Chapter Nine

The cabin was small, dim, and somewhat shabby, with dirty wood-planked floors and a few pieces of worn, mismatched furniture. Definitely not the rustic getaway Mark had pictured when he'd learned that Isaac Driscoll had taken early retirement and moved out there immediately afterward. Mark flipped the overhead light switch and then stood just beyond the doorway and gave the room a once-over before stepping inside, Harper entering behind him.

She pulled her jacket around herself and moved to the right of the door as she put her hands in her pockets. "Is it okay that I'm in here?" she asked, her breath emerging as white vapor in the chilled room. "I could wait in the truck—"

"It's fine. The crime scene techs have already completed their work. And I might have a question or two." He smiled back at her. "This isn't exactly what I'm used to, location wise. You might see something I don't. If some item or another seems strange or out of place, don't hesitate to mention it." He walked to the table next to the kitchen area—really just a counter and sink with a two-burner hotplate and a mini fridge. Just like at the first crime scene, there was fingerprint dust everywhere.

"I hear you're from California."

"Born and raised," Mark answered.

"What brought you to Montana?"

"Just looking for a change. My wife's sister lives in Butte, and when I saw the opening at the Montana Department of Justice, I applied." He looked back at her, and she was watching him with a small skeptical look on her face that told him she knew he was leaving something out. He almost smiled at the way it was so obvious when her wheels were turning. He'd only known her for an hour, but he could already tell she questioned a lot and didn't quite know if it was insight or her brain running wild. He could relate. That inquisitiveness had turned out to be a good quality for him as far as the job he did. He hoped she'd figure out where to apply it as well instead of allowing it to run amok. She was young. Very young. She had time.

Then again, his daughter had been young too, and she hadn't had nearly enough time. Not nearly enough. He shut those thoughts down, picking up a notebook on top of a short stack of other notebooks in various colors on the table and leafing through it. It appeared to be a field journal of some sort with observations about possums and…he turned the page…deer…wolves. Different sections were labeled with chapter headings as though he was outlining a book. Mark flipped through the rest of the notebook quickly and then checked briefly inside the others. Why had Isaac Driscoll taken special interest in those three specific animals and no others?

He gave the cabin another once-over. Was that the reason the guy had been out here? To write a nature book? "Harper, you're a wildlife expert of sorts," he said, and she opened her mouth as if to disagree with the statement, but he went on before she could. "If you were going to observe animals and, say, write a book on their behaviors, would you want to live among them?"

"I mean…yeah, maybe. But I can't think of any animal that hasn't already been highly observed in its natural habitat, especially around here…a hundred books written, etcetera. It wouldn't be new material."

"That's what I was thinking too," he murmured, slipping the notebooks into a folded paper evidence bag he removed from his pocket. The techs hadn't deemed them important, but something told Mark he might want to look through them later.

"Unless," she said, stepping into the room, "the animal or animals were being observed under very specific circumstances that were different in some way." She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth in thought for a moment. "Like if the data being recorded was about how an animal would react to something it hadn't previously been exposed to? Like what they do in labs."

"Yes. Only Isaac Driscoll was a researcher with a doctorate at Rayform Laboratories. He took early retirement sixteen years ago and moved here. He left the lab for the wilderness." Albeit not the kind of lab that studied animals, from what Mark gathered.

"I don't know what to make of that. Unless he was just observing animals for his own interest," Harper offered.

Could be. The real question was, why would living alone in the wilderness observing possums get you murdered? And in such a violent fashion? He needed to see the spot where Driscoll had been killed. "I'll be right back," he said to Harper before walking toward the room where the murder had occurred.

The technicians had taken some of Isaac Driscoll's blood for processing, but the majority was still there on the wall and floor—a large, dark, congealed puddle.

He wondered if the victim had a next of kin—he was still waiting for that information—and, if he did, if they'd even want this dingy cabin in the middle of nowhere where their relative had been killed. Would they want the property? And if so, what would happen to Lucas with no last name? He sighed, staring at the large, dark stain. What the hell had happened here?

It hadn't been a quick death—again, the arrow had been shot with enough force to pin the victim to the wall so he was rendered helpless. His blood had drained from his body. The same as the Jane Doe in town, though this shot had hit the victim in the chest and he'd remained conscious long enough to reach his phone and dial 9-1-1. Maybe it had been in his pocket? Accessible enough so he could reach it even in the throes of death.

There was malice in both cases—hatred even. Neither was a random crime, though the arrows found in each body were slightly different in appearance. Whether that meant there were two killers or whether a singular killer had simply used different arrows, he didn't know. The crimes were too similar not to be related though. But how? Why? That was the most important thing to figure out really. Find out why and he should find out who.

And whoever had shot the victims certainly knew their way around a bow and arrows. He would double-check with an authority on the weapon, but from his own educated guess, both were kill shots, carried out expertly and swiftly. Powerfully. How strong would someone have to be to shoot through a human body? He'd have to look into that. What he did know was that neither victim had been shot by a novice.

