tones spiral in front of me. A face. It looked like colored fragments shifting in a kaleidoscope.

  “Stay with me. I gotta get you out of here. It’s not safe.”

  The pieces pulled together and the face of Justine Peterson stared down at me. She looked worried.

  “What…h-happened?” I asked.

  “The guy I chased got away, but I know who he is. He’s the poacher I told you about. Grady Lee Matson, the bastard who had it out for Nate.”

  “Slow down. Your lips are moving, but the words need time to catch up.”

  “Yeah. You got it.” After she took a deep breath, she poured water into her palm and cooled my face with it. “You landed in one of his illegal bear traps. I don’t think you broke a bone, but I can’t be sure. Your leg is hamburger.”

  I winced with a strained laugh.

  “Don’t sugarcoat it. Give it to me straight.”

  “Sorry. I call it like I see it.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “I did the best I could with your leg until I get you back to the cabin. Can you sit up?”

  “I don’t know. Upright is overrated.”

  Justine fended off my sarcasm like a pro and helped me off my back. My jeans were spattered in blood, but the wound was covered with a makeshift bandage. In the clearing, an animal trap was snapped closed near my feet and marred with blood and chunks of fresh skin. Mine. I hadn’t seen it before because it had been buried in pine needles and debris until I stepped in it.

  She told me she’d pried open the steel hinge using a sturdy branch to free my leg. The metal teeth had cut deep into my calf and raked down the flesh to my ankle, but she’d staunched the bleeding by using an improvised tourniquet and wrapped my wounds with a clean cotton shirt from her pack. Her dressing on the fly would have to do until I could get medical help.

  “He got away, you said?” I asked. “You think he’ll be back?”

  “The guy’s crazy mean. Guess we can’t rule that out. Is your bad luck contagious?”

  “Let’s hope not, for your sake.”

  In that moment I flashed on Franklin Roosevelt and his take on good fortune. He believed too many people talked about the good luck of the early bird, when the hard luck of the early worm had its own side of the story.

  “You talked about Nate having a stalker,” she said. “I can see Matson being that kind of guy, now that I’ve had time to think about him. He used to work at the same hunting lodge as Nate, before the poaching incident, but the guy got fired. He wasn’t very reliable and the lodge got complaints from clients. Nate took on the extra work and essentially replaced him.”

  “Did he blame Nate for him getting fired?” I asked. “There doesn’t have to be a real connection. A guy like Matson doesn’t need much of a catalyst. If he did blame Nate, the poaching could’ve been his way of targeting him. Matson hunting illegally in his backyard may not have been a coincidence.”

  “Could he be the one who killed Nate?” Justine had a hard time looking me in the eye.

  “Revenge is a powerful motive. If Matson has a connection to Seattle, he’d be a suspect. Our killer operates out of that area. If Matson lives in Alaska, Seattle could be his body dumping ground so he can keep suspicion off him. He wouldn’t crap where he eats. Do you know if he has a plane or a pilot’s license?”

  “I don’t know. I’d have to check, but since he works with hunting lodges, it’s very likely. Alaska has six times as many pilots than any other state in the Lower 48.”

  “Do you know if Matson is working somewhere now?”

  “Not in Point Baker, but I heard he might have something out of Klawock, a town just south of here. After the poaching incident, I thought he was out of Nate’s hair when he moved away, but if he’s got traps here, I was wrong. Really wrong. He must’ve come back to old hunting grounds so no one in Klawock would know about his poaching.”

  She looked down at my ankle and touched my thigh.

  “Can you move?” she asked. “I have to get you to Nate’s place. With Matson in the wind, I’d rather have walls around us. We can make a call for help using that fancy FBI phone you have.”

  “Yeah, good. At the risk of tarnishing my John Wayne bravado, I need your help to stand.”

  Justine held out her hand and braced her body for my weight. When she pulled me up, I winced and stifled a yell. With my leg on fire, I almost passed out when I got to my feet. Everything spun until I took a deep breath and held on to Justine.

  “You okay?” she asked. “You’re not gonna nod off again, are you?”

  I groaned and shook my head. Liar.

  “Take it slow.” Justine grabbed my arm and pulled it around her shoulders. “Lean on me. I can take your weight.”

  No part of my inner smart ass had a voice. I let her help me and didn’t bother regaling her with my keen affection for the absurd. Even my teeth hurt. She pulled me into her body and held on. One of her hands was tight on my wrist while the other took hold of my hip to keep me steady. I felt her strength and drew from it.

  Every step I took felt like the stab of a knife and the return trip to Nate’s cabin was arduous and slow. With the sun gone from the horizon, the night air carried a chill. I wanted to believe my shivers came from the dropping temperature, but behind my eyes, I felt the heat of a fever.

  As we approached the cabin, it didn’t look as welcoming as it had in the daylight. Murky shadows made me wary, but I breathed a sigh of relief that I didn’t have to keep walking. I only wanted to lie down and sleep, until I saw my clothes strewn on the ground near my pack and my adrenaline kicked in. Justine’s gear had been rifled through, too. Her backpack looked as if it had exploded.

