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  He turned his head, putting her in his peripheral vision. ‘How do you guys do it?’ His voice sounded choked, tired.

  ‘Do what?’

  He turned his head away, his hair catching under his fingers. ‘I’ve gotta tell ya, it about killed me to meet the Alstons.’ He paused. ‘I kept picturing their daughter in the freezer, at the morgue. Those teeth. I’ve never seen such perfect teeth. She was dead but there they were, just like life. For Christ’s sake!’ He brought his arms down and crossed them tightly against his chest.

  Jayne was reaching to touch him when his voice came out in a whisper.

  ‘I feel inadequate.’

  Shocked, she drew her hand back and looked at the back of his head. Could he really have said those words? Did he feel what she felt? She knew what he meant. The dead were still dead, despite everything you’d done – despite all the Good, all the Investigation, the Uncovering, the Recovery, the Holding Accountable, the dead were still dead and you couldn’t bring them back. She knew. He was talking again.

  ‘I’ve never felt so glad to clear a case and then felt so . . . terrible.’ Scott’s head dropped down as his shoulders started to shake.

  Jayne reached for him then, turning him and pulling his head to her chest, feeling his exhalations, hot and damp, on her shirtfront. She automatically began rubbing his back and her words came out despite her defences. ‘I know, I know.’ She said them over and over until she was murmuring them into his hair, which muffled the words into noises only for them to resurface as kisses that landed on his ear, his brow, damp cheek, and then his arms were around her, tightening when his mouth found hers.

  TWENTY-ONE

  A single glance was all it took for Chesterton Police Officers Cobb and Hayden to know that the man on the stretcher was not ‘one of theirs’, as the security guard had announced when he had called the station minutes earlier frantically shouting, ‘Officer down! Officer down!’ But he could have been from another substation. The paramedics would not let them speak to the barely conscious man so Cobb had let the ambulance leave for the hospital after they had searched the man’s pockets and not found any proof of identity.

  While Hayden took a statement from the security guard, who was sitting on the curb, Cobb searched the dark blue sedan for the officer’s identification. There wasn’t a single item in the body of the vehicle. He opened the trunk and looked in the dark interior. It was lined with several layers of heavy duty clear plastic. This struck Cobb as unusual but not outside the range of possibilities for an undercover unit. The only step he could take to determine who owned the vehicle was to run the license plate number through the NCIC hook-up in his cruiser.

  NCIC listed the owner of the Georgia license plate but the plates were registered to a different car than the one illuminated in Cobb’s spotlight. Plates can be moved from vehicle to vehicle but Vehicle Identification Numbers pose more of a problem, so Cobb walked back to the dark sedan and leaned in to read the VIN from where it was screwed into the dashboard on a metal plate. He transcribed the 17-digit number on to his pad, double-checked it, and returned to his cruiser.

  When Cobb saw that there was an All Points Bulletin out on that VIN, it triggered a distant memory of a BOLO that had gone out earlier that night. But it was the APB information that caused his blood pressure to spike. The driver could be armed and dangerous and must be detained. His immediate thought was to race after the ambulance but he couldn’t leave his partner on the side of the road with the witness. He radioed the station and hurriedly told the duty desk to dispatch a unit to Chesterton General to intercept the ambulance on the way to or at the entrance of the emergency room. Then he radioed a colleague on another floor of the station and asked him to enter an NCIC response report that the wanted vehicle had been recovered, along with an unconscious man who may or may not have been the driver.

  Tripper had been careful to respond to the paramedics with enough vital signs to get them to relax about his condition but not so many that they were going to start asking him questions about his identity. They correctly deduced that he’d suffered a mild concussion, which he was coming out of, but they had no concerns about a cracked skull or fractured ribs that could cause major complications. They were driving with lights but not siren and not at great speed. He could hear the two of them at the front of the ambulance, joking about the construction site security guard and discussing where they would eat on their break: fast food or an all-night place called Rick’s.

