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His claret shirt was rolled to his elbows, and he finished wiping at his mouth with a brown napkin before pocketing it. The gunman covered the carpet between the stairs and Beth, and clamped her Adam’s apple between his thumb and forefinger.
“They might expect you to yell at me, but if you do I’ll crush this. Mh?” His tone was amicable, the threat lurking behind it all the more convincing.
Beth felt his grip tighten on it and nodded as much as she could.
He looked at his watch. “Told you I’d pick you up around seven, even if it is the morning. Now, for the purposes of this conversation, I’m Special Agent MacDonald. I don’t have much of an imagination – I rely on the creativity of others – but I’d stopped off to grab an Egg White Delight McMuffin when I made the call to Mrs O’Doole. I’ve also chosen the name Harry, my father’s. Ronald would have been too much of a giveaway.”
Beth fought to swallow and felt the solidity of his fingers as her Adam’s apple struggled to bounce in her throat.
“I called Mrs O’Doole and told her about her sister’s murder. Jess had been looking after her place while she was on vacation. The likeness was unnerving. Very unfortunate but there’s always an element of natural wastage. I told her it was a federal matter and that I needed her to examine a photo of the suspect. It’s a good one of you from your Facebook page. Tyler immediately recognised you as the woman from the crash site who attacked him. They all figure you still have a score to settle. It would be very expedient for me to make you responsible for the deaths of the people upstairs, but that might lead any subsequent investigation too close to what I’ve been doing. I’ll have to keep things partitioned. There’s a lot of wilderness hereabouts, though. I can make you disappear, bury you somewhere deep in the National Park.”
The gunman’s face blurred as Beth’s eyes began to water.
“I told her to stay put in West Glacier, keep her boys out of danger. Said she was in the safest place. Then she calls me up and tells me you’d come looking for her and she had you tied up. The three of them are up there shakily making pancakes for me now. Quite an experience for the O’Dooles. I’m going to kill you, and then I’m going to eat another hot breakfast with the family. I’ll need my strength to handle the three of them.”
She shook her head, tried to scream but his fingers completely restrained her. Just beyond her view of his paunch protruding through his shirt, she knew the meat tenderiser lay way out of her reach.
“There was a grizzly attack in West Glacier seven years ago. A family’s remains were discovered in a picnic spot. The park wardens used beaver meat to snare a rogue bear and shot it dead. But the coroner’s office proved a human had been responsible for the attack. The bodies had been mutilated to make it look like a grizzly. The bear died for nothing and they never caught anyone. It’s all online, although it wasn’t very high-profile. I suppose that’s understandable; bit of a tourism killer. It was an ideal cover story for me, though. Decomposition would complicate matters for the cops, and Mrs O’Doole said they’re going to be here two weeks. Their bodies wouldn’t have been discovered for some time. Trouble is, I’ve already used someone else’s MO to dispose of Jess. Would seem a coincidence if the entire family fell afoul of two different human predators. Highly unlikely.”
His fingers pinched harder, and Beth’s shoulders jerked as she used up her last reserves of oxygen.
“So I’m going to have to improvise. I’ll tie them up and drive them downriver, hold their heads under and leave one of their boats adrift. A plausible accident, but still too much of a coincidence. It’s not ideal, but it’s where we are. Scarcely leaves me any time to pick up on the conversation we were about to have at the Oyster Shack.”
Beth couldn’t see him now; his face was just a pink blob. She felt him shift his body though, redistribute his weight on both feet as his grasp tightened and squeezed, and she bucked against the support pillar. The blood churned in her eardrums.
