by Lisa Gardner
“Are you okay?” Mac asked softly.
And she surprised them both by saying, “No. I’m not okay. I’m angry. I’m furious. I want to scream, but what’s the use? I’m too late. We’re all too late. This boy needed us ten years ago. We failed him. We failed Ginny Jones, we failed Tommy Mark Evans. This case is nothing but a long trail of heartaches that never should’ve happened. And now I’m standing at the base of something called Blood Mountain, where if I get really lucky, we’ll find even more bodies dumped by the son of a bitch who started it all. I can’t believe I’m going to have a baby in a world where child sex slave rings are growing larger not smaller. Where children are snatched out of their beds, or hotel rooms, or family vacations in state parks. If law enforcement is a war, then we’re losing it, and I’m just … pissed off.”
“I’ll drive up,” Mac said.
“Dammit, no. You’ve been up all night. Get some sleep.”
“Are you by Woody Gap trail or over by the lake?”
“You know Blood Mountain?” she asked, startled.
“I grew up here, remember?”
“Mac … You really should sleep.”
“Just give me two hours. What can go wrong in two hours? I love you, Kimberly, and I’ll see you soon.”
The call ended. Kimberly stood behind the tree, trying to figure out if she was nervous or relieved, frightened or confused. Mostly she was aware of her pulse, still pounding too hard at the base of her neck. And rain, dripping off the tree branches, onto the top of her head and down the back of her neck, until it felt to her as if the woods were crying, and she wasn’t the kind of person for such foolish notions.
So she touched her stomach instead. Gently, tentatively.
“Hello, baby,” she whispered. And a moment later, “I’m sorry,” though she wasn’t entirely sure what she was apologizing for.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught her father standing next to the road, trying to get her attention. She sighed, walking toward him.
“Have you spoken to Ginny Jones this morning?” her father wanted to know.
She shook her head, eyeing him curiously as Rainie crossed the road to where they stood.
“I have a question,” Quincy said. “Something I’d like to ask her. It might help shed light on some things.”
Kimberly shrugged. Bloodhounds were working, the rest of them just standing around. It’s not like they had anything better to do.
“All right, let’s give her a call.” Kimberly dialed the county sheriff’s department, putting her cell phone on speaker and holding it between herself, Quincy, and Rainie, as they huddled close.
When the phone picked up, she gave her name and requested to speak with the officer in charge of booking Ginny Jones. It took a few minutes, then a harried deputy came on the line.
“What’ dya want?” he asked.
“FBI Special Agent Kimberly Quincy. I’m following up on a recent arrest, Virginia Jones. I was wondering when she was scheduled to be arraigned—”
“Already happened.”
“Excuse me?” Her startled gaze flew to her father and Rainie, who appeared equally surprised.
“Arraignment was at nine-thirty a.m. We took her over, bail was set, and she was released at ten-fifteen—”
“Excuse me?” Rainie and Quincy blinked at her angry exclamation, while at the end of the line, the deputy paused.
“Well, the bail was set at ten grand,” the deputy started.
“For accessory in the attempted murder of a federal agent?”
“Well, the subject in question killed himself, not you, so that seemed to take the heart out of the DA’s argument.”
“Ginny had no way of knowing that’s what Aaron would choose to do.”
“I’m just telling you what the judge said. Bail was set at ten grand. The bond was paid—”
“By whom?”
“Umm …” They heard the thunk of a phone being set down, then a voice calling to the back of a room. “Hey, Rick. You know who posted bail for the Jones girl? Was it a local bondsman, family? Huh. Okay.” The deputy returned. “Not a bondsman. Some local. Had a cashier’s check for ten grand. Rick assumes he knew the girl because she hugged him in the parking lot.”
Kimberly closed her eyes. “Tell me he wasn’t wearing a baseball cap.”
“Hey, Rick …” A moment later. “Yep, a red baseball cap.”
