Lone Hunter: Will Finch Mystery Thriller Series Book 3 Read online

  One billion dollars.

  Two killers.

  Three ways to die.

  Inspired by true events.

  ※

  ~ Bonus Features ~

  Be sure to review the Bonus Features

  available at the conclusion of Lone Hunter.

  ※ — ONE — ※

  APRIL HAD COME and gone, yet winter still held young Alexei Malinin in its grip. He leaned against a denuded birch tree, the bark stripped up to the lowest limbs by ravenous deer. The snow rose over the tops of his leather boots, and his wool mittens, a Christmas gift from his Baba Tatiana, were clotted with ice above his knuckles. He tugged the parka hood over his hat and shivered.

  Along the trapline stood the first of six snares he’d set with his grandfather, Ded Vitaly. The wire contraption consisted of a thin strand of steel tied to the base of a birch tree, then buried under the snow up to the fist-sized noose that Ded Vitaly had twisted into shape and set against two twigs peeled from a limb of the tree. They’d baited the front and back of the trap with raw carrot shavings.

  “Don’t touch the bait with your bare hands,” Ded Vitaly had warned him, his breath spiraling from his mouth in long scrolls. “If the rabbits, or any other creatures can smell you, they’ll high-tail it out of here. Then we all go hungry.”

  “They can smell people, Ded?”

  “Their mothers teach them. Just like Mat teaches you, yes?”

  Alexei thought about the lessons that parents can teach their children. Before he’d died, Alexei’s father had taught him what he called the most important rule of the hunter: “When you kill an animal, do it quickly and in one blow. Never add to its suffering.”

  All fine and good, Alexei thought as he curled his freezing fingers into the palms of his hands. But now that he stood here alone, stood here watching the white hare struggling in the wire noose, how was he to do it? How to bring this swift and merciful death to the animal twitching in utter exhaustion before him?

  But he knew the answer. When enough time had passed, when he understood the terror in the animal’s eyes — and after he realized that if he released this wounded creature from the snare he would condemn it to a horrible death in the teeth of a fox or wolf — then Alexei unbuttoned his parka and from the holster on his belt he drew the Nagant pistol that Ded Vitaly had given him that morning after breakfast. His feet rose and fell through the heavy snowpack as he approached the hare. He counted the eleven steps that carried him within inches of the animal. He pointed the barrel of the pistol at the creature’s soaking head. He saw the thin sheen of ice that coated the whiskers stemming from the hare’s snout. The animal was already half frozen to death. Then Alexei paused, cocked the weapon and murmured a brief prayer.

  “You have been given to me and it is right that I should take you.”

  He fired the Nagant and the recoil snapped his hand backward. Immediately a second — accidental — round discharged into the gray winter sky. He felt the air compress as the stray bullet passed his cheek. In the hills above the open field behind him he heard both shots echo twice: CRACK-crack, CRACK-crack.

  “That could have been you!” He brushed his cheek with his mitten and checked it for blood. Nothing. “Lucky.” He admonished himself and swore to be more careful next time.

  Then he drew the game bag from his backpack, leaned over and extracted the hare from the wire snare. He took a few seconds to inspect where the bullet had penetrated the skull and then set the carcass in the hopsack. He took another moment to consider how he felt. His first kill on his own; it should seem special he thought. But since he couldn’t feel much more than the cold in his hands and feet, he reset the trap, set fresh bait on both sides of the wire noose and moved up the trap line to the next snare.

  An hour later he’d taken three rabbits from the snares. He moved along the forest edge keeping the snow-covered pasture on his left. The cold had numbed his arms and legs now and he knew enough not to let the chill enter his chest and belly. Another ten minutes, he decided, and he would turn back to the dacha.

  As he approached the fourth trap he hesitated. Was someone ahead of him? A poacher pulling something from the snare? He stood at the side of a fir tree and studied the thief from the distance. He could make out someone in a dark coat leaning over his prey, tugging hungrily at the dead creature. Alexei gripped the pistol in his hand and wondered what to do. Rather than shoot first, he should call out to the poacher. Maybe he could explain himself, explain this brazen theft.