Mark took one last look around the sparsely furnished room: a bed, stripped now of bedding, and a dresser. Hanging above the dresser was the only piece of art Mark had seen in the house. He moved closer, studying it. It was a depiction of an old-fashioned battle. Men with shields and arrows stood facing another group with the same weaponry across a great divide. He wasn't a big history buff and didn't recognize the uniforms, if they could be called that, many of the soldiers bare-chested and wearing what appeared to be short skirt-type bottoms. Was it a historical Roman battle? Mark took a picture of it with his cell phone so he could look it up later.

He opened the top drawer and found it full of boxes of matches, lined up in two rows. The rest of the drawers held a few random clothing items, folded haphazardly. Mark closed the drawers, left the room, and returned to where Harper waited for him.

The rest of the information he needed would come from the crime lab. He hoped to God there was something for him to work from—a lead of some sort. He knew the department had thrown him this case because no one else had the desire to trek through the frigid wilderness in the middle of winter. And he didn't either, but he was going to do his damnedest to work this case well. To settle into this job and this new life he and Laurie were trying to accept. Mostly separately.

Harper was standing by the door where she'd first walked in, her hands in her pockets again as if ready to leave as soon as possible. He didn't blame her. There was something…depressing about this place. And not only that a murder had been committed there—though that would increase the dismal factor anywhere. No, the whole place felt oppressive and dark. He had the urge to fling open the door and escape outside, which was saying something since outside was a virtual icebox.

"Ready?" she asked.

"Yup. I want to ask you about something that was found here, but I can do that in the truck. The crime lab was supposed to email it to me after it was processed, so I'll have to make sure it's there first."

She seemed even more eager to get out of the gloomy cabin, taking two quick steps to the door and pushing it open with perhaps more strength than necessary. It banged against the side of the porch, and she glanced back with a sheepish look on her face but didn't slow her descent down the two rickety steps. Mark closed the door behind them and took a deep breath. The cold air filled his lungs, and it felt good—cleansing. Vital .

As they trudged to her truck, Harper glanced toward the three mountain peaks to the south and then back at him. "Agent Gallagher, what do you think about Lucas? Living out here alone on Driscoll's property? Trading with him? It's odd, right?"

Mark nodded. He planned to be the one to talk to Lucas if any evidence arose that involved him, and even if it didn't, he'd make a point to return his bow and arrows and get a better feel for the man. "I'm going to look into his situation. I'm confused by it too." Lucas hadn't been very forthcoming at the station, and whether that was because he was hiding something or that he simply didn't have the answers to many of the questions he and Dwayne had asked, Mark didn't know. Hell, Lucas didn't even seem to be certain about how old he was or his age when he'd come to live on Driscoll's property. Fifteen winters, he'd said, the look in his eyes so bleak, Mark had cringed inside. And it'd been a damn long time since someone had said something that made him cringe. If Mark had to guess, he'd say the man was about Harper's age—young, early twenties probably, and very sheltered, though obviously toughened too. Mark stared at the frozen landscape, the mountainous terrain blocking the last of the dying sun. You'd have to be tough, living out here. And maybe "tough" didn't even begin to cover it.

He wondered how Lucas factored into this whole thing—or if he did at all. He'd made it sound as if his relationship with Driscoll was extremely limited and that he only saw him a few times a year, if that. The quiet, watchful man was difficult to read, but Mark sensed he was holding something back.

Harper seemed troubled as she started up the truck and turned the heat up to high. The snow flurries had died down, but it was still below zero according to the temperature gauge that had been hanging on the house next to what had been Isaac Driscoll's door. Why the hell would anyone want to live out here? This sort of cold was miserable. Biting and painful.

Mark swiped his phone, relieved to see he had service. He pulled up his email and was glad that the message he'd been expecting was in his inbox. He clicked on the attached PDF, and a scan of the "map" that had been in Isaac Driscoll's bedside table filled the small screen. He handed it to Harper, and she stared at it for a minute before looking at Mark questioningly. "Is it a map?"

"Seems to be. Only I don't know what it's of. And what these"—he used his index finger to point to two red boxes containing X's and an empty black box—"might indicate, if anything."

Harper turned the phone so it was horizontal, enlarging the picture and zooming in on the X's and then back out again. She studied it for another few minutes. "This squiggly line might indicate water? There's a river in that direction." She pointed off behind Driscoll's cabin. "Or maybe it's a trail?" She shrugged. "But there are a hundred trails in this wilderness. There's really nothing here that speaks of any landmark I'd recognize."

"I figured. What about when the snow melts?"

She thought about it. "If we used his house as a starting point, we could hike out around the area, look for something that might provide some information about what he was marking." She gestured her head toward the phone. "It looks old though with all those creases and the ink faded the way it is. He might have been marking the location of water or something he found necessary when he first moved out here? Maybe even a location where he was observing the animals you mentioned."

She looked back to the phone. "Obedient?" she read, the one word printed at the bottom of the piece of paper. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know yet."

Harper looked at it for another moment and then handed the phone back.

Mark put it in his pocket, and Harper backed out of the turn-in, heading onto the snow-covered back road they'd used to get to the cabin. She was right, of course. The "map" was most likely related to whatever animal observation Driscoll was doing here in the boondocks. But something in his gut told him he needed to locate those X's and find out exactly why Isaac Driscoll had considered them important. Looking at how aged the piece of paper was, it seemed he'd kept it beside his bed for many years. But why?