by Blake Pierce
There were five huge green dumps sitting at the edge of a big paved ramp, much like the last dump. It was easy to peer into the tops of them, as the bottoms were recessed through the pavement and sitting on the ground by the exit road that led away from the dump. Mackenzie looked inside each one of them, scanning.
She saw the body in the third dump. It was lying on its side, naked. The leg hair alone made it clear that it was indeed a male. From where she stood, she could see nothing to indicate the cause of death. She turned to the men putting up the lights and was about to ask them when she saw a set of headlights approaching. A few others followed behind the first pair.
She walked down the small ramp, back past the barricade, and watched as the new vehicles parked. There three in all: two sedans and one SUV. They all had government plates.
Bryers stepped out of the first car and hurried over to her. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I had to scramble to get out of the office and assemble this team.” He hitched a thumb over his shoulder as he said this last bit.
“It’s okay,” she said.
“You see the body?”
“Yeah. It’s in the center bin.”
Bryers thought about something for a moment and gave her a sincere look. Behind him, several people were hopping out of the SUV and the other cars. They spoke to one another quietly and moved efficiently in the dark.
“Listen,” Bryers said. “Things are going to move fast for the next half an hour or so. I want you here, but I also want you to sort of stand back behind it all. Watch closely and take mental notes. If you see something someone misses, don’t say anything right away. When the body is out and the crowd disperses, let me know of any questions or comments you have. Is that okay with you?”
“Yes, I can do that.” She was pleased to see that any anger he had toward her yesterday was gone. He was back to being a partner—maybe even a mentor of a sort.
“Great,” he said, looking up the ramp to the where spotlights were now secured and shining down on the crime scene. “You ready?”
She could only nod as she followed behind him and walked back up toward the dumps.
The coroner arrived ten minutes later. By then, two agents had climbed over into the large green garbage bin to inspect the body. Mackenzie had done as Bryers had asked, standing behind the commotion and watching. She overheard most of the conversations and picked up several bits of information which she mentally filed away.
There was a large bruise in the center of the man’s chest that was likely a hematoma—meaning he had been hit hard there. There were other bruises and a single stab wound along the man’s stomach, but there appeared to be very little blood. Several of the man’s fingernails were torn and there appeared to be scratches and scuff marks along most of his fingers. He had a tattoo on his upper back, along the right shoulder, of what appeared to be a small dragon.
The man was out of the bin moments later and placed on a stretcher. Before the coroner moved the body, Bryers stepped forward. “Hey, guys, give me two minutes before you take the body, would you?”
The men nodded, looking very anxious to get out of the too-bright glow of the small floodlights. Bryers looked to Mackenzie and waved her over. She went quickly, not realizing until she got there that she had never seen a dead male this close up in her line of work. The Scarecrow Killer had caused her to see three dead women, but this was the first naked male form she’d been asked to look at.
“Look him over,” Bryers said. “Don’t touch anything. Just give him a once-over and let me know what you see.”
She bent down to better observe the body. Bryers handed her a small Maglite and stepped back, giving her some room. The dump went quiet but she barely noticed. She slipped into a focus that she only ever experienced when deeply into her work.
“I assume there was blunt-force trauma to the chest,” she said. “The condition of his hands and fingers—including the torn fingernails—indicates that he was likely trapped before he was killed. There’s noticeable dirt under his nails—pale in color. It’s loose dirt, not packed.” She leaned in closer and observed the lacerations on his fingers. “I’d guess there was some sort of rough surface, too. Wood maybe.”
She kept looking and came to his knees. “Slight abrasions on his knees, looks almost like slight rug burn or maybe the same material that damaged his fingernails. Redness around the area indicates that it was recent. No more than a day and a half or so for sure. He was on his knees at some point in the last thirty-six hours, maybe crawling.”
She looked back to Bryers and saw that he was nodding with enthusiasm. “Go on. Keep going.”
She didn’t think there was anything else of note until she had nearly given up. The added pressure of everyone watching her made her feel like she had to find something. When she reached the man’s head, she saw something that she at first dismissed as garbage. She leaned forward and examined the substance in the man’s hair with the flashlight.
“Can I see a pen or something?” she asked.
Bryers was there right away, handing her a pen. She used it to softly brush at the man’s hair. The substance in his hair looked like powder at first but then the light hit it in a particular way and revealed something else.
“What is that?” someone asked from behind her. Apparently, it was something they had missed.
“Just something from the garbage,” someone answered dismissively.
“No,” Mackenzie said. “It’s fluffy. It looks like…some sort of insulation.” She scraped a small piece of it from the man’s head with the pen and picked it up from the pavement. She rolled it between her fingers and nodded. “Yeah…insulation.”
She handed it up to Bryers and when he took it, he looked almost happy. As juvenile as it made her feel, she sort of hoped it was because her discovery had impressed him.
Mackenzie looked through the man’s hair a bit longer and felt connections starting to form. She saw more pale dirt in the man’s hair, the same dirt that was under his nails. More than that, though, she saw a small bloody gash hidden under his hair. She pushed the hair back with the pen and leaned back so the others could see it.
