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  Choi began to walk out, intending to lead the way. But he stopped when it dawned on him that Kenzie wasn’t following. His brow furrowed. “Something wrong, Cavanaugh?”

  “No. I just thought I’d wait for Brannigan. He is the colead on this,” she pointed out. The truth of it was her competitive nature was taking a back seat at the moment. Somehow, it didn’t seem right for her to leapfrog ahead of Hunter.

  “I didn’t call him about this,” Choi confessed. “I just called you.”

  “I called him,” Kenzie lied. “As soon as I finished talking to you,” she added for good measure. “He said he’d be right here just before he hung up.” She shrugged. “Not everyone lives as close to the precinct as I do.”

  It was a lame excuse, but it was all she could think of at the moment as she tried to stall.

  A feeling of relief washed over her the next moment. She saw Hunter walking into the back room. He’d changed his clothes, she realized. Even after that little speech he had given her about not needing to. He’d taken a preventive measure to forestall any questions about where he had spent the night.

  Kenzie pressed her lips together to keep from smiling.

  “Let’s get started,” Hunter said, nodding at Choi and then at Kenzie, almost like an afterthought. “Where are the hikers?”

  “I put them in conference room one,” Choi told the detective. O’Hara hadn’t come in yet and Valdez had gone to question the tattooed victim’s relatives.

  “How did you find out about them?” Hunter asked as he, Kenzie and Choi made their way down the hall toward conference room one.

  “Patrol called after talking to them. It seems that word has gotten around about our black widow,” Choi answered.

  “I suppose that’s a good thing,” Hunter commented, although his tone indicated that he didn’t believe that in the absolute sense. It wasn’t because the case was a new one. It was because this was an ongoing case that really wasn’t close to being solved yet. And it was long overdue to be solved.

  There was still a serial killer out there.

  Choi opened the door to the pristine-looking conference room. A rather bedraggled couple was seated at the table, their body language indicating that they felt entirely on edge, as if their chairs were going to catch fire at any moment.

  Bob and Cynthia Kellogg were a young—and until yesterday—robust-looking couple in their early thirties who loved spending their weekends taking in nature and hiking. They were obviously physically fit and right now just as obviously utterly shaken up by their recent experience.

  Cynthia literally jumped out of her chair when she heard the door opening.

  Embarrassed at her unrestrained display of terror, she flushed. But although she tried, she couldn’t seem to immediately calm down.

  “I’m sorry,” Kenzie apologized. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “Right now, everything frightens her,” Bob said about his wife. “Not that I blame her. My own shadow makes me jump.”

  “What happened to you last night while you were hiking, Mr. Kellogg?” Hunter asked in a kind, even voice. “In your own words,” he added. “Take your time.”

  “I wish there was a way to blot this out of our heads,” Bob confessed. His wife gripped his hand. She seemed to be holding on for dear life. “You know, like in that movie where you stare into a flashing pen and you forget everything you’ve done and seen?”

  Hunter looked blankly at Kenzie. She quickly picked up the thread. “I’m familiar with the movie, Mr. Kellogg,” she told the man. She glanced over toward his wife, who had let go of her husband’s hand and was now nervously folding and refolding hers. “I hate to make you relive something that disturbed you so much, but I need to have you walk us through it. Even the slightest detail you remember might help us save someone’s life.”

  Kenzie leaned in, as if this was just a private conversation between two friends.

  “Take a deep breath, Mr. Kellogg. Clear your mind of everything else,” she told the man. “Now, if you would walk me through yesterday. You were hiking,” she began, her voice trailing off as she silently coaxed Bob to start talking.

  “We were hiking. I guess we hiked longer and farther than we’d planned on. When it started to rain—there was a sudden storm,” he interjected.

  “I know,” she said, nodding. It caught the weatherman by surprise. “Go on,” she urged.

  “Well, I guess that we got a little off course. And really wet,” he emphasized. “And suddenly this cabin seemed to materialize out of nowhere.”

  She could tell by the wild look that had entered Cynthia’s eyes that she was letting her imagination run away with her, thinking of every horror movie she had probably ever seen. Kenzie was determined to keep this couple grounded.

  “You’d never seen the cabin before?” she questioned Bob.

  Bob shook his head as if trying to shed beads of water from his hair. “No.”

  “Could you find the cabin again?” Hunter asked.

  Bob closed his eyes as if the very thought of doing that pained him. Cynthia whimpered in the background. He avoided looking at her.

  “I guess I could if I had to,” Bob said.

  “Good. Go on,” Hunter urged the man. “You found this cabin...”

  “We couldn’t believe how lucky we were, finding the cabin like this, because the storm started to really pick up.” His mouth twisted in an ironic smile that had no humor to it. “But the second we walked in, we both knew there was something really weird about the cabin.”

  “Weird how?” Kenzie asked.

  “There was plastic hanging all over the place. Some of it was even from the floor to the ceiling.” He was breathing hard now as he spoke and his wife’s whimpering had grown louder. “I swear there was blood on some of the plastic. I didn’t touch it,” he cried. “But we just knew something evil was going on in that place. And then we heard something, an unearthly screeching.”

