Shadows of the Dead--A Special Tracking Unit Novel Read online

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  For Lea and the girls.

  PROLOGUE

  Six months ago …

  Music would’ve been nice.

  Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana, Korn, perhaps a little Pearl Jam … but … she shakes her head. No, those aren’t right; they don’t fit. Something softer is called for, something melancholic. “My Immortal” by Evanescence comes to mind. It’s close but lacks the precise ambience that she’s looking for.

  “The Dance,” she suddenly whispers to the quiet. Yes, “The Dance” by Garth Brooks; it had always been a favorite of hers, though she hadn’t heard it in years. It was perfect. It fit.

  Even the thought of it rests soothingly at the edge of Melinda’s consciousness, a welcome change from all the other things—the bad things—that have occupied her mind of late. She lets go a little more, loosens up, begins to slip away, losing herself in the embrace of the warm bath.

  An empty wineglass stained with a California merlot sits on the floor, while a dozen candles of varying sizes festoon the wide lip around the foot of the tub, casting their feeble light against the wall of the bathroom. It’s almost primal; flames against a cave wall.

  Fire and the shadow of fire have always had a mesmerizing effect on humans. Perhaps the pulsating glow of embers stirs something in our DNA, something that tugs at the shadowed corners of our brain, saying here is safety, here is warmth.

  Something stirs inside Melinda.

  Is it regret?

  She opens her eyes and a single tear breaks free and flows down her wet cheek. It doesn’t matter, she thinks. None of it matters. It’s just her and the quiet bathroom now; her and the candles and the empty wineglass, and the dark water in the darkened, primal room.

  The hour is late.

  It’s likely no one will see her Facebook post until morning. Better that way, she thinks, sinking farther into the tub, farther into the warmth. Not exactly the way she wanted to deal with the situation, but it’s done. There’s no taking it back.

  Not this time.

  She lifts her hand and wipes her face. The water gives off a reddish hue in the flickering candlelight, as if, instead of drinking the last of the merlot, she’d poured the entire bottle directly into the tub.

  “The Dance” plays in her head, melancholic and final, the kind of song you cry to after drinking too much merlot. A song you may have heard a hundred times before, but never with more meaning and emotion than at this exact moment, even though it’s only in your head.

  The moment doesn’t last.

  A different song soon begins to play, distant at first, but drawing nearer.

  It’s familiar, but unpleasant. She struggles with the sound, her mind almost lost in the warmth, unable to recall. And then she remembers: a siren.

  The harsh tone interrupts the song in her head, and she tries to push up in the tub, but she can’t. Her hands grip the sides, dripping merlot water, straining, and then she just gives up and sinks back into the blissful warmth.

  It’ll be over soon, she thinks.

  She isn’t taking any chances this time. She did it just like the website showed, long cuts from her wrist to her elbow; guaranteed results. Still, the blade hurt. Even with the wine in her, she may not have cut deep enough. It would get the job done, she was sure of that, but would it get the job done in time, before the siren arrived?

  Now she regrets the Facebook post.

  It was a stupid impulse, a final goodbye.

  Drumming now, the hammering of fists at the front door; the water so warm; the scented candles so far away, like stars now, twinkling in the night sky; a hurried riot of sound drawing ever closer.

  Crashing; a door giving way; shouts and shadows.

  They’re here.

  Time’s up.

  CHAPTER ONE

  And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.

  —John Muir

  Sunday, December 14

  The dogs sit alert and rigid at the cusp of twilight, unmoving silhouettes cut from stone. Their breathing has settled after the miles-long chase through the woods, and they pay no mind to the keening wind overhead, the whipping treetops, the winter storm that has finally caught us.

  Here, in the deep woods of the Olympic Peninsula, one might be forgiven for mistaking them for wolves, these hard hunters with bodies so similar to those of their wild ancestors. One might even feel a chill, a touch of terror at their presence, if not for the quiet presence of their handlers crouched next to them.

  With unimaginable discipline, the heads of the police K-9s remain fixed and unflinching as their sensitive noses sample the air, smelling the runner, smelling his nervous fear. Their eyes never leave the rectangular shadow resting among the trees ahead, a place of humans, though long abandoned.

  With their handlers—their alphas—beside them, the exhausted dogs feel peace and satisfaction—even joy. The long hunt is almost over. Their prey lies just ahead, injured and exhausted. They smell the blood. They wait now for the command, the human word that will send them to finish the hunt.

  Like coiled springs they sit, patient and focused.

  * * *

  The cabin is ancient, a relic from a different era now battered and decrepit.

  From our concealed position a hundred feet behind it, I can see the thick green blanket of moss draped over the roof like a half-made bed. The empty window casings are hollowed out, resembling the sunken eyes of an ancient man looking upon his final days. The remnants of wooden shutters, where they still exist, hang at an angle, reduced by time and weather. Even the planks used in the construction of the cabin speak of a different era, a time when sawmills ripped lumber into long wide slabs that both sealed a building and served as siding.