“A small gash here,” she said. “Sort of raw, so definitely recent just like the other minor wounds. About an inch in diameter, but pretty deep. Looks haphazard, not intentional.”
She handed the pen back to Bryers, who instantly tossed it into the nearest bin. When she got to her feet, done with her examination, the body was moved away from the bins and down to the coroner’s vehicle.
The group of agents and consultants broke up and departed just as quickly as they had come. Bryers, on the other hand, seemed not to be in any hurry. As they walked down to their cars, he looked out to the highway, a dark stretch of nothing about three hundred yards away from the dump exit. Headlights came and went, as small as little insects from this distance.
“That was impressive,” Bryers said. “If you hadn’t seen that cut in his head, it would have gone unnoticed until he got put on the coroner’s table.”
“I’m not sure how much help such a small find will do.”
“Honestly, for now, that find alone will probably do nothing. But why don’t you tell me what you think it means?”
She was hesitant at first, not wanting to be wrong. But everything in her gut told her that she was either right or close to it—close enough to narrow their search, anyway.
“Dirt in his hair and slightly damaged knees indicate that he was crawling. Add that with the horrible state of his hands, and not only was he crawling, but he was trying to escape…maybe from somewhere he felt he actually had a chance of escaping. It makes me think that he was being held somewhere before he was brought here—maybe a cage outdoors or something, like a kennel.”
“Okay, let’s consider that,” Bryers said. “But if that’s the case, what about the accidental gouge on his head?”
“Well,” she said, thinking out loud now. “If he was on his hands and knees, crawling and
trying to get out of something, I think that puncture wound came from something over his head. Probably a nail. So maybe a very low ceiling.”
“So you’re thinking a cage?” Bryers asked.
“Or some kind of box.”
Silence fell between them as they both thought this over. They could hear the muted noises of passing cars on the highway on the other side of the landfill.
“Maybe not a box per se,” Bryers said. “Maybe we’re looking for something like a cutaway section of floor. Maybe a crawlspace.”
“Maybe,” Mackenzie said, thinking he was exactly right.
“Well, the night is far from over,” Bryers said. “We’ll get an ID on the body within an hour. After that, the family will be notified and we’ll have to talk to them. How do you feel about taking the lead on that? Let me sit back and watch this time.”
“That’s fine,” she said.
“Now, given that you’re running out of time to bundle this thing up, what do you think comes next? We can either head back to headquarters and pretend that we can contribute to paperwork, or grab a burger at this amazing little dive down the street.”
Neither avenue sounded very productive, although restudying the paperwork for clues about the nature of the killer sounded appealing to her. But she also knew that she had been given a golden opportunity and that time was running out. Staying closer to the scene of the crime would probably end up working in their favor.
“I’d like to stick around here,” she said. “See if we can find anything else noteworthy.”
“Sounds good,” he said.
Behind them, the other agents and consultants were already packing up to go. It was a stark reminder of how quickly everything moved in a case like this. Fifteen minutes ago, this landfill had been awash in floodlights and cramped with government employees. Now it was eerily quiet and back to natural darkness.
Thinking this, Mackenzie knew that she also needed to act fast. The speed and accuracy she displayed in the next few days could very well make or break her future.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mackenzie had barely been scouring the site for ten minutes when Bryers received a call. Not only had the body of the dead man been identified as Trevor Simms, a father of two and married for ten years, but the family had already been notified. They were obviously devastated but they were also eager to speak to someone who might be able to find out what had happened.
They got into Bryers’s car, Mackenzie taking the wheel, and sped to the Simms residence. While they made the drive fifteen minutes south of Quantico, Bryers tended to several e-mails and calls regarding the case. As they got closer to the Simms residence, they received more information; bit by bit, Mackenzie started to make connections and was slowly able to form some sort of shape out of the chaos.
“Okay, so here’s where we stand,” Bryers said, reading over the last e-mail that had come in. “Trevor Simms, age thirty-one, married with two kids. He was co-owner of a small lawn care business that netted less than forty grand last year. Upstanding guy, it looks like. Coached his daughter’s softball team and mowed his church’s lawn on Saturday afternoons. His wife is Colette, thirty-three, a nurse at Stafford Hospital. Neither of them have a criminal record and it even looks like Trevor volunteered with the fire department for a few years.”
“So no enemies,” Mackenzie said.
“Not looking like it. Makes me think the victims this guy is picking are random.”
“That makes this a lot harder, doesn’t it?” Mackenzie said.
“Yeah. Nineteen times out of twenty, if you can come up with motive, you can nab your killer in less than a week. Without motive or reasoning, though, it’s just a guessing game.”
Mackenzie hated guessing. She even hated any sort of game where guessing was involved. She needed logic; she needed facts. So getting such detailed information on the victim so quickly made her think they were being more productive than Bryers was giving them credit for.
