by Lisa Gardner
“Get the rock,” York said. “Give me a call. I’d be very happy to help.” Her gaze was once more locked on Mac.
“We’ll try,” Mac said diligently, but Kimberly knew he was just being polite. They would never have access to the rock found in the victim’s hand; they were outsiders no longer privy to such helpful little tidbits as real evidence.
“One last question,” Kimberly said. “Are there rattlesnakes in the Shenandoah National Park?”
York appeared surprised. “More than a few. Why do you ask?”
“Just checking. Guess I better put on a thicker pair of boots.”
“Watch out for rocks,” York advised. “Rattlers like to curl up in the nooks and crannies between boulders. Or even sleep out on the sun-warmed surface once it’s dusk.”
“Got it.”
Mac shook the woman’s hand. York gave him a dazzling smile, while managing to once more arch her back. Kimberly engaged in a significantly stiffer handshake, which is apparently what happened when you didn’t have a Southern drawl—or Mac’s muscled chest.
They made their way back to the front door, where the blue sky already stretched bright and hot beyond the glass. “That wasn’t so good,” Mac said, pausing before the entranceway. He seemed to be bracing himself for leaving the cool comfort of air-conditioning behind and bursting once more into the heat.
“We have a start,” Kimberly said firmly. “All signs point to the Shenandoah National Park.”
“Yes, all eighty thousand acres. You’re right, we should find this girl in no time at all.” He shook his head in disgust. “We need choppers. Hell, we need search-and-rescue, the National Guard, and about half a dozen dogs. This poor woman …”
“I know,” Kimberly said quietly.
“It doesn’t seem fair, does it? A kidnap victim deserves all the help in the world. And instead …”
“She’s only going to get us.”
He nodded and the lines of frustration etched into his dark face almost made her reach out her hand. She wondered who that sort of unsolicited contact would shock more—her or him?
“We need supplies,” Mac said. “Then we’d better hit the road. It’s a long drive to Shenandoah, particularly when we don’t know where we’re going yet.”
“We’re going to find her,” Kimberly said.
“We need more information. Damn, why didn’t I just take that rock?”
“Because that would’ve been crossing the line. The leaf had already been mishandled by the ME. The rock, on the other hand …”
“Has been properly bagged and tagged and even now is wasting away in some crime lab,” Mac finished bitterly.
“We’re going to find her,” Kimberly said again.
He finally stilled in front of the glass door. His blue eyes were still dark, fired by frustration. For just a moment, however, the look on his face softened. “Earnest Kimberly,” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“I hope you’re right.” He glanced at his watch. “Ten A.M.,” he said softly, then abruptly pushed through the heavy door. “And boy, is it getting hot.”
Tina woke up slowly, becoming aware of two things at once: a deep, wracking thirst that had left her tongue swollen and cottony in her mouth and the incessant sound of buzzing around her head.
She opened her eyes, but couldn’t see a thing through the thick tangle of blond hair, now glued uncomfortably to her sweat-slicked face. She roughly pushed back the long strands, only to encounter a fuzzy black haze. And then, abruptly, she knew what that buzzing was.
Tina leapt to her feet, already waving her arms frantically while a scream built in her throat. Mosquitoes. She was covered, head to toe, with hundreds of swarming, buzzing, biting mosquitoes.
Malaria, she thought instantly. The West Nile Virus. Hell, the bubonic plague, as far as she was concerned. She had never seen so many bugs, fluttering in her hair, sinking their hungry mouths into her skin. Oh God, oh God, oh God.
Her feet landed in mud, her three-inch-high platform sandals immediately sinking into the watery marsh. She had a faint sensation of cool relief as the mud hit her toes, then she made the mistake of looking down and this time she did scream. Right there, slithering by her ankle in the muck, went a long black snake.
