Dream Killer

By M. R. James

A SADISTIC SERIAL KILLER suddenly starts terrorizing the remote corner of a northwestern Montana vacation paradise. The killer’s blatantly shocking butchery is marked by his use of hand-crafted primitive weapons and the taunting notes left at each crime scene. His signature calling card is a colorful Native American dream catcher that he hangs near his victims’ bodies.
This elusive “Dream Catcher Butcher” soon garners statewide and national media attention. As his body count climbs and fear spreads, pressure builds on County Sheriff Frank Welles and his deputies to find and take down the depraved, revenge-driven psychopath.
Joining Sheriff Welles in the methodical search is his brother-in-law, Marcus Hawkes. A wounded warrior ex-Navy SEAL, Hawkes has found the Big Sky backcountry a refuge from the horrors of Middle Eastern warfare. Working together, Hawkes and Welles put the puzzle’s blood-splattered pieces together and zero in on finding and stopping the killer.
The eventual mano-y-mano mountainside showdown deep inside the madman’s lair – where he and his latest female captive have taken refuge to make a final stand – is a taut, violent faceoff fated to end with even more blood being shed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M. R. James
• Release date: Oct 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532385964

M. R. James

Montague Rhodes James was born in 1862 at Goodnestone Parsonage, Kent, where his father was a curate, but the family moved soon afterwards to Great Livermere in Suffolk. James attended Eton College and later King's College Cambridge where he won many awards and scholarships. From 1894 to 1908 he was Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and from 1905 to 1918 was Provost of King's College. In 1913, he became Vice-Chancellor of the University for two years. In 1918 he was installed as Provost of Eton. A distinguished medievalist and scholar of international status, James published many works on biblical and historical antiquarian subjects. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1930. His ghost story writing began almost as a divertissement from his academic work and as a form of entertainment for his colleagues. His first collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary was published in 1904. He never married and died in 1936.

Book preview

Prologue

KNEES BENT, HER LONG LEGS SPREAD like some two-dollar crack whore, the naked girl stares up at the large man fumbling with his fly. Seemingly immodest and unconcerned that another brilliant summer sunrise is only moments away, she lies atop a yellow-brown blanket of larch needles littering a meandering elk trail created by countless cloven hooves over decades of seasonal use.

Hussy! the big man hisses, leering down at her.

Finished fussing with his zipper, he wraps the used condom in a Kleenex tissue and rolls it into a small white ball. Tingling and weak-kneed from his explosive orgasm, he shivers while thrusting the damp tissue deep into the side pocket of his tan overalls.

He absently wipes the fingers of latex gloves on the leg of his bibbed Carhartts and shudders recalling how the spirited girl twisted and bucked when he took her from behind. Smiling, the large man remembers her firm young buttocks pressing against his swollen, probing phallus. How she’d …

Enough!

Moaning a sound akin to some feral creature’s throaty growl, he tries but fails to blink away vivid carnal memories. Then the big man squats and gently lifts the nude girl’s tanned arms one at a time, modestly covering her compact runner’s breasts and their coral-hued nipples. Bending closer, flared nostrils twitching, he inhales the musk of her inviting openness and draws a teasing forefinger over the pliant flesh of the girl’s inner thighs.

Shifting his bulk, he carefully arranges the girl’s discarded maroon hoodie across her hips and dark pubic triangle. Each purposeful movement is not unlike those of a caring parent tucking in a child for the night, exhibiting a tender reverence that any voyeuristic bystander might easily mistake for love.

I have to go now, he whispers, but you need to know that I’ll never forget you.

Finally, just before standing again, the big man casually brushes away the single fat blowfly that had crawled from the dead girl’s open mouth and perched itself on her pouty lower lip.

THE KILLER KNOWS that it’s time to go. Past time, really. Soon the rising sun’s first rays will slant through a serrated procession of backlit pines silhouetted along the west-facing ridge across this shaded canyon. Spreading daylight will quickly wash stubborn night shadows from the rocky escarpment’s deepest cracks, crevices, and forested hidey-holes. Already the young woman lying on her back at his feet, with a ceremonial Sioux war arrow jutting from her pale chest, has been dead for several hours.