They arrived at the Simmses house eight minutes later, at 10:18 p.m. There was no trace of a police presence, making Mackenzie wonder if they’d be the first people to speak with the wife other than the officer or agent that had suffered the unfortunate duty of telling her that her husband was dead. She’d been in those shoes a few times before while working for the police and she knew that it was emotionally draining.
They got out of the car and headed up the small front porch of the Simmses’ cute two-story house. The siding was in need of a wash and the paint on the porch was cracking. A few toys were on the porch, as well as two rocking chairs. It was rustic and charming—the sort of home shared by a couple that likely paid their bills on time with very little to spend afterward.
She rang the bell, taking the lead as Bryers had suggested earlier. Right away, they could hear the shuffling of footsteps as someone came rushing to the door. Seconds later, a blonde woman in her early thirties answered. Her eyes were puffy and red and she looked exhausted—both physically and emotionally. Mackenzie wondered how much time had passed between getting the visit informing her that her husband was dead and having two agents show up at her door to ask her questions. Surely no more than three hours.
Mackenzie gave Colette Simms all the credit in the world. She did her absolute best to look like she was holding it together when she greeted them. She wondered if the recent widow had really started to grasp the totality of what had happened.
“You’re the agents?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse from screaming and weeping.
“Yes, we are,” Mackenzie said. “I’m Agent White, and this is Agent Bryers. We certainly appreciate you taking the time to speak with us.”
Colette nodded and fought back tears. “The agent I spoke with on the phone said the faster you could speak to me, the better chance we have to uncovering something about the person that k—k—killed him.”
She broke there, having to voice the fact that someone had killed her husband. She half-fell against the wall and let out a sob. Mackenzie didn’t miss a beat; she didn’t even look at Bryers for any sort of approval. She simply stepped inside the front door and placed a reassuring arm around Colette Simms.
She said nothing, letting Colette collapse into her arms and sob. Mackenzie looked to Bryers and he nodded at her. He looked a little uneasy but he also came into the house. He quietly shut the door behind him and slowly walked around them, into a small foyer.
“I’m…I’m so sorry,” Colette said between hitching breaths. “It’s still not…sinking in…”
“I know,” Mackenzie said. “I’m so sorry.”
“The kids…I had to call my mother to come get them. They still don’t know…they’re so young and—”
“Well, Mrs. Simms,” Mackenzie said, “for right now, let’s let them not know, okay? For right now, I really need to speak with you. Like that other agent told you, the sooner we can speak with you, the better our chances are of finding out who did this. Did the agent you spoke with tell you that there have been others?”
She nodded. “Young girls in dumps.”
“That’s right. So it’s looking like we have a serial killer on our hands. And you could help us stop him before he kills again. You could get answers not only about Trevor, but about the two young women that have also died.”
Colette nodded slowly. She started crying again but this time they were stray tears that poured over the corners of her eyes. She sniffed a few sobs back and when she sat down on the couch and relaxed, Mackenzie took this as the best moment to question her.
“Do you have any idea what Trevor’s day looked like yesterday?” Mackenzie asked.
“Most of the past week or so, he and Benjamin were trying to drum up new business.”
“Who is Benjamin?”
“The co-owner of their business. The Green Team. They did lawn care and restoration.”
“And does Benjamin know what has happened?” Mackenzie asked.
“Ah, God, no. I haven’t told him yet. I didn�
�t even think—”
She paused here and Mackenzie sensed another meltdown coming. Again, though, Colette showed her strength and swallowed it down, focused on the task at hand.
“That’s okay,” Mackenzie said when she saw that Colette had control again. “Had business been bad lately?”
“Not bad, really. Just slow. It had never been a very successful business. But he also did some mechanic work on the side and it helped a lot.”
“Do you know of any enemies Trevor might have had?” Mackenzie asked. “Any clients that were hostile?”
Colette smiled and started sniffing again. She grabbed a tissue from a nearby box and wiped at her puffy eyes. “No, no enemies. In fact, I don’t think I ever heard Trevor utter a truly mean word against anyone. He had so many friends…one of the good guys, you know? Always helping others and even looking for ways to help people.” She paused here and there was a frown on her face as she thought about something.
“What is it?” Mackenzie asked.
“Well, last year, Trevor worked on a guy’s truck and ended up not being able to fix it. Even Trevor said he did more harm than good. It ended up costing the guy about five hundred dollars in the long run. Trevor paid it off eventually but before that, the guy got furious. He came to the house, went into the little garage Trevor has out back, and assaulted him. It was nothing serious, just a single punch. But then he started throwing around some of Trevor’s equipment.”
“Do you remember this man’s name?”
“Lonnie Smith.”
“Did you ever see him after that?” Bryers asked.
“No. Trevor spent three months paying him back and after that, we severed ties.”
Mackenzie thought about this for a moment and then went on. “You said you think Trevor had been trying to drum up business for the last few weeks. Do you know what that entailed?”
She felt Bryers behind her, slowly scanning the room. She felt like he was monitoring her, as if she was taking some weird sort of real-life exam. She didn’t mind, actually. She understood the line of thought. More than that, it made her more aware of every question that came out of her mouth.