  “Did you see what made the noise?” Hunter asked.

  “Are you kidding?” the man asked incredulously. “Cynthia and I got the hell out of there and ran for our lives.”

  Kenzie exchanged looks with Hunter. Had this couple actually stumbled across where their killer hacked up his victims’ bodies?

  Chapter 21

  Bob Kellogg really looked reluctant to act as the task force’s guide back to the cabin that he and his wife had discovered. But it was Cynthia Kellogg’s hysterical response to the mere suggestion that terminated the very idea. His wife absolutely refused even to entertain the thought that Bob would venture anywhere into that vicinity.

  If he could remember the cabin’s location. Which he told them he couldn’t.

  “I’ve got a feeling those two aren’t going to be hiking anywhere anytime soon,” O’Hara predicted, having returned to the conference area just in time to witness Cynthia’s second and even more dramatic meltdown.

  Giving the couple a moment of privacy, Kenzie, Hunter, O’Hara and Choi clustered at the other end of the conference room to talk options.

  “Meanwhile, what do we do?” Kenzie asked.

  Rather than bandy about possible options, Hunter turned toward Kellogg and asked, “Mr. Kellogg, do you happen to remember which direction you were going in when it began to rain?”

  Holding his wife and trying to calm her down, Bob looked up.

  It took a bit of doing, but the man was finally able to give the task force a general description of the area where they were hiking.

  “I left a few trail markers along the way. You know, rocks piled up on one another, in case we got lost. That was just before we saw the cabin,” he remembered. “I guess I forgot about that until just now,” Bob told them ruefully.

  Hunter put a comforting hand on Bob’s shoulder.

  “‘Just now’ is all that counts,” he told Bob.r />
  Kenzie had a few questions of her own to ask about the cabin, but for now she thought it best not to press the couple too much. Within a few minutes, she and the others felt they had enough information to be able to find the cabin’s location.

  Considering that this was probably the scene of at least one if not multiple murders, she decided to request that a CSI team accompany them.

  Hunter had his doubts about the wisdom of doing that. “Don’t you want to make sure this isn’t just two spooked hikers letting their imaginations run away with them before we get more of Aurora’s finest involved?”

  Ordinarily, she might agree. But her gut instincts were telling her that they just might be up against a time crunch.

  “I have a feeling that if we wait, something’s going to happen to that cabin. This is fire season,” she reminded him. “And someone just might use that as an excuse to torch the place if they suspected it had been discovered.”

  She had a point, he thought. “Okay, let’s go get a team together,” Hunter declared.

  * * *

  “I just don’t see what the big attraction to hiking is,” Kenzie told the others less than four hours later.

  She, Hunter, Choi and O’Hara, as well as the four crime scene investigators whom Sean Cavanaugh had sent with them, made their way up Big Haven Mountain, guided by the general directions that Bob Kellogg had given.

  “My guess would be that’s it’s the view,” Hunter said.

  She was struggling not to slip as she was climbing, but when he extended a hand to her, she deliberately ignored it.

  “I can see the same thing on the internet,” she told Hunter.

  “There’s all this fresh air,” he pointed out, undaunted.

  “There’re also mosquitoes,” she countered.

  Hunter laughed, shaking his head. “You are determined not to like this.”

  She realized that she was making noises like a spoiled brat, and that wasn’t her intent.

  “Let’s just say that I like other things better.” Even so, they weren’t out here for pleasure. “And what I really don’t like is that some psychopath sees this as their personal Shangri-la where they can wantonly do away with unsuspecting, innocent men that they lured out here.”

  He made her a promise. “We’ll get him—or her,” Hunter added, covering all bases.

  Kenzie really wanted to believe him, but as she struggled onto flatter terrain, she looked at Hunter dubiously. “Are you sure about that?”

  There was no hesitation in his voice or his manner. “I am.”

  She sighed. “I wish I was.” Moving forward, she nearly slipped again. Kenzie swallowed a curse. “I also wish I was as sure-footed as a goat,” she complained.

  The next second, she nearly slid down the side of the mountain and might have if Hunter hadn’t quickly grabbed her hand.

  “Thanks,” she muttered, embarrassed.

  He pretended that it was nothing. “Being as sure-footed as a goat comes with a price. You’d have to look like a goat, too, and I for one think that would be a terrible waste.” Hunter had an infectious grin on his face as he said it.

  “You two having fun up there?” Choi complained, bringing up the rear of their party. “You know, I wouldn’t have felt slighted if you had picked Valdez to go with you instead of me.”

  Kenzie sympathized with her partner. “You’re younger,” she pointed out.

  “Yeah, that means I have more to live for and I won’t get to do that if I wind up falling to my death on this mountain,” he grumbled.

  Hunter waved at the other detective’s complaint. “You’re not going to fall to your death. This is hardly bigger than a hill,” Hunter pointed out. “And according to the directions that Kellogg gave us,” he said, looking around once again to get his bearings, “we’re almost there.”

  “I don’t see anything yet,” Kenzie said, straining her eyes to take in as much of a panoramic view of the area as she could.

