by Ted Dekker
Daniel stopped. Felt Lori close in behind him. “Hold up, Brit.”
The agent looked back. Daniel nodded and stepped past him. “If you don’t mind.”
Brit made no objection to his taking the lead. Daniel didn’t see it, but he heard Lori’s breathing close behind him, and he knew she’d stepped past as well. The young pathologist eager to learn. Couldn’t be much younger. At the right time he’d ask.
He walked forward slowly, listening to the soft crunch of dirt and gravel under his shoes. Eve would have carried the body over his shoulder to avoid banging her head and feet on the side walls. A strong man, six foot. Easy, unhurried stride. This after plucking his prey from their grasp like a father snatching his child from danger.
Strange thought.
They followed the cave around a forty-five degree bend and stopped at the entrance to a chamber maybe fifteen feet wide. It narrowed again thirty feet farther in. Beyond, the cave wound its way up to the exit above the cliffs where they’d found the tire impressions, but Daniel wasn’t as interested in how Eve had escaped as in what he’d done here, in this chamber.
The girl’s body lay on a shelf ahead and to his left. Still dressed in the dirty white dress. No shoes. No head covering. On her back, facing the ceiling, carefully placed.
He knew that the photographer had already recorded the scene, following protocol. The FBI now had a permanent record of the cave. Otherwise the area had been undisturbed since Eve’s departure sometime before daybreak.
A musty smell filtered through Daniel’s nostrils. A stronger but less pervasive odor hung behind it. The bite of bile. He walked forward, stepped over a clear footprint, and skirted the rock shelf from his left to his right.
He traced the body from head to feet. Positioned exactly as Eve had positioned the other fifteen bodies. Hands by her sides, fingers curving gently, feet slightly parted. Eyes closed.
A pungent odor rose from her body. Before she’d finally relaxed and died, the victim had vomited. A wet spot containing no obvious solids by her left shoulder.
“He doesn’t hate them,” Lori said beside him.
“What leads you to that conclusion?”
“Her death came from the disease inside of her, not from him.”
“Very good, Dr. Ames. And yet when you do your autopsy, I think you’ll find that his murder weapon is far worse than a bullet to the head. Why does he infect them?”
“Because they deserve to be infected. But he doesn’t blame them or use violence. He isn’t angry at his Eves.”
She pulled on a pair of green surgical gloves, snapped them around her wrists. Leaning forward, Lori eased the victim’s lips apart, pulled her lower lip down to expose her teeth and gums.
“Blood,” she said. “From a cut on the inside of her lip that wasn’t there last night. Her lips were compressed with enough force to draw blood.”
She looked up at Daniel.
He met her eyes. “He kissed her on the lips at the end.”
“He needs to watch them die,” she said.
“He’s obsessed with watching the disease smother them.”
“And he’s there to taste the last breath.”
“Why?” Daniel asked.
They were volleying like tennis partners. Lori had taken a path that landed her a job and title known as forensic pathologist, but he wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she had studied far more than the human body along the way.
“What about the other victims?” she asked. “Similar cuts?”
“Bruising. Some blood. But it’s always been attributed to the disease.”
She stood upright and looked over the body. “When can we get her back to Los Angeles?”
“As soon as she’s processed here,” Brit said. “She’ll be on ice and on a plane within two hours. Unless you want to use the Denver lab.”
“No.”
“Why would he risk his life to kiss her?” Daniel asked the question aloud, but he was posing the issue for himself. “What is it about their breath that drives him? Eve risked his life without hesitation to take her back from us last night. Why? So he could finish what he’d started. Finish taking her life through a disease.”
“Or finish taking her breath,” Lori said.
They stood next to Brit, who respected their exchange. Get him with the forensic evidence team, and he’d take the lead.
He spoke after a long stretch of silence. “Montova is at the first site with the ERT. He wants to talk to you, Clark.”
“Give me a minute, will you?”
Lori touched his arm, then left with Brit. Alone with the body. He took a deep breath, paced along the rock shelf, formed a steeple with his fingers, and tapped his lips.
Eve had kissed his victim. Sucked the breath from her. Or forcefully smothered her with his lips, but additional evidence would almost certainly undermine such a forceful killing. Eve had never expressed his passion through personal violence.
“You don’t want to kill them, do you?” His voice echoed through the chamber. “You feel sorry for them.”
Pain knifed through his head, then faded. The morphine had worn off and the naproxen was wearing thin. Why had Lori checked the victim’s lips?
But he saw why. A thin line of dried blood traced her lower lip. The pathologist from Phoenix was unusually observant.
Daniel left Eve number sixteen as she had died, faceup on the shelf, and joined the others outside the cave.
Brit turned to one of the technicians dressed in a Tyvek suit who was checking the power supply to a black light. “It’s all yours, Frank. Break it down into quadrants, turn over every rock. Let me know what you find before filing the report.”
The black lights would cause photoreaction of fluorescence or phosphorescence in different articles of evidence. Once the cave had been thoroughly scanned for trace elements, secretions, and fibers, floodlights would be taken in for a meticulous visual search. Chips in the rock, scrapes, articles of clothing, weapons, the whole gamut. By the time the cave was dusted for fingerprints, any disturbance created by the dusting itself would be immaterial.
