The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted: A Psychological Thriller (33 page)

Highway Ten, the region’s time-honored thoroughfare, edges its way along the town’s outskirts. It captures the classic image Madison Avenue has, for years, tried duplicating in both TV and print ads: terrain dominated by flat, dusty stretches of sun-beaten blacktop, along with nostalgic-looking filling stations and greasy-spoon diners, each decked out in luminous, wandering neon. You can almost hear the scratchy old vinyl 45s spinning in the background as an unforgiving sun bakes the midday air, forcing temperatures to teeter just a few degrees beyond livable. It’s not Route 66, but it’s close, and Faith is about as apple pie as any town can get without tasting too saccharine.

The much-celebrated annual fair and rodeo begins on the Fourth of July, an unofficial induction to the dog days. Arcade games bang and clang, organ music swells, and auctioneers prattle. Through the causeway, the smell of fried grease and cotton candy locks horns with the moist, earthy tang of livestock, while amusement park rides dance in the distance against a moonlit sky. The whole scene is noisy, chaotic, and in its own sort of way, enchanting—a rhythm of life, effortlessly weaving together into one pleasing rhapsody. This is Faith at its best: a picture-perfect snapshot of good old Americana.

Not for a second could anyone imagine that the picture had another side. Nobody knew that beneath the broad smiles, the beaming faces, and the stirring moments—beneath the surface—hid something else.

Chapter One

Saddleback Ranch

Faith, New Mexico

The clock struck midnight.

Something in the air seemed to change. Something sudden, mysterious, and filled with bad intent. Wind-driven clouds gained momentum, swirling into the path of a fiery moon.

What once was settled began to stir. Where there had been order, there was unrest, and from the gathering darkness, new life emerged.

The sort born of pure evil.

Deputy Bradley Witherspoon felt an odd chill run through his body but didn’t know why. He’d parked along a shadowy frontage road running parallel to the Saddleback Ranch, one of Faith’s oldest and more established cattle producers. Barely drivable and punished by years of neglect, deputies often referred to the old dirt path as the Refueling Station
.
Translation: the perfect spot to stay beneath the radar and catch-up on much-needed sleep. For those working swing shift, it seemed a good place to find refuge and restore sanity—or at least meet up with it for a brief visit.

On a scale of slim to none, chances wavered near zero that anyone would bother making the trip to check on the deputies’ whereabouts. One needed only travel a few feet down the pitted path to understand why: a vigilant pack of cattle dogs kept close watch over the property. More than capable of making themselves heard, they remained on the lookout for the first sign of unwelcome company. This gave the deputies enough warning to wake up and look sharp in the unlikely event someone
did
arrive to check on them. With all those safeguards, you might think it difficult to catch a deputy dozing off.

You would be wrong.

Witherspoon caught himself nodding off several times before drifting toward a more restful state of sleep that didn’t last long. He woke to the sound of stirring behind his seat, a rustling noise, like plastic bags rubbing together. Before he could turn around and investigate, he took a swift blow to the head from something cold and heavy, something metal. Right away, he felt a warm liquid trail from his ear. Blood trickled alongside his neck, then into his lap where it began to pool.

He tried getting his bearings, but another piece of thick metal slammed into him, this time just below his Adam’s apple; it coiled around his neck, pulling him straight back, jerking him hard against the headrest.

Panic struck. Witherspoon reached up instinctively with both hands, choking for air, trying frantically to pry the hook loose. But before he could free himself, the other hook came swooping down, landing inside his mouth, piercing skin, and driving a hole through the side of his cheek. Like a catfish snagged on a line, he felt his jaw jerk wide open, far beyond its normal limits. The skin on his neck and face tightened as both hooks worked in unison, ratcheting into flesh, stretching it in directions it was never supposed to move.

Bradley Witherspoon understood his life was about to end. He knew each shallow breath could be his last. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he thought about his wife, his kids, about never seeing them again. Then he prayed for death to come quickly and end his pain and suffering.

No such luck.

The deputy felt a sharp tug, followed by an intense rush of pain as his captor yanked him between the two front seats and toward the back. The assailant pulled him out the rear door—hook still lodged inside his cheek—and launched forward, leading the deputy by the mouth. Witherspoon let out a shrill, childlike scream. His attacker answered back by jerking the hook harder, continuing to drag him.

In a haphazard, clumsy manner, Witherspoon scrambled across the ground on all fours in a desperate attempt to keep pace. The slower he moved, the more intense the pain became as the forward movement tugged at his flesh. He wanted to look up at his assailant but could not. The hook inside his cheek assured it. Turning his head would have driven the hook deeper into his skin.

Witherspoon could not keep up any longer. His body was just too weak. He stumbled, lurched forward, and felt his skin split and separate as the hook sliced across his cheek, shifting position, and penetrating deep into the roof of his mouth. From there, it moved higher into his sinus canal. Blood began draining into the back of his throat. He choked as it spilled out from his mouth and down the front of his chin.

Their journey ended at the foot of an old feed shed topped off with a rusty metal roof. The assailant grabbed Witherspoon by the shoulders, pushed his heel into the small of his back, then shoved him forward several feet where he slammed into the ground, face first.

He tried to get up but the attacker leaped on top of him. Grabbing a lock of hair, he yanked the deputy’s head close to his lips and in a breathy voice whispered, “Just curious: how’s it feel to know you’re about to die?”

Witherspoon recognized the voice. He felt his gut tighten, then a warm, wet sensation slowly crawl between his legs.

