This had been less carefully planned. You could even have called it impulsive, but it had been for all the right reasons. He knew what those were. He remembered again that man’s rude words to him, those cruel actions that had seemed to smear the purity of the forest and the waters. No more, he thought.

  The river, the beaver dam, had claimed another surge of life force.

  That ungrateful, and in fact, rude and angry man would now become part of nature, his spirit slowly ebbing into the water to combine and be one with the reeds, the brush, the call of the eagles.

  That would teach him.

  Riverman laughed. The river was like a stew. It was a cauldron of life force. It was a cradle of souls. The river was natural law. It was beyond the power of humans to stop it. The river was what it was.

  So was he. He was a servant of nature. He was the keeper of life.

  And he'd done it again. He'd placed this man on one of the rafts that he had in a secret hiding place. He'd done his work with the blade, releasing him fully to the waters. He'd then eradicated his fingerprints, because in nature, there were no egos, no identity, and he knew this had to be done. It was very important that the corpse, the sacrifice, was anonymous. It was the step to leaving all their actions in life behind.

  All their misguided doings and rude words. He seethed briefly again. That man had been so nasty! But now he was dead, Riverman consoled himself. He was nothing more than a spirit for the waters to consume. And this time, to make up for his extreme rudeness, he’d given him an extra penitence after death, along with the scoured, scarred fingertips. He’d shaved part of his hair away. It hadn’t been a good job and that was intentional. He’d wanted it to look rough, homemade and ugly, to show this man that he was not better than anyone else.

  Now, he stopped by the side of the trail, and took a fur jacket that he'd left there earlier. Now that he'd finished being in the icy waters, he was cold, and the fur around his shoulders gave him warmth and comfort.

  He considered his options with a cold, calculating mind as he walked, the canopy of trees above him, the grasses swishing at his still-wet legs.

  For sure, he was getting better, stronger, more confident. He was moving faster. He was also getting more organized.

  "Nature will be pleased," he said aloud.

  He knew that the police had to be looking for him, and that he would need to be prepared for what might follow, and to lay low if he had to, because the police were part of the human world with all its noise and interference. They were not part of his world, where the forces of nature combined into one powerful whole.

  As he walked, he saw a blackberry bush, its branches heavy with fruit. Quickly, he picked some, saying thank you to the plant for its generosity.

  The berries were sweet in his mouth. The juice stained his hands like blood and he smiled, stopping off by a small, trickling stream to rinse them. As an afterthought, he took the blade out of his belt and rinsed that again, too. The spirits would be pleased it was clean, and ready to kill again.

  Yes, the police might be looking. But how many people would there be looking for one man, in this vast park? And it wasn't as if he stayed in the park. He was able to come and go, without being detected.

  He would be ready for this one. He would be on the lookout for the police. And he would be prepared to hide out.

  "You can't stop me," he said aloud. "I am a servant of nature."

  He felt a shudder of pleasure ripple down his spine.

  The river was nature's cleansing force, and he was the man to deliver it. He felt elated again at having discovered this calling to serve. How wonderful it was to do such important work.

  "I will serve," he said, his voice carrying through the trees. "I will not fail you."

  What a lucky man he was, and what a beautiful interlude this had been. But now, Riverman knew he had to get out of the area. He couldn’t linger here, because there were many more people who needed his special type of correction, and not all of them were currently in the park. In fact, meeting this man here had been the exception.

  Luckily, he had made quite a few rafts. More than he needed. Just as well, because he hadn't thought that there would be times when he could act on the spur of the moment to bring his sacrifices to their natural end. It was surprising and pleasing to think that he could do that, and in fact it was making him rethink his plans.

  “I must say, it opens up a world of possibilities,” he said to himself thoughtfully. He’d always thought that his sacrifices would require careful planning before they were taken, but now, he saw that this wasn’t so. He was clever enough to make fast plans when he had to.

  And he had an idea in his mind, just a little seed, of where he needed to go next. And who he needed to take.

  "Oh, I can't wait to bring you full circle, to return you to the water and the sky, to let the fishes feed on you," he muttered, knowing that the words were overly poetic but liking them anyway.

  People didn't understand him. Nobody understood him. But nobody needed to. The people that mattered to him were not people at all. They were the rocks in the river, the sentinels, the swimming beavers, and the leaping fish.

  He started to run through the trees, reliving the thrill of the hunt. He knew the body would be discovered soon, and he needed to be prepared for what would follow.

  Was it wrong of him to feel satisfaction at the thought of people’s shock at seeing his work, that beautiful scene set out?

  No, he told himself, of course it wasn’t wrong. Nor was it wrong for him to feel a pleasant thrill at the thought of killing again.

  It was a bonus, but it wasn’t his reason for doing it, he reminded himself. His reason was far more important. He was doing it for the natural world.

  Riverman felt a cold thrill of satisfaction as he thought of making more scenes like this, and becoming famous for what he did to those who did him wrong.

  Or rather, those who wronged nature.

