Hunting Season Read online

  questions, letting them search her room here in the cabin, agreeing to go over anything and everything they came up with. He had attended painfully emotional meetings with the other parents, and then more meetings with Lynn’s student friends and acquaintances. He had endured two brainstorming sessions with a Bureau psychologist that aimed at seeing if anyone could remember anything at all that might indicate where the kids had been going. All of which had produced nothing.

  Some of Lynn’s schoolmates had been a bit snotty to the cops, but that was not unusual for college kids. Engineering students at Virginia Tech considered themselves to be several cuts above the average American college kid. Perhaps they are, he thought: Lynn certainly had been. He noticed again that his thinking about Lynn was shifting into the past tense when he wasn’t noticing. But there was no excuse for the students to be rude to the law-enforcement people, given the circumstances. And there had been one redheaded kid in particular who seemed to go out of his way to be rude. Kreiss had decided that either he had been grandstanding or he knew something.

  Give all the cops their due, he thought wearily as the Feds drove off.

  They hadn’t just sloughed it off. They had tried. But the colder the trail became, the more he’d become convinced that they would eventually shop it to Missing Persons and go chase real bad guys doing real crimes.

  The Bureau had budgets, priorities, and more problems on its plate than time in a year to work them. Missing persons cases often dragged on for years, while an agent’s annual performance evaluations, especially in the statistics-driven Bureau, were based on that fiscal year’s results: case closings, arrests, convictions. Fair enough. And they had been considerate enough to drive all the way up here to tell him face-to-face, even if the young woman had been snippy. So, thank you very much, Special Agents Talbot and Carter. He let out a long breath to displace the iron ball in his stomach as he closed the door. In a way, he was almost relieved at their decision. Now he could do it his way.

  Talbot navigated the car down the winding drive toward the wooden bridge at the bottom of Kreiss’s property. Janet checked her cell phone, but there was still no signal down here in the hollows.

  “I hate doing that,” Talbot said as he turned the car back out onto the narrow county road.

  “Telling them we’re giving up. Parents always feel Missing Persons is a brushoff.”

  “We do what we have to,” Janet said.

  “Personally, I still think the kids just ran off. Happens all the time, college kids these days. They have it too easy, that’s all.”

  “I thought for a minute he was going to blow up back there. Did you see his face when you started talking about his background? Scary.”

  Janet did not answer. She fiddled with her seat belt as Talbot took the car through a series of tight switchbacks. The road was climbing, but the woods came down close to the road, casting a greenish light on everything.

  She’d seen it all right. It had taken everything she had to come back at him, and even then, her voice had broken. She’d never seen anyone’s face get that threatening, especially when the person was a big guy like Kreiss, with those lineman’s shoulders and that craggy face. Talbot had said Kreiss was probably in his mid-fifties, although his gray-white hair and lined face made him look older. He appeared to be keeping the lid on a lot of energy, she thought, and he was certainly able to project that power. She had actually been afraid of him for a moment, when he’d trained those flinty eyes at her with that slightly detached, off-center look a dog exhibits just before it bites you.

  “You know,” Talbot was saying, “like if I had some bad guys covered in a room, he’d be the guy I’d watch.”

  “I suppose,” she said as nonchalantly as she could, trying to dismiss the fact that Kreiss had unsettled her. Get off it, Larry, she thought.

  “I mean, I wouldn’t want him on my trail, either. Especially if what Farnsworth said was true.”

  Their boss, Farnsworth, knew this guy?

  “What?” she said.

  “Kreiss was apparently something special. One of those guys they could barely keep a handle on. Lone wolf type. I’ve heard that the Foreign Counterintelligence people get that way, sometimes. You know, all that cloak-and-dagger stuff, especially if they get involved with those weirdos across the river in Langley.”

  “Special how?” Ted Farnsworth was the Resident Agent in Roanoke.

