baby-doll style top and flannel polar bear pajama pants with feet. He didn’t care what I was wearing, the others would have made an inappropriate comment or two.
Gabriel was doing a good job as team leader. He made sure that the right hand always knew what the left hand was doing. This was in direct contrast to the way Alejandro had run it.
My entire house was still under construction, so to speak. The men were huddled in my living room, surrounded by blank walls. Trevor had been my shadow every time I was at home. So far, he had finished the master bedroom and bathroom, my kitchen, dining room and library.
I had to admit the work he’d done was spectacular. My bedroom had made me speechless the first time I had seen it. The soothing green walls were accented by a slightly lighter shade on the ceiling. The ceiling had a crown jewel, knowing my heritage and pride in being Scottish, it had a Celtic knot that was actually a dragon if you looked close enough. It had been free painted by hand.
The bed was another piece of handcrafted artistry. It turned out Trevor didn’t just do interior design and cook, he was a master woodworker. The bed had taken him almost a month. It had a dark rich brown canopy and curtains. They were double sided with thick lining to keep out the light so I could sleep regardless of the time of day. Inside the canopied bed, it was always pitch black.
This was achieved by running the canopy cloth into a custom made slot on the headboard and footboard. Both had curved edges that slid around the sides of the bed about a foot and a half on each side. The curtains did the same thing, overlapping the canopy in both front and back and each other by more than seven inches.
On the inside of the bed, carved in the dark wood, you could see fairies, faces of Green Men, dragons, and pixies. He had even thought to make holsters for my guns and knives in the headboard. It was a bitch to make the bed, but making my bed only happened when I washed my sheets. Since this was something I was rarely home to do, Trevor ended up making my bed most of the time.
He had made the bookshelves in my library as well, but with a different theme. That was part of the reason it was taking so long, every theme required a different thought process. The library was themed with Medieval Russia. My bookcases had onion domes on them. The redeeming point was that they weren’t kaleidoscopically painted like Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow.
The spare room he had tackled had a dark Gothic theme that reminded me of Notre Dame. I wasn’t sure what the plans were for the living room. He just assured me that they were massive and I’d love them. I was hoping he was right since I had handed over almost a month’s worth of pay for his design necessities.
Of course, I had made more in the last six months as a member of the Marshals than I had in the previous ten years combined. I had reassigned my trust fund to my nieces and nephews and was adding five percent of my monthly income to it. I was making well into six figures a year now, Nyleena kept reassuring me that I could splurge a little on the house.
“Well, are you ready?” Gabriel asked staring at the vacant room. Not only were the walls bare, but so was the floor and it lacked furniture. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in my dining room, bedroom or library when I was home.
“No, I was told we were going to Alaska and I don’t have a parka.”
“You’ll get used to it in a few days or we’ll solve the case before that becomes necessary,” Xavier smiled. I had learned he was a hopeless optimist.
Two
On the plane, I discovered the average temperature for Anchorage was 25 degrees in March. Yet, it was unseasonably warm with an average of 37 degrees this year. I was still pretty sure that I hadn’t packed enough warm clothes and if it came to it, I would have to do some dreaded shopping when we landed.
The plane touched down and we were met by our usual escorts. An FBI agent that I had never met and some local police that seemed to think we were intruding. However, most locals seemed to think we were intruding. I had come to expect it, even if I still didn’t understand it.
There was snow on the ground. I instantly felt my feet get cold. This was psychological, not physical. I don’t like the cold and my distaste for it seems to make it that much worse.
“I’m US Marshal Gabriel Hendricks and this is my SCT Unit. Lucas McMichaels, Xavier Reece, Michael Giovanni and Aislinn Cain.”
“I’m Special Agent Fred Arons and this is the head of the State Police, Commander Brian Neilsen. Where do you want to go first?”
“How fresh is the crime scene?” Gabriel asked.
“Found her yesterday morning. The body is at the morgue. The scene has been roped off. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be deterring the press much.” Commander Neilsen said.
