And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With old odd ends, stol’n forth of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

—William Shakespeare, King Richard the Third

PROLOGUE: BLOOD

Winter’s frozen fingers caressed Joe Thibideau’s face, his breath twisting in great clouds of steam to ice his eyelashes. The moon was bright as he moved as quickly as possible across the three inches of fresh snow that softened the ground. Little 8 year-old Melissa had been reported missing yesterday afternoon, and that was a long time in this weather. The night was brutally cold, and she was almost surely frozen stiff by now, a ghostly statue in the blue-white moonlight.
He immediately tried to wipe the image from his mind, but it kept coming back again, and chilled him more than the cold ever could. As the deputy sheriff in the small town of St. Boudin, Thibideau had never had to search for death until yesterday. Anyone dead was right out in plain sight, in the middle of a nasty car wreck, or perhaps a logging accident.
But this was different than anything he had faced before. This time, they had a killer in their midst.
The first victim, a local farmer named Eddie Brosseau, had been discovered yesterday morning about three miles away, stuffed inside the front end of an abandoned truck out in his field. He was missing his head, a right arm and part of a shoulder. The reason for this gruesome dismemberment was anybody’s guess; Thibideau figured personally that whoever killed the old man had trouble fitting the whole body into that little import’s engine cavity. Maybe there were other reasons, but he preferred not to think about it any more than was absolutely necessary.
Then the girl had disappeared from her home while gathering some wood from the shed. He remembered the desperate voice of the mother on the phone: We usually fill the wood box together. I never let her go out alone, especially on a cold day like that.
Joe Thibideau had a daughter of his own. If Melissa had fallen victim to the same brutal bastard who killed Eddie, he only hoped he’d have the chance to nail the son of a bitch. Never in all his forty-seven years had he wanted anything so badly.
Of course, the girl could be a simple runaway, or she might have gotten lost. And yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were linked together by a single savage thread.
He moved through a thicker patch of alders, and paused with his back against the rough bark of a tree. He had lost the others about twenty minutes ago. He should keep close by, he knew, but they had been searching in the cold for nearly two days. It was time to take a chance. He had a hunch. Just another hour or two couldn’t hurt, right?
And maybe, just maybe, if the girl was still alive, he could do something to keep her that way.
A branch snapped and sent its burden of heavy snow thudding to the ground. He jumped, almost dropping his flashlight and hitting his head against the tree trunk, which only caused a fresh shower of snow to fall on top of him. Shaking snow from his collar, he pulled a compass and then the map from the left pocket of his parka and smoothed it out over his knees, holding the flashlight in his mouth. The areas already searched were circled in bright fluorescent green on the map. They had been over about four square miles directly behind the house. She could have been picked up by a car, could be fifty miles away from here by now. So far they had been betting against that, since the house was a good half-mile off any Provincially plowed road, and the driveway hadn’t shown any fresh tracks. But they couldn’t rule it out.
The map didn’t have it, but the hydroelectric plant was less than a mile farther south. It was supposed to make use of the old mine shafts in the area to produce enough power to light up most of Quebec City and parts of Northern Maine into the twenty-first century and beyond. Construction on the new plant had been halted a couple of months back, but he was sure the old Jackson mine building was still there, and it might be just the place for a lost little girl to seek shelter. Or for a killer to hide a body.
The moonlight dimmed and a few fresh snowflakes began to filter their way down as Thibideau made his way through the bare patches and drifts. The trees here were spaced a good distance apart, their lower branches gray and stunted, and a snapped twig under his foot sounded as loud as a gunshot. He knew his way around well enough to keep from getting lost; in any case, the road down to the hydro compound was probably still impossible to get through by car. They’d stopped construction late that fall when the first heavy storm blew in. He never could understand the idiot who organized that whole project. Winters in this remote area of Canada were a bitch, and nobody but that special contractor (who was, incidentally, originally from California) thought they could get the place finished without building a quality road to it first. Now there was no doubt that contractor was out of a job, but it was too late for the road. The ground was rutted, frozen hard as a rock, and covered with a foot of snow. So the plant just sat like some huge, hibernating beast, waiting for the scientists and construction workers to wake it up in the spring.
A few more minutes of walking and he came to a break in the trees and the entire vast, unfinished compound spread out below him, a huge and gaping hole in the earth with several small buildings scattered around it, including the old mining building beside the frozen river. The river itself cut through the woods directly below, at the foot of a steep bank scattered with small saplings and naked shrubs. It sat as a silent warning, like a line drawn in the dirt by a childhood bully. Cross it and you’re gonna get yours.
