SAFE HOUSE
The ambulance wails ahead of us as we race down the highway toward Filmount County. Glenn drives, Seward is shotgun, and Jillian sits in the back next to me, her hands cupped around my handcuffed fists.
She’s still trying to make sense of things. “So he’s really coming for you?” she asks.
“If he thinks he can get to me, then yes. He would have killed me before, but he thought he had a perfect way to tidy things up and buy time.”
“By asking you to kill yourself?”
“Yes. I think he was expecting me to run to you if I didn’t go to the cops or do as he asked. He may have been near your place waiting.”
“Why doesn’t he just run?” asks Seward. “It’s what I would do.”
“As I said, he’s afraid that I’ll help you catch him. But he overestimates me.”
“So he comes straight at us? I don’t see it.”
“It won’t be straight. We won’t see it coming.”
“I’ll have more manpower in the next two hours than he knows how to deal with. He won’t see it coming.”
“I hope you’re right, but I don’t think he’ll go down easily. He took out the Hudson Creek cops because they underestimated him. When he comes for me, it’ll be indirect.”
“You think you know this guy?” asks Glenn.
“All I know are a bunch of numbers and equations that relate to him. Those bodies I found in the woods aren’t his only kills or type of victim. You said he ran several different businesses? Do you know who has been moving meth around your counties? How many warrants do you have out for dealers that you can’t locate?”
“You’re saying he’s a drug dealer, too?” says Seward.
“Anybody seen the two junkies that helped me find Chelsea Buchorn’s body? You think they could go this long without getting stopped for some minor infraction?”
“He got them?” asks Glenn.
“That’d be my bet. I think killing is both a hobby and a profession for him.”
“Maybe so,” says Seward, “but serial killers run—they don’t try to pull a Terminator.”
“What do you know about a man like Vik? How many serial killers have we ever encountered that were this prolific?”
“How prolific?” asks Glenn.
“We won’t know until we start retracing his steps. But a conservative estimate? Three hundred.”
“Three hundred people?” Seward sneers. “Somebody has an inflation problem here.”
“Yeah? Ten or more a year over thirty years. Do the math yourself. Then take a look at Montana missing-persons numbers and ask yourself why they’re higher than Florida or California. It’s not just reporting anomalies. It indicates the presence of a highly active serial killer.”
“Yeah, but three hundred?” says Glenn.
“Gary Ridgway, the Green River killer, murdered forty-two women in just a two-year period. He wasn’t caught for another two decades. He had an IQ of eighty-two. How intelligent does Joe Vik strike you?”
“Very.”
“So if a low-IQ necrophiliac who liked to return to the woods to have sex with his victims can kill that many women in such a short span of time and get away with it for twenty years, how much damage do you think someone like Vik could do?”
“Three hundred people?” says Seward, still rolling the number around.
“Conservatively.”
“We’ve never seen anything like that.”
“That you know about. Ridgway left lots of DNA evidence. Gacy left bodies under his house. Robert Hansen, the guy that abducted hookers and hunted them down in the Alaskan woods, did this over thirty times and was only discovered when one of his victims managed to escape.
“I ran the numbers. Here’s a cold fact for you: statistically speaking, you don’t catch the majority of highly organized serial killers. And the really expert ones, the killers that don’t leave DNA, don’t kill within five miles of where they live, and carefully choose their victims and method of burial, you don’t even know they exist. You don’t have profiles for them at Quantico because you’ve never knowingly encountered one.”
“But you have all the answers,” says Seward.
What an asshole.
“Just the numbers. They tell a terrifying story. There are at least thirty or more Joe Viks operating out there.”
“Let’s get this one, then worry about the others,” Glenn says.
“It’ll give you something to do from jail,” adds Seward.
“You’re still going to go through with this arrest?” asks Jillian. “After all he’s done?”
“Tell that to Christopher Dunleavy’s family after they see what your boyfriend did to their son’s corpse,” says Seward.
“The operative word is corpse,” I fire back, but I can’t pretend he doesn’t have a point. I give Jillian a sorrowful look. “I didn’t think I had any other options.”
She squeezes my hands. “I believe you.”
“It was kind of stupid in retrospect. I should have tried to draw him toward me.”
“We’ll be okay—”
She doesn’t finish her sentence.
“Shit!” yells Glenn as he swerves to the side of the road.
I look out the windshield in time to see the ambulance tumbling over on its side and skidding toward us.
The roof of the ambulance clips our front end, and we go into a violent spin, smashing a guardrail and careening into a ditch.
As we skid off the highway, I see a massive black tow truck fly past, flash its brake lights, then do a screeching U-turn.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
CRASH
Our SUV slides backward down the grassy slope and rams into a line of trees. The back of my skull rockets off the head rest, sending my face slamming into my handcuffed wrists, cracking my nose. I see stars for a moment and smell the tangy scent of blood.
“Are you okay?” Jillian asks, unfastening her seat belt and sliding over to me.
“Yeah . . . I’m okay.”
She reaches up and grabs Seward by the shoulder. “Can you get these damn handcuffs off him?”
He doesn’t move.
His head is slumped over to the side. His window is shattered.
I grab his neck with both hands and feel for a pulse. “He’s alive.”
Glenn rubs his temples. “Holy crap! Everybody okay?”
Jillian thrusts her hand in front of his face. “Handcuff keys. Now!”
“Just a second . . .” He’s still shaken from the impact. “Let me call for help.”
He takes his phone out and starts dialing. Frustrated, Jillian leans into the front section and starts to riffle through Seward’s pockets.
“Careful. He might be hurt,” says Glenn.
“You think?” she says.
Something moves through the bright beams of light shooting out over the edge of the road near the gap where we tore through the guardrail.
Reflexively, I grab Jillian by the collar of her jacket and yank her into the back. “Duck!”
“What is it?” asks Glenn.
A split second later, the windshield is punctured by a barrage of gunfire, blasting bits of glass at our heads.
I press Jillian to the floorboard and throw my body on top of her.
There’s a second burst, and the truck makes popping sounds as bullets penetrate the hood and grill.
“Anyone hit?” Glenn shouts from the front—presumably crouched down like we are.
“I’m good,” whispers Jillian.
“I’m okay.”
The light beam flickers again.
“He’s moving.”
“Stay down,” says Glenn. I hear him slipping his magazine out of his gun, then pushing it back. “I’m going to count to three, then fire back.”
“He won’t be there,” I say.
“What?”
“He’s going to try to make a feint. Probably on your side.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because he knows you’re armed and needs to take you out first.”
“Are you—”
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Bullets fly above our heads and send more glass fragments raining down on us like angry hail.
“FUCK!” Glenn screams.
“Are you hit?”
“Grazed. Went through the door. I’m going to return fire. You two get out on the other side and stay behind the vehicle!”
“Hold on,” says Jillian. I realize she’s got Seward’s keys. Her nervous fingers find the handcuff key, and she unlocks me. “Okay.”