No Man's Land

by Sara Driscoll

  “No more than a few days at most. That’s why Hawk tracked her. Decomposition hadn’t progressed very far and she still smelled human. And she’d been injured, so he was following the scent of blood. There may have even been blood drops to follow that we never saw. The floors were . . .”

  “A mess?”

  “That would be putting it kindly.” Meg took back a full glass from Cara.

  “Is this someone who was solo exploring and had a fall and couldn’t get out?” Clay McCord asked from beside Cara. One of the Washington Post’s crack investigative reporters, McCord instinctively drilled down into any story.

  “That’s where it gets interesting.” Webb sat back, draping his hand over the top of Meg’s chair. “There’s no way this woman got in there by herself.”

  “What makes you say that? Where did you find her?”

  “Inside an eight-foot-tall open-topped coal bin on a raised floor overlooking a wall of massive old furnaces,” Meg said. “The coal bin had no easy access from ground level. Todd got in by standing on Chuck’s shoulders and jumping over the side.”

  McCord whistled. “So just getting into the bin if she was by herself would have been impossible.”

  “The other wrinkle is she was eighty-five,” Webb said. “On top of that, she was in a part of the building that required a challenging path up to the second floor because the rest of the first floor was cut off by a cave-in right down to the basement. From the upper floor, there was a second, intact staircase down to the basement at the far end of the wing. And she had some significant health issues. A history of stroke and heart disease, and she was on anticoagulants. There’s no way she didn’t have assistance to get in there.”

  “Wait a second.” Cara fixed Webb with a level stare. “I know you’re an all-star paramedic, but how could you tell all that on someone with no vital signs?”

  “She was wearing a medical ID bracelet with a 1-800 number. The cops called and reported her as deceased under suspicious circumstances and got her name and details so they could inform next of kin.”

  “That would do it. You called in the Fredericksburg PD?”

  “Fire, police, and EMS to transport the deceased,” Meg said. “Her name was Donna Parker. There was a roll-up garage door that was the original access for coal deliveries, and Todd and Chuck said that was the way for them to get in.”

  “Definitely more straightforward than our path,” Webb said. “Smaill went out to meet them and brought them around the rear of the building. The Fredericksburg firefighters took care of the door with a K-12 saw in about two minutes. Then we helped the boys recover the body from the coal bin using ladders, ropes, and a rescue basket. Great guys.” He scowled. “Better than the cops they sent us.”

  Meg rolled her eyes. “Todd’s still irritated by one of the cops.”

  “The guy got in your face about trespassing and wants to call Beaumont and lodge a complaint.”

  “He knew you were FBI and still wanted to report you even though you just recovered a victim no one knew was on the property?” Cara sounded as outraged as Webb. “What a weasel.”

  Webb held out a fist and she fist-bumped him in solidarity.

  “He was doing his job. And technically, he’s not wrong,” Meg reasoned.

  The twist in Webb’s lips telegraphed his disagreement. “His partner had all the same information and clearly recognized he had a group of first responders on a day off. He had no problem with it. Was grateful for the assistance, actually.”

  McCord set down his knife and fork, impatience radiating in the set of his shoulders and the way he ran his fingers through his dark blond hair, already subtly streaked with gray from life in both the newsroom and war zones. “Good cop, bad cop, yada yada. Let’s get back to the real story. Someone put an elderly lady into a coal bin. Alive or dead?”

  “We don’t know,” Meg said. “We’re only ballparking how long she was in there, and we’re certainly not experts. She was extracted and was sent to the ME’s office in Richmond for a full autopsy.”

  “But even that’s only going to give time of death,” Webb added. “That’s not going to say how long she was there before death, or whether she was even alive when she was brought into the asylum. Either way, she must have been carried in. Even if she was alive, there’s no way she could have managed the stairs up to the second floor or then down to the basement.”

  “Or actually gotten into the bin,” Cara added.

