“How can you not care?” she asked as he yanked her across the floor. “He’s got a lot of weapons. He’s dangerous. Someone should know.”
“Yeah, someone should know, but we’re not going to be the ones to say anything. Do you want to get busted for breaking and entering?”
“No…”
He gestured with his free hand. “Then you’ll forget all of this.”
Once he got her as far as the stairs, he didn’t need to prod her anymore. What she’d seen terrified her. Sweat rolled down her back even though the place wasn’t even close to being warm. “He’s a serial killer!
“Mason?” she said when he didn’t respond. But he continued to ignore her. He was too intent on making sure they got out of there to bother with anything else.
*
Jasper pulled right into Evelyn’s drive and got out. After all, he’d been invited to the house by none other than Amarok. Amarok had even taken Makita with him. That left only Evelyn’s cat to defend her, and the cat wasn’t going to do anything.
Everything was proceeding according to plan, except that Amarok already had the damn airline manifests. Jasper had thought it would take longer to get hold of those and to go through the information they contained. But what Amarok had said to Phil—that Phil should stay until he was finished—indicated that they were closing in on what they were looking for.
Jasper had to act fast, he decided, much faster than he’d planned, which made him angry. Damn it! Amarok was a constant thorn in his side, making everything more difficult.
While he waited on the front porch, he recalled his visit to the trooper post and all the crap he’d handed Phil after Amarok had left—the fake description of the man pumping the gas, the fake description of the supposed “victim” and the vehicle itself. Phil had, no doubt, fed the same pile of horseshit to Amarok. That should’ve been funny. Amarok was so set on capturing him he’d raced off after the mysterious man driving the Ford Excursion. He’d fallen for it all, but Jasper wasn’t laughing.
This contest between them … Jasper was no longer so convinced he’d win. He wouldn’t have nearly as much lead time as he’d imagined when he left his suitcase and computer at home. He should’ve brought them to work, so he wouldn’t need to go back to Anchorage. He’d thought of that, of course, had wanted to bring them so he’d have more time if he did get into trouble. But because of the murders, everyone was looking at everyone else so closely in Hilltop, he’d decided, at the last minute, that it wouldn’t be wise. If he had a suitcase in his truck, people would start asking if he was about to leave town. His vehicle was inspected whenever he went in and out of the prison.
In hindsight, that would’ve been better than having to take off without his shit, but what was done was done, he told himself as he stepped out to peer down the road. He needed to get into a more positive mood. Needed to shake off his anger. Amarok had already cost him the months and months he’d planned to enjoy torturing Evelyn in his basement. Amarok would not cost him the pleasure of killing her tonight.
Closing his eyes, he imagined how it would all go. Once Evelyn arrived, he’d smile and joke with her as he followed her up the walkway. She’d welcome him; they were friends, after all. Getting in the house wouldn’t be hard. Then he’d come up behind her as she set her keys on the counter or turned away to get him a drink, and that was when she’d learn how very close he’d been for almost a year.
He imagined her crying and whimpering for Amarok to save her, imagined telling her that Amarok would never be able to make it back in time, since that was true. And finally, after years of craving the taste of her, he’d grab her by the hair and force her to kiss him, a deep, openmouthed, messy kiss in which he bit her and licked her to his heart’s content. He’d force her to do a lot of other things, too—things she’d consider much more degrading than that. He’d fulfill all his greatest fantasies. But he’d do it in less than an hour. At the end, he’d kill her and be done with it, move on to a new life in Mexico. To hell with those manifests! He’d be gone before Phil could figure out that Andy Smith was Jasper Moore and sound the alarm.
From force of habit, he looked at his wrist to check the time, but he’d forgotten his watch at home when he thought he was going to be late for work. He’d realized it while he was at the prison earlier—another annoyance. Fortunately, since he’d left work, he’d been able to rely on the digital clock in this truck, so it didn’t matter.
He walked back to his vehicle and turned the key so he could see what time it was. Five thirty. Evelyn should be here any minute.
Closing his door, he looked up and down the street again. Then he smiled.
There she was, he thought as her headlights appeared at the corner.
*
He was too late. Jasper wasn’t anywhere along Nektoralik Road. Amarok wasn’t sure what Andy Smith had seen, but the woman Amarok found in the shack behind the Barrymore cabin wasn’t a fresh kill. She couldn’t have been the person who sat up and pressed her hands against the window of the Excursion Andy had spotted at the gas station. There was no rigor mortis. Even with the cold slowing decomposition, rigor typically eased after twenty-four hours. And something else was strange. What rigor mortis Amarok could see indicated the woman had been in an entirely different position at the time of death. According to the blood patterns on her naked body, she’d been lying on her side, not her back. That told him she’d been killed elsewhere and dumped here.
It was also interesting that Jasper hadn’t bothered to torture this victim. He’d slit her throat and possibly raped her, either pre-or postmortem, but that was it. And unlike most of his other victims, she didn’t look like Evelyn. She had bleached-blond hair and was significantly overweight.
Jasper had seen her as merely a means to an end, he decided. That was the feeling he got. But what end? What was Jasper up to now?
Amarok had ordered Makita to stay outside so the dog wouldn’t muck up the scene. He squatted in the small room and stared at the body. Did Jasper have another victim in his truck? Someone he hadn’t yet killed? If so, there was nothing Amarok could do about it. He’d driven to a handful of other cabins, farther up the road, but he could tell no one had been up that way, not since the last snow. There were no tracks, and these roads weren’t plowed.
So he’d come back here to see if he could find something that would give him more information about who Jasper was and where he might be.
He was just trudging out to his vehicle to get the rest of his forensic equipment when the satellite phone he’d carried in with him went off. Because it had to have a direct line of sight to the sky, it didn’t work that well inside or where there were a lot of trees. Phil hadn’t even been able to give him all the information Andy had provided. Amarok still needed a good description of the vehicle, the driver and the woman. But none of that mattered right now. It was waiting for him; he could read it himself later.
He strode out into the open in order to get a clear signal. “Hello?”
“Amarok?”
Transmission still wasn’t the best, so Amarok moved farther into the road. He thought it was Phil, but he couldn’t be sure. “Yes?”
“You’re not … believe … Andy Smith.”
It was Phil. He could determine that much. Everything else was too garbled. With a frown, he plugged his free ear. “What’d you say? Something about Andy Smith?”
“I’ve been … on the manifests.”
“You’ve been through the manifests?”
“Yes. Once I … Andy Smith … I searched … on all flights.”
With a curse, Amarok moved to yet another spot. “Say that one more time.”
“I’ve found something I think you should know about on the manifests!”
At last, Amarok could hear what Phil was saying. “Calm down. I finally have decent reception.”
“There’re two people who appear to have flown from Phoenix to San Diego to Boston and back to Phoenix on these manifests.”