by Lisa Gardner
The Marine glared at her. She’d definitely crossed some line in his mind over to wacky. He sighed and seemed to be struggling to find his patience.
Mac was now at the area where they had both seen the leaf flutter to the ground. He was on his hands and knees, moving carefully. For the first time, Kimberly realized their problem. There were many dried-up leaves on the ground. Red, yellow, brown. What color had been in the girl’s hair? Oh God, she already didn’t remember.
The backup sentries had edged closer. They had their hands on the stocks of their rifles. Kimberly brought up her chin and dared them to shoot her.
“You need to leave,” the first sentry repeated.
“No.”
“Ma’am, you depart on your own or we will forcefully assist you.”
Mac had a leaf now. He held it up, seemed to be frowning at it. Was he also wondering what color it should be? Could he remember?
“Lay a hand on me and I will sue you for sexual harassment.”
The Marine blinked. Kimberly blinked, too. Really, as threats went, that was a pretty good one. Even Mac had turned toward her and appeared sincerely impressed. The leaf in his hand was green. All at once, she relaxed. That made sense. The leaves already at the scene were old, from last fall. A green leaf, on the other hand, had probably been brought in with the body. He had done it. They had done it.
The backup sentries were now right behind the first pair. All four sets of male gazes stared at her.
“You need to leave,” the first Marine said again, but he no longer sounded as forceful.
“I’m just trying to do right by her,” Kimberly said quietly.
That seemed to disarm him further. His stare broke. He glanced down at the dirt path. And Kimberly found herself still talking.
“I had a sister, you see. Not that much older than this girl here. One night, a guy got her drunk, tampered with her seat belt, and drove her straight into a telephone pole. Then he ran away, leaving her there all alone, her skull crushed against the windshield. She didn’t die right away, though. She lived for a while. I’ve always wondered … Did she feel the blood trickling down her face? Did she know how alone she was? The medics would never tell me, but I wonder if she cried, if she understood what was happening to her. That’s gotta be the worst thing in the world. To know that you’re dying, and nobody is coming to save you. Of course, you don’t have to worry about such things. You’re a Marine. Someone will always come for you. We can’t say the same, however, for the women of the world. I sure couldn’t say the same for my sister.”
Now all the Marines were looking down. That was okay. Kimberly’s voice had gotten huskier than she intended. She was afraid of the expression that must be on her face.
“You’re right,” she said abruptly. “I should go. I’ll come back later, when an investigating officer is here.”
“That would be best, ma’am,” the Marine said. He still would not look her in the eye.
“Thank you for your help.” She hesitated, then just couldn’t help herself. “Please take care of her for me.”
Then Kimberly turned quickly, and before she did anything even more stupid, disappeared back down the path.
Two minutes later, she felt Mac’s hand upon her arm. She took one look at his somber expression and knew he’d heard everything.
“Did you get the leaf?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now would you like to tell me why you’re really here?”
And Mac said, “Because all these years later, I’ve been waiting for him.”
CHAPTER 9
Quantico, Virginia
12:33 P.M.
Temperature: 95 degrees
“It started in nineteen ninety-eight. June fourth. Two college roommates went out to a tavern in Atlanta and never came home. Three days later, the first girl’s body was found near Interstate seventy-five just south of the city. Four months later, the second girl’s remains were found a hundred miles away in Tallulah Gorge State Park. Both girls were found fully clothed and with their purses; no signs of robbery or sexual assault.”
Kimberly frowned. “That’s different.”
Mac nodded at her. They were in a corner of the Crossroads Lounge, huddled over a small table, heads together and voices low. “Next year, nineteen ninety-nine. First heat wave of the year doesn’t hit until July. Two high school girls in Macon, Georgia, sneak into a local bar on July tenth. Never seen alive again. First girl’s body is found two days later, this time next to U.S. four forty-one, which happens to be near the Tallulah Gorge State Park. Second girl is found …”
“Inside the gorge?” Kimberly tried gamely.