  “And there’s the real issue,” Meg said. “McCord, can you please pass the garlic bread?” When McCord didn’t move, Meg tried again. “McCord?” She looked at him more closely. His gaze was unfocused on the middle of the table. “Uh-oh, we’ve lost him.” She snapped her fingers inches in front of his wire-rimmed glasses. “McCord!”

  He blinked and looked at her as if he’d never seen her before. “What?”

  “There you are. I was asking for the garlic bread, but now I’m asking what’s on your mind. You weren’t in there.”

  He passed her the bread basket. “Sorry, you got me thinking. You said this is someone quite elderly, found dead in a place she couldn’t have climbed into on her own.”

  “It’s extremely doubtful,” Webb said.

  McCord pulled his phone out of his pocket and pulled up his browser. “It’s ringing bells.”

  “Wait a second.” Meg set the basket down untouched. “Ringing bells as in it’s happened before?”

  “I think so. Give me a minute.” Head bent, he started running search queries.

  Meg sat back and turned to Webb. “ ‘Happened before’ could indicate serial incidents.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself. I know you’re law enforcement, but there isn’t a case in every incident.”

  “Agreed. But you have to admit this would be a somewhat strange situation.”

  “You’ve got me there. McCord?”

  “Hang on.” McCord’s thumbs flew over his keypad. “I’m just about . . . there . . .” He paused, scanning an article, and then looked up. “I was right. It has happened before.”

  Meg leaned sideways, trying to read his screen. “Where? When?”

  “About six months ago in an abandoned Gilded Age mansion outside of Trenton, New Jersey. The remains were extremely decomposed, but there were enough personal effects that they were finally able to make an ID. It was an eighty-three-year-old man.”

  “Cause of death?” Webb asked.

  McCord shook his head. “Nothing listed. Advanced decomposition, so they may not have been able to make a credible guess at it.” He set down his phone. “What if this is the beginning of a pattern?”

  “Two data points don’t make a pattern,” Cara said.

  “That’s true, and normally I wouldn’t suggest it, but look at the commonalities. Neither of these incidents can be coincidence.”

  “You’re suggesting that someone is killing seniors and dumping their bodies, or is taking them places they can’t escape from and then leaving them to die?” Webb’s expression clearly showed his disbelief. “Doesn’t that seem a little far-fetched? Also, if someone is doing this purposely, he or she isn’t even taking the trouble to hide the identities of the victims. With their identity known, the killer might be tracked from them. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I’m not disagreeing with you, but I’ve been able to find another case in under three minutes. What if there are others?”

  “Then we’d have a stronger story.” Meg took a sip of her wine and let the idea simmer for a moment. “You up to doing some research?”

  McCord grinned. “I’m an investigative reporter. Research is my middle name.”

  “Then do it. We have a suspicious death in Virginia and another in New Jersey.”

  Cara made a small sound as she suddenly saw Meg’s line of thought. “If it’s a pattern, it just crossed state lines, and it would be an FBI case.”

  “Exactly.” Meg drilled an index finger at McCord. “Get me more information. If someone is kil
ling senior citizens or leaving them to die alone in condemned buildings, I can talk to Craig about opening an investigation so we can find the perp and nail his ass to the wall.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Busted: Getting caught trespassing in an urbex site.

  Monday, October 8, 9:12 AM

  Forensic Canine Unit, J. Edgar Hoover Building

  Washington, DC

  Leaning on the doorjamb, Meg rapped her knuckles on the open door. “Craig? Got a minute?”

  Craig Beaumont, the craggy-faced supervisory special-agent-in-charge who ran the Human Scent Evidence Team, looked up from his computer screen. “You’re saving me from Brian’s latest case report. Absolutely. Come on in.”

  Meg took a chair across from his desk, Hawk settling quietly at her feet. “Something happened over the weekend. Something weird that’s bothering me.”

  “Something concerning the FBI?”

