Everyone had been advised that they had connected Becca Marle to Tate Morley. Nothing had proved yet that she was involved in the killings, but her behavior at the Alaska Hut certainly made her suspect.
Thor had chosen the back woods—leading out from the rear of the Alaska Hut and down toward a glacial peak above a group of caverns—for himself and Mike. A number of people had been thirty to fifty feet away at all times, but if Becca had done the work herself—or been instantly incapacitated—it was understandable that nobody had seen anything.
But no one could have passed the front of the Alaska Hut. There was a clearing before the woods; even if a police officer had done some blinking, it would have been nearly impossible for someone to have gone that way undetected.
Of course, that person might have skirted around the woods from the back and gotten just about anywhere. But Thor didn’t think so. Becca couldn’t know the island that well, and if someone was dragging along her lifeless body, they just couldn’t have moved that quickly.
“Being pissed off at Kimball—I can see that,” Mike commented as they moved into a section of the woods. “I can see her wanting to hurt him, maybe even proving what they can do. I don’t know. I just didn’t see the woman as a killer.”
“Did you see her carrying on a letter romance with a serial killer?”
Mike shrugged. “Well, frankly, I don’t see anyone doing that. But people do.”
They’d moved deep into a pine forest. Mike paused, taking a breath, pointing to a tree. “Grizzly territory,” he noted.
Slash marks had torn away the bark. Great.
Thor nodded. “Yeah. Let’s not tick off any grizzlies, huh?”
“I’m with you, my friend.”
They both stood still for a moment. Looking high above the trees, Thor saw circling vultures. He pointed them out to Mike.
“Aw, crap,” Mike said.
They began to stride in their direction and found a break in the trees.
And there she was.
Birds were flocking around the corpse. A timber wolf was moving in.
Mike reached for his gun and fired a shot into the air. The birds and the wolf moved off.
“I guess she wasn’t a killer herself,” Mike said.
“If...”
“If?” Mike asked.
“If that is Becca Marle.”
Thor walked toward the corpse. He winced as he hunkered down, and he thought about the display in the woman’s bedroom at the Alaska Hut.
He knew that Clara had been shocked by what she had seen. It had been hard for him to convince her that what she saw was a display and not real. But he’d known in an instant. He was far too familiar with the tinny scent of real blood. And here, in the woods, with the buzz of flies...
With the work of buzzards and insects and hungry wolves. Yes. The Alaskan wilderness creatures had been at the corpse.
But...
The killer had meant to display it...
Just like the tableau in Becca’s room at the Alaska Hut.
She lay on her one side, an elbow up, her face gone. Flesh had been stripped off her naked thighs and much of her body. Lumps...her organs and breasts...had been laid strategically around her, except that now...
Some parts had already been dragged away, a meal for hungry carnivores.
One daring and hungry blackbird remained, pecking at a bloody mound.
“Holy Christ!” Mike said, crossing himself.
The killer had found a “Ripper” victim.
This time, he’d been able to carry through with the deed.
14
“Kiss me one last time...
A whisper of memory
To the sweetness of the past
Love, my darling, is all that can last
Kiss me one last time...
I’m that whisper of memory
That rustle in the trees
Love, my darling, is all that can last
Kiss me in your heart
Locked away in the past
Where I shall be...
Oh, there in the stars, twinkling by night
Beautiful, bright, and there...in your heart.”
Clara finished her last love song as the ghost of Annabelle Lee; she hovered where she stood, as directed, and then made her way fluidly and swiftly to where Larry Hepburn—playing Annabelle’s widowed husband—stood waiting. She brushed her fingers against his cheek, placed a kiss like air on his lips, and turned and floated from the stage. She smiled as she exited stage left; Larry called out, reached out, and then fell upon his knees and began the song that would bring his new wife into his arms. It really was a beautiful finale.
Clara hurried off the stage, passing Connie Shaw, who gave her hand a squeeze and whispered, “Heartbreaking!”
The director—Tandy Larson, with whom Clara had worked before—would have a few notes for her, but she knew that she could sneak down to the audience where Jackson had been watching.
It had been nice to be greeted with an enormous wave of enthusiasm when she had arrived at the ship that afternoon; she’d felt almost like a prodigal daughter, as if the fatted calf would be slain for her. She quickly found out it was because a full rehearsal had been planned onstage that afternoon—and her understudy had realized, even as the ship sat at dock, that she wouldn’t be able to sail.