  Better still, he’d been able to brag, just a little, because there were people out there who understood him. Oh, yes, just like the roots of the trees, there was a silent underground network of those that he knew, and he’d tapped into it. Anonymously of course.

  He reached one of the small exits that pedestrians could use, unnoticed, secluded, and with no cameras around.

  He slipped out of it and quietly left the park, reciting to himself in a soft voice the address where he was heading next.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  "Another murder?" May squeaked out the words, causing Owen, who was busy checking the ranger's alibi on his phone, to look around sharply.

  This was the most terrible scenario they could have imagined. The killer had struck again.

  "Where is the body?" she said more quietly.

  "It's in another of those dams," Sheriff Jack said. "I'm going to send you the coordinates now. It's in a natural dam, just outside the park, near the far west border."

  "We'll be there as soon as we can," May said.

  Not yet knowing the time of death of this new victim, it was still important to check the ranger's alibi, and Owen completed this as fast as possible. Owen gave a nod when he was done, and May knew that nod meant that the alibi was solid and there was no room for any doubt.

  "Let's go," he said to May. Turning to the ranger, he said, “We’ve finished our questioning, and you can go. Thanks for the information.”

  The ranger nodded, and continued along the trail, with shears snipping as he went, and May and Owen rushed back the way they’d come, all the way to the parking lot. Then, they jumped into their car and headed west. May felt anxiety surging inside her. Another death. Was this an older body just found, or was it a more recent kill?

  Where was this killer now? She felt a sense of unease that he was at large, in this park or the surrounding area, a few steps ahead, and maybe even watching them.

  "It's this way," Owen said, glancing down at the map and pointing to a track that led from the main road and onto a side pathway. The car jerked and bounced as it traversed the uneven, stony ground, sliding in the mud.

  This was, at least, the quickest shortcut to the site. And as they crested a hill, May saw the flash of lights that indicated police cars ahead.

  Would this scene give them any further clues about the killer?

  She jumped out of the car and she and Owen hurried over to where Sheriff Jack was climbing out of his cruiser, having also just arrived.

  In silence, the three of them walked down to the dam. May's stomach was churning. She breathed deeply, trying to prepare herself as best she could for another of these macabre scenes.

  There it was. An almost identical looking wooden raft, floating and eddying within a small, natural dam within the river.

  This time, May saw with a flash of surprise that the victim was a man, lashed to the raft with the same coarse ropes. On his plaid shirt, she could clearly see the stab mark to the heart that would have killed him. Hopefully, it had done so instantly. She couldn’t bear to think that he might have suffered.

  "I really hope he was dead before those fingerprints were removed," she whispered, looking again at the way that the prints had been eradicated.

  Andy Baker was waist deep in the dam, busy examining the body in situ. He must have been one of the first on the scene, May guessed, and was doing the work he could, while waiting for others to arrive so that the body and the raft could be removed from its watery grave.

  He looked up when May spoke, his face looking drawn and grim.

  "Yes, May, it looks as if the fingerprint removal was done after death. There’s no sign of a struggle. I doubt he was more than semi-conscious when killed, as these ropes around his wrists have not even pulled tight," he said.

  That gave May some comfort. But as she looked more closely, she saw other, troubling things.

  "Is his hair partially shaved?" This was getting stranger and stranger. How was it possible to get into such a warped mind, to understand this man’s actions?

  "Yes, it’s been shaved," Andy said. May peered down, feeling uneasy all over again to see the crude, basic strokes of a knife or perhaps a razor. Why had the killer added this detail to the crime scene? Why had he done this?

  A thought occurred to her that maybe, with the previous victim having had long hair, he might have been able to chop off a lock that they had not yet noticed. So he might be taking trophies, or some other strange evidence that was important to him. Maybe he'd just gone more overboard this time.

  "How recent is this kill?" she asked.

  "Only a couple of hours. It's very recent," Andy said with regret in his voice.

  May's eyes widened. She looked around at the additional police cars arriving on the scene, and the forensic team arriving too.

  "Who found it?" she asked.

  Sheriff Jack, who had been speaking to police already on the scene, turned to her.

  "Two hikers, two ladies in the park saw the raft floating in the dam. They called the police immediately, and went to the nearest road to meet them. They were not keen to go back to the scene, understandably," Jack said. "One of the police took a statement from them at the roadside and then said they could go."

  May couldn't blame them. She was glad for their immediate, responsible actions of getting police here.

  "Any tracks? Any footprints?" She walked down to the dam, being careful not to step over any tracks that were already there.

  She saw a lot of footprints in the grass, and the sandy soil, but they were shallow and she couldn't even make out the pattern of a tread. He'd chosen a clever way in, where there was no thick mud to leave a direct print. And this looked to be a well-used trail. In the muddy areas, there were numerous prints - but the mud was so wet they hadn't held. The weather wasn't helping them here.

  “We’re going to set up roadblocks in the area,” Sheriff Jack was saying authoritatively. “On the roads leading to and from the park. And we need to search the parking lots again for abandoned or unclaimed vehicles. Jensen, Briggs, if you two want to go and do that now, we can run a check on plates, and see if any are still there in the morning.”