Tina scrambled quickly back onto the rock that had apparently been her perch. The mosquitoes swarmed hungrily. And now she could see other hunters as well. Yellow flies, gnats, buzzing creatures of all sorts and sizes. They swarmed her head and shoulders, seeking the unprotected skin of her throat, the corners of her mouth, and the whites of her eyes. Fresh welts rose on her ears, her eyelids, her cheeks. Her legs were covered in red marks, some still oozing fresh blood as more mosquitoes were drawn to the scent. She started clapping her hands. Then she slapped them against her entire body.
“Die, die, die,” she gasped. And they did. She felt plump, overfed bodies explode between her fingers, staining her palms with her own blood as she took out dozens. Then hundreds more insects swooped in to take their place, biting painfully at her tender skin.
She was crying now. She gasped for breath. Then in the middle of her frenzy, the inevitable happened. Her stomach rolled, she got down on her hands and knees, and then she vomited over the edge of the rock into the foul-smelling muck below.
Water. Green bile. Precious little food. Her stomach contracted anyway, her head dropping between her shoulders as she dry-heaved. The mosquitoes used the opportunity to swarm her shoulders, her elbows, her calves. She was being eaten alive, and there wasn’t a thing she could do to save herself.
Minutes passed. The knot eased in her stomach. The cramping nausea released its hold on her bowels. Shakily, she straightened, brushing back her long, sweaty hair, and feeling new welts already raise up on her ears.
The mosquitoes danced in front of her eyes, seeking skin. She batted them away, but her movements were already halfhearted, the actions of a woman who realized she was no match for the enemy. She could kill hundreds of insects. A thousand would simply take their place. Oh God …
Her throat burned. Her skin felt as if it were on fire. She raised her trembling hands to her face and saw that they were also covered in red, angry bites. Then her gaze went all the way up to white-hot sky, where the sun was already starting to blaze overhead. The dog crate was gone. Instead, from all appearances she had been cast into some kind of swampy pit, fodder for insects, snakes, and God knows what.
“Good news,” Tina whispered to herself. “He’s not a sexually deranged pervert after all.”
And then she started to laugh. And then she started to cry. And then she whispered in a voice probably heard only by the mosquitoes and snakes, “I’m so sorry, Ma. Oh God, somebody, get me out of here quick.”
CHAPTER 20
Quantico, Virginia
10:08 A.M.
Temperature: 91 degrees
At eight A.M., Special Agent Kaplan escorted Rainie and Quincy to the roped-off crime scene where the victim had been found yesterday morning. At eight-ten, Kaplan took off to attend to his own tasks for the day, leaving Rainie and Quincy alone. That was fine by Quincy. He liked to walk a scene unescorted, without the murmur of voices, incessant clicking of cameras, or the needling scratch of pencil on paper to divert his attention. Death inevitably took on a life of its own, and Quincy preferred the calm after the storm. When all the other investigators had left and he could be alone with his musings.
Rainie stood a good thirty feet away from him, walking soundlessly around the fringes of the forest. She was used to his ways by now, and worked as quietly as he did. They had been at this for two hours already, falling seamlessly into the usual grid pattern, slowly and methodically dissecting each inch of the roped-off area, and then, because even the best cops missed things, moving outside of the cordoned-off space, searching for what the others might have missed, for that one clue which would magically bring it all together. If such a thing really existed.
Underneath the relative shade of
the thick oak trees, the heat hammered down on them relentlessly. They shared one bottle of water, then another, and were now almost done with the lukewarm third. Quincy’s white dress shirt, sharply pressed just this morning, was now plastered against his chest while thin trickles of sweat beaded down his face. His fingers left damp stains on his small notepad while his pencil slid wetly between his fingers.
It was a brutal morning, serving as a brutal start to what would be no doubt an extremely brutal day. Was this what the killer wanted? Overheated law enforcement officers struggling to function in damp, unbearable weather that glued their uniforms to their bodies and robbed them of breath? Some killers picked extremely harsh or disgusting places to dump bodies because they relished the thought of homicide detectives picking through Dumpsters or wading through swamps. First they humiliated the victims. Then they reveled in the thought of what they could do to the police.