  Tripper lifted his head. His eyesight was blurred but the blood that had been flowing from his nose was drying. He could feel clots deep inside his nostrils and the symptoms of a massive headache. Squinting down his body, he could see the seatbelt-like straps crisscrossing the ruined police costume and keeping him attached to the stretcher as the ambulance moved. It was easy to undo the straps but leave them looking as though still clipped into place. What he did next would depend on where the paramedics pulled in at the hospital: the emergency room or a main entrance. He waited, fighting the desire to close his eyes against the headache and fall into delicious sleep.

  The ambulance coming to a stop jolted him into full consciousness. He stayed prone until he heard both paramedics jump down from the front of the ambulance and walk to the rear. He knew they had arrived at the main entrance; otherwise emergency room staff would already have opened the ambulance doors. In one swift movement, Tripper sat up on the stretcher and the searing pain in his head flared up, accompanied by flashes of white light in his peripheral vision. He pushed the straps clear of his body and swung his legs on to either side of the stretcher.

  When the paramedics, still chewing the fat, opened the rear doors, he catapulted himself out on to the ground and ran toward the darkest part of the street he could see. He heard their startled ‘Hey!’ but knew he had the advantage of surprise and as he ran, he felt every sense in his body sharpen while his legs and arms began to pump in perfect time, the blood clots in his nose clearing as he breathed deeply, the pain in his head masked by the adrenalin released by his body for this very purpose.

  Eric didn’t immediately respond to his supervisor’s query about ‘civilians’. Turner had to be referring to Jayne and Steelie, but who had told Turner that the women had even been at the freeway site? The Highway Patrol officers wouldn’t have gone over Scott’s head and the Critters had no reason to talk to Turner. And what did this have to do with Franks over in Atlanta? How could he have known about Jayne and Steelie? It just didn’t add up.

  Turner looked up from his sheet when Eric didn’t respond. ‘I’ve looked into this. They were not only at the crime scene but here in the building. You authorized SA Weiss to log two scientists from an outfit called Agency Thirty-two One into the building as visitors yet he took them up to the tenth floor. That’s reading like a potential violation of chain of custody protocols. Clarify it.’

  ‘Sir, those scientists assisted us with gaining leads on this case.’

  ‘Dammit, Eric, those body parts were supposed to be en route to the LA Coroner’s Office, not being pawed over by every Tom, Dick, and Harry while in our custody.’

  ‘At no time did the scientists come into physical contact with the remains, sir.’

  Turner looked at him with interest. ‘Can anyone back you up on that? Besides your partner?’

  ‘Absolutely. Tony Lee.’

  ‘OK. Get him in here.’

  Eric went to reach for the phone but, at that moment, the computer behind him emitted a beep. He whipped around in his chair, scanned through the green binary code on the old monitor, and quickly interpreted it. There had been a hit on the APB for Wayne Spicer’s car. The responding agency was Chesterton Police Station in Atlanta, Georgia.

  ‘I need to make a call to a PD,’ Eric said, reaching for the desk telephone.

  ‘Put it on speaker-phone, SA Ramos.’

  Eric paused momentarily but he did it and they heard the southern accent of the man who answered.

  ‘Offi
cer Lake, Chesterton PD.’

  ‘Officer, this is FBI Special Agent Eric Ramos. I’m the originator of the APB you just responded to. Can you give me further details, please?’

  ‘OK, Agent Ramos but I gotta tell ya, it ain’t such good news.’

  ‘Just give it to me.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got your vehicle all right, but the unidentified man who was driving it is AWOL.’

  ‘Wait. Your response says the driver was taken to hospital unconscious.’

  ‘Apparently, the boys on the scene thought he was unconscious or as good as. Maybe he just regained consciousness. Either way, by the time our units caught up with the ambulance at Chesterton General, the man had absconded from the stretcher and they’ll be damned if they can work out where he went. He was wounded.’

  ‘And no one got an ID?’

  ‘No, but the vehicle was wearing plates registered to a male, name of King, DOB nineteen sixty. I’m faxing you the sheet now.’