  With the logistics being handled, May knew that Jack was freeing up herself and Owen to do deeper research. Because, if this killer was going to be found soon, an important step might be to get into his mind.

  Looking again at the scene, now that May was getting over the shock of seeing this new victim, she realized this was a killer who knew the park well. He even knew where to find these strange natural dams. This one was secluded and off the beaten track. He must have known about it and been into the park many times before. Was that something they could use to find him, she wondered.

  "I'm getting the impression that this man must live in an alternative reality," Owen muttered.

  May nodded. "This is all just so strange. Why do this? Why go to all the trouble? It must have significance to him."

  “Maybe it’s just giving him a thrill.”

  “We have to get into his mind.”

  “Yes, yes. I know we do.”

  May was reassured they were thinking along the same lines.

  Was it a deranged creation of his own, or was he copying someone else's gory artwork? Where could they look for pointers to this man, who clearly knew the area and terrain well enough to be able to melt into the wilderness and disappear?

  "Head shaving can be a sign of penitence," she said thoughtfully, wondering if that might be a reason for this action.

  “Can it?” Owen sounded, briefly, as if his mind wasn’t on the topic. Or maybe he thought she was wrong.

  “I think so. I remember reading about it.”

  Owen nodded, looking distracted all over again. With a flash of unwanted insight, May realized he hadn’t looked at her directly during this conversation. Not once. And he’d taken care not to touch her either.

  Her unease deepened, because she was worried that Owen might have a problem with her, personally.

  They'd had issues before, and May thought that they had gotten over them. But now, thinking back over this silence between them, his awkward behavior that entire day, she felt a sharper worry.

  Was her deputy, her boyfriend, this man she cared about so deeply, going to end up breaking up with her? The thought was like a wash of icy water down her back. But once it was in her mind, it wouldn't leave.

  "I think we need to go back to the police station," she said. "We need to try and research this whole head shaving, penitence theory. Perhaps if we do, we'll find something on it - someone arrested for it, or some other case history."

  As soon as they were in the car, she promised herself she was going to ask Owen if he had any problems with her right now that she hadn’t known about. At least she'd then know about the upcoming romantic disaster - or not.

  In just one minute, May resolved, she'd gather her courage and ask.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  May's resolve to find out about her relationship problems was derailed when her phone rang as they were getting into the car. It was Kerry on her caller ID.

  Until that moment, May had been so distracted by her current case that she hadn’t had time to think about what Kerry was having to deal with, which was probably just as well. Now, anxiety and worry flooded in. What had she found?

  As she picked up the call, May was shocked to notice the time. It was already after five p.m. and getting dark.

  The stress of the case had actually forced that grinning skeleton out of May's mind for a while, but now it was back there, in all its vivid creepiness. Kerry had been keeping tabs on the forensic search, and she might have had a chance to communicate with Harriet, too.

  All her anxiety on that subject rushed back.

  "Any news on the search of the room, sis?" Thinking of Owen beside her in the car, she switched the phone to speaker.

  The problems she'd previously had between herself and Owen were mostly centered around the fact he felt hurt that she hadn't shared with him what was happening in her life. May had learned that, thanks to the disaster of her sister disappearing, she had ended up being a person who was reluctant to trust and to share. She kept things to herself and it had impacted her and Owen’s communication.

  That was something she hadn't known about herself. It was a flaw that was going to get in the way of any relationship. May was determined to fix this character flaw she hadn’t even known she had.

  After the discovery of that room and its contents, she’d briefly messaged Owen, to tell him the basic details. But she'd said she wasn't ready to talk about it and he had messaged back that he understood.

  Now, at least, he'd be able to hear the update. Although if he already had concerns about their relationship again, it might be too little, too late, she worried.

  "Yes, there is news," Kerry said briskly.

  "What's is it?" May said. Glancing at Owen, she saw the worry in his eyes, too.

  "The forensic team has been working all day, going through all the evidence to be found in that room, and they've discovered some things that are very strange."

  May didn't even want to cast her mind back to that musty smelling room with its macabre evidence. Had she been looking at Lauren's skull? The thought was just too shocking, too dismaying for words.

  "What have they found?" she asked, feeling scared to learn.

  "Many different hairs. And a few small trophies, random personal things - like bracelets, a purse, a hair tie."

  May thought back to the safe that they had previously found, where they discovered the killer had stashed more of these trophies. It pointed the way to him working for years, taking these women, holding them, and then most probably, May guessed, killing them. It was terrible to think that this had happened to Lauren but she knew she needed to be brave and face up to the harsh truth that her sister had been targeted by a dangerous psychopath and was no longer alive.

  She heard Owen gasp in a concerned breath and glance at her.

  "Is there any evidence yet about who this killer is?" she asked, hearing the desperation in her own voice. While forensics was at work piecing together the clues in this secret room, how could they find out who this monster had been - and where he was now?