He also realizes that with uncommonly mild overnight temperatures in the thin high- country air, molecules of her windborne death-stink are already spreading on rising mountain thermals. That distinctive odor will attract more of the ugly egg-laying flies: Calliphora vomitoria, if the killer correctly recalls his college entomology class notes and lab workbook. The pesky insects actually are blue bottle screw-worm flies, what the uneducated yokels call bottlebees. Regardless, by whatever name they’re known, these winged, metallic blue housefly-on-steroids creatures possess an uncanny ability to detect the faintest hint of carrion from several miles away.

Later, when this cloudless June Monday grows hot and silver heat waves shimmer like mirages above high mountain boulder fields, scavenging ebony ravens and gray camp robbers will join the buzzing flies in their unexpected feast. Within another day or so, the spreading stench of decaying flesh will touch sensitive nostrils of this wild land’s larger predators: skulking wolves, solitary cougars, ever-hungry black and grizzly bears.

Although the area’s sole wolf pack and the long-tailed tawny mountain cats will ignore the girl’s body, preferring to do their own killing, the ever-opportunistic and always-hungry bruins will follow their quivering noses to the malodorous scent source. Drifting like dark smoke through surrounding conifers, the bears will pad closer on silent and clawed plantigrade feet to claim and gorge themselves with whatever remains of the dead girl.

Finally, in due time, odds are some unsuspecting backcountry hikers, huckleberry pickers, mountain bikers, or horse trail riding passersby will wrinkle their noses in disgust at the unmistakable smell of putrefying flesh. Eventually, someone will see or hear squabbling scavenger birds and edge closer, curious but cautious – perhaps clutching an uncapped canister of bear spray – to find the source of that unmistakable cloying odor.

The big man closes his eyes and smiles at images flickering across his mind’s eye, most notably the looks of gut-twisting shock that normally accompany discovery of any young girl’s violated body. Will it be, he wonders, some pipe-smoking Mark Trail outdoorsman-type who stumbles onto her corpse, first gaping and then gagging at the sour gorge clogging his throat? Or perhaps it will be some athletic woman hiker who’ll instantly spin and flee in horror, tears streaking her sunburned cheeks. The killer can imagine her clawing through mountainside thickets and skin-raking branches, staggering blindly downslope away from the source of her daytime nightmare, her future dreams haunted by the obscene sight of jutting bones and clinging clots of maggoty flesh. No matter. This young woman’s body will not lack human contact for long. The grim news will quickly spread. Perhaps within hours, maybe a full day. Two or three at most. Just as the calculating killer has planned.

After all, this large and muscular man personally selected this specific backcountry location weeks earlier during an orientation hike. He’d immediately recognized the site as sufficiently remote yet conveniently handy for body disposal purposes. He knew that even in this far northwestern corner of the sparsely populated Big Sky state, with British Columbia’s forested ridges rolling away to the north and Idaho’s Copper Mountain rising above the western tree line, outdoor-minded locals and summer tourists alike are drawn here. They become almost as commonplace as fleeting glimpses of russet-coated deer crossing the rock-littered logging roads just ahead of rattling four-wheel-drive rigs.

For the killer’s purposes, it’s critical the girl’s body be found. Only then will the trap be set and the wheels of his plan for atonement begin an inexorable turn toward its inevitable and desired denouement.

YET HE LINGERS, still tingly from masturbating into the condom while standing over the body, wasting precious time for a final examination of the girl’s pretty face. Somehow it has remained peacefully devoid of the startled countenance of someone witnessing their own murder. Bobbed, wedge-cut auburn hair frames her attractive features. Half-closed chestnut eyes, once a rich brown, are now dull and unseeing. Gone is their vibrant I-love-my-life spark that drew his attention the first time he saw her. Also gone is the icy anger – absent any trace of disbelieving fear – that flashed within those same narrowed eyes when he stepped close and jerked her struggling body against him.

Standing motionless amid the tall conifers, the killer realizes that his thick organ is again growing painfully erect. He hears a sudden rush of blood in his ears and feels the thrumming of his pounding heart. Closing his dark eyes, the big man remembers the shampoo-clean scent of her hair feathering against his cheek when he gently lowered the limp body to the forest floor. Although he has no real basis for comparison, her death seemed mercifully quick and painless. Above all, he now is both sated and immensely pleased.

