CHAPTER FOUR

It was a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Anchorage to Nelchina, the small town where the victim lived. The two of them had slept on the flight. When they woke, the Boss had sent them the details of the case, and Faith reviewed them now as Michael drove the rental truck.

"The victim is Ethan Holloway, forty-two. Divorced, no kids. He was found when an emergency signal from his satellite phone alerted authorities that he hadn't used the device in twelve hours. I guess that's a safety feature you can program into some of these phones."

"How was he killed?"

"Pickaxe."

Michael grimaced. "Ouch. Was there a struggle?"

"PDs not sure. It looks like this case is a lot like a case from last week where a woman was killed in a cabin in the wilderness with similar injuries."

"Details?"

"The Boss says local PD will give them to us. I guess he got the call right before he called you. PD's weirded out by the whole thing. They can't find a sign of anyone else there but the victim."

"Suicide?"

"The pickaxe severed his brainstem from above and behind him. So no."

"Ouch. That's… creepy."

"It gets creepier. The scene isn't actually in the town of Nelchina. It's in the mountains twelve miles west. Ethan Holloway has a cabin there that's really hard to get to. Nelchina PD's going to have to airdrop us in."

"Air drop? As in parachute?"

"No, ladder."

Michael sighed. "Lovely. I no longer like Alaska."

She rolled her eyes and patted his shoulder. "You'll be okay."

"So this second victim. Or first victim, I mean. What do we know about her?"

"Valerie North, thirty-eight. She was found with her head severed by a wire."

"God. What happened to just shooting or stabbing people?"

"The normal cops handle that stuff. We get the psychos."

He chuckled. "Yay us. How does someone get her head severed by a wire?"

"It looks like someone rigged a snare in her cabin."

"A snare?"

"Yeah. It's… well, it's basically what I just described. A trip wire that tightens when an animal steps on a trigger. It snaps shut around the animal's leg, back or neck. It's a tool used by survivalists to hunt for meat."

"And someone rigged it in her cabin?"

"That's what it looks like."

"So definitely a homicide."

"Most definitely. Two homicides."

Michael sighed. "Well, I guess I signed up for this job."

She grinned. "Oh, come on. It's an adventure. We're in the Alaskan wilderness hunting a dangerous hunter, pitting our wits against nature and evil at the same time. It'll be fun."

He frowned at her. "What's gotten into you? You're never this giddy over a case."

She shrugged. "Just trying to make the best of it. This asshole would have killed these two people no matter what I did. But I'm happy that I'm going to bring him to justice."

"Well, when you put it that way."

***

It was after ten in the morning local time when the helicopter lowered the three of them along with a police detective down to the grass in front of a simple wooden cabin. Michael held on grimly as he descended the ladder and sighed with relief when his feet reached solid ground. Turk was no less grim as he descended in the basket they used to rescue stuck animals.

The helicopter moved off as soon as the last of them was down, and soon, the chop of the rotors was replaced with the silence of the Alaskan wilderness.

"All right," Faith said to the detective. "Talk to me. What do we have so far?"

The officer was a middle-aged man with a husky build and a bushy handlebar mustache who introduced himself as Wyatt. He put his hands on his hips and affected a passable Midwestern drawl when he replied. "Well, the body's gone already. Shipped it to Anchorage so the coroner could take a look. Just got that report back an hour before y'all showed up. Cause of death is what we told your boss. Pickaxe struck Mr. Holloway at the base of the skull and severed his brainstem."

"And the blow was delivered from above and behind?"

"Mmhmm. Come on, I'll show you."

He led the three of them toward the cabin. They stepped inside, and Wyatt pointed to a pin with a red flag punched into the roof of the cabin. "Haven't had a chance to search everywhere yet, but I can tell you what we found so far."

"You haven't had a chance to search?" Faith asked. "This murder occurred yesterday, correct?"

"We found the body yesterday, yes, but we're spread pretty thin. We had some calls to take care of in Anchorage, so we had to get the body out of here ASAP and save the full analysis for later."

Faith frowned. "And meanwhile, the killer could have erased or taken the evidence."

Wyatt's jaw tightened. "Like I said, ma'am, we're spread pretty thin here."

Faith decided she would have to let this go for now. This was a serious mistake on the part of the police, but there was nothing she could do to change it now. Better to learn what they could now and address this in their formal report. "All right. Go ahead and show us what you know."

Wyatt nodded and pointed at the ceiling. "That there is where the handle of the axe was tied. It operated on a simple hinge. There was chicken wire that ran under the head of the axe here"—he pointed at another pin—" and went to the wall here."

