“Do you know anything about this guy?” asked Potash, ignoring my question. “Anything at all? A cannibal we thought we could deal with—just wear body armor and shoot first. But if that’s all an act … we need to know what we’re up against.”
I hemmed and hawed for a minute, trying to piece together the few bits of info that we knew about The Hunter—or the real killer who was using The Hunter as a facade. He was smart. He was careful. He was patient. But we knew all that already. He was taking on an FBI kill team all on his own.… “He’s confident,” I said, slowly putting the picture together in my mind. “He’s made a lot of plans, including a lot of interaction, and so far all of it has worked. He’s a planner, which means he’s planning something big—not just individual kills and messages, but an end game. He’s…” I shook my head, watching for ice on the road, trying to think as fast as I could—all the more difficult because there was so much I couldn’t say without giving myself away. “He’s a talker,” I said, thinking about the letters. And the e-mails: he’d insisted on communicating with me, but he’d never really said anything. “Words are important to him,” I said, “and communication. Something about that means something to him, maybe the exchange of words or thoughts or ideas.”
“Maybe he’s just an extrovert,” said Potash.
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe he’s just a liar. His communication is only important because it’s been a method for deceiving us. He planned this entire thing to throw us off his trail, which means … which means that his real trail has nothing to do with what he’s trying to make us think about.”
“So he’s not a cannibal,” said Potash.
“Maybe he can’t be a cannibal,” I said suddenly. “Are you there with the others?”
“Yes.”
“Brooke said something about a Withered with no mouth: someone who couldn’t possibly eat our victims because he can’t eat anything. A Withered with no mouth is also likely to be obsessed with talking, which could explain why he’s been writing so many letters—because written words are the only way he can communicate.”
I heard more mumbling in the background and an expletive that must have come from Nathan.
“Potash?” I asked.
“Are you close?” he said.
“Maybe ten minutes.”
“And you’re sure about this?” he asked. “The puppet, the deception, the whole thing?”
“It all makes sense,” I said. “For the first time in the entire investigation we have a single theory that explains all our variables.”
“And the Withered with no mouth?”
“I can’t be sure until I see him,” I said, “but it fits. If you were a monster with no mouth, trying to hide from a bunch of monster hunters, what better way than by tricking them into chasing a fanged, hungry carnivore?”
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I believe you. Get here as fast as you can, because we’re going on high alert. Trujillo’s got a lot of notes about a mouthless Withered and it’s not good.”
“Which one is it?”
“His name is Rack,” said Potash. “Apparently he’s their king.”
15
“The key was in the third letter,” said Trujillo. “Nathan and I found the clue last night, but I didn’t realize the full significance until this morning. In the penultimate paragraph, talking about Potash, he says he knows everything.”
“Just to be clear,” I asked, “are we talking about the cannibal or Nathan?”
“Shut up,” said Nathan.
“Obviously we’re talking about the cannibal,” said Trujillo. “He’s always gone out of his way to show us how smart he is, but here’s the thing: he says he knows everything about us, but he never mentions Brooke.”
Of course he knows about Brooke, I thought. He’s knows all about me and where I came from, so he’d have to know about Brooke. Why wouldn’t he mention her in the list?
“Obviously if he knows everything, he knows about Brooke, right?” said Trujillo. “And given that his first letter was delivered in the regular mail, to this office, he obviously knows where to find us. There’s no way he could have all of that information and not know about Brooke. Which means Brooke is somehow different in his mind: she’s not one of us. Look at the structure of the letter: an introduction and then a paragraph for each member of our team—except there are six team members mentioned by name, and seven paragraphs.”
“The last paragraph doesn’t have a name,” said Nathan. “It’s got to be about Brooke—it’s the only thing that makes sense.”