The scope of the thing was remarkable. Until now he had never seen the place, and standing here at the edge, he found it lived up to the stories he had heard in town. Hell, it blew the stories out of the water. Trees had been cut down for what seemed like miles in every direction; the place looked like the center of an atomic bomb blast, the half completed buildings dotting its edge like props for a toy train set.
Standing there gaping, it took him several minutes to realize that something seemed out of place, something more than just this alien blast site in the middle of dense woods. In another second he knew what that thing was, and crouched behind the trunk of the biggest tree he could find on the upper slope, trying to calm his thudding heart. Partially hidden behind the old wooden mine building just across the river was a snowmobile, cleaned of snow and with what looked like fresh tracks behind it.
He killed the beam of the flashlight and slipped it into his coat pocket. The flakes had stopped falling again, and the light of the moon was enough out here. He felt the sweat inside his mittens and the shake in his legs, and the fiery rush of adrenaline lit up his body like an electric shock. There’s nobody else around, you could be dealing with the fucker right here, right now, just you and him, one on one.
He scanned the entire complex slowly, watching for any movement, or light, or bit of smoke. Nothing.
Come on now, she could still be alive. He unzipped his jacket, and pulled his .38 out of its holster, trying desperately to keep his hand steady. There was no time to get help; he might have been seen.
Slipping out from the protection of the tree trunk, he made his way down the steep bank, stumbling and sliding until he reached the ice at the bottom. Nothing stirred, and he hurried across the frozen river towards the closest structure, a half-completed building along the right edge of the pit. Out in the open, he was painfully aware of how vulnerable he was under the moonlight, with the snow crunching under his heavy boots. He would have to move fast.
He made it to the corner of the building without incident, and leaned carefully around the other side. The complex looked like a ghost town. The entire side of this structure was open, and great drifts of snow filled the inner section, its surface completely smooth. Moving out and around it, he kept the gun held out at arm’s length, like he’d seen cops do in movies. He’d never pointed the gun at anything other than the targets at the range, and it felt uncomfortably heavy and awkward now.
He walked quickly along the edge of the pit to the left, making for the old mine building. At the wall he crouched and crawled under a window, then slowly raised his head and peered into the darkness. It was lighter outside with the moonlight, and he had to cup his hands to the dusty glass and squint. Even then he could see only shadows. His hand shook and rattled the gun barrel against the glass. Once again peering in, something caught his attention. One of those shadows, over in the far right corner, slumped over in some impossible position, looked like a body.
A little body.
Sweat began to roll in little beads down Thibideau’s forehead, stinging his eyes. What if it’s her? Christ, what if the killer’s standing right there just out of sight, in one of the deeper shadows?
But she could be hurt, unconscious…
He crouched and ran along the wall until he reached its edge. Blood pulsing impossibly loud in his ears, he stuck his head around the corner. He found himself looking at the door of the building, shut tight against the cold. Cutting off his fear as best he could, he tried the handle. It swung open with a dull scraping sound.
It was the smell that hit him first—an overpowering, rotten stench that clogged the nostrils and made him gag, staggering backward until he could get his parka zipped up to cover his face. Even then it was there, the unmistakable smell of death.
Right then he almost turned and ran. But the thought of that little girl, maybe still alive and scared at least as bad as he was, made him take a step into the darkness.
The blackness surrounded him, swallowed him and welcomed him with the utter equality of the blind. He blinked stupidly, eyes adjusting to the deep black shadows around him, and stood frozen with his gun held out as things began to take shape. A dim patch of light from the window shone onto the floor, and he shuffled towards it, closer to the wall until his hands met with something hard.
Jesus the flashlight I forgot the fucking flashlight in my pocket.
How could he be so stupid? Holding the gun in his left hand, he pulled the flashlight out of his jacket and aimed it at the wall, switching it on.
The thing he had touched was an animal, or at least it might have been at one time. It looked to be the size of a raccoon, and it was covered in dried blood and frozen stiff.
There was no head.
Joe stumbled backwards, and the beam of the flashlight lit up the entire wall. It was covered with the carcasses of animals and bare bones, a grotesque and sadistic trophy case. Blood ran in drips and blotches down the wood, staining it a dull coppery brown.
He turned and saw the girl. She had been thrown into a corner, her body broken and battered and her clothes ripped to shreds. Her head was twisted at an impossible angle and her dull, dead eyes stared at him vacantly.
The doorknob was slick in his gloved hand, old and slippery metal, and then the door opened and he stumbled into the cold. The smell would not leave him, it followed him as he struggled across the snow, and then he saw his tracks and there were another pair, oh Christ, another pair, and he spun around wildly, losing his balance and dropping his gun.
Joe Thibideau never had a chance to get up. A shadow fell across his path, followed by a searing pain in his shoulder, moonlight flashing on a silver blade that rose up and plunged down again and again, speckling the pure white snow with his blood.

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