“Nope. Burke County cotton field. One hundred and fifty miles away from the gorge. It’s the gorge that we searched, however, so nobody discovered her body until the cotton harvest in November.”
“Wait a minute.” Kimberly held up a hand. “It takes all the way until November to find a girl’s body in a field?”
“You’ve never been to Burke County. We’re talking eight hundred square miles of cotton. The kind of place where you can drive all day without ever hitting a paved road. There ain’t nothing out in Burke County.”
“Except a dead body.” Kimberly leaned forward intently. “Both girls fully clothed again? No sign of sexual assault?”
“The best we can tell,” Mac said. “It’s difficult with the second girl of each pair, given the condition of their bodies. But for the most part, yes, all four girls are found wearing their party clothes and looking relatively … peaceful.”
“Cause of death?”
“It varies. For the girls left next to roadways, an overdose of benzodiazepine, the prescription drug Ativan. He injects the lethal dose into their left shoulders.”
“And the second girls?”
“We don’t know. It looks like a fall may have been what killed Deanna Wilson. For Kasey Cooper, exposure, maybe, or dehydration.”
“They were abandoned alive?”
“It’s a theory.”
She wasn’t sure she liked how he said that. “You said you found their purses. What about ID?”
Mac’s turn to frown. He was obviously thinking of the girl they’d found that day, and the lack of ID in her wallet. “They did have their driver’s licenses,” he admitted. “IDing the bodies was never an issue. No keys, though. For that matter, no cars. We’ve never recovered a single vehicle.”
“Really?” Kimberly’s scowl deepened. She was fascinated in spite of herself. “Okay, continue.”
“Two thousand,” Mac said crisply, then promptly rolled his eyes. “Bad year, two thousand. Brutally hot summer, no rain. May twenty-ninth, we’re already in the mid-nineties. Two students from Augusta State University head to Savannah for a girls’ weekend. They never come home. Tuesday morning, a motorist finds the first girl’s body next to U.S. twenty-five in Waynesboro. Can you guess where Waynesboro is?”
Kimberly thought about it a minute. “The cotton field place. Burke County?”
He smiled, a flash of white against his dark skin. “You catch on quick. That’s one of the rules of the game, you see: the first body of the new pair is always left near the second girl of the last pair. Maybe he likes the continuity, or maybe he’s giving us a fighting chance at finding the second body in case we missed it the previous year.” He paused for a second and eyed her appraisingly. “So for this new pair, where’s the second girl?”
“Not in Burke County?”
“You’re cheatin’.”
“Well, he hasn’t repeated an area. So you can assume not the gorge and not a cotton field. Process of elimination.”
“Georgia has nearly sixty thousand square miles of mountains, forests, coastline, swamplands, peach orchards, tobacco fields, and cities. You’re gonna need to eliminate more than that.”
Kimberly acknowledged the point with a slight shrug. Unconsciously she worried her lower lip. “Well, you said it was a game. Does he leave you clues?�
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His answering smile was dazzling. “Yes, ma’am. Second rule of the game—for it to be competitive, you gotta leave clues. Let’s go back to the very first girl, found outside of Atlanta. Girl’s laid out next to a major interstate, remember? We have no signs of violence, no sexual assault, so that means no blood, no semen, none of the normal trace evidence you might expect to collect in a homicide case. But here’s something interesting. The body’s clean. Very clean. Almost as if someone has washed the victim’s legs, arms, and shoes. We not only lack hair and fiber, we can’t even find traces of spilled beer on her shoes or a stray peanut in her hair. It’s like the girl’s been … sanitized.”
“All of her?” Kimberly asked sharply. “Then you can no longer be sure of lack of sexual assault.”
Mac shook his head. “Not all of her. Just the parts … exposed. Hair, face, limbs. My best guess? He wipes them down with a sponge. It’s like … he’s wiping a slate clean. And then he starts his work.”