  Janet couldn’t see a homeboy like Farnsworth consorting with the FCI crowd.

  “He didn’t elaborate, but he was shaking his head a lot. Supposedly, Kreiss spent a lot of time apart from the normal Bureau organization.

  Then something happened and he got forced out. I think they reorganized FCI after he left to make sure there was no more of that lone wolf shit.”

  “I’ve never heard of Bureau assets being used that way. It would give away our biggest advantage—we come in hordes.”

  Talbot concentrated on navigating the next set of hairpin turns.

  “Yeah, well,” he said.

  “Farnsworth said Kreiss got involved with the Agency’s sweepers, who supposedly are all lone wolves.”

  “

  “Sweepers’? What do they do?”

  “They’re a group of manhunting specialists in the Agency Counterespionage Division. They’re supposedly called in when one of their own clandestine operatives gets sideways with the Agency. Farnsworth said they were ‘retrieval’ specialists. Supersecret, very bad, et cetera, et cetera.”

  Janet winced when Talbot went wide on a blind curve.

  “Never heard of them,” she said.

  “Sounds like another one of those Agency legends—you know, ghost-polishing for the benefit of the rest of us mere LE types.”

  Talbot looked sideways at her before returning his attention to the winding road.

  “I’m not so sure of that. But anyhow, this was four, five years ago. Farnsworth said he was at the Washington field office when Kreiss was stashed over at headquarters, so this is all nineteenth hand.

  But, basically, I was relieved when Kreiss said he’d stay out of this case.”

  Janet snorted.

  “What?” Talbot said.

  She turned to look at him.

  “There is no way in hell that guy’s going to stay out of it. Didn’t you pick up on that back there?”

  Talbot seemed surprised.

  “No. Actually, I didn’t detect that. I think he’s just pissed off. Besides, whatever he used to do at the Bureau, he’s retired now. He’s a parent, that’s all. I think he’s just a guy who screwed up at the end of his career, got kicked out, moved down here to be near his kid, and now she’s gone missing, and here’s the Bureau backing out. He’s old, for Chrissakes.”

  “I think you’re wrong,” she said, shaking her head.

  “And he’s not that old.”

  Talbot laughed.

  “Hey, you attracted to that guy or something?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Larry,” she said, looking away, afraid of what her face might reveal. It hadn’t exactly been attraction. She’d been scared and embarrassed. Eight years in the bureau and some veteran stares her down.

  “Well, just remember, Janet, there’s still no evidence of a crime here.

  You know RA Farnsworth’s rules: no crime, no time. He’s right: We shop it to Missing Persons and move on. Hey, where do you want to stop for lunch?”

  Janet shrugged and continued to stare out the side window. Gnarlybarked mossy pines, some of them enveloped in strangling vines, stared indifferently back at her. They were going down now, but another steep hill filled the windshield in front of them. It didn’t take a huge leap other imagination to visualize Edwin Kreiss slipping out of that cabin and disappearing into the woods. Her heart had almost jumped out of her chest when he had loomed over her like a tiger examining its next meal. She had never had such a powerfully frightening reaction to a man in all her life.

  “Wherever,” she said.

&nb
sp; “I’m not that hungry.”

  Barry dark got off the shuttle and hurried through the rain toward his apartment building in the student ghetto behind the Kroger shopping center. He held his backpack over his head in a futile effort to keep his flaming red hair dry. It was nearly dark, and he was, as usual, pissed off.

  He reached his ground-floor apartment, checked the battered mailbox cluster, which always got wet when it rained—stupid, dumb damn place to put the damn mailboxes, anyway, mailmen getting lazier and lazier-and then went into the concrete hallway, which stank of fried foods, cat piss, and laundry soap in about equal proportions. A single bulb threw minimal light on the trash accumulated in the hallway corners. He unlocked the flimsy door to his apartment, pushed aside some of the junk and litter that filled his so-called living room, and closed the door behind him. The curtains were drawn to discourage campus thieves, and with the wet gray evening outside, the room was dark and gloomy, perfectly matching his mood. He dumped his wet backpack onto the floor and hit the light switch, which produced absolutely nothing. He swore out loud.