  “No. Well, not yet, anyway.” At Craig’s raised eyebrows, she rushed to explain. “I was out exploring an old abandoned psychiatric institution in Virginia. It’s been closed for about fifteen years, and urban explorers go through it for fun. One of the firefighters on Todd Webb’s shift is into urbex, and he invited us to come along. Hawk and I went because I thought it would be good practice for him. All of the physical search challenges with none of the actual search.”

  Craig sat back in his chair and loosened his tie slightly. “I hear a ‘but’ coming.”

  “Um . . . yeah. We found someone.”

  “Someone who’d gotten lost while they were exploring the building?”

  “Maybe. But definitely someone who died in the building or whose body was dumped there.”

  More raised eyebrows from Craig, but his silence directed her to continue her story.

  “Hawk was distracted pretty much from the get-go. We were in an office full of old ward reports, examination rooms, a surgical suite, a morgue, and he was all over the place. It wasn’t like him at all.”

  “He could smell the body.” Craig’s statement told Meg he had jumped ahead of her tale.

  “You know he’s not a trained cadaver dog. Corpses aren’t his thing; that’s the Victim Recovery Team’s job.” Meg ran a hand over Hawk’s square head, and his tail thumped in response. “I wasn’t in search-and-rescue mode, so I wasn’t watching his body language for any signs of alerting. But, finally, even Todd questioned his distraction. He’s worked enough cases with us that he knew something was off. I gave Hawk his head, and he led us deeper into the basement. And that’s where we found her, in the back of the furnace room, in a coal store above these ancient furnaces. Craig, she was a frail, eighty-five-year-old woman. Maybe she was dead long before she was placed in the bin, but it’s been bothering me that she might have died alone there because she certainly couldn’t climb out in her condition. And then it gets more complicated. When Todd and I had dinner last night with McCord and Cara, it flipped a switch for McCord. He did a little fast research and found a similar case in New Jersey. This time it was an eighty-three-year-old man found in a condemned Gilded Age mansion near Trenton.”

  Craig’s relaxed pose melted away as he leaned forward. “Two elderly persons found dead in unlikely places they’d never be able to get into under their own power?”

  “And certainly couldn’t get out of,” Meg confirmed. “I asked him to dig deeper and see if he found any other instances. I was going to wait until I heard from him before talking to you, but it’s been bothering me all night.”

  “You’re thinking we have a serial killer who is crossing state lines, killing the elderly.”

  “I know it sounds a little insane. Whoever is doing it isn’t even trying to hide the victim’s identity.”

  “What you’re suggesting is entirely hypothetical, but that’s where a lot of cases start. It’s also where cases are missed if investigators don’t start making connections. Maybe the killer doesn’t need to worry about victim identification. If there’s utterly no connection with the victim, he doesn’t have to worry about being linked to him or her. To efficiently evade identification, he could remove the head and hands, but that’s a lot of work. And that still leaves DNA. Why go to all that trouble if you don’t have to?” He studied her thoughtfully for a moment, his fingertips drumming rhythmically on his desk. “I think you have traces of something here.”

  “Traces pretty much sums it up. This isn’t enough for us to lay claim yet.”

  “No, but I could make some inquiries. Maybe between that and McCord’s research, we’d have a better idea of what we’re looking at.”

  “You’d do that? I know how busy you are.”

  Craig glanced down at the surface of his desk, which was covered with case reports, file folders, and requests for search-and-rescue teams, and winced. “I’m not so busy that I can’t make a few phone calls and pull a few strings. Let me get back to you in a few days.”

  “Thank you.” Meg stood, and Hawk jumped to his feet beside her. She took one step toward the door and stopped. “Oh . . . uh . . . sorry, but you may get a call today from the Fredericksburg PD.”

  “About this case?”

  “About your team members who were caught trespassing yesterday.” She threw him a contrite smile. “One of the responding officers was extremely unhappy about that. And it felt like he was more focused on that than the body. Luckily, his partner had his eye on the real issue, but this guy . . .”

