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Fear his presence where moonlight dies.
Beware his bunker, hidden and dark,
Where he preys on souls, leaving his mark.
In woods so still, his hunt begins,
Fear his presence, where moonlight thins.
One by one, his tally grows,
For in the shadows, his secret shows.
He remembered the first time he’d heard the rhyme during a sixth-grade camping trip to Olympic National Park. One of the counselors had told the story of the Shadow Stalker over the campfire, and it had both thrilled and terrified him, lurking in his subconscious until he needed a monster for The Shadows Within. Then he delved into the legend. He’d picked it apart, exploring the meaning behind every word, every syllable, every rhythmic beat to understand the essence of the Shadow Stalker.
“Do you mind?” he asked, reaching for the tablet’s stylus on the table between them.
Alexis waved a hand. “No, go ahead.”
He picked up the pen and drew lines between the stanzas. “A version of this rhyme has been around since the earliest days of the Gold Rush—especially these first two lines.”
Cal’s brows scrunched together. “Wait.” He pulled the tablet toward him and read the first two lines out loud. “Is this about Sasquatch?”
“Could be,” Connelly said and sat back in his seat, relaxing now that they were in the familiar territory of fiction again. “Or it could be about the boogeyman. A vampire. The Chupacabra. Or any other sinister figure that haunts our collective consciousness. Every culture on Earth has its own version of shadowy creatures that lurk in the dark. And it’s possible the Shadow Stalker myth actually started long before the Gold Rush. Several local Native American tribes in the area have legends revolving around spirits that hide in the dark.”
Warming to the topic, he leaned forward and tapped the tablet. “This rhyme is interesting because when you break it down, you can see all the layers of fear in it. Each addition was a way to frame new fears within an ancient context.” He pointed at the first two lines. “There’s the fear of the dark and the woods and the general sense of the unknown from the 1800s expansion west.” Then he pointed at the next stanza. “And this part, here? About the bunker? These lines were added during the height of the Cold War when everyone was terrified of a nuclear apocalypse and building bunkers. Because what’s scarier than a space that was built for safety being used for evil deeds? Then these final four lines about his hunt and the tally growing first appeared sometime during the height of the serial killer era in the late 70s or early 80s.”
“That’s fascinating,” Alexis said, and it sounded like she genuinely meant it.
Still, embarrassment burned up the back of his neck. Here he was getting excited over a nursery rhyme while they were trying to track down a killer. “Sorry. I love this stuff.”
“No need to apologize.” Her eyes sparkled with amusement. “I totally get it. I nerd out over weird stuff all the time. And this is interesting. In fact, have you ever considered doing a podcast on urban legends?”
Thrown, he sat back. “Uh, no. Can’t say I have.”
“My sister and I are starting our own production company, and I think you’d be amazing at it.” She nodded as if making up her mind about something. “Yes, I can see that working. We’ll definitely talk later.” She shifted her attention back to the tablet and sighed. “But as fascinating as this is, I don’t know how it helps.”
“Well,” Connelly said and leaned forward again. “You think this is a case of folie à deux, right? A killing duo? What if these last four lines are actually about the older killer? The lines first appeared in the eighties. If he’s… let’s say, in his sixties now, then he would’ve been in his twenties then. Prime serial killer age. It’s entirely possible these lines were added about him.”
Alexis’s eyes widened. “So rather than hiding behind the legend, he created it? Or at least that part of it.”
“The M.O. fits,” Cal said.
“Did you look further back than Maria Socktish’s disappearance?” Connelly asked. “What if she was just the first of this new M.O., and there were others before her?”
“I started to, but then—” Alexis broke off and rubbed her hands restlessly against her thighs. “Well. I never got the chance.”
Connelly’s heart went out to her. Under the brave face she showed the world, she was obviously still struggling with what happened to her. She should talk to someone.
No, he realized. Not just someone. Veronica. It would be good for them both, and he could easily picture them becoming friends.
He tucked the idea away for later consideration and refocused on the conversation. “You’d want to look for young women with dark hair—because that probably wouldn’t have changed—but look beyond gunshot victims. I think he evolved into that M.O. He either inspired those lines of the rhyme or was inspired by them. His first kills would have been him experimenting, trying to find what he liked best. Strangulation, suffocation, stabbing. They wouldn’t have been neat.”
“Wait, wait,” Cal said, pushing back from the table and grabbing his laptop from his briefcase. He typed for a moment, then slapped the table with his palm. “There it is.” He swung the laptop around so they could see the old newspaper article on screen. “When I first started law school, I did a project on unsolved cases around my hometown, and my uncle told me about this one. In 1987, back when Eldridge still had a high school before they combined with Steam Valley, a girl my uncle was friends with disappeared off school property after cheerleading practice. Jennifer Anderson. She was found three days later in Lost Rocks State Park. She’d been strangled and sexually assaulted. Look at her picture. She has long dark hair and dark eyes.”
“Eldridge?” Alexis asked, pulling the laptop closer to scan the article.
“My hometown,” Cal said. “An unincorporated village about six miles north of here. Population, very small. And then there was this case here in Steam Valley…” He took the laptop back and typed again, pulling up another article from 1990. “My mom told me about this one. It happened when she was pregnant with me, and all the women in town were terrified, thinking some psycho was out there targeting pregnant women. Oh, here it is. Stephanie Walsh, 21. She was three months pregnant when she was killed by stabbing on June 6, 1990. Also sexually assaulted.”
