LITMIR.BIZ

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graphic pictures I’ve printed from satellites, photos available on the Internet, on the long table. I’ve carefully pieced these images together and marked them with colored pins that correspond to the same colored pins on the forestry maps.

      From a room down the hallway, I hear her quiet cough.

      I freeze. Listening.

      She groans, no doubt still unconscious.

      A smile pricks at the corners of my mouth when I think of her. She is rousing and that’s a good sign. Soon she’ll be ready. A little sizzle of anticipation sweeps through my bloodstream and I quickly tamp it down. Not yet. Not until the time is right. Not until she is healthy enough to do her part.

      Oh, it will be unwillingly, but she will partake.

      They all do.

      She groans more loudly and I know I’ll have to attend to her. Soon. I look at the open closet, an armoire I’ve fashioned with my own hands and a few basic tools. I’ve carved it ornately, lovingly, with images of celestial beings cut into the dark wood. Inside are the cubicles where I keep my treasures, little mementos of the reluctant participants. The door is slightly ajar. I scoot back my chair and stand, stretching my muscles before walking to the closet. Opening the doors further, I note how the mirrors lining the inside catch the reflection of the fire and my own sinewy body. Toned muscles. Dark hair. Deep set eyes with 20/10 vision.

      “A specimen,” one foolish woman said of me as she let her gaze wander down my frame.

      As if I would be flattered.

      “A tall drink of water,” another unimaginative would-be lover cooed, licking her lips slightly.

      “Ah…a bad boy with bedroom eyes,” a third whispered, hoping I would fall prey to her uninspired advances.

      In the mirror my lips twist at the memories, my eyes darken a shade.

      They found out, didn’t they?

      But those incidents were just the beginning, before I fully understood my mission.

      Ignoring my reflection, I open some of the drawers in the closet and eye my treasures, little bits of the women who were to become immortal: a tooled leather bag with fringe, a small clutch made out of fake leopard fur, a snakeskin wallet filled with credit cards, driver’s licenses, insurance information cards. Designer cases for eyeglasses, cigarettes and makeup. Nail files, tampons, cell phones, lipsticks in shades from wine to sheer, shimmering pink.

      Treasures.

      From those who were the chosen. I glance at one of the newspaper articles that has been written about the killings, the clippings all stacked neatly on a thin shelf. In this particular article, the reporter quoted some “source within the sheriff’s department” who indicated that the “acts” had been “random,” and that a “maniac” sharpshooter was behind the murders.

      Maniac?

      Random?

      The police are worse imbeciles than I originally thought.

      Idiots playing at detection.

      From a distance, through long-range binoculars, I have watched the officers from the sheriff’s department swarm into the canyon, some up on the ridge, searching for clues, sifting for evidence, pawing through the snow like dogs looking for bones in the sand. Others, the lazier ones, huddled around the wrecked car, scratching their chins, frowning and talking and getting nowhere.

      As I close the closet door I hear her cry out. Whimpering. Perhaps this one was a poor choice. She doesn’t seem to have much backbone.

      But it’s early. She will snap out of it. Her ferocity, her passion, will surely appear.

      I know she is one of the chosen. Just like the others.

      Listening to the howl of the wind, I wonder just where I will leave her to fight her battle with fate and the elements. She is too injured from the “accident” to move easily just yet, but within the week, she will have healed to the point that she can be urged to the perfect spot, a site I have yet to find. It has to be remote yet accessible, so that the imbeciles who work for the sheriff’s department can find her.

      Eyeing the forestry map again, I run a finger down the spine of one of the smaller ranges branching off the Bitterroots and remember a valley I hunted in long ago. Somewhat alpine, the meadowland has a few sparse trees along its perimeter. I think hard, remembering, bringing back the imagery of those few grassy acres. Just at dawn, I once spied an elk across the lea, a muscular bull standing near one gnarled pine, his rack five feet wide if an inch, his dark mane and coat barely visible in the thicket. I shot at him, missed, and he disappeared as if he were a ghost. I found the bullet from my rifle burrowed deep in the scaly bole of a solitary pine. That tree, if it is still standing, will be the perfect death post.

      I study the map carefully. There are so many gullies and ridges, places a body won’t be discovered until spring, and maybe not even then.

      But those won’t do.

      I need the woman to be found.

      I have to keep searching for the perfect spot.

      I don’t doubt that I will find it.

      God and the Fates are on my side.

      “Okay, so what have we got?” Alvarez asked as the Jeep, buffeted by the wind, slid on the icy terrain.

      “You mean besides diddly-squat?” Pescoli was driving, her eyes narrowed as she tried to keep the rig on the road. Despite the windshield wipers slapping frantically at the continuous flakes, visibility was nil in the near whiteout. The road they were driving had already been closed, the plows unable to keep up with the storm. Ahead of them, the vehicles driven by the officers at the scene slowly eased along the uneven mountain terrain.

      “Yeah, besides that.” The police band crackled and the defroster blew enough hot air that Alvarez pulled off her gloves with her teeth, then unzipped her jacket. The interior smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and the cup holders were filled with half-full drinks.

      “We’ve got his MO.” Pescoli glared through the window as she drove, her gaze fastened on the snowy road, her eyebrows pulled together.

      “Which so far only links the Subaru to the other cars we found.” Alvarez didn’t like the turn of her thoughts. She was certain the crumpled Subaru would show up registered to a woman who had gone missing, a woman who even now was being held hostage somewhere within the surrounding five miles. So close, and yet eons away in this blizzard.

      As Pescoli drove, Alvarez put a call in to the State of Washington DMV, finally connected, only to be placed on hold. When the clerk on the other end returned to Selena, he refused to give her any information over the phone but promised to fax the car’s registration, as well as e-mail it to the sheriff’s department. By the time Alvarez and Pescoli returned to the office, the car owner’s identity would be available.

      Not so the killer’s.

      “So if this car has been in the ravine two, possibly three, days, how much longer do you think he’ll keep her alive?”

      “Don’t know,” Alvarez said, concentrating on the taillights of Watershed’s rig, the closest vehicle in their mini-convoy of county-owned pickups, SUVs and cars. The tow truck was behind them all, dragging what was left of the Subaru to the lot where it would be gone over again and again as investigators looked for evidence pointing to the killer. If only the guy would leave a fingerprint, or a hair, or some damned piece of evidence for them to work with.

      So far, the killer had been lucky. No hairs, no fibers other than from the yellow plastic rope used to bind the victims to the trees, no fingerprints on the notes or vehicles, no witnesses to his crime. They had bullets, no casings, and poor impressions of boot prints in the snow. The blood samples the department had collected were all from the victims, and the damned carvings in the trees, all of which seemed to have been cut by some kind of hunting knife, gave no indication, except for a guestimate, of the killer’s

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