Quincy stopped and turned once more, frowning in spite of himself. He wanted to know this space. He wanted to feel this space. He wanted a glimpse into why, of all places on this nearly four-hundred-acre base, had the killer dumped the body here.
The area was sheltered, the thick canopy of trees making the path invisible at night. The path itself was wide enough for a car, but four tires would have definitely left at least a faint impression and there was none. No, their unidentified subject—UNSUB—had selected a spot half a mile from the road. And then he’d walked that half mile in pitch-black night while staggering beneath the awkward weight of a hundred-and-ten-pound body. Surely there were dozens of spots more accessible and less physically demanding.
So again: Why had their UNSUB chosen here?
Quincy was beginning to have some ideas. He’d bet Rainie would also have a few opinions on the subject.
“How are you making out?” Kaplan called out.
He was coming down the dirt path, looking fresher than they did, so wherever he’d been, it had had air-conditioning. Quincy found himself resentful already.
“Brought you bug spray,” Kaplan said merrily.
“You’re the king of men,” Quincy assured him. “Now look behind you.”
Kaplan obediently stopped and looked behind him. “I don’t see anything.”
“Exactly.”
“Huh?”
“Look down,” Rainie said impatiently, from twenty feet back. “Check out your footsteps.”
Rainie had pulled her heavy chestnut hair back in a ponytail first thing this morning. It had come loose about an hour ago and was now plastered in sweaty tendrils against her neck. She looked wild, her hair curly with the humidity and her gray eyes nearly black with the heat. Having grown up on the Oregon coast with its relatively mild climate, Rainie absolutely loathed high heat and humidity. Quincy figured he had about another hour before she’d be driven to violence.
“There aren’t any footsteps,” Kaplan said.
“Exactly.” Quincy sighed and finally pulled his attention away from the scene. “According to reports on the Weather Channel, this area received two inches of rain five days ago. And if you venture off the path into the woods, there are patches where the ground is still marshy and soft to the touch. The thick trees protect the dirt from baking in the sun, plus I don’t think much can dry out given this humidity.”
“But the path is solid.”
“Yes. Apparently, nothing hard-packs soil quite like the daily grind of a few hundred pounding Marine and FBI trainees. The path is hard as a rock. It would take more than a two-hundred-pound person, plus a hundred-pound body, to dent it now.”
Kaplan frowned at them both, still obviously confused. “I already said there weren’t any footprints. We looked.”
Quincy wanted to sigh again. He so preferred working with Rainie, who was now regarding the NCIS special agent with a fresh level of annoyance.
“If you simply walked off the road into the woods around here, what would happen?”
“The ground is still soft; you’d leave a footprint.”
“So to a casual visitor, the woods are marshy?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“And what’s thirty feet to my left?” Quincy asked crisply.
“The PT course.”
“The paved PT course.”
“Sure, the paved PT course.”
Quincy looked at him. “If you were carrying a body into the woods, wouldn’t you take the paved path? The one that offered you better footing? The one that would be guaranteed not to leave footprints, given the soft soil you see all around?”
“The wooded path has less traffic,” Kaplan said slowly. “He’s better hidden.”
“According to the ME’s report, the UNSUB probably dumped the body in the small hours of the morning. Given the late hour, the man’s already well hidden. Why take the dirt path? Why risk footprints?”
“He’s not very bright?” But Kaplan was no longer convinced.
Rainie shook her head impatiently, crossing over to them. “The UNSUB knew. He’s been on this path. He knew the ground was hard and would protect him, while the wide scope makes it less likely he’d bump the body against a tree limb or accidentally leave a scrap of fabric on a twig. Face it, Kaplan. The UNSUB isn’t some random guy. He knows this place. Hell, he’s probably run this course sometime in the last five days.”
Kaplan was clearly discouraged as they trudged back to the Academy.
