Krewe of Hunters: The Hidden Part 20

"Who found her?" Scarlet asked, worried. "Not Ben, right? And where was she found?"

She knew she wasn't going to like the answer when she saw the way Diego looked at Brett.

She groaned before he had a chance to speak. "Near here, right?" she asked.

"Just down the mountain from the ranch," Diego admitted. "Hikers found her in the woods."

"How was she killed?" Scarlet asked.

"Shot," Diego said. "That's all I know."

"A young woman?" she persisted.

"Scarlet, we have to go now," he said.

"Of course," she said, standing. "Jane, can I help you with anything? They have a room ready for you at the main house."

"I'm fine, thanks. I'll take my computer, but I'll leave my portfolio here for now. I'll show everyone my sketches later. I'll get my bag from the car on the way."

Matt and Brett went with her as she left the room, but Diego paused, looking at Scarlet. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine-honestly. I've just got a lot to think about, that's all," she a.s.sured him. "Go-do your job. Find out who's doing this."

He nodded, looking as if he wanted to touch her, hold her, rea.s.sure himself that she really was all right.

He had to go, but she could tell that he really was torn between staying with her and leaving to do what he had to do.

Finally he gave her one last look and left.

She turned to Meg and forced herself to smile brightly. "Coffee? I hear it goes well with research."

"Yeah, and a bagel and cereal or something. I missed the breakfast part of our bed-and-breakfast stay, and I work much better when I'm well fed."

"I can make omelets if you want. Pancakes, French toast-whatever."

"Something quick and easy," Meg said.

"Okay, bagels," Scarlet agreed, heading into the kitchen. "We can eat, then head downstairs. I read the journals when I first started here, but I wasn't looking for anything specific, and I did some skimming. It will be interesting to go back and try to really understand what was going on before he was killed." She reached into the bread box for the bagels and popped a couple into the toaster.

Meg poured coffee for them and asked, "What do you think happened to the statue of Jillian?"

Scarlet shrugged. "Who knows? Over the years, things have been lost, broken, even stolen. If Jillian's statue was even half as well done as Nathan's, someone might have decided it was worth real money and taken it. I asked Ben and he said he knew her father had it made, but he'd never seen it. It was already gone the first time he came out here years ago."

"I'm going to keep going with Nathan's Civil War diary. Maybe something in it will spark an idea with something you're reading."

The bagels popped.

"Coffee, bagels and the Civil War. Agent Murray, you do know how to lead an exciting life."

"Not to worry, Scarlet. I've come to love the quiet. Trust me. I don't mind leaving the dead to others."

Scarlet winced. She hadn't meant to sound callous.

Another woman was dead.

"Let's hope we can find something in those journals," she said.

"I won't be at all surprised," Meg said. "The dead speak in many ways."

Lieutenant Gray met them outside the crime-scene tape. "Just to warn you," he said, "some victims look almost as if they're asleep. Not this one. Caught her in the face-right in the face-as well as in the gut, just like he shot Candace Parker. We can't find any sh.e.l.ls or cartridges, so he picked up after himself."

"My gut says she'll turn out to be local and that it's the same killer," Diego said. "The killer didn't know Candace Parker, so he didn't care whether we saw her face or not. I think not only did he know this woman, so he didn't want to see her face after she was dead, lots of people around here know her, so he didn't want her recognized right away, in case that led us right to him."

"What are you, one of those profiler guys? Gotta tell you, I don't put a lot of stock in that," Gray said.

The man really did look like a tired hound dog, Diego thought. It was hard to imagine that he and Scarlet were related, even as distantly as a hundred and fifty years ago.

"I'm not a profiler, but every agent studies psychology at the academy," Diego said. "And I'm not saying I know everything about our killer, much less his victim. But I do think we'll discover that this woman is local."

He ducked under the crime-scene tape. The medical examiner was by the body, hunched down with his back to them and his kit at his side, swabbing blood.

Dried leaves crunched under Diego's feet as he approached, and the ME looked up. Diego was pleased to see it was Dr. Robert E. Fuller.

