CHAPTER FIVE

"Do you think the killer's targeting people?" Michael asked, "Or do you think he's just rigging cabins and hoping people stumble onto them?"

"These are private cabins," Faith replied. "So I'm leaning to the former."

They were at Valerie North's cabin now. Like Ethan Holloway's cabin, it was spartan. It had no electricity or running water and no modern conveniences of any kind. It was larger than the cabin and had a wood-burning stove made of stone with a clay chimney that extended through the roof, but other than that, it was just as simple as the other one.

"That's not necessarily true," Wyatt corrected. "It's true that private citizens build these cabins, but this is public use land. You can't claim ownership of it. Strictly speaking, you can't build dwellings on public-use land either, but they get around that rule by claiming that since there's no electricity and running water, these are temporary shelters. The Park Service lets them get away with it because they'd rather not find people dead out here from exposure. They still do, but this means they find less of them. The point is, just about anyone could use this shelter if they were of a mind to it and could get here. It's not common out in this part of the park, but that's because people aren't common in this part of the park."

Faith could understand why. If anything, Valerie's cabin was even harder to reach than Ethan's. It sat atop a sheer rock bluff underneath a glacial plateau. A trickle of clean water from the glacier collected in a hewn stone pool just outside of the house. To get there, the helicopter had dropped them off in front of a narrow and steep path that rose a hundred feet from a larger rock face. The four of them had to climb up, a task that only Turk handled easily. Faith wasn't looking forward to the journey down the bluff.

"He'd have to be an outdoorsman too," Michael said. "Or outdoorswoman. These are not easy places to reach."

"He'd have to know where the cabins were, too," Faith replied. "There's too much land out here for him to accidentally stroll up to multiple cabins and rig traps."

"Are there a lot of people who come out here and do survival stuff like this?" Michael asked.

"Oh, yeah," Wyatt said. "Alaska's one of the most popular destinations for that sort of thing. We have—as Miss Bold pointed out—a lot of unspoiled land. We also have a very robust first responder network, so if you do get lost or hurt out here, we're more likely to find you."

"Or find a body," Michael added.

Faith frowned at the rude comment, but Wyatt didn't seem offended. He replied with dead seriousness. "Or find a body."

"How did you find Valerie North's body?" Faith asked.

"Her friend called us about a week ago saying she hadn't checked in for the day. She was supposed to call us if that happened. She gave us some GPS coordinates that Valerie had given her. That led to this cabin, and… well, we found her."

Faith looked around the cabin. There were multiple red pins throughout the large single room. The police apparently had better luck finding the traps here. "Walk me through what you saw."

Wyatt pointed to a large dark stain in the middle of the room. "That's where her body was. As you can tell, it was completely exsanguinated by the time we found it. The head rolled all the way here to the stove and came to rest against the left side right here. We think there was a fire going at the time of death because the head was burnt severely on the side that came to rest."

Michael groaned and turned away. Faith didn't feel nauseous, but she could understand it. The image of an innocent woman's head searing against a hot stone while her body bled out was a rough one. She'd spent her entire career confronting such images, but it never got easier.

"How did the snare work?"

"So that's the part that we're trying to figure out. I mean… we know what happened, but we don't know how the killer got it to work the way it did."

"Let's start with what happened," Faith said.

"Well, what happened is she stepped on a tripwire here." He pointed at a red pin stuck in the ground behind the dark stain in the floor. "When she stepped on that tripwire, somehow a loop of chicken wire descended from the ceiling suspended by two hinged rods here and here." He pointed at two red pins about eight feet apart on the ceiling. "Once the rods reached full extension, springs released that caused them to snap back up toward the ceiling, stretching the rope taut instantly. The wire went through her neck like a cheese slicer."

Michael groaned again. "Christ. And this happened fast enough that there was no time to react?"

"We can only assume so. We weren't able to replicate the weapon's action. It was, pardon me for using the term, very sophisticated."

"How tall was Valerie North?" Faith asked.

"Five-foot-nine," Wyatt replied.

Faith thought a moment. That was relatively average height for a man, tall for a woman. It was possible that the trap could have been meant for anyone, but it seemed like an awful lot of work for no guarantee of success. "I think he targeted them. I think he designed his traps specifically to work on these particular victims."

"Have you talked to their families?" Michael asked. "Their friends?"

Wyatt chuckled. "This is a small town country. Most of the people that live out here fall into two camps: people with family in Anchorage or people with family out of state. Ethan and Valerie were the latter."

"What about friends?"

"We're working on that," Wyatt replied. "We don't have anything just yet."

"You haven't checked social media?"

"Neither of them were active." Faith and Michael looked at each other, and Wyatt explained, "This is a different country out here. People live differently. We're so far away from everything else that social relationships out here are a lot more like things were back in the old days. You talk to people. You see them face to face. You help your neighbors out, help your community out. You don't have friends from a distance. Maybe a little bit in the cities: Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau, but in the country, you have to rely on the people who are right there in front of you. Or you have to rely on yourself. Ethan and Valerie were the kind of people who relied on themselves."

