Page 29 of Hunting the Crossbow Killer

“No way. Can’t be. There’s no one in this town that I can picture shooting at people with a bow and arrow. Not even therottenest of the teenage menaces who like to have bonfires in the woods without caring that they could set the whole forest on fire would go around shooting arrows at people. It can’t be a local.”

“Let’s add those teenage menaces to the list for additional interviews. I’m not ready to discount that our suspect could be a local. But let’s say you’re right and he isn’t. What does that leave us with, remembering that no one has noticed anyone unfamiliar to them in town?”

Fletcher thought for a moment, then shrugged. “No idea. What’s your theory?”

“It’s more like a building block than a theory, something to start giving us a more clear idea, or profile, of the person we’re after. If he’s a stranger, not a local, then to not have been seen around town means he’s not going to the restaurants or shops. He’s not staying at the campground and not stealing a boat or canoe from the marina since they didn’t report any missing. He’s likely not broken into anyone’s homes or vacation cabins looking for food or shelter or you’d have had someone reporting that.”

“Oh, I get what you’re saying. He’s comfortable with the outdoors. He’s self-reliant, used to camping in the wilderness, on his own, away from everyone else. He’s avoiding the town and the people in it, except for when he wants to strike, like at the festival or at O’Brien’s place. Most likely he has a tent, a sleeping bag, provisions. When he came here he came prepared with all the supplies he’d need to survive until he accomplished whatever he came here to do.”

Grace grimaced. “To get revenge against O’Brien for something. Framing him didn’t work, so his next step may well be to try to kill him. But go back to what you just said. You mentioned when he came here. How did he get here? There’s only one road in and out. I suppose the river is an option.”

“No, it’s not. It feeds our lake, but if you trace it up the mountain you’ll see a giant waterfall, Mystic Falls. It’s one of ourtourist attractions around here, especially in the spring when it swells from the winter thaw. It’s pretty incredible, but it’s in no way navigable. Even a boat or canoe would be busted up on the rocks if someone tried to navigate the river over the falls. The only way to get a boat here is on a trailer behind your vehicle. Most people just rent a boat already at the marina rather than go to that kind of trouble.”

Grace considered what she’d said and looked up at the steep, treacherous mountain Fletcher was carefully descending to get them back to town. “I suppose, in theory, someone determined enough could hike in over the mountains, couldn’t they?”

“Ha. Not likely. You’ve seen how unforgiving the land is around O’Brien’s place. We’ve got spots like that all around here. Makes it darn near impossible to approach our town that way. It’s one of the reasons our town stays small, even with the attractions for tourists. To move here, you have to either buy someone out or have the money to dynamite and excavate a part of the mountain to make it possible to build on in the first place. We’re truly landlocked. One way in, one way out.”

“The road through the mountains and forest to reach Mystic Lake is an hour by car,” Grace said. “How long would it take to walk that distance?”

“Me? About a week.” She laughed. “Okay, maybe not that long. But you drove here, you saw how the road winds around the mountains, constantly going up and down. It would be a challenge to anyone to do that without a vehicle. Even one of those iron man athletes would struggle. No, I think he drove here.”

“All right, then how hard would it be to hide a vehicle once you arrive so that no one reports seeing it?”

“I like where you’re going with that,” Fletcher said. “Collier, to his credit, is an explorer at heart. His idea of a vacation is to hike the mountains around our town. I think that’s crazy. I’drather go to some nice warm beach and work on a tan. But my point is that he knows the land that surrounds our town better than most. We can put him on that, have him map out the area and figure out the places where someone might likely hide their vehicle so we can check them out. Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky and catch our suspect napping in his back seat or the bed of his pickup.”

“There’s something else we could do,” Grace added. “With only three officers, I know you can’t spare someone to keep an eye on the road out of town 24/7. But maybe a camera could be set up to record the license plates of anyone leaving the area. We can check those out in case our suspect leaves. That would be like a gift from heaven, having a plate to track. Unless of course his vehicle is stolen. But even that would give us another clue. Maybe he stole it in an area where he’s most comfortable. You never know what that might lead to.”