  The breakers in the kitchen power panel were probably wet again. Jesus!

  Would nothing go right on this miserable day?

  He ran a hand through his mop of hair and was starting across the room when a very large figure with no head rose up out of a chair and hit him high on the right side of his chest, just inside his right shoulder, so hard that he staggered sideways. The pain was incredible and he almost stopped breathing. Then the headless figure delivered another stunning punch, this one to the same point on his left side.

  Almost without realizing it, Barry began sinking to his knees, then squatted back on his haunches on the floor, eyes teary, trying to make a sound but only managing a whimper. His arms were paralyzed right down to his fingertips, and the pain was making him sick. When he opened his eyes, the figure was not visible, but then he sensed that some thing was behind him. He tried to turn around, but it wasn’t possible with his frozen arms, and then a viselike hand gripped him by his hair and lifted him straight up to his feet.

  It hurt like hell, but what really scared him was that the man was able to do that with one hand: Barry weighed over 160. The headless man frog marched him over to the interior living room wall and pushed him back down to the floor, onto his knees, pressing Barry’s face to the wall before letting go. When Barry’s head came off the wall, the hand pushed his face back against it, hard enough to mash his nose and start a small nosebleed.

  Even Barry, who wasn’t into following orders, understood: Don’t move.

  He stopped moving.

  The fire in his upper arms threatened to envelop him. He tried to understand what he had seen: a large dark figure in a full-length coat, black gloves, and no fuckin’ head! Reviewing the image scared him again, and then a very large polished chrome blade flashed up along the right side of his face, its edge resting casually one millimeter from his right eyeball.

  He flinched automatically, ducking his head away, but that iron hand came back and pushed his nose up against the wall again, where a dark blotch now bloomed. The man pressed the edge of the blade against Barry’s right cheekbone and he felt a sting on his skin. He began to tremble uncontrollably. He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t figure out what was happening to him, and besides, his throat was dry as paper.

  “We can make this long or short. Your call.” The man’s voice was a hoarse, accentless whisper.

  Barry tried again to say something, but he managed only another croak. He felt the man’s body settling down behind him, a huge presence, what felt like a knee pressing in against his back. That knife blade had not moved. He suddenly felt an extreme urge to urinate. The pain in his shoulders was getting worse, much worse.

  “Here it is, sonny,” the man whispered.

  “I want to know where Lynn Kreiss and her friends went camping.”

  Barry blinked in the semidarkness. Lynn Kreiss? Who was this fucker?

  He’d been all over this with the cops. He had blown them off, of course.

  Barry dark didn’t give cops of any variety the time of fuckin’ day, not after all the hassle they gave him with traffic stops and parking

  tickets. He had also feigned total ignorance because Rip had made him swear not to tell anyone, but then that knife did move and there was a sudden cold draft on his skin as the man sliced open the back of Barry’s shirt from waist to collar. As Barry was trying to assimilate this development, the man took him by the hair again, hoisting him all the way up on his toes.

  This time, Barry yelled with the pain. And then that huge knife pressed for an instant against the small of his back, its cold steel tugging once at his belt line, and then his jeans and underwear were sliding down his thighs. He looked down and saw the tip of that brilliant blade projecting from between his naked legs. He struggled, then stopped when he felt a stinging sensation on the bottom of his scrotum. He made a squeaking noise and went even higher on his toes, teetering almost out of balance, managing to stay upright only because of the man’s grip on his hair.

  “Talk to me, wipe,” the man whispered again.

  “Where did they go?” Barry was shaking all over now. This giant bastard was going to cut him in half!

  “Okay! Okay} Jesus Christ, man! Don’t! Rip said they were going to break into someplace called Site R. I don’t know what that is.