Unsnapping and reaching into coveralls’ top pocket, the killer extracts a small handmade dreamcatcher, what its Ojibwa crafters call bawaajige nagwaagan. He hangs this delicate willow hoop, with its intricately woven sinew web, from a convenient limb overhanging the body. Finally, he straightens the dream snare’s dangling feathers and twin rawhide strips, each decorated with small brightly dyed medicine beads.

There, the killer whispers, looking down at her a final time. No more bad dreams for you.

THE FIRST LONG RAYS of Monday sunshine suddenly wink through the forested ridgeline across the canyon. Without another word or wasted movement, the killer spreads the linen bed sheet that shrouded the girl’s body during transport. He tosses her sweat pants, undergarments, fanny pack, socks, and running shoes onto the sheet, quickly gathering and knotting its corners. Clutching the bundle, he stands and lumbers off down the twisty game trail toward his waiting truck.

Behind him, several feet above the naked girl’s sightless eyes, the colorful Ojibwa dreamcatcher trembles with the new day’s first stirrings of pine-scented breeze. High overhead, an adult bald eagle wheels past on locked sunlit wings, gliding silently over this vast timberland in a lazy and graceful arc.

Chapter 1

MARCUS HAWKES SITS SLOUCHED behind his cluttered desk in the dimly lit riverside cabin, staring at his MacBook’s glowing screen. Behind him, Kristofferson’s Blame It on the Stones thumps out from twin dust-rimed Bose speakers perched atop an overflowing home office bookcase. Mood music du jour, the song’s pounding beat perfectly suits Hawkes’ let’s-get-it-on Monday morning mindset. Already nearly an hour has passed since he jogged back from his mind-clearing morning run. It’s now several minutes shy of seven o’clock.

Beyond a small window to his right, gray-white daylight is gradually brightening the dawdling shadows that shroud his Yaak River canyon. The thin mountain air holds a tangible dampness that carries a comingled scent of moist humus, riverbank ferns, and wet river rocks. Overhead, the visible slice of cerulean sky is sunlit and flawless, stretching above this forested canyon’s rugged walls. Hawkes notices none of this. His total focus is on the last few sentences he’d typed late Sunday afternoon.

This assigned Bugle magazine feature is due and nearly wrapped up. Barring interruptions, a mere hour or two spent crafting the closing paragraphs and tweaking his manuscript one final time should allow Hawkes ample leeway to email the finished draft to the Elk Foundation’s Missoula headquarters before noon, as promised.

Satisfied with what he just read, Hawkes takes a deep breath and sits up, raising his right hand to finger-comb a shaggy russet mane that’s still damp from a post-run shower. Turning his computer slightly with the stub of his scarred left forearm, Hawkes hunches his broad shoulders and leans forward. The hooked middle and index fingers of his good right hand hover above the keyboard like an osprey’s talons.

As Ted Nugent would say of the man at his desk, he’s cocked, locked, and ready to rock. Hawkes’ two typing fingers begin jabbing the keys as if their owner is pissed off at the entire alphabet. But, as usual, cogent words appear and fall into neatly double-spaced lines on the white screen.

IN FACT, HAWKES IS a middle-aged Navy vet long committed to physical and mental workouts as both gym rat and avid reader. First, as a high school and college student jock. Next, as a gung ho Special Ops candidate for the eighteen ball-busting months – including twenty-six grinding weeks of hand-to-hand combat training – required to earn and proudly wear a SEAL’s coveted gold Budweiser Eagle trident. And now as a freelance writer and book author who’s just beginning to gain some national attention and critical acclaim, along with timely royalty checks. Hawkes thanks any personal success to a wounded warrior’s introspective examination of his grit, personal sacrifice, and subsequent discoveries.