Fletcher stopped at the very road they were discussing, checked for cars, then turned in the direction of Mystic Lake. “I think a camera on this road is a perfect idea. We can borrow a trail camera from one of our local hunters, the kind that’s activated by motion so the battery doesn’t run out right away. One of us can change out the video card every day and bring the used one back to the station to check out on our computer.”

“About how many vehicles head out of town every day?”

“More than I’d like when it comes to figuring out which cars belong to people who live here and which ones don’t. Since the pandemic changed how people do business, a lot more of our town telecommutes, works from home. But there are still quite a few who have to drive to Chattanooga every day. Don’t worry, though. We’ll track everything down, see if there’s a lone, unexplained vehicle coming in or out of town.”

Grace was happy to have a plan, even if just one to try to get a license plate and vehicle description that may or may not helpthem find the killer. That was the thing about investigative leads. You could never predict which one would pan out, so you had to follow up on all of them.

“You haven’t heard any updates about today’s search, right?” she asked.

“Not a peep. But I’m sure everyone’s okay or we definitely would have been called. Most likely the deputies are either on their way back to Chattanooga or are there already. No one’s going to search up here at night, especially on O’Brien’s property. That’s some of the roughest terrain I’ve seen anyone living on around here. It’s downright dangerous.”

“Which means our suspect is even more comfortable and knowledgeable about the outdoors than your typical hunter or even camper would be. He was able to get away from your boss and O’Brien when he shot at me.” She grimaced. “Both timeshe shot at me. A novice outdoorsman wouldn’t have been able to get away, not without getting hurt or cornered. He’s highly skilled.”

Fletcher snorted. “Except for that stupid feather thing on the end of his arrows. He’d have way better aim if he didn’t use that. He must not know much about using a bow and arrow or he’d ditch the feathers.”

Grace stared at her a moment. “You may be right. O’Brien theorized that the shooter doesn’t care who he hits. The victim is random. They just happen to be in the way of wherever the arrow lands. Honestly, that makes the most sense for our profile since our other evidence points to this guy being an experienced outdoorsman. He knows the feather throws off his aim and he doesn’t care. It’s because he’s bragging. He wants everyone to know that he’s the one hurting or killing people. The feather is his signature.”

“You’re talking about this Crossbow Killer again. I thought you were thinking our shooter probably wasn’t him, that he was someone specifically after O’Brien.”

“I can’t discount the possibility that the real serial killer could also be after O’Brien for some reason. It seems unlikely. Doesn’t fit in with typical serial killer behavior, if you can call any of their behavior typical. But we don’t have enough information to arrive at a conclusion about that. As for the picture of our shooter that we’re trying to draw, I think wecanconclude that he’s in good physical condition or he wouldn’t be able to run through the woods in rough terrain to escape the police. That means he’s young, but old enough that he’s likely had years of experience in the wilderness. I’d say mid- to late twenties, maybe even early thirties.”

“Honestly, I’m leaning more toward those teenage locals again,” Fletcher said. “Kids around here start hunting and hiking and practically living outdoors from a really young age. They can be experts outdoors before they even graduate. I’ll draw up a list of our frequent offenders. And I can ask the school principal if there’s anyone else he thinks we should consider, maybe someone who’s a loner or even a bully, something like that.”

“I wouldn’t have thought Mystic Lake was large enough to have any schools. Or do the kids commute to Chattanooga?”

Fletcher laughed. “Believe it or not, we have enough residents to support a K-through-twelve school and a one-truck fire station in addition to our little police force. You don’t see everyone because the town’s population is spread out over a vast area, all up and down the mountains. There’s even a subdivision past the marina. We ran out of time today to go that far. But we really have a lot to offer for just about anyone, whether you want to live in the mountains or the burbs.” She rolled her eyes. “Listen to me. I should be on the town council heading up the tourism task force.”

“You do make Mystic Lake sound pretty nice.”

“Except for our resident serial killer or copycat?”

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