  “Ah, hell. He must’ve doubled back. I tell you, that bastard is messed up.” Justine helped me to the porch and made sure I could stand on my own before she pulled her weapon and checked the inside of the cabin for intruders.

  “All clear, but the place is a wreck.” She holstered her gun and headed for her gear.

  I felt lightheaded from blood loss and nauseous as I leaned against the threshold of the front door, watching Justine. Crouched on the ground, she went through her stuff first and crammed things back into her pack.

  “He took a little food, but I don’t see anything else missing,” she said. “You want me to check yours? Anything valuable you want me to search for?”

  The instant Justine looked at me, I felt as if I’d been cold cocked. My badge and gun were with me. Beyond that, I had only one thing I cared about.

  “My phone. Bottom right zipper pocket.”

  Justine’s eyes grew wide. She knew what I thought the minute I’d asked her to look for my cell. I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she searched. When she came up empty, Justine shook her head and heaved a sigh. Her shoulders slumped.

  “Damn.” I leaned my head against the log cabin and shut my eyes. “My bad luck would appear to be a malignancy. Let’s hope it’s not terminal.”

  The mountain of my misfortune weighed heavy on me—made worse by what I suspected. If Matson had risk
ed doubling back and rifled through our gear—taking our lifeline for help—it could only mean one thing.

  Grady Lee Matson wasn’t done with us. He’d be watching and waiting to make his next move.

  ***

  BAU headquarters

  Quantico, Virginia

  After dark

  In a dimly lit room Special Agent Devin Hutchison sat at his desk huddled over his keyboard. He’d softened the overhead lights in his office to make it easier to see the screen and his fingers tapped out commands that retrieved online records. He read through another missing person report filed in the Seattle area as he ate a stale blueberry scone.

  “Sanforth, John. You don’t fit the victimology, Elvis. Righteous sideburns though.” After he clicked on another profile image, he winced. “Oh, dude. Seriously? The eighties called. They want their mullet back.”

  When he worked alone, after hours, Hutch often talked to himself to help him focus. He liked hearing a voice in the quiet, even if it was his. He glanced over his shoulder at another computer screen that ran his fingerprint scans against other databases using software he’d created to save him time in the cross reference process. His program had a certain amount of acceptable redundancy since fingerprint records were shared across resources, but if his secondary query scored a hit, he didn’t care if his program search criteria appeared inelegant. All that mattered was getting results.

  He had to resort to a derivative search after his first pass had been a bust on the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. With IAFIS being the largest biometric database in the world, the odds of him finding a match elsewhere was statistically a long shot, but he refused to accept that. Local, state, and other federal law enforcement agencies voluntarily shared fingerprints and criminal histories with IAFIS, but when he didn’t get a hit, he’d been forced to cross check for prints that may have fallen through the crack of such a massive system and look for matches in more obscure resources.

  He hadn’t gotten a first hit yet, but he wanted to be in his office when he did. Every positive ID they made bettered the odds of getting another lead.

  “Gotta have faith, baby,” he said with a yawn. “And a shot of Red Bull.”

  Hutch’s eyes were strained from a long day. He took off his glasses and shut his eyes for a break and pinched the bridge of his nose to stave off a tension headache. He stretched his arms and rolled his head to ease the tight muscles in his neck and shoulders. He’d been sitting too long.

  When he heard the sound of a buzzer coming from a secured door down the hall and the echo of footsteps, he knew it would be his ERT partner, Camilla Devore.

  “Good timing, Cam,” he whispered as he keyed up another report.

  “You look exhausted.” She smiled as she came up behind him and worked her fingers deep into his neck muscles to give him a massage. “Lucky for you, I find tired boys very sexy. Sleepy eyes make me think of a hot bath and bed…for two.”

  “Oh, God, you’re not playing fair.” He shut his eyes and gave in to her. Hutch dropped his chin into his chest and let Cam’s fingers work their magic. “Ahh, that feels…amazing.

  “I’m only getting started, love.” She trailed her hands down his chest and slipped one under his shirt. The warmth of her touch gave him a second wind. He leaned his body into her and let Cam have whatever she wanted.

  During work hours, she kept their relationship professional. She’d shoot him a wink, text him, or catch his eye across a conference room table to let him know she thought of him, but after hours when they were alone together, things were different.

  He never knew what Cam saw in him. She was a couple years older than him and hot as hell. She could have any man she wanted, but when she’d hit on him first—seriously—how could he refuse? Dating was an epic fail for him, but with Cam, he flew his geek flag with pride and never worried what she thought.

  They kept a low profile on the job and had separate apartments. Since they didn’t want to jeopardize working together, neither of them broached the subject of moving in. Whatever they had, it worked. Lucinda Crowley and Sinead Royce suspected he had something going on with Cam, but they never made a big deal about it.

  “No hit on IDs yet?” she asked, nibbling his ear.