  “Small-town cop, big power play?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll make it go away.”

  “Thanks. Again, sorry.” She started for the door but stopped in the doorway when Craig called her name. “Yes?”

  He waved an aggrieved index finger in her direction. “It sounds like a fun outing, one I’d probably enjoy myself. But next time, try not to get caught. You know the locals hate us feds and love to rub stuff like this in.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She was grinning when she left his office.

  CHAPTER 5

  Bricked Up: An entry point that has been blocked or made inaccessible in the past.

  Wednesday, October 10, 4:37 PM

  Forensic Canine Unit, J. Edgar Hoover Building

  Washington, DC

  “What on earth happened to you two?” Brian Foster’s dark brows snapped together and his lip curled as he took in Meg’s mud-soaked clothes and bedraggled hair. Hawk wandered in behind her, his fur tipped with mud. Brian’s German shepherd Lacey jumped to her feet from where she lay beside his chair and ran to Hawk, sniffing him from head to toe while he wagged his tail in greeting.

  “You should see the other guy.” Meg dropped into her desk chair across from Brian and glanced down at her filthy clothes in disgust.

  “You were fighting Mother Nature?”

  “Just about.” Meg ran a hand self-consciously through her hair and then shrugged and dropped her hand to her lap in resignation. “Are all the twigs and leaves out?”

  “Close.” Brian pushed out of his chair and crossed to her. He pulled first a small twig and then a mangled, brilliant red leaf from her ponytail and dropped them on her desk. He smoothed her disheveled hair away from her face. “Now they’re all out. But you’re still a mess.”

  Meg tipped her head against her chair back and laughed. Of all the handlers she worked with in the Forensic Canine Unit, Brian was her closest companion. Coworkers for years, and friends for almost as long, Brian was always her best ally, even if he regularly gave her a hard time for fun. Meg had been his strongest supporter and counted both Brian and his husband, Ryan, among her closest friends.

  With a sigh and one last chuckle she looked up at him. “You’re too good to me.”

  “Always.” Brian’s green eyes sparkled with laughter as he sat back in his chair and propped his feet on the corner of his desk. “Where did Craig send you?”

  “Ellicott City.”

  That wiped the smile from his face. “Yeah, I can see that. They’ve
barely recovered from the last round of flooding and here they are in it again. Looking for flash flood survivors?”

  “Mudslide.” She held out her hand for her dog. “Hawk, come.” She ran a hand over his stiff, spiky fur. “I didn’t do a very good job of toweling the mud off you.” She pointed to the floor. “Down.” Hawk settled on the floor with a long sigh. “He’s exhausted, even with a power nap in the car on the way back. I know how he feels, and I didn’t get a power nap. It was seriously hard physical work slogging through the mud looking for victims.” She smiled. “But we found three, all alive, so it was worth it.”

  “Nice.” He grinned at her, knowing full well the satisfaction of a successful search, as well as the sucking grief of finding victims they were too late to save. “But next time I recommend wearing coveralls.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him. “Funny man. I did wear coveralls. And when they became too saturated to move, I stripped down to street clothes. My mistake was in not bringing two sets of coveralls because then I . . .”

  Brian stared at her questioningly when she trailed off. “Then you . . . what?”

  But Meg wasn’t listening to him. Her attention was fixed on Craig, who had left his office and was headed straight for them, a notepad in hand. “Incoming,” she murmured. When he got closer, she said, “What’s wrong?”

  Craig pulled over a spare chair and sat down between Meg and Brian. “Why does something have to be wrong?”

  “The look on your face. What don’t we know?”

  “I made those phone calls you asked for.”

  “About the elderly victims?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is related to the asylum victim?” Brian asked. “And Clay McCord’s possible connection?”

  “Yes, though I’m thinking that ‘possible’ is becoming ‘probable,’” Craig said.

  Exhaustion rolled off Meg, and she sat bolt upright. “You found another one.”

  “Two.”