His voice sounded hollow, and his reflection in the dirty mirror made him look like a cadaver. Violence wore him out, drained him in a way nothing else did. The level of brutality he could summon at will shocked him every time. He didn’t know where it came from. His well-to-do, respectable family in Oregon had seen the propensity for violence in him early, how a violent outburst would settle him down, calm him. He hadn’t had anything to do with them – or they with him – since he’d dropped out of high school and headed east.
Until today, he’d never hurt anyone in the mountains. But the conniving Harris and Cal had left him with no other choice. Jesse was so pent up with anger, he needed to blow off some steam. He wanted his money, along with their little insurance policy to get him out of their lives and never to return – whatever it contained. Pictures, DNA, fingerprints, bank accounts, addresses of properties he owned, names. His life.
If he was caught searching Judge Peacham’s property for the money and materials, he had to be sure no one linked him with her, her ex-husband or her no-account friend Harris.
There were easier ways, perhaps, to accomplish that mission than by attacking the female hiker that morning, but he’d succeeded in throwing off the police. They were hell-bent on finding a scary, unhinged lowlife who struck women at random.
He hadn’t gotten any of his first victim’s blood on his hands. But she hadn’t kicked him, either.
He dried his hands with a stiff brown paper towel, crumpled it up and tossed it into an overflowing, filthy trash can. Too late to worry about leaving behind DNA. One speck of blood in the sink, and the cops would trace it back to Miss Mackenzie, figure out he’d been there washing up.
But he’d planned for that in the hours after confronting Harris Mayer.
J. Harris Mayer.
J for Jackass, J for Jerk…
Actually, the J stood for John. How anticlimactic was that?
Jesse pushed back the uncomfortable reality of just how close he had come to messing up today with the redheaded marshal, and focused instead on the task at hand.
It was past ten, dark and chilly. He unzipped the backpack he’d hidden in a cluster of rocks off one of the trails above the lake, after he’d attacked the hiker. She’d come damn close to tripping over it – as good a reason as any to pick her to stab. He could have killed her on the spot, but alive, she’d be able to confirm any description of him if he had to attack again.
A shrink might call that a rationalization to commit violence, but whatever. It had worked.
The backpack was filled with supplies, although there was nothing the police could trace back to him should they have managed to get to it before he had. His decision to head down from the hills to the lake carrying only his assault knife had paid off. Agile, not weighed down by gear, he’d made a quick getaway.
He pulled out clean hiking pants, a clean shirt and clean socks. Horn-rimmed glasses with plain lenses. A Red Sox cap. He was in Red Sox country – when people saw his cap, they wouldn’t think, Oh, that must be the man who stabbed those two women today.
The beard was a problem, but he figured dealing with it now would only draw more attention to him. Go into a gas station bathroom with a beard and come out with one, no one would notice. Come out without one, everyone would notice.
Once transformed into a respectable-looking, inexperienced hiker – not the fit, half-mad hiker police were looking for – Jesse slung his backpack over one shoulder, exited the bathroom and bought a Coke and a bag of Frito’s, with silent apologies to his organic farmer, and left the gas station.
He noticed splattered blood on his right hiking boot.
Deal with it later. Stay focused.
He walked down the pitch-black road, the scattered houses near the gas station giving way to impenetrable woods. He heard animals rustling in the brush. Bats swooped across the starlit sky. The air was cool now, but the wind had died down and the mosquitoes hadn’t yet found him.
After a half mile, he came to a trailhead and indulged in a moment’s relief when he saw that his rented BMW was still there. An expensive car parked at a trailhead this far from the crime scene shouldn’t be suspicious, but even if police checked out the BMW, they would discover it was rented to a small, law-abiding Virginia consulting firm.
Fifteen minutes later, a chubby couple in their late forties welcomed him into their bed-and-breakfast, a Victorian gingerbread house just off a tiny village green.
Not exactly where police would expect a deranged slasher to spend the night.
Jesse was in no mood for good cheer, but when the couple smiled at him, he smiled back. “Great day to be out in the mountains. I hope I’m not too late?”
“Not at all.”
Nothing in their manner indicated they’d heard about the knife attacks and the search for the man responsible.
The husband, who sported a beard of his own, led Jesse upstairs to a cottage-style room with its own bath. “Breakfast starts at eight,” he said, “but if you want it earlier -”
“Eight’s perfect. Thank you.”
“Are you hiking tomorrow?”
“I’m climbing Mount Washington.”