“Oh my God,” Kimberly breathed. She was no longer sure she wanted to know what had happened next.
“They’re a map,” Mac said quietly. “That’s why the first girl exists. That’s why she’s left next to a major road and easily found. Maybe why she gets a quick and relatively painless death. Because she doesn’t matter to him. She’s just a tool, a guide to where the real game is being played out.”
Kimberly was leaning forward again. Her heart had started pounding, neurons firing to life in her brain. She could feel where this was headed now. Almost see the dark, twisted road open up before her. “What are the clues?”
“From the first girl, we found a feather in her hair, a crushed flower beneath her body, traces of rock on her shoe, and a business card in her purse. The crime lab followed protocol and took samples of everything. And then … nothin’.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothin’. You ever been to a real crime lab, Kimberly? And by that, I don’t mean the FBI lab. The Feds have money, no doubt about it. I mean what the rest of us working stiffs get to use.”
Kimberly shook her head.
“We have equipment. Lots of equipment. But unless it’s fingerprints or DNA—God’s honest truth—it’s as worthless as an unmatched sock. We don’t have databases. So sure, we collect soil samples, but it’s not like we can scan them into some giant computer and have a matching location magically blip across the screen the way they do in some of those crime shows. Frankly, we operate on tight budgets and tight budgets mean forensics is mostly reactionary. You take samples and someday, if you have a suspect, then you have a reference sample to work with. You take your dirt from the crime scene and hope it matches dirt from the bad guy’s yard. That’s as good as it gets.
“In other words, we collected the rock sample, the feather, the flower and we knew they were worthless to us. So we sent them out to real experts who might be able to make something of them. And then we waited nine months.”
Kimberly closed her eyes. “Oh no,” she said.
“Nobody knew,” he said quietly. “You have to understand, nobody ever expected the likes of this man.”
“He abandoned the second girl in the gorge, didn’t he?”
“With a gallon jug of water. Wearing high heels. In nearly a hundred-degree heat.”
“But if you had interpreted the clues in time …”
“You mean, if we’d identified the white flower as persistent trillium, a rare herb found growing only in a five-point-three-square-mile area in all of Georgia—an area inside the Tallulah Gorge? Or if we’d realized the feather belonged to the peregrine falcon, which also makes its home in the gorge? Or if we’d understood that the granite in the rocks found ground into her shoes matched samples taken from the cliffs, or that the business card found in her purse belonged to a customer service representative from Georgia Power, the company that just so happens to own and manage the gorge? Sure, if we’d known that stuff, then maybe we could’ve found her. But most of those reports didn’t come in for months, and poor Deanna Wilson was dead and buried by then.”
Kimberly hung her head. She was thinking of a poor young girl lost and bewildered in the middle of a hostile forest. Trying to hike her way out over uneven terrain in party heels and a little black dress. The burning, scorching heat. She wondered if the girl had drunk the water quickly, convinced someone would find her soon. Or if she had rationed it from the start, already fearing the worst.
“And the second pair of girls?” she asked quietly.
Mac shrugged. His eyes were dark and somber. “We still didn’t know any better. The minute the first body appeared outside of the gorge, that’s the connection everyone made. We have someone who kidnaps girls and likes to hide ’em in the gorge. Given the extreme heat, the Rabun County Sheriff’s Office did the logical thing and threw all resources at searching the state park. It took another week to realize she wasn’t there, and even then, it was hard to be sure.”
“What were the clues?”
“Josie Anders had white lint on her red top, dried mud on her shoes, four kernels in her purse, and a phone number scribbled on a cocktail napkin wadded up in her front pocket.”
“The lint and kernels have something to do with cotton?” Kimberly guessed.
“Upon further examination, the lint proved to be linters, made from raw cottonseed. The kernels were cotton kernels. The mud turned out to be high in organic matter. And the phone number belonged to Lyle Burke, a sixty-five-year-old retired electrician, living in Savannah, who’d never heard of the two girls, let alone Roxie’s Bar, which was where they were last seen alive.”