  Please, man!”

  Barry felt the knife turning between his legs, the edge of the blade scraping against his inner thigh, and then it was withdrawn, its dull edge pressing pointedly into his genitals. The grip on his hair relaxed. As Barry sagged back down onto his feet, something tapped him behind his right ear and he sagged to the floor. He felt almost grateful as he slipped into unconsciousness, glad to be out of it. His last sensation was that of his bladder emptying.

  The Virginia Tech campus police desk sergeant went through the report with Janet Carter. It was 11:30 P.M. and some patrol cop was making a big deal on the radio-circuit speaker about a fender bender.

  “Okay,” the sergeant said.

  “So the complainant is one Barry dark, third-year civil engineering student. Subject called nine one one at eighteen-fifty-five, semi hysterical Since he lived in the student housing area, we owned it. Responding officers said they found the subject naked on the floor, his clothes sliced up around him, a lump behind his ear and a puddle of piss on the carpet. Subject reported that a very large individual with no head assaulted him, cut his clothes off, threatened to kill him, and then coldcocked him. That’s about it.”

  “Headless?” Carter asked, looking up from her notebook.

  The sergeant shrugged, looking at his report.

  “That’s what he said.

  Subject showed evidence of being hit twice, and then the sleeping pill behind the ear. Can’t move his arms. Point contusions. I got Montgomery County hospital to fax their ER report over. States direct blunt-force trauma to the—let’s see—brachial nerve tie-in on both sides, causing complete but hopefully temporary paralysis to both arms. No sign of alcohol or drugs in his blood work. Hematoma behind the right ear but no skull fracture. Released after four hours of observation.”

  He put the report down on the counter.

  “We called you people because when the incident report went into our computer, there was a flag tying the subject’s name to an interview list on the disappearance of those three Tech kids.”

  “Right. That was ours. This kid have red hair?”

  The cop scanned the report.

  “Yep.”

  “I think I remember him. Snot mouth. Lots of attitude. Anything taken?”

  “Apparently not. Right now, he’s on some legal drugs and can’t tell us anything—like why this might have happened, or what the headless horseman was after.”

  Janet shook her head. She had just gone to bed when the call came from the Roanoke duty officer to get over to Tech campus security. She had asked if it could wait until morning, but the du
ty officer said Special Agent Talbot, the first agent they’d called, seemed to think Carter would want to get on it right away. Thank you, Larry Talbot, she thought.

  “Headless,” she said again.

  “Okay, that’s a new one.”

  The sergeant shrugged again.

  “College kids, what can I tell you.

  They’ve got seriously active imaginations. This isn’t the weirdest one we’ve ever seen, believe me. You want a copy of this report?”

  “Yes, please,” she said.

  “Did the responding officers see any evidence of a burglary?”

  “This all went down in the student ghetto. They checked the door lock, said it was easy pickings. It’s not in the report, but the guys said the apartment was a double-glove situation. If there was evidence in there, none of them wanted to touch it or catch it.”

  She nodded again.

  “Got it. I think I’ll go see Mr. dark. How do I get there?”

  Fifteen minutes later, she was knocking on the door of dark’s apartment.

  No one answered. She examined the door lock. The cops had been right: She could have taken it with a Q-Tip. She knocked again, then took off a shoe and used that to make enough racket to bring Barry dark to the

  door finally. He was wearing an oversized Tech sweatshirt and flip flops

  His eyes were bleary, and she noticed that his arms were not in the armholes of the sweatshirt. She identified herself. She had heard a door open on the other side of the noisome stairwell, but it closed quickly when the name FBI rang out. He stared at her for a long moment, blinking slowly, and then nudged the door open with his foot, letting her in. She left the door cracked and wrinkled her nose at the mess in the apartment.

  dark sat down carefully on the only chair in the room and blinked up at her with dilated eyes. There was a single light on in the living room.