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Chapter 2
The sleek white helicopter contrasted sharply with the lush, Pacific Northwest rainforest. Trapped beneath an early morning overcast, it swept through a steep, winding valley that followed a meandering highway and a fast-moving river that washed over boulders and fallen trees.
The valley was crowded with the spires of evergreens, forming a blue-green carpet shrouded in radiation fog draining out of the clouds to the valley floor. The carpet showed some signs of wear through occasional breaks in the rain clouds, mottled in places with clear-cuts—twisted brown DMZs from the region's logging history. The ground moved deceptively slowly beneath the helicopter. Less than an hour after lifting off from the rooftop of the Federal Building in bustling downtown Seattle, the speed and ease with which the aircraft climbed into the mountains created a false impression that the area was less remote than it truly was.
The whirling rotor blades beat their wasp-wing rhythm, slicing the gray overcast light so that the interior of the cabin looked like film running on an old projector. Isolated from the noise of the engines, the pressurized passenger cabin buzzed with the various melodies of cell phone ringers and the sound of urgent chatter. Two plush leather bench seats faced each other, crowded with passengers.
Front and center, with her back to the pilots, was Connie Sondaricker. She was busily talking to the man seated across the aisle on her left while at the same time adroitly holding a cell phone to one ear, jutting her elbow into the cheekbone of the man seated on her right.
Sondaricker wore smart, urban librarian's glasses framed by her rounded, modern Dutch Boy haircut with a single curl on each side pointed toward the corners of her mouth. Her makeup had been chosen for its utility and ease of application using a handheld compact or the rearview mirrors of cars. She wore severely professional slacks and blouse with heavy-soled school shoes. Instead of a suit jacket, she was wearing a blue windbreaker with the large yellow letters FBI on the back.
“Sondaricker here,” she said as she flashed lines on the portable phone. She listened intently to the caller and then checked her slender, feminine wristwatch and nodded. “No, we’re still in the air. We left Seattle about half an hour ago.”
After the caller asked her something, she spun around as far as she could in the confines of her seatbelt and whacked the pilot solidly on the shoulder. “How long?”
“Fifteen minutes,” the pilot responded. He pointed to the radio headset he was wearing around his neck. “Sounds like a bunch of press choppers up there. They're trying to get all the air traffic sorted out.”
Sondaricker told her caller, “We'll be up there in thirty minutes. The town?” The question stumped her and she elbowed the special agent on her left. “The town?”
He replied without looking up from the laptop computer he had opened on his knees. “Huntington.”
“Big Dawg?” Sondaricker held a hand over her cell phone receiver and looked to the man seated in the window seat across from her. “I just got off the phone with D.C., they want direct reports every hour as soon as we hit the ground.”
The man acknowledged her with a slight nod without turning his attention from the river valley passing below them. Special Agent in Charge LeMar Wallace leaned heavily on the armrest. Wallace no longer wore the nondescript, dark suits that normally distinguished FBI field agents. Instead he wore a pinstriped three-piece suit custom-tailored to fit his unusually large build with a golden embroidered vest and a red silk tie. His skin was dark black with a cleanly shaven scalp that showed the battering ram shape of his skull and a fierce scowl was permanently embedded into his brow.
He retained the impressive height and size that had gotten him through six seasons as an All-Pro middle linebacker. As he watched the scenery passing below the helicopter, he stroked his chin thoughtfully with a hand that bore two grossly oversized, grandiose silver-and-diamond rings from the Big Show, Super Bowls.
The red and blue emergency lights of state patrol cars shimmered on the wet asphalt. Troopers in yellow rain slickers and clear, elastic covers over their flat-brimmed hats together with firefighters, snug against the drizzle in their heavy bunker gear, directed an endless stream of cars that included several TV satellite trucks.
