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He saw a space between a massive GMC truck and a Mini Cooper. He moved his car smoothly in and turned off the ignition.
“What do you see?”
“The birds. ”
He looked. They were across from a large wooden fence.
Black birds were perched on top of the fence.
On it were written the words Danger. Keep Out. Fourscore Construction.
He left the car and started toward it, aware that Kelsey was close behind.
There were chains where the wood ended and an aluminum gate had been erected. The fence itself had a jagged top—fine for birds, but not great for people.
Logan pulled out his Colt.
“What are you doing?” Kelsey snapped. “This is private property!”
“We’re feds now, or acting as feds, right?”
“I am a fed. It’s still private property. ”
“I hear a distress cry. Don’t you?” he demanded, squinting at her.
As if on cue, one of the birds let out a raw scream.
“Well…” Kelsey shrugged. “We could just call someone from the company. ”
“That takes time,” Logan objected.
The bird gave another loud screech.
“Hey, I hear a cry,” Logan said next. “It might be nothing, but…”
He shot the chain that was keeping them out, then pushed the gate open and entered the construction site.
Kelsey said something under her breath and followed.
The site was large, but no one seemed to be working that day. An old building had apparently been torn down to make way for a new one. Old foundations stood, surrounded by cheap wire and warning signs. Plywood covered some of the gaping holes in the ground.
Logan gestured toward the south. “Start over there. I’ll take the north corner. ”
“Yes, sir,” she muttered, marching off in the direction he’d told her.
Logan went to the opposite corner. Here and there, sections of a wall had been built; he could see naked brick as he lifted the first plywood sheet. Below it he saw nothing but what would one day be a part of a basement.
He looked across at Kelsey. She’d lifted a sheet, too, and then let it fall. She was standing very still.
“Logan,” she called softly.
“Yes?” he called back.
“The birds. ”
That was when he noticed them. They hovered over a section that would have been an entry, he imagined, or, perhaps a corner of the basement.
He heard sirens—someone had alerted the local police to gunfire.
They had to hurry.
He nodded, and they both skirted the other holes and went over to the area where the birds had been.
Facing each other, they raised the sheet of plywood.
Logan looked down expectantly but saw nothing except a hole in the ground littered with construction debris.
Kelsey hurried around to his side. “Slide me down there, Logan!”
She crouched close to the ground, heedless of her clothing—her tailored pants and jacket, her crisp white shirt. He caught her arms, guiding her, holding her tightly until she dangled just a few feet from the bottom.
Their eyes met, and in that moment, he thought, We are a team. We understand each other.
She dropped the rest of the way and righted herself. He twisted around, sliding into the hole himself and then falling.
Old broken boards were everywhere. So were plywood shavings and sawdust, with the occasional coffee or soda cup and fast-food wrappers.
He began to raise boards and sift through trash, and then Kelsey cried out.
He turned.
There, protruding from the ground, was an arm, the hand dangling.
And the hand was missing a finger.
Chapter Eight
“Fentanyl,” Kat Sokolov said when they were back at the office.
Kelsey tried to recall what she knew about the drug. It was legally used as a painkiller and had improved the quality of life for many a cancer patient.
Not surprisingly, unscrupulous people were now selling it for use on the streets. Like all good things, it had been corrupted.
She waited for Kat to continue. Kelsey’s mind seemed as exhausted and dazed as her body. It had been a long day. Logan had managed to keep the local cops at bay while contacting Jackson and getting Kat down to the construction site so the body could be recovered without losing any evidence that might exist. They’d spent hours in the April sun, working the scene along with local forensics and keeping the “team” in the lead. Jane Everett had come to photograph every minute of the procedure, and she, Logan and Jackson Crow had kept watch to ensure that nothing that could provide a clue—a fiber, a fingerprint, a hair—was overlooked.
