“It hasn’t caused him to make that mistake you promised yet, but it’s only a matter of time,” Regis continues.
“And why this trail?” I ask. “There must be hundreds of ‘out-of-the-way locations’ like this one out here.”
His bottom lips juts out. “We’re pretty far north,” he says. “Fewer tourists up this way. But…”
My brows arc, waiting.
“It’s easy. One of the more moderate climbs with stairs at the worst part, which means he doesn’t want to work too hard for it.” Regis stands beside me, glancing around. “He’s not into the chase. And he’s not from here. Not used to the elevation, the terrain. He’s protecting himself.”
“He likes to watch,” I tell Regis. “Not run. It’s the power he’s after. Watching makes him feel powerful. Running reminds him of his humanity, his mortality, his limitations. He’s probably not a large man. Not small necessarily, but not an athlete. The woman wasn’t small in stature, but she wasn’t large.”
He shakes his head. “Not especially. But she was a bit older, in her late fifties. And she had an on-again, off-again limp, arthritisin one knee that sometimes bothered her, which is likely why she chose this trail. She was looking for easy, too.”
I breathe in the faint aroma of lemons, too sugary to be real. Likely a shampoo or detergent. It’s not her I’m smelling. It’s his memory of her smell breaking off, drifting back to me, like a trail of dandelion seeds. “He likes to find the ones with a weakness. Wolves hunt like that.”
“Because they’re easier to kill?”
A snaking grin slides across my face. “Because they make him feel more powerful.” I turn to Regis. “Did Beth Ann have any physical disabilities? Anything that would have slowed her down, given him an advantage?”
He frowns. “No. She was strong. She took care of her body—worked out and ran. She was in good shape.”
I push aside my own niggling sense of comparison and self-doubt. “He’s gaining confidence.”
“Getting bolder, sloppier,” Regis agrees.
I shake my head. “No, not sloppy. This is arrogance, not carelessness. His confidence is gained from experience, but he’s not infallible. He grows with every kill. Beth Ann was a kind of leveling up, like in a video game. He’s training himself. You understand?”
“I think so.” Regis glances behind us to where a young couple are starting up the trail, laughing. Her leggings are a jaunty red, his cap a little offset. They’ve foregone backpacks for a small utility bag and a water bottle between them. They don’t expect to sweat. As they pass with easy smiles, greeting us, unaware that they are treading on a murder scene, Regis tips his hat.
“Just don’t underestimate him,” I say once they’re out of earshot. “This is not just a man becoming impulsive. This is a killer getting better, more efficient. This is a boy becoming a man.”
Regis doesn’t look comforted by my help. His teeth grind behind his beard, eyes pointing into the trees, sharp as blades. His drive to catch this man is nearly as raw and eager as my own. But there’s purity behind his motives, altruism. I wonder if his versionof justice is really so different from ours. Why should this man live when he has killed so many? I don’t believe Regis wants to spare him, but he will because he is a rule-follower. His nature is to color inside the lines. Mine, I realize starkly, is to stand just outside them, stuffing my face with forbidden fruit.
Maybe I am like the venery after all.
23Ed
Something isn’t right. I feel it like a tickle beneath my breastbone, a hum of anxiety that can’t be explained or brushed aside, my heart alerted to a change that hasn’t shown itself yet. The sun has rolled beneath the mountains, leaving the sky the color of compost, black with possibility. I lean against the seat back and feel the ground moving below me, a blur of territory in my wake. Beside me, Regis is quiet, everything that passed between us on the trail percolating in his mind, a simmer of data about our shared target both horrific and impossible. When we pull up in front of the café, the lights are still on. Myrtle’s sitting just inside by the windows. She looks up, her face rounder than I remember, more vulnerable.
“What’s she doing still open?” he asks. “Shouldn’t she be at the cabin by now?”
“I don’t know.” I slide out of the vehicle and get to my feet just as she’s pushing through the door toward us. The concern is printed like a birthmark across her face. Wrongly, I think it is for me. I spin around and bend down, ducking back into the car. “Just go,” I tell Regis. “I’ll deal with this.”
“You sure?”
“Go,” I tell him, straightening and heading toward her, fearful that I’ve committed some cardinal sin of the venery I don’t know about.
She approaches as he backs away, the headlights washing outher face. The nearer she gets, the more I realize I am not the thing to blame for her worry. Her face stays painfully drawn with angst.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, reaching for her elbow.
“It’s Ed,” she tells me, eyes plated with tears, reflective. “He hasn’t returned for dinner, and he’s not in his cabin.” She scans the trees rearing behind us, monuments to Mother Nature, as if she’ll suddenly spot him there at the edge, overalls hanging by one shoulder, an empty bottle in his hand. “He’s not answering his phone.”
“Could he be in town? At the Drunken Moose with Terry and Amos?”
She shakes her head so vigorously I want to hold on to her neck to stabilize her. “I have a bad feeling,” she whispers. “You don’t think the Strangler…”
The impossibility of it is swift, dumping over me like ice melt. “No. He only hunts women.”
