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Dark Shaman

by Sean E. Thomas

223 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-0150; ISBN 1-55395-787-3; US$22.50, C$24.96, EUR18.50, £13.00

Gripping mystery set in the Alaskan wilderness where children are being kidnapped and murdered. To stop these depraved killings, State Trooper Sable must discover the identity of his elusive adversary.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpt      catalogue info

About the Book Children are being kidnapped and slaughtered in the Alaskan bush. Alaska State Trooper Robert Sable takes over the investigation from Nicholas Kelly, who has vanished without a trace. Sable along with the FBI has to deal with an elusive killer who is more cunning than all his previous adversaries. Their hunt encompasses the town of Token, nearby Indian villages, and hundreds of miles of wilderness. As they interrogate local rapists, pedophiles and sexual deviants, the bodies of children keep turning up. A Tlingit village shaman, Dan-e-wäk, believes the killer is a powerful ancient evil shaman, Auktelchnik, resurrected. Though Sable and his partner scoff at the idea, the mounting evidence seems to validate the absurd theory. At an archeological excavation, Sable finds ancient evidence of similar murders. Could this coincidence or is someone imitating the legend? Now someone is killing off the suspects one by one. Is the new killer an irate parent or someone else? A search for a missing trapper missing leads to an encounter with Auktelchnik that almost costs Sable his life. When a SWAT team trying to capture the shaman is annihilated, Sable realizes the killer cannot be captured by any conventional means. Sable now realizes the killer and the shaman Auktelchnik are one and the same. Sable and his friends use ancient sacred rites and weaponry to stop Auktelchnik.

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About the Author Longtime Alaska resident Sean E. Thomas authored four Alaskan mystery novels: Dark Project, Dark Soul, Dark Gold and now Dark Shaman. His current project Dark Conspiracy involves an attempted take over of the state of Alaska by domestic terrorists. He graduated in 1970 from Alaska Methodist University with a B.A. in chemistry. He attended the University of Idaho graduate school on a fellowship studying organic chemistry. Sean then served several years as an Army officer with Nike Hercules missiles and later worked for the Army as test engineer on several laser and missile systems. An avid boater, he has been a Coast Guard Auxiliary volunteer in search and rescue, vessel safety, and safety education for more than 25 years. He currently works for the federal government as a chief of administrative services.

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Sample Excerpt

excerpt from Chapter One: The Present

A dozen, dog-eared, manila folders lay scattered across Sergeant Robert Sable's battered oaken desk. He'd inherited the missing children's case just a few days earlier along with his new assignment to the Token detachment. Sable had handled some pretty horrific cases in his ten years with the Alaska State Troopers, but no other case had so repulsed and intrigued him. His first hour in the office, he had posted enlarged photographs of ten lost children, Athabascan, Tlingit and white, on a large bulletin board with diagrams and lists of facts. Under each picture was the child's name and the date of his or her disappearance. Time had run out for two of the children--their bodies had been found with their hearts cut out. Sable only hoped the others were still alive. Sergeant Nicholas Kelly, who had been investigating the case, had also vanished without a trace. His empty car had been found several miles back in the bush, far from the nearest road. Within a week of the sergeant's disappearance, Sable was transferred from Juneau specifically to handle the Kelly case. Before Sable had arrived, Matthew Grady, another trooper, working on the case, had been murdered, his body found next to one of the slain children. Several troopers from different parts of the state were being assigned to the investigation, but their arrival was still a month away.

The children's photos pulled at his heart, especially the photograph he held in his hands. Bobby Mills, a 12-year-old boy in a typical student pose, smiled back at him. The boy was the same age as his son‹that is, if his son had lived. He laid the folder down, bit his lip and forced back a tear as his gaze drifted to the silver-frame at the corner of his desk holding the photograph of his deceased wife and son. He studied their faces and started to pick up the frame but stopped as a knock on the door brought him back to the present.

Corporal Jason Lum ducked under the doorjamb and leaned his huge frame against a nearby wall, his green eyes peering out from under shaggy, blond hair. "Do you think we'll find any of them alive?" His voice carried the waver of uncertainty.

