by Jeramy Gates
Chapter 3
Michael and Kelly Brooks had moved far away from the city in search of a quiet, safe place to raise their son. They found a small parcel of land deep in the heart of Sequoia County’s redwoods, just ten miles from the Pacific and three miles outside of Stumptown. It was an enviable piece of wilderness, a serene place; the antithesis of the hustle and bustle of the city life they had sought to escape.
The neighbors were friendly but remote, the community artistic, eclectic, and unashamedly liberal. It was, in their opinion, the perfect place to start a family. The Brooks had found their ideal home. Unfortunately, the killer had been looking for exactly the same thing.
Michael Brooks had been twenty-eight, his wife Kelly twenty-seven. Their son Blake had just turned five. The child had been murdered first, quietly in his room, while he slept.
Thank God for that, thought Sheriff Diekmann, standing on the front porch, gazing absently at the collection of vehicles assembled out front. At least the boy hadn’t suffered like his parents.
Bill Diekmann was dressed in his typical apparel: blue jeans, old boots, and a worn out baseball cap with the letters CAT emblazoned in yellow across the front. He wore a star on his shirt, a revolver on his hip, and that was as close to a uniform as he ever got, except at ceremonies and funerals.
The lights were flashing on one of the cruisers, the eerie strobes of color dancing across the scene like fireworks bursting in the low-lying fog. A dozen people stood around the drive, talking in lowered voices, waiting for the coroner to let them into the house. Riley White, the owner and editor of The Redwood Herald, appeared next to the sheriff. His short black hair was parted perfectly down the middle and slicked almost straight back. He looked like a throwback to the fifties, Diekmann thought. The eighteen-fifties. Riley was only twenty-eight, but dressed like he was seventy.
“Does this sound about right?” Riley said, holding up his Android tablet. “The killer tortured the young couple, violently raping Mrs. Brooks numerous times before finally ending her life. He had spent hours savoring his crime, relishing Michael’s horror as he watched on helplessly. The couple had long since realized that no one would hear their screams. No one would come to their aid-”
“That’s a bit sensationalist, isn’t it Riley?”
“Just the truth, that’s all.”
“You’re not really going to report all of this, are you?”
“Are you asking me not to?”
Diekmann took off his baseball cap and scratched the back of his head. “Let’s hang onto the details for now, shall we? Whatever information we hold back might help us convict the killer. Besides, your readers don’t really want to know about all that happened here. The truth would just frighten them. They’re already going to be worried enough.”
“All right. I’ll print names and ages for now, maybe a few minor details. I’ll leave the rest up to the imagination.”
“What about the Democrat?” Diekmann said. He was referring to The Press Democrat, the only real competition Riley had. The difference between the Herald and the Democrat was that the Democrat was a top-notch operation, with a huge building in south Santa Rosa and at least fifty full-time employees.
Their recent takeover by The New York Times meant that financially, the Democrat was a juggernaut, especially compared to Riley’s little independent operation. They also had a state of the art website, updated religiously every hour, mostly by people who lived three time zones away. By way of contrast, Riley’s website was a Wordpress blog that he tried to update once or twice a week, when he found the time. Riley had an assistant editor named Jacquelyn and two part-time interns. All three were taking classes at the university, hoping to get real news jobs after graduation. Distribution for his paper was mostly through local coffee shops.
“I can’t speak for the Democrat,” Riley said. “If they don’t get somebody here soon, they won’t have a story anyway.”
A swirling mass of fog blew through the clearing, reducing visibility to just a few feet. The police lights pulsed with an alternating blue and red glow, and a strange silence fell over the scene. A shiver went through the tree branches and a gust of wind drove the fog back into the woods. Diekmann’s eyes widened as he realized that a woman had appeared in the clearing in front of the house.
She was tall and thin, dressed in black and leaning ever so slightly on a long hardwood cane. Despite her disability, the woman projected a sort of quiet confidence, with her shoulders thrown back and her chin held high. Jet-black bangs fell down over her eyes, and she fixed the sheriff with a dark gaze that seemed to reach inside him, right into his very soul.
It seemed strange that no one had noticed the headlights of her sleek black sedan moving through the redwoods, or had heard the low rumble of its powerful engine approaching the scene. No one had even realized she was there, until she appeared in their midst. All eyes were on the woman as she strode forward, straight for the sheriff. The gravel driveway crunched under the soles of her shoes, the cane swinging forward in straight, fluid motions and then gliding back behind her with every other step.
She favored her right leg, Diekmann realized. Perhaps she had suffered a broken hip at some point.
“Special Agent Valkyrie Smith,” the woman said, flashing her identification as she approached the porch. Diekmann tugged the brim of his cap as he looked her up and down.
“Who called the feds?” he said.
“No idea, sheriff. It’s possible that the description of your crime scene may have triggered an alert.”
“What kind of alert?”
“I’d prefer not to get into it right now,” she said. “Not until I’ve seen everything with my own eyes. Do you mind if I take a look around?”
“Help yourself,” Diekmann said. “But watch your step in there, it’s unpleasant.”
“Thanks, sheriff.”