One lane was marked off with flares, crisscrossing in sparkling red zigzags so that one burning out would ignite the next one, preparing for a long day as a highway construction crew was distributing pylons and barricades. Traffic was completely stopped in the opposite lane to make way for a convoy of olive drab National Guard vehicles that were crawling slowly up the mountain highway.
Wallace shook his head in abject disbelief. He swore quietly in his deep voice, mellowed with the remains of a Texas drawl, “God Almighty.”
The former logging and mill town of Huntington passed beneath the helicopter as though from out of a different time. A relic from the days of dinosaur trees, the boom town had sprung up when the region was covered with an endless supply of giant Douglas Firs, Western Red Cedars and Hemlock. All that remained was a roadside attraction, a museum piece from an America that no longer existed. All that remained of the endless supply of timber was a few faded photographs showing trains with single section logs that took an entire flatcar and images of gaunt Scandinavians in handlebar mustaches and suspenders, posing with their axes in front of trees that half a dozen men could not join hands around.
The town comprised a single main street of rusting tin-roof buildings with a handful of mud-road tributaries. At the center was a wood-floored general store with aisles spaced close together from a time before shopping carts. A large, handwritten sign by the entrance stated: No Credit, Don’t Ask. The general store shared a muddy parking lot with a honky-tonk. At that early hour, the neon beer signs in the windows were lit and a few pickup trucks were already parked near the front entrance.
The sole gas station had little white flakes of paint left from when it had sparkled clean in the heyday of the American automobile revolution, when teenaged boys in uniforms and bow ties would run out and surround a customer's car, checking the oil and fluids and tire pressure while cleaning the windows and mirrors, and all of it with a smile. What remained was a concrete island with two antique mechanical pumps that dated back to when a gallon of gasoline cost a nickel, surrounded by dirt blackened by decades of leaking motor oil and spilled diesel. Behind the station lay five acres of rusted hulks of automobiles that spanned from suicide doors and rumble seats to t-tops among logging yarders and trucks petrified into statues by decades of rust.
Across the narrow, two-lane street a barber pole hung outside a large plate glass window where old men watched the helicopter pass overhead through out-of-date drugstore eyeglasses. The street led out of town into patches of mobile homes with dented siding and farmhouses with dilapidated barns with swaybacked ridges.
Wallace watched the town school pass below from the window of the helicopter. The red brick building had a large set of wide, shallow front steps that gave it a stately dignity. Black and white checkerboard tile floors were visible through the unpainted windowpanes. The school grounds were encircled with a collapsed cyclone fence. A single set of bleachers overlooked an oval running track broken into shifting tectonic asphalt plates and a football field that was overgrown into a hay field. The scoreboard behind one of the rusting goal posts read: Home of the Huntington Hunters.
“Doesn't look like they'll be sending anybody to the NFL anytime soon,” the man seated across from Wallace remarked casually.
Sondaricker overheard the comment and spoke without missing a beat on the telephone. “The high school that Special Agent Wallace went to didn't even have goal posts.”
The man seemed content to allow Sondaricker to have the final word, but then added, “Well, he's from Texas. They grow football players on special farms down there like chinchillas.”
The remark drew Wallace out of his contemplation of the scene below. He turned from the window toward the lean, suntanned man wearing suit pants and a shirt and tie with a beige zippered jacket. The man had slipped onto the helicopter in the commotion on the helipad in Seattle.
Beneath his seat was a black paratrooper's duffle bag that bore the eagle, pistol, anchor and trident Budweiser emblem of the US Navy's SEAL teams. The zipper of the bag was open far enough to reveal a long, hard-sided case that was unmistakably a rifle case and a portable satellite communications system. Following the cord of the com unit to the computer the man held on his lap, Wallace could see that the man was using the laptop to cover up his reading of a pamphlet—the teenager sneaking a dirty magazine in a textbook.
Without a word, Wallace lifted his eyebrows, momentarily un-creasing the unfriendly lines on his forehead—the schoolteacher issuing the command to be shown the incriminating magazine.