“This way.” Brit led them along the cliff wall, where game had worn a thin trail through the brush.
“You okay?” Lori asked.
“You got any more Advil?”
THE CAVE WITH THE animal pens looked like a zoo now, climbing with technicians armed with the tools of the trade. The evidence collected would be bagged and tagged and flown to the LA lab for examination. Only the Tokyo Police and Scotland Yard matched the FBI’s capability in extracting patterns from evidence. But the suggestions made between the lines were what interested Daniel.
No sign of Montova.
Daniel spent ten minutes walking through the pens, stepping around technicians shifting through straw and dirt. They had already lifted a wealth of evidence from the scene, but nothing that would lead them closer to Eve’s identity. They might catch a break, but fifteen months on the killer’s trail had left Daniel with one clear understanding: there was no real trail.
Eve left only evidence that confirmed the profile they already had. He’d been careful not to supply the slightest indication that might expand the FBI’s knowledge of him, and Daniel doubted he’d slipped this time.
There was one thing in common among the blue Bic pen found in the third cage, and the razor-clean cut along the goat’s sternum, and the metal chair in the girl’s cage, and the mud impressed by the bottom of Eve’s boots, and the fingernail recovered next to the chair, and a dozen other pieces of bagged evidence: none of it would advance the ID of the UNSUB.
It was the seventh time they’d found a slaughtered animal near the victim. Part of his religious profile.
“Could I see you in private, Agent Clark?”
Daniel turned around and faced Montova, who stood near the cavern’s entrance. “Morning, sir. Of course.”
The assistant director in charge led Daniel to his car, where Lori leaned against the front fender, arm
s crossed. She stood when she saw them approach.
The rusted white Dodge Caravan was being loaded onto a flatbed truck, ready to be taken to a secure facility in Colorado Springs for processing.
Montova stared him down, rubbing his jaw between his thumb and forefinger. “You know why I’m here?”
“Not really, no.”
“For a lot of reasons that make sense to the bureau. First victim found alive. First agent found dead. To mention a couple.”
Daniel nodded. His head ached despite the Advil he’d downed. A cricket in the nearby trees seemed unnaturally loud. The canyon was filled with sounds of the FBI working over a crime scene—subdued voices, the mechanical clicking of a camera, muted radio chatter. To the casual observer, they were just busy bodies working methodically, hardly an image of full-scale war.
Montova spoke. “Consider yourself off the case, effective immediately, Agent Clark.”
“Sorry?” Daniel felt momentarily stunned.
“Not only do we face significant liabilities in fielding an agent in your physical condition”—he glanced at Lori—“but we can’t afford to put a case of this magnitude in the hands of a broken man.”
“Broken?” Daniel felt his left eye twitch, a condition only his wife had called out as an idiosyncrasy. Evidently the twitch came on when he was enraged, a rare enough occurrence that only someone who lived with him for quite some time would notice. So said Heather, his one and only true love.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Lori said, “but I believe at risk was the term I used.”
“In my estimation, at risk of a mental breakdown is broken, at least when it comes to field duty. You were killed. At least accept that much. Your body made it back in one piece, but did your mind? I’m not willing to sit around and find out. At least not officially.”
“I can assure you, I’m fine,” Daniel snapped. “Apart from a headache and some occasional dizziness, everything is functioning just fine. You can’t just remove me from the case.”
“You were dead for—”
“I’m alive, for heaven’s sake! Don’t penalize me for refusing to die!”
“We aren’t. Just questioning your mental stability.”
“I’m sorry, I was under the impression that she”—Daniel pointed to Lori—“is a medical doctor. I’m the behavioral psychologist. Or did I lose my doctorate while I was under as well?”
“Self-evaluation isn’t acceptable. FBI policy. I’m putting you on leave, no discussion.” Montova blew out some air. “On the other hand, if you choose to follow up this case on your own, I won’t stop you.”
“Meaning . . .”
“You forget already?” Montova’s brow arched.
Daniel glanced at Lori. “You’re saying I can go dark on the condition that I work with the woman who’s declared me unstable.”
Lori took his frustration in stride, returning his glare with the look of an empathetic, maternal partner. It’ll be okay, trust me.
Montova glanced between them. “That you do everything through Lori, yes. She’ll provide you access to necessary elements of the ongoing investigation. And for the record, I think you could use someone to help you process what’s happened here.”
“You mean someone to keep tabs on me,” Daniel said.
Montova dipped his head almost imperceptibly. “Call it what you want.”
Daniel stared at the flatbed that was hauling away the white van. “I want to check the tires,” he said.
“Stick to the head game, Agent Clark. Leave the tires to Agent Holman.”
“The tires are part of the head game,” Daniel snapped. His head throbbed and for a moment the edges of his vision darkened.
Then it was gone. Stable, he thought. Maybe Montova and Lori were on to something.
“The tires tell us where he’s been.”
“The lab will tell Brit where he’s been,” Montova said. “Brit will tell Lori. Lori will tell you. You’ll have full access, and believe me, I hope you corner him in one of his dark, smelly holes. But it’s my job to make sure it’s Eve who ends up in the ground, not you. You do things my way.”
