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There was nothing like it, nothing like the color of blood on the snow on a sunlit day. It was a riveting hue, brilliant and vivid against the golden rays shooting down from the royal blue sky. It was spattered in a clump and led...just over the next rise.
She’d thought he was behind her.
The killer.
But...
She couldn’t just stand there in indecision.
But she didn’t know what the hell to do. Was the killer behind her? Or had he somehow managed to move ahead?
No, that couldn’t be the case. She knew that he had seen her at the Mansion, knew that he’d still been in there, knew that he had heard her leave...
And was in pursuit.
There was only one way to go—forward. Yet she dreaded every step because now...
Now she followed a tiny trickle of blood over the next rise of snow.
Stopping had been a mistake; her body seemed to scream now at movement, even though she wasn’t running. She was walking slowly and carefully over the rise...
And then she saw her.
Dead in the snow.
Amelia Carson, her raven-black hair as startling as the color of the blood against the sea of white around her. She was faceup, arms stretched out as if she were embracing the sun or making a snow angel beneath it.
With her arms only. She was in two pieces, cut in half at the waist.
Her lower body and limbs lay just a few feet away, a pool of blood separating them.
She had met Amelia Carson—celebrity hostess of many a short-lived TV show—only once. But she had met her. She knew her. And here she was...
Who else was dead?
She didn’t even know! She’d seen the carnage at the Mansion and heard the movement upstairs and then the footsteps on the steps...
Clara stood still, her breath caught in her chest. She needed to think, but it seemed that her mind was as numb as her limbs. This scene had been displayed to strike fear and terror, to paralyze...
And it worked.
It was as if she was frozen.
* * *
Not your usual murder.
Though what was usual about murder?
And did it matter to Natalie Fontaine now that she had been victimized whether her death had been usual?
Natalie hadn’t been killed for her money or possessions; she hadn’t been sexually assaulted. It didn’t seem that the act had been carried out in a fit of passion—though a great deal of thought and strength had gone into the execution of the deed.
Thor could still close his eyes and picture the room in the hotel, just as they had seen it, the body curled on the bed in what appeared to be a sleeping position. According to the medical examiner, the killer had strangled his victim before laying her out as he had, as if she were curled up...
Except her head was missing. It had been left on the dresser for all to see the minute the door was opened.
It was the head that had immediately assured the hotel staff that foul play had occurred.
The scene had been arranged like a tableau. It haunted Thor, and he knew he had viewed such a scene before...
In a picture? In an old crime scene photo?
Memory eluded him, so he’d made notes of all the facts.
Joe Mason of hotel security had come up because some neighboring guests had dialed the desk about a disturbance.
Mason had dutifully gone to the room, called out, tapped and banged for entry, and then, receiving no response, opened the door at 5:35 a.m.
The FBI offices in Anchorage and across the country had been alerted soon after.
The crime scene had filled with members of different law enforcement agencies and forensic experts. Most of their information had been gleaned slowly and painstakingly from Misty Blaine, Natalie’s production assistant, who had just been getting dressed for the day in her room on the first floor. As experts learned more and more, they began to fear for others.
Law enforcement had to get out to Black Bear Island and find the people Natalie Fontaine had been scheduled to work with that morning.
A surprise had been planned for that day—not the horrifying one that had befallen her after all, but something gruesomely similar.
All in the name of reality TV.
And so Thor and Mike were now in a coast guard vessel, headed out to Black Bear Island.
“Ironic,” Mike murmured.
Yes, it was. Misty Blaine had told them about the scene that was to be staged later that day. The cast of the Celtic American Cruise Line’s Saturday-night performance on the Fate ship had been told that a film company would be interviewing them for their show Vacation USA. Unbeknownst to them, the cast was actually going to be featured on the show Gotcha, a knockoff of Candid Camera and Punk’d. Yes. Ironic.
The scenery that they encountered on their way was, in Thor’s opinion, some of the most beautiful and spectacular to be viewed anywhere on earth. Crystal-blue waters, peaks of white ice rising, a sky clear and majestic.
And Black Bear Island before them.
The main problem with the island was that not even the newest, “smartest” smartphone worked out there.
Natalie Fontaine should have arrived that morning. Ready to greet her first interviewee for the day.
Four members of Natalie’s film crew were also supposed to be out on the island already—cameraman Tommy Marchant, sound technician Becca Marle, hostess Amelia Carson and fabricator Nate Mahoney. Joining them should have been four members of the cast and crew of Celtic American Cruise Line’s Broadway-style Saturday-night show.
Also expected were the island’s caretaker, Justin Crowley, along with the property manager, or glorified housekeeper—his wife, Magda.
The film crew was not answering the radio. Neither were Mr. or Mrs. Crowley.
Thor chafed inwardly, dreading what they might find, anxious to get there.
He’d been chafing all day, he knew.
The dream; the nightmare.
And now Jackson was coming, as well.
He tried to breathe. Usually, being on the water was like receiving some kind of a cleansing balm on the heart and soul. Nowhere else in the world was the air so crisp and clean.
The wind was in his hair, the sun on his face, as the ferry approached the rugged terrain of the island. There were no roads here that allowed for cars—the ferry gave transport to snowmobiles and dogsleds, the only conveyances that could bring supplies to the island.
Pity that it was privately held; it should have been part of the national park system—a little piece of crystal heaven for the world to enjoy. It was elevated to such a height that even in summer, when the average mean temperature of Seward hovered around sixty degrees, there was often snow on the ground. Snow also covered the many peaks that rose in haphazard beauty here and there, dotted with crystal lakes, birds and animals finding refuge among them.