"Hey," Fuller said. "Gray told me you were coming. I couldn't tell how he felt about it. The man's mind seemed to be in something of a gray zone."

Diego smiled grimly at Fuller's dry humor. "I'm not surprised," he said. "What have we got here?"

"Female, as you know. I'd say twenty-five, maybe a little more. About five-six, weight about a hundred and thirty. There's a lot of blood, but the hair looks to be medium brown." He hesitated. "I can't tell you about the eyes, though," he said softly, "because they're gone. She was killed at point-blank range. She was dead before he shot her in the face, though. The kill shot was to her abdomen. Huge hole, though, so I think she bled out quickly. For her sake, I hope so anyway. Take a look at the wrists-she was tied and dragged up here. She was wearing jeans, otherwise I'm sure her legs would show scratches from that, but you can see the evidence on her clothes. And she's missing one shoe-a white sneaker."

Diego looked down toward where the road was, but he couldn't see it from there. He turned and looked up toward the Conway Ranch. He couldn't see the house or any of the buildings, because the trees and underbrush were so thick.

"Almost perfectly halfway between the road and the ranch," he said.

"No one could see what happened from either direction," Fuller said.

"No car left down on the road," Diego said, "which supports your theory that she was dragged through the woods."

"Yup," Fuller agreed.

"Time of death?" Diego asked.

"Sometime late last night or very early this morning," Fuller said. "I'd say between 11:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m."

"Gray told us hikers found her. Do you know any details?"

"A young couple. The girl was so startled she fell and twisted her ankle. The boyfriend accompanied her to the hospital. They know you or one of the others will want to interview them."

He would, of course, Diego thought. But he didn't think they would be able to tell him much.

Their best lead would be getting her ID'd quickly, because the killer had known her. He was certain of it.

Maybe she had rejected him, so he'd wanted to hurt her the way she had hurt him. And he had to wonder... Was she yet another descendant of Nathan Kendall?

"Any idea what the murder weapon was?" Diego asked Fuller. "Antique?"

The ME was thoughtful for a minute. He looked past Diego to Gray, who was giving instructions to the crime-scene techs.

"Another Colt-a Walker model. It was the most powerful handgun out there until the invention of .357 Magnum," Fuller told him. "He shot and killed her here, then picked up after himself. There were three shots. Maybe she squirmed, but he missed anything vital first-there was one bullet that just got her in the arm. I've gotten it out already, it will go to the lab. The second ripped through her abdomen like a cannon, which tells us more about the gun, as well. The third destroyed her face. I don't have the second two bullets yet, but I do have the first, which is why I can be so confident of the weapon. It's rare, if that helps you any." He shrugged. "Sorry-I'm pretty sure of the gun, at any rate, because I've studied old weaponry. Hope that helps."

"It does. Thanks."

Diego looked out over the area. Matt and Brett were carefully following a trail of broken brush and flattened leaves, staying to the side so as not to taint any evidence. The terrain was steep, filled with jutting rocks, old twisted trees and thick brush.

He watched his step as he caught up to them as quickly as he could.

"There!" Matt called. He was ahead of Diego by about fifty yards. "I can see down to the road. He must have driven her there, parked, then dragged her up the hill."

"What have you got?" Gray shouted from above.

"The trail leads to the road."

"I'll send the techs over. Maybe the killer left something by where he parked," Gray called back to him.

Carefully avoiding the killer's trail, Diego half walked and half slid down the slope to the road. On the way he startled an elk. The animal stared at him for a moment, then bounded off.

"Fuller have anything useful yet?" Brett asked Diego as he caught up with Matt and Brett by the road.

"Fuller thinks the gun used was another antique," Diego answered. "He's pretty confident, but he's not a hundred percent sure yet."

"And the guy is a f.u.c.king gazelle," Matt said. "That's tough terrain."

"A coordinated, history-loving, antique-gun buff. You'd think he would be easy to find," Brett said.

"At least we've got something to look for," Diego said. He hesitated, frowning. "I think we've got something else, too."

He moved over to a piece of brush by the flattened path, where something white was just visible.