Chapter Two

Saddleback Ranch

Faith, New Mexico

When Assistant Sheriff Cameron Dawson arrived on scene, he barely recognized the dark, obscure object hanging stiffly in the distance; it looked like an old blanket left out to dry. But as he drew closer, he began to see what—or
who—
it was. As soon as he made the connection, he felt the bile rise up, burning through his throat.

The scent of death hung heavy in the air, a coppery, metallic odor—blood, and far too much of it. The corpse dangled upside-down from the roof of the shed, suspended by a hook lodged into the scrotum.

Cameron gazed at the two deputies standing guard, their expressions somber, then returned his attention to the victim.
The weapon of choice: a pair of hay hooks—thick, curved metal fashioned into crooks with spear-like tips, and at the other end, heavy, wooden grips resembling shovel handles with leather cuffs draped around them for better grabbing power. Ranchers use the implements to move large bales of hay weighing more than seventy-five pounds, thrusting the sharp, honed hooks into each end to lift them.

The killer had stripped the body nude, exhibiting it in a manner so peculiar, so hideous it barely looked human. Bent in two at the waist, it gave the illusion of being half its normal size. As Cameron moved his gaze downward, he noticed the ankles and wrists were sliced vertically, then hogtied. This caused the spine to bow and the body to bleed out, while giving it a grotesque, humpbacked appearance. The hook lodged into the groin came straight up between the legs, past the buttocks, with a rope tied to the handle. The other hook stuck out of his mouth, which hung wide-open, leaving the eerie impression of an eternal, silent scream.

Cameron moved closer. On the back of one arm, a dried ribbon of blood ran down past the wrist to a drooping hand, and then alongside the index finger. From there, it had broken away, where it joined a large pool on the ground.

The killer had created a crude hoisting device to lift the body, tying one end of the rope to the steel push-bars on Witherspoon’s squad car. The other went toward the shed, where it looped over a steel-beamed roof support, then straight down to the hook’s handle. The perp only needed to back the vehicle up, hoisting the body, where it remained suspended in midair.

This was not the Bradley Witherspoon Cameron remembered, athletic, vibrant, good-looking. This
object
—this tangled mass of flesh hanging before him like a side of beef—bore no resemblance to the man with whom he’d worked.

Cameron’s horror turned to disgust, which quickly erupted into rage. He looked up at the deputies almost as if demanding an explanation for what had happened. They answered back with blank, hesitant expressions, breaking eye contact, looking off to the side—anywhere but across the path of his glare. Realizing he’d unnerved them, he looked away.

Cameron moved behind the body, and something instantly caught his attention. He tilted his head, knelt, then focused on a spot just below the right rear shoulder blade.

“Sir?” offered Deputy Jim Avello, wondering what his boss had seen.

Cameron didn’t respond. He just stared, eyes narrow, head jutted forward, gaze immovable.

“Sir?” Avello repeated.

“Jim,” Cameron finally said, his attention fixed on the body. “Go and get the metal briefcase from my car.”

Avello hurried toward the vehicle, pulled out the briefcase, then came back.

“Tweezers,” Cameron ordered, holding out his palm, eyes still focused on the one spot.

Avello flipped open the briefcase, found the tweezers, and placed them in Cameron’s hand.

With great care, the sheriff moved the implement toward the victim, mindful not to disturb the dried blood, debris, or scratch marks on the skin. He pinched something, then held it up to the light.

Resting between the tweezers was what appeared to be a tiny gemstone fragment, black, and no bigger than the tip of a ballpoint pen. Cameron wiped it clean on his pant leg, then tilted it back and forth, watching it twinkle in the reflected morning sunlight.

“Evidence bag,” he said, loudly, to no one in particular.

Avello reached inside the briefcase, producing a clear plastic bag. He handed it to Cameron who lowered the chip inside, then sealed it.

Avello glanced up at him.

Cameron said, “Looks like our killer left us a little surprise.”

Chapter Three

City Morgue

Faith, New Mexico

A chill cut through Cameron’s body, making goose bumps swell along his arm. He shivered and rubbed a palm against his skin, wondering if his reaction was from the room’s coldness or because he was standing over Bradley Witherspoon’s remains.

Cameron’s boss, Sheriff Frank Donato, did not appear cold at all—he’d come dressed appropriately, wrapped in a cloak of despair. As Cameron’s shock began to fade, Frank’s had just begun. He looked up from the body toward Cameron, trying to gauge his reaction, then let out a heavy sigh, one that seemed to express what he could not say. The sheriff’s department was a family, and a close one. They’d just lost a brother in the most violent, brutal way imaginable … and that wasn’t all.

Also gone was the sense of security they’d once enjoyed while protecting and serving their community. There had never been much reason to worry about their safety before—not in a town as small as Faith; it just wasn’t a concern. The deputies knew they faced potential dangers on the job, but that possibility seemed remote. Now Bradley Witherspoon’s murder had changed that.

As for the locals, the word
homicide
might as well have been part of some foreign dialect. The only murders any of them had ever witnessed were the kind they watched on television. Things like this happened in other places. Not in Faith. Theirs was a peaceful, close-knit community, the kind where everybody seemed to know one another, if not on a first-name basis, then certainly by sight, where a trip to the local diner felt more like a social event than a meal. The victim being a sheriff’s deputy made matters even worse. After all, if the person who was supposed to protect them wasn’t safe, where did that leave
them
?

Earlier that morning, Frank had to perform a duty he hoped he’d never have to do: tell a family member their loved one was killed on the job. As soon as Bradley’s wife opened the door and saw Frank’s expression, she knew something horrible had happened. He watched her cheeks go from rosy-red to lily-white within seconds, her expression turn blank. She collapsed into his arms, burying her face in his shoulder, and letting out an agonizing wail.