“I’ll deal with them,” Gabriel nodded decisively. “Take McMichaels and Cain to the crime scene. Reece can go to the morgue. Giovanni and I will go set up our command post.”
Lucas and I were ushered into a waiting SUV. We drove about thirty minutes before we turned off the paved road and onto a well-traveled asphalt path. Another ten minutes and the vehicle stopped.
“Here we are,” one of the State Troopers informed us.
“This park, is it state or national?” Lucas asked.
“State.” The trooper told him.
“Have they all been found in state parks?”
“Yes. We think he’s been operating in the state parks to keep the feds out of it. We have our own system up here for that. However, we tried to contact you after the twenty-fourth woman was discovered and you all were busy.”
“Sorry,” Lucas managed to make it sound heartfelt. I wasn’t sure it was genuine, but then Lucas was still full of mysteries and wonder, even after six months.
“The scene is about a mile or so down this path. You’ll want to dress warmly, but not too warmly. Mostly cover your feet and legs. The cold will sink into your shoes pretty quickly.”
I was way ahead of him. I had already started pulling on snow-boots with good treads that went all the way up to my knees. I grabbed an extra fleece and put it on. This gave me six layers of upper-body protection.
We got out of the SUV and the cold which had been starting to creep out of my bones, rushed back into them. I didn’t let it show that the cold was bothering me. I kept pace with the taller men, ignoring the protests from my knees and hips. My lifestyle was conducive to permanent joint discomfort.
The walk seemed to take ages. Barren trees covered in icicles and a crunchy snow covered landscape gave the impression of being in a winter wonderland. Hard to believe a dead body had been found here the day before, unless you looked at the ground.
The hard, crunchy snow was covered in footprints. Some of them were dirty, some clean, some buried under others, it looked like hundreds of people had come and gone down this path. My own snow-boots were leaving impressions as we continued forward, my footsteps falling in the impressions being left by Lucas’s shoes. There were already enough prints without adding mine. So I carefully walked in Lucas’s. His feet were almost twice the size of mine, making it easy.
Finally, the men stopped. I came up even with them and stared at the scene. There was a rope hanging from the tree with a hook on it. The rope looped over a branch and came down to where it was staked into the hardened ground.
There wasn’t nearly as much blood on the ground as I had expected. A few drops here and a medium sized puddle there were all that showed. There was another area though. It was distinctly different from the other. It looked as if the snow had partially melted and refroze.
“What’s that?” I pointed to the altered snow.
“His signature,” a trooper said to me. He walked over to it, I followed him.
“It doesn’t look like much,” I squinted to see if I could find any discernible features.
“We found skin here, laid out on the ground in the shape of a drawn back bow and arrow ready to be released. We removed the skin, but the salt melted the snow any
way.”
“That’s really gross,” I knelt down to get a closer look.
“Yes it is, but it is how the press nicknamed him. Not sure who released that nugget of information, but someone leaked it and now the press knows that he signs his kills with it.”
“What do you see?” Lucas knelt down next to me. We had developed a student/teacher relationship, but we seemed to take turns on which role we played.
“I see something that takes a lot of skill. Skinning a human is much harder than skinning a rabbit or fox or bear. The hanging implement is crude, nothing fancy there, but aside from the tree, nothing is improvised. He even brings his own stakes and hammer to drive them in with. What do you see?”
“I see a man disconnected from reality. To kill a person is one thing, to skin them is entirely different. He is obliterating their identity when he removes all their flesh. He is methodical, skilled and completely lacking in empathy. He probably works with his hands for a living. I imagine there is also some military training or martial arts, given his skill with a knife. People don’t just become good with knives overnight. He may be a hunter who got bored with animal prey, but we aren’t in a Joseph Conrad story,” he shrugged at the last.
My mind instantly got the references, both of them. The Most Dangerous Game and Heart of Darkness were twisted works about twisted men who devalued human life to the point that it