The island wasn’t owned by the government or the public; it was the property of an absentee landowner, Marc Kimball, oil baron and Wall Street phenomenon. Enfield had assured Thor that Kimball had been advised via his assistant—a very soft-spoken woman named Emmy Vincenzo, who Enfield hoped had truly comprehended the severity of his message—that Natalie Fontaine had been murdered and police and FBI would be headed to the island in her stead. Kimball had rented the island and its properties out to Natalie Fontaine and her Wickedly Weird Productions, and was expecting their film crew this morning.
Thor had read the folder that had been left for him on the chopper to Seward—and listened to Misty Blaine’s panicky and barely coherent explanation of the day of filming that had been planned. None of it was good; all of it added ridiculousness to what was already bizarre, gruesome and horrible.
As far as the film company, Wickedly Weird Productions, went...
To be fair, Thor conceded, some of their reality TV was interesting. They did shows that dealt with roadside diners, special tours that no one should miss and unusual cities or areas in the United States. He had a feeling that the real powers that be at the film studios loved history and travel—but they also needed to make money.
That meant that some of their shows were, at best, juvenile.
Those were the programs that were mostly popular with a young crowd—the kind of viewers who found fart jokes hilarious and also seemed to enjoy the distress or humiliation of those caught in the wheels of their “Gotcha!” factory.
Wickedly Weird Productions had rented two of the main properties on Black Bear Island. They included the Mansion, a sumptuous house that had begun its existence as a log cabin only to become something of a modern-day castle, and the Alaska Hut, a “rustic” lodge with eight or nine bedrooms, a huge living room, kitchen, dining room and expansive porches.
The crew was supposedly filming a piece on the Celtic American Cruise Line’s entertainment venues—that’s what the cast members from the ship believed, and what they thought they were signing release forms for. However, the real plan for the day had been to film a segment for their show Gotcha.
Other agents and the Alaska State Troopers were still busy going through procedure in Seward; dealing with the crime scene units, possible witnesses, hotel staff and more. But Thor and Mike and three officers were on this trail—hoping to find that Natalie’s crew and the cast of the Fate were patiently waiting for their leader or already in the midst of filming.
In short, that they were all alive and well.
And it might be very difficult to figure that out.
Because, according to Misty Blaine, they were going to find a scene of carnage—blood and destruction—whether it was real or not.
Misty had supplied them with the file folder on the day’s intended shoot. Wickedly Weird Productions had filled the Mansion and the Alaska Hut with bloody mock-murder scenes. Scenes meant to terrify the Fate cast. Of course, before anyone succumbed to their terror—the film crew would jump out and scream, “Gotcha!”
“Almost there,” Thor heard. He turned around. Lieutenant Bill Meyer, with the Alaska State Troopers, approached them.
“We’ve got a storage shed near the docks,” Bill told them. “We don’t have any permanent force here—a good majority of the year, no one is out here at all. But the owner paid for the snowmobiles we keep. There’s been trouble before, of course. One rush to the hospital. Wild party and a man wound up outside naked and nearly froze to death. Other than that...let’s see, alcohol poisoning, a fight, one time a break-in...mostly, people behaving badly. Not lethally.”
“Thanks,” Thor said. He liked the cops he and Mike were working with—then again, he liked cops in general. His father had taught him from a young age that most were decent and hardworking and doing their best. Only a few were assholes—which he assumed was true in any vocation. Bill Meyer was a good guy, he knew. They’d worked together before. Bill had been assigned to Anchorage for a year and he’d spent many of his off-hours finding the down-and-outers and trying to get them help.
The Coast Guard cutter arrived at the one long dock the island offered. Captain Filmore handed out walkie-talkies to Thor, Mike, and Bill Meyer and his men, instructing them to keep close contact.
“There’s no telling what you’ll encounter, but...”
“We’re not going to be meeting an army,” Mike said.
“But, a strong man with some lethal weapons,” Thor said. “Perhaps meeting up with a number of accomplices? Thing is, to escape the hotel security, it had to be someone who appeared to be part of the hotel staff. You didn’t have just anyone doing that. You had someone with an extremely sharp weapon—and the strength to make that weapon cut through flesh and bone.”
Someone who might not even be on the island—who might be chopping off more heads back in Seward.
Then again...
They might find a slew of dead right here. Oh, wait. They definitely would; he just hoped the dead were all mannequins and stage props.
“Yeah. Anyway, watch your backs,” the captain said.
“Will do,” Meyer murmured. Thor and the others nodded.
Ten minutes later, they were on the snowmobiles, headed to the Mansion. And then another ten minutes, riding through the snow that almost continually covered the island, brought them to their destination—and a scene of utter chaos.
Bodies strewn here and there, blood sprayed everywhere.
Thor hunkered down by the first body.
He looked up at Mike. “Mannequin,” he said.
Bill Meyer had hurried on to another. “Fake blood,” he called.
Thor moved through the downstairs, stopping at each body—it was all part of the staged scene that the assistant producer had told them about.
“Someone thought that this would be funny?” Mike asked with disgust.
“Apparently,” Thor said, rising after his inspection of the last “corpse.”
“They just had to come to Alaska,” Bill Meyer muttered.
“Thing is,” Thor said, “where is the film crew? And where is the cast?”
“Alaska Hut—or here, somewhere, in all this. I’ll take the upstairs,” Mike said. “We may find real bodies yet. Fellows? A hand?” he asked the state police officers.
They nodded and started to follow him up the stairs to the many rooms above. “Man, this is sick!” one of them muttered.
“I’m on the exterior,” Thor said.
Near the top landing, Mike nodded.
Thor headed out. There were no snowmobile tracks leaving the Mansion, but there had been precipitation in the last few hours, so a path might have easily been covered.
He kept looking. And that was when he found the trail of footsteps.
And he began to follow it.
* * *
