The Naturalist (The Naturalist #1)(95)

“What do you know about a man like Vik? How many serial killers have we ever encountered that were this prolific?”

“How prolific?” asks Glenn.

“We won’t know until we start retracing his steps. But a conservative estimate? Three hundred.”

“Three hundred people?” Seward sneers. “Somebody has an inflation problem here.”

“Yeah? Ten or more a year over thirty years. Do the math yourself. Then take a look at Montana missing-persons numbers and ask yourself why they’re higher than Florida or California. It’s not just reporting anomalies. It indicates the presence of a highly active serial killer.”

“Yeah, but three hundred?” says Glenn.

“Gary Ridgway, the Green River killer, murdered forty-two women in just a two-year period. He wasn’t caught for another two decades. He had an IQ of eighty-two. How intelligent does Joe Vik strike you?”

“Very.”

“So if a low-IQ necrophiliac who liked to return to the woods to have sex with his victims can kill that many women in such a short span of time and get away with it for twenty years, how much damage do you think someone like Vik could do?”

“Three hundred people?” says Seward, still rolling the number around.

“Conservatively.”

“We’ve never seen anything like that.”

“That you know about. Ridgway left lots of DNA evidence. Gacy left bodies under his house. Robert Hansen, the guy that abducted hookers and hunted them down in the Alaskan woods, did this over thirty times and was only discovered when one of his victims managed to escape.

“I ran the numbers. Here’s a cold fact for you: statistically speaking, you don’t catch the majority of highly organized serial killers. And the really expert ones, the killers that don’t leave DNA, don’t kill within five miles of where they live, and carefully choose their victims and method of burial, you don’t even know they exist. You don’t have profiles for them at Quantico because you’ve never knowingly encountered one.”

“But you have all the answers,” says Seward.

What an asshole.

“Just the numbers. They tell a terrifying story. There are at least thirty or more Joe Viks operating out there.”

“Let’s get this one, then worry about the others,” Glenn says.

“It’ll give you something to do from jail,” adds Seward.

“You’re still going to go through with this arrest?” asks Jillian. “After all he’s done?”

“Tell that to Christopher Dunleavy’s family after they see what your boyfriend did to their son’s corpse,” says Seward.

“The operative word is corpse,” I fire back, but I can’t pretend he doesn’t have a point. I give Jillian a sorrowful look. “I didn’t think I had any other options.”

She squeezes my hands. “I believe you.”

“It was kind of stupid in retrospect. I should have tried to draw him toward me.”

“We’ll be okay—”

She doesn’t finish her sentence.

“Shit!” yells Glenn as he swerves to the side of the road.

I look out the windshield in time to see the ambulance tumbling over on its side and skidding toward us.

The roof of the ambulance clips our front end, and we go into a violent spin, smashing a guardrail and careening into a ditch.

As we skid off the highway, I see a massive black tow truck fly past, flash its brake lights, then do a screeching U-turn.





CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE


CRASH

Our SUV slides backward down the grassy slope and rams into a line of trees. The back of my skull rockets off the head rest, sending my face slamming into my handcuffed wrists, cracking my nose. I see stars for a moment and smell the tangy scent of blood.

“Are you okay?” Jillian asks, unfastening her seat belt and sliding over to me.

“Yeah . . . I’m okay.”

She reaches up and grabs Seward by the shoulder. “Can you get these damn handcuffs off him?”

He doesn’t move.

His head is slumped over to the side. His window is shattered.

I grab his neck with both hands and feel for a pulse. “He’s alive.”

Glenn rubs his temples. “Holy crap! Everybody okay?”

Jillian thrusts her hand in front of his face. “Handcuff keys. Now!”

“Just a second . . .” He’s still shaken from the impact. “Let me call for help.”

He takes his phone out and starts dialing. Frustrated, Jillian leans into the front section and starts to riffle through Seward’s pockets.

“Careful. He might be hurt,” says Glenn.

“You think?” she says.

Something moves through the bright beams of light shooting out over the edge of the road near the gap where we tore through the guardrail.

Reflexively, I grab Jillian by the collar of her jacket and yank her into the back. “Duck!”

“What is it?” asks Glenn.

A split second later, the windshield is punctured by a barrage of gunfire, blasting bits of glass at our heads.

I press Jillian to the floorboard and throw my body on top of her.

There’s a second burst, and the truck makes popping sounds as bullets penetrate the hood and grill.