  The thickness of the slabs is likely the only reason the cabin still stands.

  “One room, maybe a hundred and fifty square feet at most,” whispers Detective Sergeant Jason Sturman as he studies the dark openings through the thermal scope of a borrowed sniper rifle. “Probably an old hunting cabin from the thirties or forties.”

  Despite the storm, we keep our voices low, knowing the howling wind could ebb at any time and catch one of us in midsentence, giving away our presence.

  “Do you think it’s his?” asks my partner, FBI Special Agent Jimmy Donovan. “Or did he just stumble upon it?”

  “Stumbled upon it would be my guess,” Jason replies quietly. “If it was his I’d expect it to be in better shape.” He gestures at the structure. “One heavy snow and it’s going to be nothing but a crumpled pile of mossy tinder. The only reason anyone would hole up inside is if they had nowhere else to go. Desperation makes you do stupid things.”

  “Sounds like our guy,” I mutter.

  * * *

  My name is Magnus Craig, but everyone calls me Steps, even my mom. I’m a man
-tracker for the FBI’s Special Tracking Unit, and my partner and I have done four searches here in Clallam County: two missing hikers, a bank robber, and a bona fide murder suspect. The last search was eight months ago—the bank robber—and I only remember that because it was part of the briefing before we left our office at Hangar 7 in Bellingham this morning.

  I have a hard time with names and faces.

  We travel to so many places and meet so many people that it really is impossible to keep them all straight, at least for me. Faces blur together; names morph; personalities flatten out. Or maybe my mind just processes information differently and anything deemed no longer of value gets purged, a scrubbing of the hard drive, so to speak.

  Jimmy always remembers names and faces.

  When Detective Sergeant Jason Sturman and Detective Nathan Critchlow met us on the tarmac this morning as we disembarked from Betsy, the Special Tracking Unit’s Gulfstream G100, Jimmy immediately recognized both Nate and Jason, and greeted them with genuine enthusiasm. We’ve worked with these guys twice before, and they’re hard not to like.

  The Clallam County Sheriff’s Office only has four detectives, so the odds of us ending up with Nate and Jason again were fifty-fifty. I like to think they volunteered when they heard we were coming.

  * * *

  Our impromptu tracking party includes two state troopers and three Clallam County deputies. With Jason, Nate, Jimmy, and me, that makes nine bodies in all—eleven if you count the dogs.

  “What do you think, Steps?” Jason asks, turning from the cabin. “Is he inside?”

  “The trail leads in that direction,” I confirm. “We’re going to have to check it out, either way.” I glance back at the faces clustered in a half circle behind me. “Anyone want to hike seven or eight miles back to civilization and fetch a tactical robot?”

  The words bring weary smiles and a couple chuckles.

  “Guess we’ll have to do it the hard way, then,” I say, and turn to Jimmy. “Why don’t you and I take a nice wide stroll around the cabin?”

  “Perimeter check?”

  “Only way to be sure. If we find any tracks leading away from the cabin, we’ll know he’s still on the move. And if not…”

  “Yeah,” Jimmy says. “If not, then we have a whole new problem on our hands.” He glances at the cabin and then at the darkening sky. “Namely, how to get him out of an old, rotting cabin without collapsing it on top of him or setting it on fire with a flashbang.”

  I pat him on the shoulder. “You’ll figure it out.”

  * * *

  Our circuitous reconnaissance takes us in a counterclockwise direction around the shack, our movements hidden by trees, distance, and understory vegetation.

  We start in a northerly direction, moving by steps, careful not to create any more noise than necessary. In a wide-arching sweep, we soon find ourselves heading to the northwest, then westerly, and so on, until we’re 180 degrees from where we started and two hundred feet west of the cabin.

  Jimmy and I now have a clear view of the front door—or, rather, we can see the gaping black hole in the empty place where a door once stood, eons ago. I can barely see Jason and the others hunkered down in the trees on the east side of the cabin. Most are just shadows upon shadows.

  “Front door is missing,” Jimmy whispers into the mic attached to his portable radio. “No movement. We’re going to sit here a moment and see what happens.”

  We don’t have to wait long.

  A massive gust, perhaps sixty or seventy miles an hour, viciously bends the treetops and creates what in eons past might have been mistaken for a dragon’s roar. Twigs and branches snap and crack and tumble to the forest floor, stirring up their own cacophony.

  This draws out our suspect.

  Curiosity is a powerful thing, especially in the face of nature. I see him first, a dark shape stepping out from the left side of the doorway, brushing his pants off as if he’d been sitting. He walks with a heavy limp.

  “There he is!” Jimmy hisses as the figure steps fully into the frame of the door and pokes his head out, looking skyward.

  Perhaps it’s the trees he fears?

  This, after all, is the witching weather of widow-makers, massive tree limbs sheared off in such weather and sent hurtling to the ground to smash anyone and anything foolish enough to get in their way. They can send you from this life to the next in an instant. Such a limb falling from such a height would crush the old cabin as surely as a boot on an eggshell.

