Fallen Angel (Detectives Kane and Alton)

Riggs held their gaze for a moment. “You look familiar. Have we met before?”

“Yeah, I pitched my novel to you at the last conference and you asked for the full. It was called Revenge Is Sweet.” The acquaintance leaned against the wall and shrugged. “But you rejected me.”

Searching his mind, Riggs took a long drag on his cigarette. “I do recall reading your submission. You write well, but your stories are without substance. Your murders lacked imagination and I knew who the killer was from the second chapter.”

“If I write well, don’t you think a good agent would have been able to guide me to becoming great?”

Riggs shook his head. “No. Agents often don’t make good authors. You know as well as I do, if I represented you, I’d read your work and perhaps make a few suggestions, but I don’t have the time to nurse potential authors along. I have to make a living too, you know.”

“If you could indulge me for a moment.” The guest moved a little closer. “What makes the murders in the book you talked about earlier more imaginative than mine?”

Biting back a laugh, Riggs grinned at him. “Body Parts is terrifying. It’s a thriller that teases the edge of a horror story. The stalking, disabling, and dismembering of a person while they’re alive kept me awake at night trying to get to the end of the book to find out what had happened.”

“But wasn’t that taken from true crime?” The acquaintance looked bemused. “I mean, to me it was almost a copy of the notorious murders that happened right here in this forest.”

“I guess.” Riggs pulled on his cigarette again, growing tired of the conversation. “There are so many stories out there and they’d have to cross over with real crimes by coincidence or intent. There are only so many ways you can kill a person and only so many plots to explore.”

“No, there are unlimited ways to kill and I’d say if I allowed my imagination to run wild, I’d find a million plots to explore.” The acquaintance moved a little closer. “I believe the Stanton Forest Killer’s idea of injuring the spinal cord was unique, although the most productive way to damage the spinal cord to cause paralysis would be from the neck down—not the waist. Now that would take skill, or the victim would die at once and then the thrill of the kill would be lost. Don’t you agree?”

Intrigued, Riggs smiled. “Go on, now you’re interesting me.”

“Well, if you take the notorious James Stone. He went for the waist and used a knife.” The acquaintance moved closer. “I would go for the cervical spine area and use a stun gun. No blood, and the victim is immobilized at once. It would be so easy; the vic

tim would never see it coming. Let me demonstrate.”

The shock hit him hard in a blinding wall of pain. He fell into the snow twitching and his arms and legs refused to respond. Was this some kind of a sick joke? Riggs couldn’t control his eyes or lift his head from the freezing snow. He tried to speak but nothing came from his mouth. Close by, the roar of an engine and the smell of fuel crawled up his nose as a snowmobile came from around the side of the building. Trapped in his own body, he tried to swivel his eyes. Was someone there to help him? The abductor leaned over him, wrapped a rope around his feet, climbed aboard the snowmobile and dragged him into the forest. Terror gripped him as his head bumped along behind his inert body, snow and pine branches catching in his hair and scratching his face. The forest closed in around them and they came to a stop. His eyes moved and he croaked out a whisper. “Okay, you made your point. Now take me back to the lodge.”

A scarf was stuffed into his mouth. The woolen material pressed down on his tongue, making it hard to breathe. His tormentor walked away, leaving him petrified and alone. Some moments later, he heard shuffling and the person returned in coveralls, latex gloves, and a face mask with a Perspex shield. Without saying a word, they bent over him with a hunting knife to cut away his clothes, slicing through them like butter. No coldness penetrated Riggs’s bare flesh. His head was raised onto a pile of snow so he could watch as the author tied cord around his thighs and the top of each arm using a stick from a fallen branch to tighten the binding into tourniquets.

“Now we wait.” His assailant smiled. “With the windchill factor and the fact it’s about twenty degrees Fahrenheit right now, I figure what I’m planning will work better if your limbs are frozen. I don’t want my saw to get clogged or kick back and cut me. I’ve read about the Ice Man, and he sliced up his victims after he froze them.”

Riggs screamed through the scarf in his mouth but it was like a whisper on the wind. It was like a terrible nightmare. His vision blurred and he closed his eyes. The slap across his face brought back the terrible reality.

“Now, don’t pass out on me.” The crazy person slapped him again and then moved around him prodding his blue flesh. “You’ll miss all the fun.”

Satisfied, the acquaintance lifted a chainsaw from behind a tree and brushed away the snow before turning back to him. Trapped and helpless Riggs could only follow the person’s moments by swiveling his eyes.

Panic had him by the throat when a dark unemotional gaze settled on him, and the ice-cold blade of the chainsaw ran down the side of his cheek in almost a caress. Riggs wanted to scream, fight back—do something—but he couldn’t move. All he could do was stare into unforgiving blank eyes. It was like peering through the gates of hell.

“Do you still figure I lack imagination?” His abductor started up the chainsaw and smiled. “Let me change your mind.”

Thirty-Eight

Bored with waiting for Rio to round up the suspects, Kane scanned the files, trying to find a connection between the kills. It was all very well finding items the killer had left behind, but that proved nothing. Sure, the killer could have been involved in the Tate murder and the deaths of the men in the local forest all those years ago, but unless the serial killer was ten years old then, it couldn’t have been any of their suspects. It wasn’t easy to kill and from what he could find about the brutality of the series of murders, a kid would find it difficult to hide his involvement. The blood spatter in each case would have been significant and the kid had turned up to school each day and carried on as normal. In an adult psychopath he’d expect it, but not a ten-year-old. The idea seemed too remote to consider. He reached for his phone and called Jo. “Hey, Jo, can I bend your ear again?”

“Sure, what’s up?” Jo sounded interested.

Kane leaned back and stared at the ceiling, his best position to center his thoughts. “Have you ever heard of a serial killer sharing his trophies?”

“Hmm… not that I recall. I’d doubt they’d share something so precious to them.”

“That’s what I figured.” Kane thought for a beat. “How would our current killer have trophies from a historical kill in his possession if he wasn’t the killer?”

“Unless he met the historical killer in jail, and he told him about his kills.” Jo tapped her fingernails on the desk. “They do talk about their kills. Maybe the historical killer was dying and disclosed where he’d hidden his trophies, allowing the younger guy to live through the stories.” She sighed. “I can’t think of another reason… ah… unless the killer is the kid and he witnessed the original murders. These men’s mutilations are signals of being guilty of a sex crime. Perhaps they were pedophiles?”

Kane straightened. “And the mother was allowing it to happen?” He stared at the wall thinking. “Perhaps the kid told someone he was being abused and they did something about it, maybe someone who was abused as a kid himself? Maybe the kid took the trophies?”

“Oh yeah, that makes sense.” Jo chuckled. “You think like me—out of the box. Now all you need to do is find the link between the Tate murder and your suspects. I’ll ask Kalo to hunt down where little Paul Tate is nowadays. He went into the system, so it might take a while.”