Chapter 8

EIGHT

Moving his field glasses across the frozen landscape he cursed under his breath at the sight of the sheriff and her team. How had they managed to find the downed aircraft and miss his line of frozen fakes? He took in the preparation to leave. Each body was carefully slid into a body bag along with an evidence bag filled with possessions he assumed belonged to each victim of the air crash. The way they were heading led right to the two bodies he'd left close by, but he didn't worry about the sheriff finding him as his tracks were covered by thick layers of snow. He smiled to himself. She didn't know the extent of his line of fakes but maybe with all the attention on the air crash, teams would be coming in from different directions before too long.

His mind went back to Carolyn Stubbs waiting for him in the cabin. Living in the forest had its advantages. Most people would leave their cabins vacant over the winter, preferring not to risk being snowed in for months on end. It gave him the opportunity to use the cabins for his own use. When the women were found, an investigation would commence, and by selecting a different one each time, he would throw suspicion across all the cabin owners. The forest was vast and he had come to know it like the back of his hand. The protected trails during snowfall made it easy for him to move around using his snowmobile. Dense forest offered a canopy to lessen the snowfall and allowed him to move freely to many of the fire roads, which in turn gave him access to the highway. He'd made his home in two cabins but never took a woman that he planned to murder there. The one on the edge of the forest housed his truck and snowmobile, the other, deep in the forest, he used as his secret hideout. Protected by dogs, and signposted, no one came by. He'd become the recluse, the man nobody approached because they figured he'd shoot them dead. It was a great place to hide.

In someone else's cabin, Carolyn Stubbs waited for him. Waited to die. He chuckled. Excitement bubbled over at the idea of tying her to a tree while the sheriff was in the forest. The sheriff would no doubt be back with other officials as there was no way they had completed their examination of the crash site. He would wait until they left the area and then take Carolyn to look at the crash site and leave her somewhere close by for them to find on their return. Thrilled by his ingenious plan, he tipped back his head, allowing the snowflakes to touch his face like butterfly kisses. The chilled air didn't worry him. In fact, the snow was his friend. It took the lives of the self-important women he loathed and covered all traces of his existence. It gave him time to walk his line and see them all caught like vermin in his traps. All staring sightless ice sculptures of gargoyles. It was as if they'd grown from the trees like parasitic plants sucking the life out of them, but in his experience, high-maintenance women did that to a man. The women in his collection had spent all their waking hours touching hair framed around a face a surgeon had given them. The sight of their oversized breasts and huge ugly lips made him shudder. At first, he'd laughed at the way their eyebrows reached almost to their hairlines and the thick false eyelashes made them look like freaky dolls, but it was the hair that drove him to distraction. It was always long, usually colored, and then they tossed their heads and moved it over one shoulder and then back, tucked it behind one ear, and milliseconds later did the same thing over. Watching them preen was like a macabre Groundhog Day .

Nothing soothed him like cutting off all their hair and showing them what they looked like. He couldn't shoot, stab, or strangle them. No, all that blood and mess wasn't his style and it was just too quick for them. They owed him for annoying him for so long, and freezing them to death made everyone see them for what they truly were: fakes. When all the layers of fine clothes were peeled back, the surgical scars laid bare, and the hair removed, the world would see them as they truly were. He pushed his field glasses back into the case hanging around his neck and trudged back to the cabin. Carolyn would be waiting for him by the fire. Her fat red lips would spread to show her new snow-white veneers. Not one wrinkle marred her filled swollen cheeks and then she'd start to play with her hair. He shuddered and stood for a few minutes, allowing calmness to float down over him. He was a nice guy—well, at first at least. He grinned. The women saw him in the persona he portrayed, but just like them, inside a different person lurked. They wore their masks on the outside, but he hid his true self until it was too late to run.