  Hunter did the same. Ten inches taller than Kenzie, he was just able to catch a glimpse of something that might have been a cabin.

  “Over there.” He pointed to something on the right as he shaded his eyes for a better view. “I think that might be it.”

  “I sure hope so,” Choi muttered. “I’m never going to complain about filing paperwork again.”

  “Sure you will,” Kenzie told her partner. “You’ve got a short memory.”

  Choi made no response.

  Going a few steps closer, Hunter was no longer wondering if he had indeed spotted the cabin that Kellogg had told them about. There it was, a sorry-looking little structure in the distance.

  “This way!” he called out, raising his voice so that the others who were following them could hear.

  With the end in sight, Kenzie got her second wind and practically sprinted the rest of the distance to reach the cabin.

  It was a rustic-looking one-story structure, the kind people might envision when thinking of Lincoln’s birthplace. Some of the wood on the sides appeared to be rotting.

  Reaching the door, Kenzie wanted nothing more than to eagerly survey the cabin, but she kept herself in check long enough to pull on a pair of rubber gloves first. If she didn’t miss her guess, a lot of people’s fingerprints were already here. She didn’t want to add to that confusion by adding her own.

  When she had finished pulling on the gloves she’d brought with her just for this purpose, Hunter was standing next to her. She noticed that he already had his rubber gloves on.

  “Ready?” he asked her, his hand on the doorknob.

  She paused to glance over her shoulder. They had an audience of six behind them.

  “So ready,” she answered.

  The second that Hunter opened the door, she knew that they had found the right place. She could swear that the smell of death was everywhere, even though at first glance there seemed to be no bodies visible.

  At least not yet, she thought, cautiously taking a step inside.

  “What do you think?” Hunter asked her after Kenzie’d had a chance to look around.

  “What do I think?” she echoed. “This must be the place,” she murmured in a voice that called to mind an old cartoon.

  The sound of plastic restlessly moving in the heated breeze only added to the sum total of the eerie atmosphere the scene generated. Kenzie drew closer to a length of torn plastic that was just hanging at a window.

  “That’s blood,” she pointed out, trying not to think past that.

  “There’s a smattering of blood over here, too,” Hunter added.

  The CSI team members were already scattering throughout the cabin, photographing and documenting everything they came in contact with.

  While they were doing that, Kenzie, Hunter and their two team members searched the cabin, looking for more evidence, something that was instantly definitive.

  There was a main room with a sofa as well as a long table that had a couple of chairs buffering it on each side. Kenzie could almost visualize the table being covered with plastic and some other fare, rather than dinner being carved up on it.

  She couldn’t help herself. Kenzie shivered.

  “Are you okay?” Hunter asked, seeing her shivering. “It’s not cold in here,” he told her.

  She could almost see it, see all the death and carnage that had transpired in this cabin. Kenzie could feel her blood running cold.

  “I disagree,” she told Hunter in a whisper.

  “Hey, Cavanaugh,” Choi called out from the next room. “Guess what I just found.”

  Not another headless torso, she hoped.

  She, Hunter and O’Hara all poured into the only other room in the cabin. It was the bedroom.

  Choi was on the floor, on his hands and knees next to the bed. He’d discovered something there. As they watched, they saw
him pull out a hacksaw whose blade was partially broken as well as a battery-powered saw.

  Getting back up, he dusted off his knees. “I think we struck gold,” Choi announced.

  “Or at least found another piece of the puzzle,” Hunter agreed.

  O’Hara had opened the only closet in the room. There was nothing in it except for wire hangers, conspicuously empty.

  “Whoever used these hangers is gone now,” O’Hara said.

  Hunter nodded. “Luckily for the Kelloggs, otherwise we’d probably be finding their bones here today,” he speculated.

  But Kenzie had other thoughts. “I don’t think so. They’re not our killer’s type. Cynthia’s the wrong gender and Bob’s too young. The target has always been men in their fifties.”

  O’Hara didn’t look convinced. “Maybe under the right circumstances, the killer would have branched out,” he suggested.

  Lord, she hoped not, although it had been known to happen.

  “Now, there’s a grim thought,” was all she allowed herself to say. Taking a deep breath to brace herself, she said to the others, “Let’s check out the grounds while we’re here.”

  “You never take us anyplace fun,” Choi complained, mimicking a high-pitched voice of a child who was on a family vacation.

  Kenzie’s mouth quirked in a smile. “Next time,” she promised, playing along.

  There was an old outhouse located just behind the cabin.

  “That has to be for show,” Hunter told Kenzie. “I saw a small bathroom inside the cabin.”

  “Maybe the cabin came with an outhouse and when whoever bought it built the cabin up a little, they decided to leave the outhouse as a piece of history,” Kenzie speculated. She cautiously drew closer to it. “I wonder if it comes with its own bats.”

  O’Hara laughed. “Well, there’s only one way to find out.”

  Playing the macho male, he moved ahead of the others and dramatically pulled open the creaky wooden door. It seemed almost to moan mournfully as he opened it and looked in.