  Eric almost got goose bumps. He spoke rapidly. ‘I need you to put out a BOLO on that individual with whatever descriptions you have and I need it to maintain that he is armed and dangerous.’

  ‘You got it, Agent Ramos. I already had a BOLO underway. We sure are sorry about this but we’re on top of it.’

  Eric disconnected the call by lifting and replacing the handset but he kept his hand on the phone as he said to his Supervisor, ‘I need to call Scott.’

  Turner shook his head. ‘First, Tony establishes for me that you two are not conducting this case like a bunch of cowboys. Call him now.’

  What Eric really wanted to do was smash the telephone against the wall while picturing his old boss Franks’ smug face but he steadied his hand and dialed Tony Lee.

  When the Critter arrived and saw their supervisor was there as well, now sitting in Scott’s chair across the room, he looked at Eric. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Tony, SSA Turner needs your chain of custody protocols for when Weiss brought Steelie Lander and Jayne Hall up to Critter Central.’

  Tony cleared his throat. ‘Agent Ramos gave the scientists from Agency Thirty-two One access to the main room of the lab. I then escorted them into the cool room once they were fully suited up in protective gear. I was present the entire time they observed the body parts they had been asked to review. I handled the body bags, body parts, and all the equipment.’

  Turner’s tone was brusque. ‘Photographs?’

  ‘I took images but retained those images at the lab. Later use of the images for the purposes of analysis was conducted by the scientists at our laboratory and in my presence.’

  ‘So, you’re saying that neither scientist even touched the body parts?’

  ‘They barely breathed on them.’ Tony crossed his arms.

  The telephone on Eric’s desk rang and he looked at the digital read-out. It identified the call as coming from the colleague who took over his desk in Atlanta, Georgia. He pressed the speaker-phone button before Turner could order him to do it.

  ‘Ramos here.’

  ‘Eric, it’s Nicks. You got me on speaker or something?’

  ‘Yeah, Angie. You’re broadcasting to SSA Turner and Tony Lee. Go.’

  She resumed, speaking fast. ‘OK, Wilson and I got a PIN-to-PIN from Houston this afternoon.’

  Eric hoped that, in light of SSA Franks’ witch-hunt, Turner didn’t find it suspicious that Scott had used his government-issued BlackBerry to send the type of instant message that was more difficult to track than a text or voice message.

  Angie was still talking. ‘He asked us to check the shortlist of suspects you guys drew up on the missing women before you got transferred out. He suggested that we use the APB you guys just put out on that vehicle, on the thinking that the driver might be our Georgia perp.’

  ‘Tell me something good, Angie,’ he said, trying to make it sound like he’d been aware of his partner’s request all along while simultaneously trying to place when Scott had leapfrogged to a Georgia focus instead of sticking to the idea that they would find Tripper somewhere on the road between Arizona and Georgia.

  ‘We’ve got a lead,’ Angie said. ‘We’ve been checking through the shortlist since we got the search warrants and all your suspects were home in the time period you’re looking at for this guy being in California and Arizona except for one. We’re not clear if he wasn’t at home then, but he’s not at home now, then we saw the BOLO go out on him from Chesterton PD.’

  ‘King?’

  ‘Yep. He hasn’t been seen for weeks but as soon as we saw that BOLO, we got a search warrant that would allow us to enter the property in his absence. House seems clean but his backyard reeks of decomp.’

  ‘Yesss!’ Eric sounded triumphant.

  ‘Hang on, Eric,’ Angie warned. ‘The reason I’m calling is that we’ve just had the ME down there to take a look. The yard is apparently full of bones buried pretty shallow and the doc says he can’t handle it. Can’t tell which ones are human or animal and he thinks there’s some of each. Says he’s got some university students – volunteers – who’d probably be glad to go through all of it but it could take them weeks and they don’t have a lot of experience. So we’re in a holding pattern here. What do you want to do? It’s yours and Houston’s case.’

  Eric looked over at his supervisor, who was leaning forward in the chair, elbows on knees. He liked what he saw in Craig Turner’s eyes and liked the man even more when he stood up while crumpling the sheet of paper he’d been carrying with the notes from SSA Franks’ phone calls.