“I spoke with the four Marines on duty Tuesday night,” he reported. “They had nothing out of the ordinary. No unusual vehicles, no suspicious drivers. Only thing they could think of was that it was a particularly busy night. A bunch of the National Academy students had hightailed it for air-conditioned bars, so they had cars coming and going right up until two A.M. Everyone showed proper ID, however. Nothing stood out in their minds.”
“Do they keep a log of who comes and goes?” Rainie asked, walking beside Quincy.
“No. All drivers have to show proper security passes, however. The Marine sentries may also ask for a license and the driver’s final destination.”
“What does a security pass look like?”
Kaplan gestured to Rainie’s shirt, where a white plastic card dangled from her collar. “It looks like that, except in a variety of colors. Some are blue, some are white, some yellow. Each color indicates a certain level of clearance. A yellow card indicates an unescorted guest pass, someone who’s allowed full access. We also have cards reading Escorted Guests, which means they wouldn’t be allowed back onto the base without being in the company of the proper person. That sort of thing.”
Rainie glanced down. “They don’t look that complicated to me. Couldn’t someone just swipe one?”
“You have to sign a badge in and out. And believe me, the FBI police keep tabs on that sort of thing. None of us would feel particularly good if just any Tom, Dick, or Harry could swipe a card.”
“Just asking,” Rainie said mildly.
Kaplan scowled at her anyway. Their earlier conversation had obviously wounded his ego. “You can’t steal a badge. You can’t just walk onto this base. For God’s sake, we take this kind of thing very seriously. Look, you’re probably right. It probably is an insider. Which really depresses me, though I don’t know why. If all the good guys were really good people, I wouldn’t have a job, would I?”
“That’s not an encouraging thought,” Rainie said.
“Ma’am, it’s the worst thought in the world.” He glanced at Quincy. “You know, I’ve been thinking … Given the lack of sexual assault, and that the ‘weapon,’ so to speak, was a drug, shouldn’t we be looking at women, too?”
“No,” Quincy said.
“But women are the ones who predominantly kill with poison. And the lack of sexual assault bothers me. A guy doesn’t just OD a woman and dump her body in the woods. Men are sexual predators. And did you see how this girl was dressed?”
Quincy drew up short. “The victim,” he said curtly, “was wearing a short skirt, not uncommon for this time of year. To
imply that a certain manner of dress invites sexual assault—”
“That’s not what I was saying!” Kaplan interrupted immediately.
“It’s not about sex for any predator,” Quincy continued as if Kaplan hadn’t spoken. “It’s about power. We’ve had many serial killers who were not sexual-sadist predators. Berkowitz, for one, was strictly a triggerman, so to speak. He picked his victims, walked up to the car, opened fire on the couple, and walked away. Kaczynski was content to kill and maim long-distance. Even more recently, we had the Beltway Snipers, who held most of the East Coast in absolute terror by picking off victims from the trunk of their car. Murder isn’t about sex. It’s about power. And in this context, then, drugs make perfect sense, as drugs are weapons of control.”
“Besides,” Rainie spoke up, “there’s no way a woman carried a dead body half a mile into the woods. We don’t have that kind of upper-body strength.”
They finally emerged from the relative comfort of the woods. Immediately, the sun struck them like a ball-peen hammer while waves of heat shimmered above the paved road.
“Holy Lord,” Kaplan said. “And it’s not even noon.”
“It’s going to be a hot one,” Quincy murmured.
And Rainie said, “Fuck the Academy, I’m putting on shorts.”
“One last thing,” Kaplan said, holding up a hand. “Something you should both know.”
Rainie halted with an impatient sigh. Quincy waited with a far more prescient sense of something significant about to break.
“We have the tox report back on the victim. Two drugs were found in her system. A small dose of ketamine, and a significantly larger dose—no doubt lethal dose—of the benzodiazepine, Ativan. In other words …”
“Special Agent McCormack listed them both last night,” Quincy murmured.
“Yeah,” Kaplan said slowly. “McCormack knew the drugs. Now how about that?”
CHAPTER 21
Quantico, Virginia
11:48 A.M.
Temperature: 95 degrees