Another red flag showed where the wire ran to the floor, and a final one indicated the tripwire Ethan would have stepped on. "Chicken wire was painted the same color as the wood so it would blend in," Wyatt explained. "Holloway stepped on the wire, and the axe swung down and caught him right here." He turned around and tapped the hollow of his skull. "Killed him instantly."

"That's a silver lining, I guess," Michael said.

"Was anything stolen?" Faith asked.

"Doesn't look like it. All he had on him was a crossbow and a backpack with some survival gear: satellite phone, fire starting kit, a knife, a compass, a first aid kit. Killer didn't take any of those."

"Didn't take the satellite phone either," Michael said. "Where was that phone?"

"On Mr. Holloway's person."

"The killer wasn't here when the murders were committed, though," Faith said. "So he wouldn't have been here to take any of Ethan's belongings."

"Looks like he never came back for them, though," Wyatt said. "That's the part that's strange."

"Not so strange," Faith replied. "It just means that the motive for the homicide wasn't theft."

Wyatt nodded. "Kind of a cowardly way to do it," he said. "Setting a trap and hiding somewhere instead of having it out man to man."

"Killers are cowards a lot of the time," Michael opined.

"They are," Faith agreed. "And sometimes they just don't think like you and I do. We would consider it cowardly to kill from a distance. But if our killer thinks of himself as a hunter, then he probably thinks of this as a victory. The smart hunter defeated the dumb animal."

"Like that movie about the guy who hunts people?" Wyatt asked.

"I haven't seen it," Faith replied. "But sure."

Turk barked suddenly, and the three humans turned. He had his nose pointed under the raised cot that served as a bed. The cot was covered by a bearskin that hung to the floor in front of Turk. He looked intently at the skin. Wyatt walked over, and Faith called, "Careful. Don't touch anything yet."

He stopped, and Faith moved slowly to Turk. "Hey, boy. What do you smell? What's over there?"

Turk looked at her, then looked back at the bearskin. Faith stepped to the foot of the cot and stooped down. There was a sawed-off shotgun balanced on a tripod underneath the cot. She shined her light under the bed, and the beam reflected off of a thin filament that looped around the shotgun's trigger. The filament was attached to the bearskin.

"Okay, everyone. Back up. There's a shotgun rigged to the bearskin. If you move it, it'll take out your legs."

Michael whistled. "Damn. This guy had a plan B."

"And maybe a plan C and a plan D," Faith added. "Let's look around for any other traps. Carefully."

Michael looked around nervously. "Do we really need to? We can't just assume that overpreparing for his remote murders is part of his profile?"

"I'm a little more concerned with not seeing one and accidentally tripping it," Faith replied.

Michael shivered. "Yeah. Okay."

The four of them scoured the cabin. Wyatt checked the fireplace and found nothing. Michael shone his light on the ceiling, but no wires or weapons reflected back at him. Turk and Faith walked outside and looked through the grass that covered the small plateau. Faith was checking underneath some rocks on the upper edge of the plateau when Turk yelped and leaped into the air.

Faith rushed toward him. "Turk? Are you all right?"

Turk barked in alarm and ran in a half-circle, pushing into her legs and shoving her to the ground. She landed using a breakfall technique she'd learned in the Marine Corps, but the fall still jarred her.

"Faith?" Michael called. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Faith called. "Turk bumped into me. I think he was trying to keep me from stepping on something."

Michael shined his light on the spot Turk had prevented Faith from reaching and whistled. "Yeah. I'd say so."

Faith got to her feet and followed his flashlight beam. It gleamed off of a thick iron bear trap.

"This guy really hated Ethan Holloway," Michael said.

"And Valerie North," Faith said. She reached down and scratched Turk behind the ear. "Good boy."

"How long does it take to set something like this up?" Michael asked.

"Something like what?" Wyatt asked, walking toward the three of them.

Faith pointed at the bear trap. Wyatt chuckled mirthlessly. "Talk about overkill. To answer your question, the bear trap shouldn't take long. These modern traps are pretty easy to set up. Maybe five minutes at the most. As for the other two? That requires a hell of a lot of precision, especially for the shotgun. Our killer was here for a couple of hours at least."

Faith looked back at the cabin and imagined the killer carefully setting his traps, anticipating the places his prey was likely to walk and hiding his weapons, like a viper. No, not like a viper. Like a hunter.

And like any predator, he would hunt until he ran out of prey.