“Burke County,” Kimberly said.
Mac nodded. “Cotton’s not a fair clue in a state like Georgia. There’s only ninety-seven counties that grow the stuff. But by throwing in the phone number … I think in his own way, the man considered it sporting. Now we had only eight hundred square miles to search. If we’d been paying attention—” He shrugged, his hand knotting and unknotting in a frustrated motion.
“When did you start putting it together?” Kimberly asked.
“Two months after Kasey Cooper was found in the cotton field. The last of the evidence reports came in, and we made the connections after the fact. Gee, we’ve had four girls disappear in pairs. In both instances, one girl is found right away, next to a major road. And in both instances, the second girl isn’t found for a long time, and when she is found, it’s in a remote and dangerous area. The first girls, however, have evidence that ties them to the second location. Gee, maybe if we figure out those clues sooner, we can find the second girls in time. Good golly, Miss Molly, that might make some sense.” Mac blew out a breath of air. He sounded disgusted, but then he got on with it.
“We assembled a task force. Not that the public knew. We worked behind the scenes at that point, identifying some of the best experts on Georgia—biologists, botanists, geologists, entomologists, etc., and getting them thinking about this guy and where he might strike next. The goal was to be proactive. Failing that, at least we’d already have the experts in place to give us real-time answers should the man strike again.”
“What happened?” Kimberly asked.
“The year two thousand,” he said bluntly. “The year we’d thought we’d gotten smart. Instead, everything went to hell in a hand basket. Two more kidnappings, three girls dead.” Mac glanced at his watch. He shook away the rest of what he was going to say, and startled them both by taking her hand instead. “But that was then. This is now. If this is the Eco-Killer, Kimberly, we don’t have much time. The clock is ticking. Now here is what I need you to do next.”
CHAPTER 10
Quantico, Virginia
2:03 P.M.
Temperature: 98 degrees
Special Agent Mac McCormack was going to get her kicked out of the FBI Academy. Kimberly thought about it dispassionately as she drove through Quantico’s winding roads on her way to the main highway. She’d showered after talking to Mac. She’d changed into the
appropriate uniform of khaki cargo pants and a navy blue FBI Academy shirt. Then she’d tucked her good ol’ Crayola gun into a holster on the waistband of her pants and attached handcuffs to her belt. As long as she was going to trade in on the cachet of being a new agent, she might as well look the part.
She could’ve told Mac no. She thought about that, too, as she drove. She didn’t really know the man. Good looks and compelling blue eyes aside, he had no claim on her. She wasn’t even sure she believed his story yet. Oh sure, this Eco-Killer guy had probably ravaged the state of Georgia. But that was three years ago. In a state hundreds of miles away. Why would some Georgian nut suddenly turn up in Virginia? Better yet, why would a Georgian nut leave a dead body on the FBI’s doorstep?
It didn’t make sense to her. Mac saw what he needed to see. He wasn’t the first cop to be obsessed by a case and he wouldn’t be the last.
None of which explained why Kimberly had just blown off her afternoon classes, a violation that could get her written up. Or why she was now driving to a county ME’s office, after her supervisor had explicitly told her to stay away from the case. That little act of insubordination could get her kicked out.
And yet from the minute Mac had made his request, she’d agreed. She wanted to speak to the ME. She wanted to con her way into the autopsy of a poor young girl she’d never met.
She wanted … She wanted to know what happened. She wanted to know the girl’s name and the dreams she’d once had. She wanted to know if she’d suffered, or if it’d been quick. She wanted to know what mistakes the unidentified subject might have made, so she could use those mistakes to track him down and find justice for a young girl who deserved better than to be abandoned like garbage in the woods.
In short, Kimberly was projecting. As a former psych student, she recognized the signs. As a young woman who’d lost her sister and mother to violent deaths, she couldn’t stop if she tried.