  “Not yet.” He sighed. “I’m running prints and searching missing person reports, looking for anything to tie these body parts with a name. I don’t want to miss anything. Did I mess you up for dinner?”

  Cam had offered to cook at her place. She’d gone home to start dinner, but when he didn’t show, she called to say she would head back to help him and dinner would wait. Cam was cool like that. Nothing riled her and she understood how he lost track of time when he was on a tough case. They were both like that.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly hungry for food, Devin.” She nuzzled kisses down his neck. “I’ll help you now…if you make it up to me later. And trust me. You’re gonna pay. Deal?”

  “If that means you’re gonna spank me, ‘cause I’ve been a bad boy—deal.” He stood and pulled her into his arms. Hutch held her face in both hands and kissed her long and slow.

  “Seriously, thanks. I’ll make it up to you,” he whispered.

  “Yes, you will.” Cam settled into a chair and got to work, sifting through online records to cut his time in half.

  Thirty minutes in, one of the database alerts sounded and Hutch did a fist pump and yelled, “Yes!” He raced over to the computer to grab the mouse and pull up the file.

  “Ha. I knew you’d bring me luck. We got our first hit.” He grinned. “Fingerprints off one of the severed arms. Brian Dunkirk. See if you can pull up DMV on him.”

  “On it,” Cam said as she hit the keyboard on another computer. In minutes, she had more on their first body identified. “Dunkirk lives outside Seattle in Redmond. Good job, Boy Wonder. Check him out.”

  Cam had pulled up a DMV photo and had it displayed on the screen. The young man looked eerily similar in appearance to Nathan Applewhite, the dead guy at the top of the Totem.

  “You know, when TK started killing, the earlier victims didn’t look like this, but I’m beginning to see a more defined pattern,” Hutch said, not taking his eyes off the computer. “It’s like he’s zeroing in on a type and not hiding his preference now.”

  “You channeling Ryker?” Cam asked. “Because you just gave me goose bumps. I think you’re right. You know what else this means, Hutch?”

  He shrugged and shook his head, too tired to play twenty questions.

  Cam smiled and said, “You’re getting so laid tonight.”

  ***

  Prince of Wales Island, Alaska

  Ryker Townsend

  I listened to the eerie stillness as I stood outside Nate’s remote mountain cabin with Justine. Birds and other animals were noticeably quiet. In the distance I heard the sound of a rushing river and the night’s chill settled onto my skin through my clothes as a breeze rustled through the evergreens in an unsettled whisper.

  I shut my eyes to listen to it all.

  I had a sense Matson had eyes on me. That’s what I’d be doing if our situations were reversed, but the macabre feeling of being watched hadn’t left me since the Cascades. That could be paranoia, but after the connection I’d made from the last crime scene, I hadn’t experienced anything like it before. If the hair on my neck stood at attention, my primal instincts had a good reason to flare.

  The sensation of being watched had followed me here. It was with me now. I couldn’t break free of it.

  TK’s here. I can feel it.

  The sun had gone down, but this time of year in Alaska—when the days were getting longer—it never got totally pitch black. A bluish haze shed enough light to see under the night sky, but inside the cabin, things were impossibly dark.

  “Wait here until I find one of Nate’s lanterns,” she said. “I don’t want you tripping over anything in there.”

  “Good call. If there’s anything
to trip me in there, I would find it.”

  Justine disappeared into the cabin as I leaned against the front doorjamb, feeling utterly useless and wincing in pain.

  A faint glow lit the small dwelling enough for me to see the damage. Grady Lee Matson had torn it apart in what looked like a blind rage. Pots and pans were strewn on the floor and cupboards were open with shards of broken dishes scattered. Nate’s mattress had gaping tears through it like Matson had bludgeoned it with a knife. The rage it took to wreak such havoc meant Matson had a personal grudge or a vendetta against Applewhite that made him want to wipe out his very existence, even after he was dead.

  Killers often targeted surrogates to murder, substitutes for the violence and hatred they felt for someone else. A practice run they could repeat over and over. I didn’t know if that was the case with Nate, but the destruction in the cabin looked out of control.

  “This guy has anger issues.” I gazed around the shadowy room and looked for something I’d expected to see. “Did Nate have weapons? Knives, hunting rifles, ammo? We’ll need ‘em.”

  “Yeah. He hid them. They’d be locked away. I’ll check his cache when I’ve got you settled.”

  With Justine’s help, I hobbled into the shambles of Nathan Applewhite’s cabin.

  Before Matson got to it, Nate’s place must’ve been well-stocked and homey. He had heavy quilts on the bed, utensils for cooking, and a small pantry. The stone fireplace had seen plenty of use with a loaded bin of firewood outside, as if Nate would be home any minute. Framed photos of him and his boy had been smashed to the floor and his son’s water color pictures had been trashed and torn off the pins that must’ve held them on a wall.

  I didn’t know what Nate had done to become a target for such hatred.

  “Matson is a real piece of work.” Justine sighed as she gazed over what remained of Nate’s home.