The man dutifully handed over a slender, pocket-sized booklet called Clearing the Air: How to Quit Smoking and Quit for Keeps.
The special agent leaned forward against his seatbelt and handed it back. Wallace asked, “How long?”
The man smiled nervously, waiting for a lull in the conversation in the chopper to respond. He said tentatively, “My second day.”
Wallace nodded, showing the slightest hint of appreciation. He circled a hand over his own midsection. “I hear lots of water helps.”
The man dug into the seat between himself and Sondaricker to show Wallace a plastic water bottle. As he did, he deliberately drove his knuckles harder into Sondaricker's bottom than was necessary.
She snatched the pamphlet out of his hand, read the title and handed it back, impatiently. “I don't remember seeing you around.” She leaned over to see what was on the computer monitor. “What office are you with?”
“Office?” The man calmly replaced the pamphlet inside his zippered jacket and closed the laptop. “Oh, right, office. I got the little one with the cubicle, desk, typewriter. You know? Stick ‘em notes, stapler. The whole thing.”
Sondaricker regarded him suspiciously. “You're not with the Bureau?”
Wallace, watching the exchange, was unable to resist a short chuckle. “Not anymore,” he answered her. “His name is Jack Corbett. Used to be a sniper on an FBI tactical team back East. Former Navy SEAL and blood kin to Colonel Jim Corbett. They say the best cold shot rifle sniper in Bureau history.”
Wallace then turned to the man sitting across from him. “Resigned over some kind of administrative trouble, wasn't it?”
Corbett only turned up one corner of his mouth.
“Now he's the Lone Ranger,” Wallace continued. “Probably has the State Department on his paychecks, but basically wanders the halls of the Pentagon and the cocktail parties in Washington D.C. running errands for very important people.”
“State Department?” Sondaricker studied the side of Corbett's face. “I didn't think this was a national security issue?”
This time Wallace did not answer for him, but waited with Sondaricker for an explanation from Corbett as to why he was on the helicopter.
“Hey, don't look at me,” Corbett said defensively. “You guys know as much about why I'm here as I do.”
“Well, then, I guess we're all going to find out together, right, Mr. Corbett?” Wallace leaned forward in his seat. “Just so you know, over here on the Major Crimes side of the FBI, we're not really into all that cloak and dagger stuff. We're more of your straightforward types. I understand you Special Forces fellows are real good at hand-to-hand combat. Tae Kwon Do and Ninjitsu and all that nonsense.” He dismissed the martial arts with a wave of one hand. One of the hands he had used to get the undivided attention of high-risk youths in the Bay Area by tearing the San Francisco phone book in half across the binding. “I sure hope there's nothing you and me gonna go out back of the woodshed over?”
Corbett stared at the knot of Wallace's tie—the center of his mass. He made no attempt to hide his sudden need to swallow, then said with a voice that was still dry, “Me, too.”
Wallace nodded with satisfaction as he sat back in his seat. Turning back to the window he broke into a grin. “Chinchillas.”
The helicopter lowered for a landing in an area where the tall grass had been beaten flat. Standing at the front of a crowd of people who awaited the helicopter's arrival was Jerry Moore from the Seattle field office. His gray business suit was soaked dark on the shoulders and he wore tall rubber boots, looking sleepless and exhausted. His damp, silver hair whipped wildly, his shoulders bent, as if the swirling propwash of the rotors of the descending helicopter might knock him over. He looked as though he had just walked away from a serious car accident.
Moore shook Wallace's hand the instant the Special Agent in Charge was able to stand to his full height after avoiding the spinning rotors. “Welcome to sunny Washington State.”
The group from the helicopter merged with the group from the landing area as they moved between several police cars parked in the tall grass. Moore pointed out a short man with a neatly-trimmed beard in a tweed suit that was too big for him. “This is Michael Rosen. He's with the US District Attorney's office.”