“Fuck!” And in that moment, she got it. And she didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, so she slammed her phone shut and kicked a clump of grass instead. “How could we have been so stupid? Goddammit, she played us like violins!”
Her father and Rainie were looking at her wide-eyed, so she spelled it out for them, still kicking at the grass, feeling almost crazy with rage. “You must kill the one you love. Those are the rules. You must kill the one you love. Aaron Johnson died. What does that really mean?”
Quincy got it first. “She graduated. Ginny Jones set Aaron up so she could graduate.”
“Yep, and we’re the morons who let her get away. Dinchara posted her bail and picked her up. She was spotted hugging him in the parking lot. They’re out, they’re together, and we’re screwed.”
“You don’t believe …” Rainie started.
But their conversation was suddenly interrupted by the loud baying of a hound dog, followed by an excited shout. The three looked up to see a surge of humanity running forward, followed by more excited exclamations. The dogs had picked up the scent, pulling Skeeter and the rest of the team into the woods.
THIRTY-EIGHT
“The jumping spider has huge eyes that detect even tiny movements of passing insects. First, it creeps up on its prey. Then it jumps, opening its jaws mid-flight to deliver a lethal bite when it lands on its victim.”
FROM Freaky Facts About Spiders,
BY CHRISTINE MORLEY, 2007
They hiked for hours, Lulu and Fancy straining their leads in their eagerness to follow the scent. Harold walked beside Skeeter, easily covering the steep, uneven trail as it wound around tree stumps, rocky outcroppings, and washed-out gullies. Periodically, he’d stop and tie an orange surveyor’s ribbon around a tree, marking the trail for his slower, more human, counterparts. Rachel had also assigned Harold camera duty, assuming he’d get to the site before everyone else and could get to work documenting the scene.
Several ERT members stayed behind to man the van, in touch by radio. Should need for additional supplies arise, Rachel could call in her order, with an agent following the orange ties up the mountain. Per protocol, everyone wore flak jackets and carried first-aid kits as well as personal firearms. Safety was always a primary concern, even when pursuing dead bodies.
Kimberly fell back sooner than she would’ve liked. Her mind was willing. Her body had other ideas. She could feel a pulling sensation where the top of her thighs met her steadily increasing abdomen. The tight stretch of tendons and ligaments already struggling to adjust to one demand on the body, without the additional pressure of sprinting up a mountain. Quincy and Rainie walked beside her. Kimberly presumed Sal was farther ahead, up with the action.
“Need to rest?” her father asked presently.
“Fine.”
“I need to rest,” Rainie announced.
“Oh, shut up. I’m pregnant, not stupid.”
Rainie grinned, and they kept moving, though it was possible that Kimberly’s pace had slowed another notch. She could hear the dogs in the distance, an occasional murmur of voices. Otherwise, the woods had folded around them, a damp, green canopy that smelled of moldy leaves and decaying logs. This high up, the trail formed a series of narrow switchbacks, with dense root systems forming crude stair steps beneath their feet. The grade was steep, the footing slow going. They were all panting hard from the exertion.
“Mac call?” her father asked.
Kimberly nodded, not having enough air for speech.
“How was his evening?” Quincy continued.
“Successful dr
ug bust.” She paused. “He’s … happy.”
“You tell him what happened?” her father asked mildly.
“He’s driving here now,” Kimberly managed to gasp, which was answer enough.
“You said Dinchara posted Ginny’s bail money?” Quincy started. “Any idea why?”
“Maybe they’re heading out of town,” Rainie ventured. She paused at the top of a switchback, reaching for water. Kimberly took advantage of the rest to draw in some deep lungfuls of air.
“He needs her,” Kimberly said at last. “Otherwise, why would he risk showing up at the county courthouse after burning down his house? Why surrender ten grand? He bailed her out because he has a plan. I’ll be damned, however, if I know what it is.”
“You think she’s his accomplice?” Quincy asked.
