Die Again (Rizzoli & Isles, #11)(69)

“But local authorities soon realized a real leopard wasn’t behind the attacks. The killers were human, members of an ancient cult that goes back centuries. A secret society that identifies so strongly with leopards, its members believe they actually transform into the animal if they drink the victim’s blood or eat the victim’s flesh. They kill to make themselves powerful, to take on the strength of their totemic animal. To perform these ritual killings, the believer dons a leopard skin and uses steel claws to slash his victim.”

“A leopard skin?” said Jane.

Zucker nodded. “The theft of that snow leopard pelt takes on new significance, doesn’t it?”

“Does this leopard cult still exist in Africa?” asked Tam.

“There are rumors,” said Zucker. “During the 1940s, there were dozens of murders in Nigeria attributed to leopard men, a few even committed in broad daylight. Authorities cracked down by bringing in hundreds of additional police officers, who ultimately arrested and executed a number of suspects. The attacks ceased, but was the cult actually wiped out? Or did it simply go underground—and spread?”

“To Boston?” said Crowe.

“Hey, we’ve had cases involving voodoo and satanists here,” said Tam. “Why not leopard men?”

“Those killings by the leopard cult, in Africa,” said Frost. “What was the motive?”

“Some of it may have been political. The elimination of rivals,” Zucker said. “But that doesn’t explain the apparently random killing of women and children. No, there was something else behind it, the same thing that’s inspired ritual murder cults around the world. Vast numbers of people have been sacrificed for a variety of beliefs. Whether you kill to terrify your enemies or to appease gods like Zeus or Kali, it all gets down to one thing: power.” Zucker looked around the table, and once again Maura felt that cold reptilian kiss. “Add up the peculiarities of these murders and you start to see the common thread: hunting as power. This killer may look perfectly ordinary and work at an ordinary job. These things don’t give him the thrill or the sense of power that killing does. So he travels in search of prey, and he has the means and freedom to do so. How many more deaths have been misclassified as wilderness accidents? How many hikers or campers who’ve gone missing were actually his victims?”

“Leon Gott wasn’t hiking or camping,” said Crowe. “He was killed in his own garage.”

“Perhaps to steal that leopard pelt,” said Zucker. “It’s this killer’s totemic symbol, to be used for ritual purposes.”

Frost said, “We know Gott bragged about the snow leopard in online hunting forums. He announced to everyone that he was commissioned to work on one of the rarest animals on earth.”

“Which again points to a hunter as your suspect. It makes sense, both symbolically and practically. This killer identifies with leopards, nature’s most perfect hunter. He’s also comfortable in the wild. But unlike other hunters, his quarry isn’t deer or elk; he chooses humans. Hikers or outdoorsmen. It’s the ultimate challenge, and he favors wilderness areas to stalk his prey. The mountains of Nevada. The Maine woods. Montana.”

“Botswana,” said Jane softly.

Zucker frowned at her. “Pardon?”

“Leon Gott’s son vanished in Botswana. He was with a group of tourists on safari in a remote area.”

At the mention of Elliot Gott, Maura’s pulse jolted into a gallop. “Just like the backpackers. Just like the hunters,” she said. “They go into the wild, and they’re never seen again.” Patterns. It’s all about seeing the patterns. She looked at Jane. “If Elliot Gott was one of his victims, that means this killer was stalking prey six years ago.”

Jane nodded. “In Africa.”

THE ELECTRONIC FILE HAD been sitting in Jane’s laptop for days, sent to her from the Interpol National Central Bureau for Botswana. It was nearly a hundred pages long and contained reports from the Botswana Police Service in Maun, the South African Police Service, and the Johannesburg branch of Interpol. When she’d first received the file, she’d been unconvinced of its relevance to Leon Gott’s murder six years later, and had only skimmed through it. But the disappearance of the hikers in Nevada and the hunters in Montana had unsettling parallels to Elliot Gott’s doomed safari, and now she settled down at her desk and clicked open the file. As phones rang in the homicide unit and Frost noisily crinkled sandwich wrappers at his desk, Jane once again read the file, but this time more carefully.

The report from Interpol contained a concise summary of the events and the investigation. On August 20 six years ago, seven tourists from four different countries boarded a bush plane in Maun, Botswana, and flew into the Okavango Delta. They were dropped off at a remote airstrip, where they were met by their bush guide and his tracker, both from South Africa. The safari would bring them deep into the Delta, where they would camp at a different location each night, traveling by truck, sleeping in tents, eating wild game. The bush guide’s website promised a “true wilderness adventure in one of the last remaining Edens on earth.”

For six of those seven unfortunate tourists, the adventure had been a journey into oblivion.

Jane clicked to the next page, a list of the known victims, their nationalities, and whether the remains had been recovered.