He moved the leaves aside, then pulled gloves and an evidence bag from his pocket before he carefully reached for the once-white woman's sneaker.

Now it was white and red.

White.

And bloodstained.

"'Brian Gleason, Jeff Bay and Billie Merton made their way here last week,'" Scarlet said, reading to Meg. "'I'd expected them, because I'd received a letter not long after I bought this land. They were always on the run, of course, though, to my knowledge, no one knows that Jeff shot that man in cold blood during the robbery. In fact, on account of the masks we wore, it would be hard for anyone to swear that they'd seen us do any of the robbing or the killing. To be honest, I'd hoped never to set eyes on the three of them again, though they'll always be part of my heart and soul. You don't survive the kind of bloodshed we did without becoming kindred in some terrible way. Jeff is still bitter. Always says he should have been killed, not his wife and the son he never saw or held. Brian told me he keeps moving just 'cuz he has nowhere to go. His house burned down, and some Yankee carpetbagger is building a new place on the property. Billie says to f.u.c.k the North, the war and his family, even though they told him he could go home. Says he'd always be the enemy in their eyes, and, worse than that, a loser. I figured they'd just come by to talk some and then move on, but Billie had a fever. My Jillian, she's such an amazing woman. She had no concern with the war whatever, being in the West with her father for those terrible years. But she said a friend was a friend, and she was going to nurse Billie back to health. I don't think even my precious wife can help him, though. That fever just keeps on getting worse and worse. I think we're going to be planting Billie up on the mountaintop. Hope he'll find peace there at last.'" Scarlet stopped reading and looked at Meg.

"You think Billie is up there?" Meg asked her.

"I guess I have to keep reading," Scarlet said. She s.h.i.+vered slightly. The temperature in the room hadn't changed; it must have been the diary. "I'm going to run up and grab a sweater. Are you okay? Do you want me to get you anything?"

"I'm fine. I just feel like I'm being ripped up a bit. Reading this... Nathan cared about people, even those he didn't know. He's talking about a wounded Yankee he stumbled across. He was so struck by the fact that the soldier was so young that he dragged him back behind Confederate lines, then hoped the surgeons wouldn't inadvertently kill him. He writes that the Yankee medics were better equipped and better trained, and that if he was wounded, he hoped he was taken by the enemy."

"I know, it's such sad stuff," Scarlet said. "I'll be right back. I need to find out if Billie did die while he was here."

She hurried up the stairs to her bedroom. It was while she was rummaging in her drawer for a sweater that she suddenly felt as if ice crystals were racing up her back.

And she knew, even before she turned, that she would see him.

Her stalker.

The ghost.

Even as she turned, a warning was flas.h.i.+ng through her head.

Scream. Run.

But she didn't.

She turned and stared at the man who had materialized by the window near the head of her bed. She thought that he'd been looking out, down at the stables or over to the next mountaintop, even feeling wistful, perhaps.

Maybe wis.h.i.+ng that he could feel the cool mountain air on his skin, breathe in the delicious freshness and the scents of fall.

She stared at him in silence.

"Please," he said simply, looking back at her.

"You're dead, aren't you?" she whispered.

"Yeah, sucks, huh?"

"So why are you doing this to me?"

"You're a descendant. So was I."

"What?"

He let out an impatient sigh. "I came here after I was fooling around at one of those online ancestry sites. I traced myself back to Nathan Kendall and this place. You know what it's like when you're online. I'm from North Carolina, been hiking the Blue Ridge all my life. I couldn't wait to get out here, see Rocky Mountain National Park and the old homestead. I didn't even ask my girl or any of my friends to tag along. I wanted to experience it all by myself. Smart, huh?"

"Not very, from the looks of things," Scarlet said.

He shrugged at that. "A wisea.s.s, huh? Great. I've been doing my best to reach you, and you just keep making me go poof. It's not easy, you know, getting someone to see you, much less managing to touch them. Mostly you're just kind of...there. No one sees you, no one talks to you. And if they do see you, they get scared and run away."

"Why don't you give me your name?" Scarlet asked.