Daniel decided to accept the man at his word. If he were to be completely frank, he’d thank them both for giving him more than he’d asked for. Lori’s involvement could prove invaluable; she’d proven that much in the last hour alone.
“Fine,” he said.
Montova nodded. “As of this moment, consider yourself dark.”
TEN
HEATHER CLARK WALKED along the concrete sidewalk, angling for the steps leading up to the courthouse, mind still buzzing with the events that had kept her awake through the night. The world seemed to have rolled over and exposed an underbelly not even she could stomach.
An hour earlier, Brit had filled her in on the details of Daniel’s death and resuscitation. She had begged him to let her talk to Daniel, but he’d insisted she should let Daniel process the matter first. The death. His health, body and mind, or lack thereof. The crime scene.
It was then she’d learned that he was actually headed to the crime scene. Any lingering concerns for his well-being fell away. Daniel had been killed and brought back from the brink, but in the end he was still Daniel. His first concern was always the crime scene. He probably hadn’t even stopped to consider the pain his rather inconvenient death had caused her.
“Does he know that I know?” she’d asked.
“No.”
That gave her some comfort. If he knew, he’d have called to check on her. Unless he finally decided he’d had enough of her lines in the sand. Every person had a limit. The longer a couple is separated, the less likely their reunion, they said. She and Daniel were going on two years.
Heather climbed the steps, mind so far from her continuance hearing that she considered calling the office to pawn it off on Cynthia or one of the other new attorneys.
Her phone chirped and she pulled it from the clip on her belt. Raquel.
“You okay?” Raquel asked.
“As I can be. Find anything?”
Raquel paused. “Bobby ran the plates and came up empty.”
Bobby Nuetz worked for the California Highway Patrol, a good friend to Raquel who had dipped into his state resources on more than one occasion for both of them. True to form, Raquel had followed Heather out of the bar last night, watched her step into the black car, then scribbled the plate number on a napkin before going back inside.
“What do you mean empty?”
“I mean it doesn’t exist. I obviously missed something. You don’t happen to remember the make or model of the car, do you? If Bobby had one or the other, he could cross it with part of the license and possibly get a hit.”
“No. A black sedan. But there were others who saw me get in, I made sure of that. The valet may know.”
“I’ll check.” Raquel took a breath. “Have you talked to Daniel?”
“Not yet.”
“You going to tell him?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You need to turn this over. Play with fire and you’ll get burned, Heather.”
She dipped her head at a dark-suited man who opened the glass door to the court building. “Thank you.” She stepped into the busy foyer. “I’ll call you after the hearing. I’m at security.”
“Call me.”
She dropped the phone into her purse, set it on the X-ray belt, and stepped through the scanner. The guard who motioned her through was a retired cop named Roy Browning, and he tipped his hat as he did every time Heather made an appearance at the courtroom.
“Lovely as always this morning.”
Her phone was ringing as it passed through the X-ray tunnel—a traditional bell sound that she normally muted before entering any office.
“Thank you, Roy. I feel like I’ve been scraped off the bottom of someone’s shoe.”
“You look like an angel. And you can tell the judge I said so.”
She picked up her purse, smiled at the man, and pulle
d out her cell phone on the fourth ring. One more and it would go to voice mail.
Heather flipped the phone open, thinking the call might be more news from Brit, who’d promised to reach her if anything changed in Colorado Springs.
“Hello?”
Static filled the receiver.
She hurried forward, hunting reception. “Hello?”
Only static.
She glanced at the display, saw that she had three bars, and pressed the phone back to her ear. “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.”
A soft click sounded. A breathy voice was barely audible. “Heatherrrrrr.”
She stopped in the hall. A sea of bodies, most dressed in suits, moved around her, but they fell silent as her hearing homed in on the one small speaker pinned to her ear.
“Heather. Heather—are you there?” A male voice, the same one that had called before, if she wasn’t mistaken. Whispering this time. Low. “Heather, Heather. Did you make me a promise?”
“Who is this?” she asked. But she knew already, didn’t she?
Still whispering. “I’m your saving Jesus. I’m your worst nightmare. I am Lucifer. It depends on what you want me to be. On what you do.”
The voice sliced into her mind and sent a fear unlike any she could quite qualify through her nerves. Her voice came raspy, so quiet.
“Eve?”
Even as she spoke, she doubted he could hear.
“I do love Eve,” the voice whispered back. “Do you love Daniel? He’s forgetting his promise. He’s going to die if you can’t stop him.”
“What promise?” she said, loud enough now for two men who’d passed her to glance back.
“You can’t stop me. He took me from my daddy, my sister, my priest. No one can stop Eve.”
Breathing.
“Who are you?”
The phone clicked.
“Wait! What promise?” This time she yelled the question, and a dozen passersby turned to look at her. She stood rooted to the marble floor. Stranded and conspicuous, she snapped the phone shut and forced her feet forward.
Raquel’s warning rang through her head. Play with fire and you’ll get burned, Heather.
She took two steps before slowly turning and walking toward the exit.