  Turner spoke, his tone authoritative. ‘Call in Agency Thirty-two One.’

  He turned to leave the office, then turned back. ‘And clear it with Houston first.’

  Eric smiled at Tony Lee and then said toward the phone, ‘Got all that, Ange?’

  ‘Ten-four.’

  ‘I’ll call you back ASAP.’ Eric’s tone was jubilant.

  Scott slid his hands up Jayne’s back until they were on her neck, in her hair, pulling her to him. He wanted her even closer but they couldn’t get any closer. Their kisses were turning into something else altogether and Scott could feel his pulse speeding up. But the roar in his ears wasn’t related. There was a vehicle exiting the freeway and rolling too slowly toward them. He and Jayne surfaced simultaneously but he held her to him as they watched the pick-up truck pass, then turn right at the bottom of the exit ramp. Scott became aware of other noises now . . . cars on the freeway, a fly buzzing past, Jayne’s fast breathing, her chest rising and falling in syncopation with his. And something else . . . his cell phone. He looked to the Suburban where the driver’s door was wide open.

  He started for the car and drew Jayne with him by taking her hand with a familiarity he didn’t want to lose. She let him pull her into the confined space between the door and the seat, let him keep contact between them even as he reached for his phone in the center console. In the first seconds of hearing Eric’s voice, Scott was still in the moment with Jayne, whose gaze was fixed on his mouth, causing him to look at hers, wanting to kiss. Then the import of what Eric was saying broke through. Scott tensed.

  Jayne looked up at him with a questioning expression but it was faster to simply hold the phone out to her. ‘I need you to listen to Eric.’ He activated the phone’s speaker.

  ‘Jayne?’ Eric’s voice sounded thin but audible. ‘We’ve got a situation where we need the Agency’s help. We may have a multiple or mass grave in a backyard and the ME’s out of his depth. We don’t need you to exhume it but Thirty-two One could assist us to get a lead if you could do a day’s assessment and some training of the volunteers they’ve corralled to help the ME. This is urgent but it does involve traveling to Georgia, to the premises of a suspect who is still at large. I’m not going to pretend there’s no danger quotient but you and Steelie would be under Federal protection. Can you do it?’

  Scott thought he read excitement, concern, and then duty on Jayne’s face before she said, ‘I’ll need to confirm
with Steelie but, yes.’

  ‘Good,’ Eric replied. ‘Because Steelie’s already on her way over here with your overnight bag. Scott, see you at LAX as soon as you two can get there. We’re all booked on the red-eye.’

  DAY TEN

  Thursday

  TWENTY-TWO

  FBI office, Atlanta. 9.45 a.m. Scott rolled his shirtsleeves above his elbows and leaned on the briefing room’s long conference table. The lights were dimmed to allow a screen at the end of the room to take center stage.

  Eric contemplated the blurry portrait of a man projected on the screen, while Agents Mark Wilson and Angela Nicks looked at Scott from the other side of the table. Scott looked at his watch. ‘OK, Jayne Hall and Steelie Lander will be here in fifteen and I want to make sure we’re all on the same page before they arrive.’

  He pointed to the portrait on the screen. ‘Starting with descriptors on our suspect, King: white male, forty-five years old, six-foot-four, blond and blue. Holds the title to Thirteen twenty Mead Street and witness statements suggest he is also resident there. Eric and I put him on our list of suspects for the prostitute abductions about a year ago because he was alleged to have associated with some of the missing women. We never had any hard evidence on him, thanks in part to a lack of surveillance. So we never got a search warrant for his property.’

  Eric pointed at the screen. ‘This image is the most recent photograph we have of him. It’s the one on file at his work. The facilities contractor at Atlanta Airport employs him part-time, primarily cleaning floors and he alternates between employee areas and the arrivals transport section. Right now, they have him down as on vacation. He’s had the job for a year and a half. No previous employment record.’

  Scott used the remote to bring up the next image.