  As the trees continue to sway to this new, more violent song, the occasional smaller branch does indeed break off, tumbling to the forest floor with mixed results: some are muted by the storm, while other, larger specimens give an audible accounting of their arrival.

  “We have confirmation,” Jimmy whispers into his mic. “He’s in the doorway.”

  In that instant, the figure looks our way.

  A chill runs down my spine and I remain perfectly still, afraid even to breathe. There’s little chance he can see us, but perhaps he heard something, or imagined he heard something.

  He stares for a long time, his face a mask of shadow. At last he retreats back into the cabin, disappearing to the left, returning to whatever old chair or spot on the floor that he came from.

  Jimmy and I exhale in unison.

  Getting my attention, he taps the bud in his ear, and in a breathy, barely audible voice says, “They’re putting together a plan. They want us to stay put and keep eyes-on.”

  That’s fine by me. We’ve got the perfect location to watch the coming takedown, a spot with little chance of stray rounds spinning our way. The wind can’t reach us, and though we’re lying on the ground I haven’t felt this warm in hours.

  It’s almost pleasant, and a sense of peace begins to settle over me.

  That’s when Jimmy’s phone rings.

  * * *

  There are some things that are almost always loud and crystal clear. One is the sound of a toddler using a curse word in front of his grandparents, another—to put it crudely—is a fart in church, and still another is the sound of a cell phone going off in the middle of a supposedly empty forest while a dangerous fugitive rests in a nearby cabin. Admittedly, the last example is far less common than the first two, but now we know it happens.

  With shrill tones strung together like pearls, one of Jimmy’s special ringtones issues forth, piercing the encroaching night and seeming to amplify the sound twentyfold, carrying it through the trees with the force of a Chinese gong.

  Just like that, everything changes.

  It’s the spoiled appetizer before the soup sandwich.

  A world of fumbling and grabbing ensues as Jimmy searches his pockets, finally remembering he placed his phone in the zippered inside pocket. He kills the call before it gets halfway through the third ring.

  For a moment he just stares at the phone in his hand, a look of shock and horror on his face. It’s a rookie mistake, and he knows it. When he finally looks at me, the shock has changed to embarrassment, and all he can say is, “Damn.”

  That’s about as vulgar as it gets for Jimmy.

  When his earpiece comes to life a second later, startling him, he has to live the moment again as he explains to the others what happened.

  More embarrassment.

  Meanwhile, my heart still drums in my chest and pulses in my neck. It’s so loud I fear the sound of it will carry to the cabin and set its walls to trembling. The thought is preposterous, I know, but still I fear.

  A minute passes.

  I’m waiting for something to happen, some reaction from the cabin, perhaps an attempt to flee. He had to have heard the ring. It was impossible to miss. My attention is so completely focused on the slouching old hovel that I nearly cry out when I feel Jimmy prying at the fingers of my right hand. That’s when I realize that I’ve clamped down on his shoulder, my knuckles white from the pressure.

  Releasing, I give him an apologetic look and he tries to smile. It’s a tense
smile, but the effort is appreciated. I exhale to the count of four, and then inhale to the same count, repeating the cycle several times. It’s a calming technique Jimmy taught me years ago, a way to reclaim control of my body when adrenaline threatens to take over.

  My eyes are off the doorway mere seconds, but when my gaze returns a chill electrifies me and I freeze as if turned to stone, as if Medusa herself looked out upon me. Breath is once more stuck in my throat, unable to enter or exit.

  There, in the doorway, at head-height, a sliver of face with a single, probing eye peeks out from the left side of the opening, unmoving, staring into the darkening forest.

  * * *

  The plan is simple.

  “He’s in the front corner,” Jimmy whispers to Jason over the radio. “He was just left of the doorway a moment ago—my left, not yours.” There’s a short pause. “No, no gun. Not that we saw, anyway.” Another pause. “We’re good for now. Have everyone spread out and move up a bit for containment. The perimeter’s going to be tight in these trees, but we don’t have a choice. As soon as it’s a go, we need to tighten it up further.”

  As the next words come through Jimmy’s earpiece, he glances at me apprehensively and then looks way. “Are you sure?” he asks.

  The response appears to be in the affirmative, because his next words are tight and to the point: “I can do that. When?”

  I don’t hear Jason’s reply, but Jimmy nods in the darkness. “You got it. Make sure the dogs are ready to give chase, just in case.”

  When he ends the transmission, he sits silently for a moment, eyes on the dark shadows overtaking the cabin. “Are you ready?” he asks at length.

  “Ready? Ready for—”

  Apparently it was a rhetorical question, because before I can finish, Jimmy calls out in a loud voice, projecting the usual challenges: We know you’re in there; Come out with your hands on your head; You’re surrounded, that sort of thing. Experience tells me to expect two possible reactions: silence or profanity. On rare occasion, gunfire decides to join the party.