“You look familiar.” Wallace struggled to recognize Rosen's face. “We worked together on something up here?”
“United States v. Peal,” Rosen refreshed his memory. “I didn't have the beard.”
“Oh, right,” Wallace said. “Sorry about that.”
Rosen asked anxiously, “You don't like it?”
“It's fine. It looks very...” Wallace looked at him again as they walked. “Makes you look very distinguished.”
Wallace was stopped by a tall, stunning woman with smooth, Nigerian features wearing a clear plastic raincoat over a deliberately unpretentious skirt suit.
Moore introduced her. “This is Lucinda Brown. She's with the American Civil Liberties Union. She's here on authority from D.C..”
Sondaricker stepped up to her. “ACLU? You're in the wrong camp, aren't you? The bad guy sidelines are on the other side of the field.”
“I was not aware there were any suspects, yet?” Wallace regarded Brown as he walked.
“There aren't,” Brown answered him. “I’m here as part of the appeals process while the ENFORSUR program cases are before the Supreme Court. I'm here to monitor the evidence gathering and preservation and then pass along my findings to whatever defense attorney the suspects decide on after an arrest is made.”
“So a person has a lawyer keeping an eye on us before we even know who they are?” Wallace said dubiously. “Only a bunch of lawyers could have come up with an idea like that.”
“I understand you have a criminal law degree from the University of Texas, Special Agent Wallace?” she countered. “I would think you'd appreciate that laws change.”
“I got one of them old school law degrees.”
“How old school is that?” Brown challenged. “Does it date back to the time when the law said folks like you and me were three-fifths of a person? Or only back to when we had to ride on the back of the bus?”
“Listen up, girlfriend,” Sondaricker stepped between them. “We'll call you when we've got something to report, until then—”
“Hold up.” Wallace touched Sondaricker on the shoulder as he appraised Lucinda Brown with renewed interest. The attorney returned his gaze with fiery determination. The sharp, regal shape of her jaw, like Nefertiti, when jutted forward, created the impression of having pissed off someone important. Wallace said, “The sister can come along.”
As they threaded their way between the cars, the group moved among sheriff’s detectives and coroner's technicians, carrying plastic equipment cases, making their way toward a village of military tents. Moore asked, “Has this thing hit the air down in San Francisco yet?”
“C'mon, Jerry,” Wallace said. “You can't believe anything you see on TV.”
“State Patrol is handling traffic. They've got the mountain closed off to everyone except residents and the press.” Moore indicated the tents. “They have their detectives helping with the evidence gathering and technicians from the state crime lab. The local sheriff's office isn't big enough to have its own homicide division, so we got some sent out from Seattle helping supervise the evidence collection and to canvass the town.”
The lanky, silver-haired special agent explained, “The governor has called up the National Guard to provide kitchen facilities, barracks and latrines for all the cops, a portable air traffic control station for all the press choppers and a temporary morgue.”
“Great, Army food again,” Wallace said without enthusiasm. “Where's the crime scene?”
“Back down there,” Moore pointed to an area a few hundred yards down the logging road that was cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. He explained, “They just finished up with the tire impressions and paint scrapings off the bushes along the trail, so we can start getting vehicles back in there. There's giant boulders and puddles the size of lakes. Whoever was going back in there must have been using some kind of four-wheel drive.”
Moore stopped walking and unhurriedly lit a cigarette. Wallace and Sondaricker both turned to watch Jack Corbett, who was studying the cigarette so carefully he appeared to be counting the microscopic silver rings in the paper that made it look so crisp and neat.
Moore haphazardly exhaled the smoke and continued. “There's a cabin down there. It's some kind of old trapping or hunting shack. It looks like it's been there a while. There's a pile of magazines inside. Ones on the bottom date back to the fifties. There's tons of garbage all over the place up in there, it looks like a landfill. Some of it’s pretty recent.”
Moore suddenly realized something important. He reached into the outside pocket of his sport jacket and produced a clear plastic evidence bag. Holding it with two fingers he offered it to Wallace.