“I don’t know,” Kimberly said. “I mean, to hear Ginny talk, Dinchara picked her up and forced her into a life of prostitution. She’s the victim. And yet … She lived on her own in Sandy Springs. Think of the options for running away. Instead, she sticks around for two years, even after she knows he killed her mother and engineered Tommy Mark Evans’s death. The girl is smart enough to target an FBI agent, but not clever enough to run when she had the chance? I don’t buy it. Whatever’s going on, she’s not doing it just because Dinchara told her to. She likes it. The danger, the manipulation, the violence. That girl is seriously warped.”
“Stockholm syndrome,” Quincy said quietly.
“More warped than that,” Kimberly said flatly.
“You don’t like her.”
“She did try to arrange for me to die.”
“But you don’t blame the boy Aaron, who held the gun.”
Kimberly shifted impatiently, angrier at this line of questioning than she knew she should be. “Hey, from the sound of things, he had to live with Dinchara. He was taken younger, endured more.”
“But if he was taken later, endured less? What exactly is the line that separates victim from not victimized enough?”
“Well, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” Kimberly gave her father a look, to let him know the discussion was done. He could debate semantics all he wanted. In her mind Aaron and Ginny were not the same and that was all there was to it.
They got moving again. The sound of the dogs grew louder. They finally crested a small hill to discover the rest of the team gathered at the edge of a clearing. The dogs were working the perimeter, snuffling at bushes, backtracking, pushing ahead, backtracking. Skeeter followed patiently behind, matching them step for step as the dogs yanked his arm front and back, side to side.
“They lost the trail,” Harold reported, coming to stand beside them. “See, the dogs can pick it up right about there, but then they lose it again, hence all the forward and back, forward and back.”
Rachel was looking around the clearing with an expression Kimberly knew well.
“You think this is it,” Kimberly said, a statement, not a question.
“Got the right feel. What’d you think?”
Kimberly inspected the area. They were probably two-thirds of the way up the mountain, in a twenty-by-forty-foot clearing formed in part by a rocky ledge. The back half appeared meadowlike, a grassy field sheltered by a yawning canopy of evergreens. Toward the front, a massive rock jutted out to form a sitting area. On a clear day, the boulders probably offered a decent view, maybe even one that included skippy little Cub Scouts. All in all, a nice place to grab a bite of lunch.
Or dig a shallow grave.
“You bring the surveying equipment?” Kimberly asked Rachel.
“As if I would ever forget. Harold?”
Harold dutifully turned around, revealing a backpack with long orange rods strapped to one side. He handed over his pack, then went to discuss the matter with Skeeter and Sheriff Duffy. Kimberly started laying out supplies as Rainie and Quincy looked on with interest.
“Ever participate in an outdoor recovery?” Kimberly asked them.
They shook their heads. Quincy’s role as a profiler would’ve had him entering the picture after the fact. Rainie might have had a chance as a small-town deputy, but apparently had managed to miss that piece of luck. Kimberly, on the other hand, assisted with at least half a dozen of these exercises a year. Like all her teammates, she’d spent a week training at the outdoor recovery school at the Forensic Anthropology Center at the University of Tennessee, better known as the Body Farm.
“Here’s the drill,” she explained, picking up the first slender rod and holding it up for display. “We’re going to stand shoulder to shoulder, forming a line that stretches from one side of this clearing to the other. We’ll all advance one step, probe the ground, wait for our neighbors to do the same, then advance again as a single unit. If you feel, say, a soft pocket of earth, where the soil has obviously been disturbed, or, perhaps a hard item worth further exploration, you’ll flag that spot.
“When the line search is done, we’ll grid and map the entire area. Then a second team will follow up on the flags, working grid by grid to process the site.”
“How do you follow up on a flag?” Rainie wanted to know.
“You get down on your stomach and dig with a trowel. Each scoop of dirt is placed in a bucket, each filled bucket is carried to a nearby spot, where it will be dumped in a mesh sifter and processed by another team. Their job will be to look for fine bone fragments, projectiles, teeth, etc. It’s amazing how tiny some human bones are, particularly the ones in the fingers. If you’re not sifting, you can pass ’em right by.”