  “Hey, you! That’s my trap you’re messing with!”

  The figure stood, turned to face him with a brief snarl.

  A bear.

  Alexei felt his heart stop, then beat in double-time as a burst of adrenalin pulsed through his body. He stood his ground and leveled the pistol at the beast. A moment of silence passed between them, a hesitation in which Alexei tried to guess the distance to the bear and wondered if the three shots left in the Nagant could save him if the bear attacked. More important, could he steady his hand and wait for the bear to charge within a meter of his shaking body — and then fire all three shots into the beast’s snarling mouth?

  The bear lifted his nose to the wind. His nostrils flared, his long tongue licked a spittle of blood from his snout. He appeared to be considering a decision. After some hesitation he returned his attention to the raw feast laying in the snow at his feet.

  Alexei took a backward step. Then another. When he’d retraced his path to the big fir tree near the third trap, he turned and began to plod forward through the snow, setting his feet into the foot holes he’d created during the trek out to the forest. After twenty minutes he felt his body relax and the fear subside. The encounter now seemed more like a dream than a threat. Had it really happened? Yes. If the bear had charged him could he have killed it? Yes, he could do that, he assured himself. He knew how to kill now and could do it whenever the need arose.

  ※

  Three rabbits weighed down his pack as he made his way back to the dacha. The stone house had been in the family for generations going back to the czars. After the revolution it had been expropriated by the local Soviet, abandoned two years after Lenin’s death, then re-occupied by Ded Vitaly’s father. Ded Vitaly had drilled this saga into Alexei whenever they drove up to the dacha from Moscow. A four-hour trip. Plenty of time to recount the family chapters in the thick book of Russian history.

  Dusk had fallen by the time he swung open the back door to the dacha and tugged off his boots, mittens and parka. He hung his hat and parka on the peg nearest the little door that led down to the root cellar, pulled on his fur slippers and climbed the stone staircase to the kitchen. The oil stove glowed with a radiant heat and he leaned over the cast iron surface and inhaled the scent of roasting onions and boiled potatoes. His mother and grandfather sat at the oak table, a half-gone bottle of vodka positioned between them.

  “Where were you?” Mat swung around to examine the rugged, youthful face of her son. “I was getting worried.”

  “Out hunting.” He slung the hopsack from his shoulder onto the floor and set the palm of his right hand on the Nagant revolver strapped into the holster on his belt.

  His grandfather smiled at the twelve-year-old as if he might be remembering something of his own childhood.

  “Look.” Alexei opened the drawstring on the game bag to display his catch.

  Ded Vitaly stood up and peered at the bounty before them. “Alexei is a true hunter now, Mat. Now we have some meat to add to the broth.”

  He smiled at his daughter with a grin that suggested a new man had arrived in the house, a home wh
ich had nourished generations of Malinins.

  “Someone we can be proud of. A lone hunter.”

  ※ — TWO — ※

  FIONA PAGE PRESSED her thumbnail into the tight groove of the wood screw and turned her hand until the nail split and ripped away from her flesh.

  “Damn,” she whimpered, her voice tucked into the back of her throat. Keep quiet, she whispered to herself. Just in case the worm is listening through the walls. She glanced at the door to her cell. A sheet of inch-thick foam core had been glued to the door’s surface and a sheet of plywood nailed over it. The door had no handle and no inside hinges. A keyed deadbolt provided the only way to open the door, and the worm always wore the key on a retractable steel cable attached to his belt.

  She turned her attention back to the rack of iron bars that blocked her escape into the alley. Where could she possibly be? Somewhere downtown, maybe in the Tenderloin District. Maybe in Oakland. Emeryville?