Diekmann stood aside as Valkyrie climbed the steps. She crossed the porch and entered the house without a backwards glance. As she disappeared inside, Diekmann turned back to see the entire crowd gawking.
“Get back to work,” he grumbled.
Chapter 4
Val stepped across the threshold and took it all in. Henry Halverson, the balding, middle-aged coroner was talking quietly into a voice recorder. His assistant -a thin, wide-eyed man with wild brown hair- snapped photographs of the blood on the floor. Neither paid any attention to Valkyrie as she entered the room and stood there, leaning on her cane.
Val’s gaze flitted from the spray patterns on the walls and ceiling to the bloodied instruments of torture lying casually discarded about the room. It was almost as if the killer had had no concern about hiding the evidence, she thought. Or wiping away his prints… must have been wearing gloves. Her gaze fell on the cryptic message scrawled in blood above the mantle. Val approached the fireplace and stood there, head tilted to the side; face intense as she studied the strange symbols.
Apparently satisfied by what she had learned, she circled the room and then strode out the back door without a single word. A few minutes later, Sheriff Diekmann entered the house. He threw a glance around the room and looked at Henry, who had knelt down to study the blood on the sofa.
“Where is she?”
Henry glanced up at him. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a bloody gloved finger. “Who?”
“The fed. She was just in here.”
“I think she stepped out back, Sheriff,” the assistant volunteered. “Must’ve gone outside to check the bodies.” The assistant looked a little green around the gills. Diekmann didn’t blame him.
“You look like I feel,” he said.
Diekmann followed Val, half-expecting to find her doubled over, puking her guts out in the back yard. Instead, he found himself alone in the quiet mist-filled clearing. The bodies were still hanging there, just a few yards from the back door, waiting for Henry’s final okay to remove them. Judging by the amount of evidence lying around, it still might be a fe
w hours.
Valkyrie Smith was nowhere.
Diekmann circled around the cottage and found the emergency personnel still milling around the parking area. Riley was conversing with the attractive young redheaded reporter from the Democrat, who had just arrived. Diekmann instantly knew that Riley’s cooperation wasn’t out of journalistic integrity, or anything so high-minded. Riley was gearing up his courage to ask her out. Not that he ever would. The guy was too shy, too unassertive. Diekmann had been expecting Riley to come out of his shell for years. From the looks of things, it might never happen. Riley was about to turn thirty, and as far as Diekmann could tell, had never had a real date. Diekmann had a strong suspicion the journalist was a virgin.
“Riley,” Diekmann said, waving him over. Riley excused himself and hurried over to the sheriff. Diekmann took the reporter by the shoulder. “Did the fed leave?”
Riley glanced around the clearing. “I didn’t notice anything.”
“She’s gone,” said one of the EMTs. “She was parked over there.”
“When did she leave?” Diekmann said.
They met him with silence, and Diekmann frowned. “Nobody saw her leave?”
“I guess she was in a hurry,” Riley said. “She was only here for a few minutes.”
Diekmann frowned, narrowing his eyes as he gazed down the road into a wall of fog.
Chapter 5
Val pulled into the parking lot of the Bodega Bay Suites at three a.m. The fog was so dense that she almost missed the turn. She parked the Packard in a handicapped space and climbed the metal stairs to the second floor, leaning stiffly on her cane all the way.
The cane was an unfortunate necessity, the result of having had several vertebrae in her back fused together permanently. The surgery had restored her mobility, but left her upper body stiff, so that she walked very upright, with her shoulders thrown proudly back. Sometimes, people mistook her posture as a sign of arrogance. They usually figured things out once they noticed the cane, but sometimes they didn’t. Val didn’t care. She couldn’t be bothered to explain things to people too stupid to figure them out on their own.
The inn was tucked into the redwoods along the coast, with a fireplace in every room and unobstructed views across Bodega Bay, all the way to the head. It would have made a perfect getaway for honeymooners, Val thought, or an older couple celebrating an anniversary. Unfortunately, there wouldn’t be any more anniversaries for her. The killer had seen to that.
Val found a cheery fire burning in the fireplace, and the shades drawn wide to reveal the full moon hanging high over the bay. Long tendrils of fog threaded across the sky, creating the eerie impression that they had been woven together like a fabric. Val paid little attention to these details. She pulled her laptop computer out of the safe, and removed the hidden stereo cameras from her jacket.
Valkyrie tossed her jacket onto the bed, leaving her officer-length 1911 dangling from the shoulder holster under her left arm. As the laptop downloaded and processed the video files, Val set up a tripod in the middle of the room. She attached a high definition, multi-field projector, which she then plugged into the laptop via a long USB cable. She tapped the screen of her smartphone and said, “Call Matthew.”
While she waited for an answer, Val selected the largest wall in the room and began clearing obstructions out of the way. With a sharp upward push, the print of an old rowboat came free of the wall. The lamps were similarly easy to remove with a quick twist.
“Val?” said Matt’s voice through her phone.
“Evening, Matthew.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in Bodega Bay, a little town on the coast, north of San Francisco. Did you trace that phone call for me?”
“I tried. It was the same as last time.”