Wallace took it and examined what was in it. It looked like a silver marble with three thin metal wires protruding from it. “What's this?”
“A camera,” Moore explained. “It's a little spy camera. This whole place is covered with them.”
“Is it live?” Wallace held it up in the air to where he could see the tiny lens.
“Yeah,” Moore said. “The technical guys are working with the phone company to track down where the signal is going.”
“They're watching us?” Wallace looked out across the clearing at the heavily forested hills shrouded in rainy mist. He handed off the clear plastic envelope to Lucinda Brown without looking at her. “Say hello to your clients.”
Brown held the envelope in two fingers and looked at it with disgust.
“Big catch so far has been a bunch of video tapes,” Moore explained. “Dozens of them. Some of them go back to eight-millimeter home movies and Beta cassettes, but some of them are real recent. Digital disks.”
Wallace turned to the older agent. “Videos?”
“There's no power out here,” Moore told him. “We're guessing they were just stored here. The ENFORSUR team is working on them in their mobile lab.”
Moore continued, “Down behind the cabin there's these three holding cells built into the hill. Cinder block construction with reinforced steel doors. Dr. Hong calls them the Straw Chambers in her preliminary report.”
Moore watched Wallace's face, expecting an explanation.
“Straw Chambers?” Wallace looked back at Sondaricker for help. When she shrugged, everyone turned to Jack Corbett where he was following along. “Straw Chambers?”
Corbett lowered the pamphlet he was reading intently and said quickly, “Sure, it’s from Rumplestiltskin. You know? The three chambers where the Miller's daughter had to spin straw into gold or the king would kill her.” He looked at each one of their faces in turn. “The little leprechaun helped her every night. He said he'd let her out of it if she could guess his name.”
“Hey, Corbett.” Sondaricker spun on him. “You used to be a Navy SEAL, didn't you? So you're probably real good around water, right?”
“Water?” Corbett leapt at the opportunity to help. “You bet, that's right.”
“Great, so why don't you go see if you can find a place to make some coffee?”
Corbett wandered off into the encampment, returning to his small pamphlet as he made his way through the gathered police and scientists.
“Whatever it is—” Moore stopped walking, squaring himself to Wallace. “The bodies are in an area around the cabin, all over the bushes and trees around it. All women, so far. Most of them been here a while, bunch of remains overlapping each other. Some of them have been here long enough to be grown over with trees and bushes, there's a few still in various stages of decomposition. Some just a few weeks, the most recent ones look like they've only been dead a couple of days.”
“They're not bodies, Jerry,” Wallace quietly corrected Moore. “They're victims. How many?”
“Jez, LeMar, I dunno.” Moore showed the first signs of not being in control. His voice was unsteady as he said, “It's just out of this world in there. There could be a hundred.”
Wallace stared at the plastic yellow crime scene tape in the distance flapping gently in the rain. “What's the talk of the town? Has anybody noticed there's a hundred people missing?”
“There hasn't been a crime worse than a drunken lumberjack busting up the local bar in thirty-five years around here,” Moore said. “Whoever these victims are, they're not from around here.”
Moore pushed one hand through his damp hair. “Dr. Hong said there is a place where all the socks that end up missing in the dryer are,” he told Wallace, his voice shaking. “This place is where all the women who vanish every year end up.”
Wallace asked, “Well, what's your impression? This a gang of crazies out digging up people out of cemeteries or something?”
“No way,” Moore shook his head ardently. “These people were murdered. The way the victims are, all women, the differences between the times of death. This could be one guy.”
Wallace stiffened. “A serial killer?”
“I think this is somebody who has been doing this for a long, long time,” Moore said, looking through the rain down the road at the crime scene tape. “We found the Boogeyman’s house.”
“Well, it ain't the Boogeyman’s house no more,” Wallace said forcefully. “Now it's my house.”