  She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead as the wedge of another headache began its descent through her skull. Justin Whitelaw — the worm — had drugged her, she was certain of that. The drugs he added to her food and wine caused painful, star-burst headaches that immobilized her for hours at a time. You have to give up eating and drinking, she told herself. Go on hunger strike if you can bear it. When you’re too weak to go on, then he might release you. Maybe.

  She slumped onto the army cot and clamped both hands to her face until the pain of her fingers pressing into her flesh overwhelmed the pain of the migraine. After ten minutes the tension seemed to balance, and then turn ever so slightly away from the heavy throbbing. An hour later she felt some relief and leaned against the wall beside the cot and studied her cell once more.

  Apart from the door and barred window, her cubicle consisted of four brick walls, a chipped concrete floor and a panel ceiling. A worn shag rug filled half the space of the eight-by-ten foot floor. Other amenities: a porcelain sink with a cold water tap, a dented metal cup that might have been salvaged from Alcatraz, a worn wash cloth and threadbare towel, an always-on florescent light suspended from the ten-foot high ceiling. And last but not least, a squat-on “Jonny-B-Kwik” port-a-potty that the worm dumped somewhere (a flush toilet down a hallway?) every evening after he brought her meal. Or presented her meal, would be more accurate.

  The fact that Justin Whitelaw seemed to think he was courting her, worried Fiona almost as much as her confinement. If some kind of deviance governed his affections for her, she had no idea where his perversions might lead. Nor did she want to find out. Maybe she should ask him to boost the measure of her medication. Whatever he’d been dosing her with had effectively blocked her memory. She shook her head at the bleak irony. Which dose offered greater relief? More drugs, or less?

  A brief rattling in the alley drew her attention back to the barred windows. Something out there? She gripped the bars in both hands and tried to yank them sideways. Not a budge. Then in the distance she saw three crows in pitched battle over a torn sheet of newspaper, a fish-and-chip wrapper dripping with catsup. That meant restaurants nearby. Fast food. People.

  Once again she studied the four wood screws that held the rack of bars in place. Setting her teeth, she fit her left thumbnail into the groove on the top of the screw and tried to turn it. “Damn it!” she cried and shoved the broken nail into her mouth. She nursed it a moment and then examined the damage. The nail had torn away into the pink. “Fuck!”

  As she sat on the bed she felt tears brimming in her eyes. She hated this weakness. All her life she’d been considered weak by someone. Her mother. Her dismissive father. By Leona, her best friend in high school. James Stinson, her two-timing boyfriend at SF State. Only when her son, Alexander, had come along and she’d had to defend her baby from the obsessive-compulsive madness of her husband — only then had she found the inner strength to stand up for herself. That’s what she needed now. Do-or-die determination.

  She shifted her weight on the cot and heard the springs groan. Then a tight snap. She reached under the frame and felt a steel coil dangling from the frame. Settling on her knees beside the cot she examined the coil and then tugged it free. The spring was about an inch in diameter and two inches long with flat loops that extended from both ends. The loops were meant to hold the spring to the bed frame, but one end had stretched away from the coil and extended into an open arc.

  A burst of energy surged in her body as she stood next to the barred windows and tried to fit the flat end of the coil into the screw slot. Damn. Too thick. Maybe she could adapt it somehow. She went back to the bed and lifted one leg of the cot and set the arced end of the spring on the concrete floor. Then she lifted the bed six inches into the air and hammered the leg onto the tip of the coil. Then again. And again. She looked at the coil and in the light cast from the alley she examined the effects of her work. Could she see a few abrasions there? Tiny scars cut into the metal?

  She tried to press the open end of the spring into the slot of the wood screw. Still too thick. But convinced now that she’d made some progress, she knelt at the side of the cot and began to hammer the coil under the leg of the cot. Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Twenty minutes, maybe thirty minutes later, when the sound of the steel leg pounding on the coil replaced the pounding in her head, she realized that the coil tip was a little longer. A little wider. And flatter where it had to fit into the screws.