"In other words, they were the perfect target," Faith summarized.

"Yeah. Looks that way. We're talking to people. Nelchina's a small town. Everyone knows each other. Someone will have something for us. We just have to be patient."

"In my experience, Wyatt, killers like this count on patience. The slower we move, the faster they move."

Wyatt met Faith's eyes. "We have a saying up here. The worm eats what the eagle misses. Believe me, Special Agent, I have as great of a sense of urgency to solve this case as you do, but trying to find information as fast as possible only means that we don't notice the crucial details. In a haystack as big as Alaska, we can't afford to miss details."

Faith frowned. Wyatt was right, but it frustrated her to be stuck, even if it was only the beginning of the case. Killers moved so quickly these days. The worm might eat what the eagle misses, but while the worm gorged itself, the sparrow could swoop in out of nowhere and tear the worm from the Earth.

There was no point in arguing, though. Being angry wouldn't make anyone move faster, and it wouldn't make the evidence more noticeable. "All right. Then let's look at details. Besides the snare, are there any more traps you're aware of?"

"No, ma'am, but with your dog here to help, we might have better luck."

"Then let's start looking."

The team split up to look for evidence of more traps. Faith and Turk moved carefully along the narrow ring of stone surrounding the cabin. With no grass here, any traps laid would be easier to see. Unfortunately, the killer seemed to have realized the same thing, and they didn't find any evidence.

Once, when they passed the small glacial waterfall, Turk barked and stared up the nearly sheer cliff face. "See something, boy?" Faith asked.

She looked up the face but didn't find anything that could have piqued Wolf's interest. "What is it?"

Turk whined and looked back at Fath, then back up the cliff. Faith followed his eyes, but whatever Turk picked up on, it wasn't noticeable to her. "Do you smell something?"

Turk looked up at the cliff face one last time. Then he hesitantly moved away, dipping his head in the negative. Faith kept her eyes to the top of the cliff for a while longer, then followed Turk away.

The men stepped outside of the cabin just as Faith and Turk reached them. "Anything?" she asked them.

"We found one of the springs to the snare mechanism," Michael said. "It looks like an ATV coil spring."

That could be something. "Any thoughts on the brand?"

"Something OEM. I'll send it to the crime lab in Anchorage and have them take a look. If we're lucky, we'll get fingerprints. If we're less lucky, we'll figure out what make and model of ATV this came off of."

"Are ATVs popular out here?" Faith asked Wyatt.

"No, not really. There isn't a lot of vehicle accessible wilderness, and what's there is better suited for trucks and SUVs."

"That's good," Faith said. "It means there won't be a lot of people with ATVs. Gotta hand it to you, Wyatt. Slowing down was the better choice."

"Thank you, ma'am. Did you and Turk find anything?"

Faith looked back at the cliff face by the waterfall. "I'm not sure. Turk stopped by the glacier for a moment. It looked like he was onto something, but then he lost the scent."

"Hmm," Wyatt replied. He looked at the cliff face, then said, "I wonder if the killer came from above instead."

"Could he climb down that?" Michael asked.

"He'd have to be a very high-level climber, but it's not impossible."

"How would he get to the other side?" Faith asked.

"That's the real question. I don't know of any safe path that would take you up the other side of the mountain. Even if there is, you'd have to cross the glacier to get here. That alone would take four days to do safely."

"What about unsafely?"

Wyatt chuckled. "Well, unsafely depends on how skilled, how lucky and how unsafe you want to be. I've heard of people climbing Mount Everest naked, and I've heard of professional hunters stepping on a porcupine and dying from an infected cut. It's just hard to tell."

Faith pressed her lips together and looked behind at their relatively easy climb. "We'll save that question for later," she said. "What we know is that he set multiple traps for Ethan Holloway and one very elaborate trap for Valerie North. I find that odd. More traps increase the likelihood of success."

"He was successful with Valerie," Michael reminded her.

"Yes, he was." She cocked her head. "That means he knew his victims. He put failsafes in place for Ethan but not for Valerie because… that's what we need to find out."

She turned to Wyatt. "You can take us back now. Is there a place to stay in Nelchina?"

"There might be room at the lodge in town. I'll find out for you."

"Thank you. I want to look into Ethan Holloway's and Valerie North's backgrounds. Whoever committed these murders not only had to be a capable outdoorsman himself, but he also had to have an intimate knowledge of his victims' habits."

"So we don't like the crazy opportunistic hunter hypothesis?" Michael asked.

"Oh no," Faith said. She thought of the snare snapping shut around Valerie's neck and the pickaxe burying itself in Ethan's head. "No, this was personal."

She dwelled on that thought as they headed to Nelchina. It took a special kind of hatred to kill someone this violently. Usually, this violence was accompanied with insanity or rage, sometimes both.

But to lay a trap for someone took time and patience. They were after a very different kind of killer this time.

And they were hunting him in his own backyard.