Rainie had a slightly horrified look on her face. “We’re going to sift every bucket of dirt we dig up?”
“That’s protocol.”
Rainie looked around at the clearing. “We’re going to be here for days.”
“Possible,” Kimberly concurred. She shrugged. “Depends how many areas we flag. Clandestine graves inevitably appear as a series of depressions and mounds next to each other. The mound is from the dirt the killer removed to dig the grave; the depression from the grave itself as the body decomposes, causing the fill material to sink. You want to steer away from the base of big trees—the roots make it too hard to dig, even for a homicidal maniac. Finally, you want to keep your eye out for lots of weeds, which seed nicely in the loose soil of freshly turned earth. The tricky part is that old tree falls create the same pattern of mounds and depressions. Rule of thumb is ‘trowel it and see.’ ”
“Why on your stomach?” Quincy wanted to know. “That sounds awkward. Why not just dig with a spade until you hit something?”
“Because most clandestine graves are shallow. If the body is fully skeletonized, you can do real damage nicking it with a spade. Body recovery follows the same protocol of an archaeological dig—meaning we want to disturb the skeleton the least amount possible while excavating the soil all around it. You’ll see us using brushes, all the stuff from the History Channel. And before we ever move a bone, we’ll document the hell out of the skeleton in situ, photographing, mapping, graphing. You have to, because there’s no way to remove a skeleton as a whole. Instead, when we’re finally ready, we’ll bag it bone by bone to be reassembled later by a forensic anthropologist.”
“You have a lot more patience than I do,” Rainie said.
“Not really.”
Harold was back with Sheriff Duffy and Sal in tow. “Skeeter says his dogs need a break. He’s not sure if they’ve lost the scent, or they’re just getting fatigued, but either way, now would be a good time to rest. He’ll take them off for a bit and we can get going on searching the clearing.”
Duff cleared his throat. “All right, I’ll assemble my men. You’ll tell us what to do?”
“Absolutely.”
Duff headed over to his deputies, who were shaking out their rain gear and downing bottles of water. In five minutes, he had the group assembled and Rachel gave them the official rundown on how to probe for clandestine graves. Then Harold lined them up, the inexperienced volunteers
sandwiched between the pros from the ERT. Sal ended up standing beside Kimberly, neither of them speaking, as they prepared for the first step forward.
The storm had finally passed, the rocks steaming up as the afternoon sun broke through the dark clouds. Beneath her rain poncho, Kimberly shifted restlessly, feeling the building heat, the sweaty discomfort of fabric that didn’t breathe. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Sal and was aware of him returning the favor.
She should say something, break the ice before Mac showed up, took one look at the both of them, and assumed the worst.
Second step. Third. Fourth. Somewhere down the line one of the deputies made an excited exclamation and Harold helped him stick in a yellow flag. Mostly, however, the officers exchanged concerned frowns. Did I just feel a dead body? What did a dead body feel like anyway? Until you’d been through the drill a few times, it was hard to know.
Kimberly found a loose pocket. Flagged it. Beside her, Sal cursed under his breath.
“What?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It’s … something. But maybe it’s a rock something or a root something or a clump of dirt. It’s hard, but too small to be a bone.”
“Bones can be quite small,” she supplied mildly. “If you’re not sure, flag it. Better safe than sorry.”
“I don’t know how you can do this for a living,” Sal muttered, flagging the site.
“Because every now and then, we find the smoking gun. Or the body of the missing girl whose parents have had to wait four years for the funeral. Or maybe, just a gold wedding band. It doesn’t sound like much, but when your loved one was on the plane that hit the Pentagon, a wedding band is all that’s left. And you’ll take it. You’ll take anything to hold on tight and help you grieve.”
Sal opened his mouth, looked like he might say something, but then another shout went out, calling for a yellow flag. The line ordered up, and on Harold’s count, took the next step forward, moving quicker now as everyone got the hang of it.