“How is that possible? It was a different number.”
“The cell number was spoofed. Every time this creep calls, the number traces back to Washington D.C.”
“Is it possible he’s really there?”
“He could be anywhere. I’m telling you Valkyrie, not many people could pull this off. This isn’t just cloning a cell phone. This requires access to high-level accounts. The sort of stuff only an executive could access.”
“You think he might work for the phone company?”
“It’s possible. Or, he could be setting up a false trail just to throw us off track. Honestly, I don’t even know how the guy does it.”
“Thanks for trying, anyway.”
“So what happened? Did you go to the crime scene?”
She could almost see the pimply-faced college freshman leaning closer to the phone in anticipation. Of course, he wasn’t a freshman anymore, and he probably didn’t have pimples anymore, either. That had been years ago. Matt had started college the same time Kyle would have… just a few months after his death.
“I’m sending you a file,” Val said. “Get your projector up.”
Shuffling sounds came out of the phone, and Val quietly went about her business. When she was ready, she turned off the lights, turned down the gas in the fireplace, and activated the special program on her computer that controlled the projector. Instantly, the murder scene came to life in front of her in vivid, gory detail. The scene stretched around the corners of the room a full one hundred and eighty degrees, but because of the furnishings, only the image directly in front of her was clearly visible. Fortunately, Val was able to move the image with a simple click of the remote. The projection system was one of a kind, an invention of Matt’s, created solely for the purpose of examining such images.
“Okay, I have it!” Matt said. “Geez, Val. What am I looking at?”
“Kelly Brooks was a teacher at Stumptown Elementary. She missed two days of work without calling in. A deputy went out to check on her tonight, and this is what he found.”
“Unbelievable. This room is just like…” Matt’s voice trailed off.
“Like what happened to me and Tom?” she said. “I know, only it’s not. Not really. Take a closer look.”
“What do you mean?”
“Notice the weapons, the things the killer used: a broken glass, a tenderizer, a cleaver! The Collector doesn’t work like that. He uses his knife, his own personal knife, and he’s meticulous.”
“What about the bodies?” said Matt.
Val clicked the remote, and the image morphed into the scene behind the house. Matt made a choking sound. “Yggdrasil,” he said.
Val frowned. “What?”
“In Norse mythology, the god Odin was crucified on Yggdrasil, the World Tree. He sacrificed an eye and was impaled on the tree by a spear, if I remember right.”
“Why?”
“To gain knowledge. He did it all to gain knowledge.”
“Strange. And the Collector identifies with him for some reason?”
“Some reason?” Matt said. “We know why, don’t we, Valkyrie? You’re special to him.”
“I suppose,” she said absently.
Val’s stomach churned. She didn’t like the idea that her name had somehow suggested a theme to the serial killer’s new M.O.
“He’s becoming more violent,” Matt said. “More aggressive. That could account for the changes from previous murders.”
“I don’t think so. Serial killers usually become more confident with each crime. They don’t get messier just for the fun of it. They get better at what they do. Sometimes, they look for victims that are more challenging, looking for a bigger rush, but if anything, they get less messy.”
“So you think this is a copycat?”
Val hit the remote and the screen flickered, bringing the cryptic writing in the living room back into focus. On the other end, Matt’s projector mimicked the display.
“What is that?” he said.
“I thought you might know.”
“I do. I mean, I know that it’s runic writing; it’s the alphabet of the Vikings… but why is it there?”
“Can you translate it?”
>
“Give me a minute.”
Val heard Matt’s keyboard as he worked his computer. A moment later, he said, “Oh! This is easy. I thought it might be Scandinavian, but it’s English.”
“What?”
Matt sighed, and she could imagine him rolling his eyes nearly a thousand miles away. “The letters of this alphabet represent phonetic sounds, just like they do in English. B for brown, D for duck. Just like that, except they look different. Whoever wrote this doesn’t actually speak Norwegian or anything. He just used the letters as a code. It’s English.”
“What does it say?”
“I am Loki. I shake the earth.”
“Loki?”
“Another of the Scandinavian gods, like Odin and -ahem- the Valkyries.”
“That means there’s a second killer.”
“Are you serious?”
“It’s two of them, working together. Did you notice the hesitation marks on the victim’s wounds? The bizarre choice of weapons? It makes sense now. That was Loki. This was his first kill, I’m almost sure of it. He’s new at this. Erratic. He’s an amateur. He’s trying different things, but the theme… that’s the Collector. Or Odin, as he calls himself now. He’s the mastermind, the mentor.”
“Mentor? Two serial killers working together? Are they trying to qualify for group insurance or something? This is insane, Val. You need to get out of there. It’s not safe.”
“It’s never safe, Matt. I won’t quit until I stop him. You know that.”
“You mean both of them?”
“If that’s what it takes. If I’m right, this may be just the break we’ve been looking for.”
“How so?”
“Because if the Collector has joined up with this Loki character, then that’s his weak link. Loki is going to lead us to him.”
Matt sighed. “Are there any more clues?”
“Not yet. I’m going to have another look at the crime scene in the morning. The place was dark and crawling with cops.”