Also, Hawkes intentionally stays physically fit, rolling out in early morning darkness, clipping a can of bear spray to his vest, and jogging three to five challenging miles along nearby mountainside roads and trails, four to five days every week. Frankly, all this tedious effort is expended so he can sit on his skinny butt typing a minimum of seven-fifty to fifteen hundred publishable words every freakin’ day spent at his Mac’s keyboard. No half-assed excuses offered or accepted, especially when there’s a deadline dead ahead. Hawkes knows full well it takes a fit body and clear mind to keep creative juices flowing. It’s as simple as that.

If asked or pushed, he’ll plead guilty to lacking many of the admirable personal, professional, and social qualities that most successful men and women possess. However, a dearth of discipline won’t be found anywhere on his Dave Letterman’s list of Top Ten Personal Faults. God knows, Hawkes understands exactly what it takes to produce self-satisfaction and quality prose. And that’s why he’s loath to slack off his physical maintenance program and creative writing regimen.

Explicitly now that he’s reached his mid-forties and some semblance of personal and professional maturity. Particularly now that memories of his swinging dick days as a Navy SEAL team ass-kicker have mostly faded, resurrected only in the three-dimensional nightmares that come creeping through the darkness, jolting him awake, leaving his heart drumming and his body clammy with sweat as cold as March rain. Chiefly now that his second book’s delivery deadline is looming on the horizon like a ship’s deck view of the Rock of Fuckin’ Gibraltar. But especially now that he sometimes finds himself standing ass-deep amongst the hungry publishing industry swamp gators, whether predatory agents or bloodthirsty editors, hungry for a second New York Times best-seller. Not to mention the Ben Franklins his writing will generate.

Time was not all that long past that Hawkes earned a paltry yet sufficient government paycheck sweating and bleeding in an overheated world of sand, sun, and IEDs; of snipers and ambushes. Of nighttime mortar attacks and clandestine Black Hawk missions chasing bearded goat-fuckers hellbent on killing him and as many other infidels as they might blow to hell before rendezvousing with the dozens of promised virgins. Back then, when money was always an afterthought, being a paid assassin was the convenient scapegoat Hawkes could blame for blocking creative expression and financial independence, not to mention having time necessary to find personal peace of mind.

But today he could only fault the mundane chores of bachelor life and occasional law enforcement gigs as an unpaid deputy gofer working for a Montana sheriff who just happened to be Hawkes’ brother-in-law. Or the occasional untimely ringing of his telephone. Or some insistent fishing or hunting buddy dropping by his remote mountain valley cabin, depending on whichever hook or bullet Big Sky season happened to be open at the time.

Finding and making excuses is always the easy part; writing material that sells and pays monthly bills is damned difficult. For him, anyway. So he stays mostly focused and does what needs doing to keep it that way. In Hawkes’ case, his best creative work is done early in the day before life’s routine interruptions get in the way.

Thankfully, more mornings than not, Hawkes produces quality prose, welcoming the fact he no longer carries an HK 416 assault rifle and wears a camouflaged helmet and clothing, along with sixty-plus pounds of ceramic body armor. Not that any of that protective gear had mattered in Mosul when a short burst of Kalashnikov rounds shattered his exposed left forearm, leaving his wrist and useless hand dangling by torn ribbons of bloody flesh.

EVEN BEFORE HAWKES FINISHES his first new paragraph, the desk phone jangles. He ignores it, continuing to type. And so it rings. And rings. Until finally his answering machine clicks on and he hears his own recorded voice saying, Hawkes here. Speak your piece.

Marcus? It’s me. Pick up, goddamnit!

Other than family, only Maddie calls him Marcus and gets away with it. Hawkes lifts the handset, pushes its talk button, and says, Yeah, Maddie. I’m here.

For a long moment the line only hums. But Hawkes knows she’s still at the other end. So he waits.

It’s Krissie, Maddie says at last. She didn’t come home last night.

Not the first time, Hawkes thinks. Sixteen going on twenty-six, Kristy Sue Spragg has inherited her mother’s perky Reba McEntire-country-girl good looks, not to mention her mom’s shapely legs, breasts and splendid ass. More than once Maddie has cursed the genetic vagaries that endowed her very young and very pretty woman-to-be daughter with the innate power to instantly attract the attention – wanted and unwanted – of rutty teenage boys and horny grown men.