  ※

  Whenever Fiona heard the key slip into the lock she knew she had about five seconds before the door swung open. The process seemed to require three steps: key in, then a delayed churn followed by the leaden sound of the deadbolt as it unlocked the door. Just enough time to hide her newly-fashioned screwdriver under the far corner of the mattress and prop herself on the edge of the cot to face her captor.

  Today Justin Whitelaw appeared in a three-piece suit, the sort of attire Fiona assumed he wore to the corporate offices of Whitelaw, Whitelaw & Joss. The company took its name from Justin’s father, Senator Franklin Whitelaw, and his step-brother, Dean Whitelaw — who’d been murdered a few weeks earlier in a bizarre shoot-out in a North Beach parkade. And Joss? As a reporter for the San Francisco eXpress, she’d made it her business to learn everything about the organization and the people who ran it. Fiona’s research revealed that Joss had started the firm with the Whitelaw brothers in the late 1970s, left the company within two years and died penniless in Venezuela under dubious circumstances.

  “Good evening, Fiona.” Justin shuffled into the room, a pizza box clutched in his left hand and two glasses of wine balanced in the fingers of his right. He heeled the door closed, listened for the deadbolt to click into place, set his load on the floor and smiled. “Long day.”

  Fiona tried to decode his cheery banter, to sense how dangerous he might be under the veneer of his slick good looks. She’d decided that tonight she’d try to engage him in a conversation, something that might access his sense of empathy. If she could find that part of him, maybe he would … what? Release her? She could barely imagine the circumstances that would lead to her freedom. Still, she had to try.

  “Wearing a suit today. Back in the office? Must be a Monday.”

  He blinked. Had her casual tone caught him by surprise?

  “I got vegetarian.” He paused to smile again. “I assumed you’re vegetarian. Am I right?”

  “I am,” she lied. “How did you know that?”

  He took a step toward the cot, the smile widening on his face. “Male intuition I guess.”

  “Male intuition?” She shifted to the right side of the bed, closer to the make-shift screw driver. “Well. I suppose that must be some kind of gender-bender.” She immediately regretted this and bit into the side of her cheek. Concentrate.

  His lips pressed together with a look of dismissal. “I’m not so sure about that.” He sat on the edge of the cot. “I brought you some Pouilly-Fumé today. I know you like whites. This one’s from France. Three years old. Contrary to common
misunderstanding, white wines shouldn’t sit too long.” He set his glass on the floor and passed the white to her.

  She looked at his face and waited until he turned his eyes away. “What are you drinking, Justin?”

  “A local barolo. King of wines.”

  “Maybe we could trade today. Just for a change.”

  “No, Fiona.” His head tilted to one side as he held his glass up to toast her. “You always drink white wines. Best to stick with what you know.”

  She clinked her glass against his and then set it on the floor. “You think so?”

  “Absolutely.” A look of mock assurance crossed his face. “Wait until you see what I have for us. Then you’ll want your wine.” He lifted the lid on the pizza box. “They’re still hot. From wood-fired clay ovens.”

  She glanced at the street address printed on the boxes. EXTREME PIZZA. “All the way from the Marina district?”

  He frowned. “Fiona — don’t.”

  She tried to hold his eyes but he glanced away again and lifted a slice from the box and handed it to her. She took a bite and chewed hungrily. As soon as the rich flavors hit her tongue, she took another mouthful, then another. She knew it would be her only meal of the day.

  “So I’ve been thinking about what you’d like to talk about after dinner.” His tongue swept a smudge of cheese into his mouth.

  “How about we go out for coffee. I haven’t had any decent java in days.”

  “Now, Fiona.” He smiled and dipped his head to one side. His expression suggested that unless she behaved she might never leave her cell. “Let’s talk about you. Tell me about what it’s like to work at a newspaper.”

  She swallowed the last bite of her pizza and took a second slice into her hand. “Maybe we could talk about what it’s like to be a kidnapper.” Despite her intentions to develop some rapport with him, her voice hardened. “About the fact that you’re holding me against my will.”