"After all this time, I doubt it." Sable glanced out the window, deep in thought. Pushing his raven hair from his eyes, he returned his gaze to the folder. Frowning, he studied the missing person's reports from the villages of Tetlin, Kanashig, Tanak and Token. The reports seemed inexplicable. At first, one child had vanished each month. Now it was one every week. At each scene, the forensics teams found very little--just a few footprints and some animal tracks. Last summer, when the first four children vanished, Kelly thought the children had either run away or been killed by a wild animal. Then, as the list grew, rapists and serial killers had been considered‹serial killers always started slow, then escalated.

And Token, just 15 miles from Tok, was an easy place for a killer to hide. The town was situated in the center of the state‹ pristine wilderness. It was why people moved here. In Token, murders, rapes, muggings, domestic violence and child abuse were nonexistent. It was a small town surrounded by dense forests of birch, alder, and fir, rugged mountains with large, spiraling glaciers, roaring waterfalls, raging creeks and deep cold rivers. Finding a killer among this diverse population was next to impossible. The people, like the region, were self-reliant, considering themselves rugged frontiersmen and women. They came to this country, seeking solitude‹a way to leave society and their troubles behind. During the summer months the population increased a thousand-fold as tourists descended on the area to take in the unspoiled beauty and splendor of the area. In the late summer and fall, sportsmen arrived to escape the drudgery of everyday life to find the serenity of nature.

"I've never seen so many cases," Lum said.

"Did Kelly check the state website and our list of the sex offenders living in the area?"

"Sure did, but there weren't any."

"Check again. I'll bet that some of the perverts haven't registered. How about Fairbanks, Delta Junction, or Glennallen?" He had to consider that the predator's territory could range a couple hundred miles or more.

"You've got to remember a recent state Supreme Court ruling required us to drop about 65 percent of the damn scumbags from the list. You know, from before the molester registration law went into effect. But, I'll . . ." Lum paused, "let my fingers do a little walking across the keyboard."

Sable nodded but hardly glanced up from the folder.

"After Kelly vanished, I even checked current releases from the correctional facilities. No luck so far."

"It could also be that there's a new psychopath in the area." Sable set the report on his desk and stretched. "Do a national search and see if we could possibly have a transplant from another state."

"The man leaves no clues."

"Or woman. Let's review the facts. What's the same about each case?" Sable hoped to pick Lum's brain in order to view the case from a new perspective.

"They were Indian as well as white children taken after school. In a few of the cases there were mukluk or moccasin tracks found in the vicinity; in others, only dog or wolf tracks, leading one to believe that the killer is an Indian."

"Or someone who wants us to think that."

"None of the children struggled. So they knew their kidnapper."

"Not necessarily. They could have been drugged," Sable said as he grabbed a sketchpad and then drew a circle on a blank sheet of paper and mulled over the problem. The first disappearance had been in the early fall. As the toll increased, his predecessor had sent out his best men to question hundreds of potential witnesses and follow numerous leads, but they came back with nothing.

"They all were taken during daylight with no witnesses." Lum stood, walked to a chair opposite of Sable's desk and sat.

"Wrong, Kelly and Grady probably saw something, but one's dead and the other's missing."

"I hate to say it, but Grady has to be dead."

Sable nodded.

"Ronald Phillips' disappearance was the strangest--with his tracks stopping in freshly fallen snow and the surrounding snow not being disturbed." Lum shuddered. "Kind of spooky."

"The killer must have brushed out his tracks. Maybe even used a leaf blower."

"But the investigator said the snow hadn't been disturbed."

The phone pulsed and Sable snatched it up. "Sable."

"This is Benson. We found the body of a missing child‹ it's . . . it's Jenny Dawson." Benson's voice sounded reluctant.

"Was she raped?"

For a moment silence met his question, then Benson began, "No, sir. Not so as I can tell, but...her heart was cut out."

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Catalogue Information

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