Hawkes’ mind flashes back to a day in the bedroom of this very cabin, when Maddie voiced a motherly fear that more than likely her Krissie loved having her own breasts and ass fondled as much as Maddie herself did. Thereupon Hawkes had ceased fondling the splendid ass and breasts of the aforementioned Madison Leigh Maddie Spragg only long enough to reassure her that Krissie was a savvy youngster with enough smarts to avoid any real trouble, beyond the likelihood of losing her cherry during heavy petting and perhaps smoking some dope from time to time. Even though Hawkes hadn’t necessarily believed his own comforting words, it seemed the appropriate thing to say at the time.

Tell me about it, Hawkes says, frowning and idly stroking the beard stubble hiding his butt crack chin-dimple. His dark brown eyes are locked on the cursor blink-blinking in place on the laptop’s blue-white screen.

He hears Maddie take a deep breath. "Krissie and the Dahl girl, Margilee, drove down to Del Monte last night. Supposed to meet friends at Kootenai Falls, or so they claimed. I’d figured, ‘How much trouble can they find in Del Monte, Montana, on a Sunday night?’, so I let her go. You know Krissie. Wasn’t worth arguing over, right? I dragged my butt home after work around midnight, bone tired as usual. Krissie wasn’t back yet, but I didn’t think that much about it. I dozed off waiting up for her. Woke up just past 2:30 and she still wasn’t home. Got worried and called the Dahl house. Got screamed at for waking Lonnie. The dickhead said Margilee was home in bed asleep and he had no effing idea where the hell Krissie was … and added he didn’t give a healthy shit, either. Asshole slammed down the phone. Hung up on me.

So I got back in the CR-V and drove around, just looking, you know. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No sign of Krissie anywhere. I’m thinking, ‘Had she stayed in Del Monte? Had she even gone to town?’ I wanted to drive over to the Dahl place and bang on the door and shake the shit out of Margilee until she told me what the hell was going on. Those other times Krissie disappeared she ended up in Whitefish or Kalispell, for Christ’s sake! God only knows where she is this time, or who she’s with. I just don’t know …

Maddie’s voice trails away. Still Hawkes waits, listening to the line hum. In the background Kristofferson is now singing The Law Is for Protection of the People.

Should I call Frank? he finally asks.

Maddie laughs, a harsh throaty sound. "And tell him what, Marcus? That Krissie has disappeared again? That I’m worried again? Sheriff Welles has heard it all before. Besides, I haven’t told you yet that I ended up in the Dahl’s driveway at first light. Caught Lonnie leaving for the mill. Got into a real screaming match there in his front yard. It finally woke Margilee. She stumbled out onto the porch, still half asleep and wearing only pink panties, bare titties bouncing. Yelled at me that Krissie had hooked up with ‘some dude’ from Troy and they’d split in the guy’s green pickup. Said she had no effing clue where they’d gone."

Passing that info along to Frank might not be a bad idea, Maddie. He’ll tell his patrol guys and Trooper Higgins to keep an eye open for two kids in a green truck. Warden Brown, too, for that matter. You never know. Say the word and I’ll make the call.

Have a problem, call a cop, huh, Marcus? Maddie whispers those words before her voice rises again. Sheriff Welles is married to your sister, not to you. I don’t want my latest Krissie headache to cause you or your kinfolk any grief. Yeah, I know sometimes you work with the Sheriff, but that’s when he asks you for your help, not the other way around.

Maddie …

Let me finish, Marcus. I appreciate your offer, really I do. I’ll admit I feel and probably look like some goddamn ‘Walking Dead’ zombie. I’m probably not thinking very straight, either. I’m sick with worry and totally pissed at Krissie. But I called you mainly because I needed to vent, to hear a friendly voice – and maybe ask for a shoulder to cry on. I just don’t want the cops involved. Not yet, anyhow. Krissie has always turned up sooner or later. I’ve got to believe before long she’ll drag her ass home again.

Want me to drive over? Hawkes asks.

"Besides wanting some answers and seeing Krissie safe at home, what I want most of all right now is sleep. Fat chance, I know. Thank God I have tonight off, but right now I’d be piss-poor company. Take my word for it. I’ll call back