And once Vanessa Johnston had been removed from the ground, she’d been rushed in for autopsy while local investigators had set out to question every member of the construction team, from the contractor to the delivery boys. Kelsey had to admit that, like Logan, she didn’t believe they’d get much help from that direction. The site had been closed down for several weeks due to lack of funds. Vanessa Johnston had only been missing for about a week. Still, there was the fact that the lock on the gate was new and there was no other point of entry, unless one scaled the wooden walls with their arrow-tipped tops. It was extremely unlikely that anyone could have crawled over the fence, especially carrying a corpse or a drugged or unwilling woman. That mystery was solved when Logan began walking the perimeter and discovered that two of the side-by-side slats were no longer embedded in the earth. They slid easily enough when pushed to create an entrance allowing passage for a man, even a man bearing a burden as large as a human body.
The neighborhood was canvassed, although no one had heard anything, and only one woman complained about noise at the site.
“Birds!” she’d told the officer. “Birds shrieking and cawing at all hours of the night. I called in to complain twice. ”
And she had; the construction site was on a list for the cops to check out.
The physical evidence at the site could take weeks to examine, even with all of Jackson Crow’s power and contacts. There were hundreds of wooden boards, there was dirt, bricks, refuse, and many other surfaces to be tested.
Vanessa Johnston’s body had not decayed to the same extent as the other bodies. Kat was optimistic that she’d be able to learn a great deal more about time and method of death than she could with the earlier victims.
Kelsey thought about Vanessa’s family and friends, those who had feared for her and would now learn the worst… .
Everyone seemed as exhausted as she was. Jane had done what she could to establish images of the deceased; Kat, too, had worked without a break. Sean came later, having spent the day on the documentary. He’d plunged in without pausing for a meal.
Now they sat, the six of them, in the office, their chairs gathered in a circle, sharing the events of the day and discussing what they’d found out, with Sean listening.
“Fentanyl,” Kat repeated. She looked at Logan and Kelsey. “I’m sure you’ve come across it. Fentanyl is a synthetic narcotic analgesic, and it’s a hundred times more potent than morphine. For chronic pain, it’s often delivered to patients through a patch. It’s also combined with other drugs for surgery. Like I said, fentanyl’s hit the streets, and God knows how many overdoses there’ve been because of it. It’s sometimes mixed with Rohypnol—commonly known as a roofie—and I’m assuming that we’ve missed the combination because of the deterioration of the previous bodies and because we needed to use GC-MS testing. But that’s how the killer is grabbing these women. I think he’s mixing up a dose and getting close enough to prick them with some sort of needle or slap on a patch. I’m not positive of his method because I haven’t been able to find a needle mark or evidence of a patch on any of the women, although I’ll continue s
earching on Vanessa Johnston tomorrow. ”
“The drug is that potent?” Kelsey asked. “In my experience, roofies usually go into drinks, and I’ve worked cases where the women don’t remember a thing that happened to them for hours afterward. In one rape, the woman didn’t believe she’d ever been with the man, and he was only caught because the police found video. ”
“Yes, a roofie is a date-rape drug,” Kat said. “Memory can be completely lost. But this is a mixture. The fentanyl is knocking the person out—right after the killer gets her to come with him willingly. Why? I have no idea. As far as I can tell, the women aren’t being attacked sexually. ”
“I figured he had to have a method for getting so many women to disappear with him. If he was causing any kind of scene, someone would’ve noticed something by now and reported it,” Logan said.
“I’ll start on a grid, although I don’t suppose we know where Vanessa was last seen?” Sean asked.
“Let’s begin by putting all the women somewhere near the Alamo,” Logan suggested. “And then indicate where the bodies were found. Let’s include Sierra Monte in the investigation, so we’ll need the Longhorn in the grid, as well. We know she was taken from there. ”
Kelsey glanced over at Logan. He seemed increasingly convinced that Sierra Monte’s death was connected with the others. He also wondered if—and how—the Galveston diamond might be involved.
“I’ll have preliminary sketches of the other women for you tomorrow, and we’ve decided it’ll be necessary to remove the remaining flesh and soft tissue on several of the skulls. In a few of the other cases, that’s what we’re down to, anyway,” Jane said. “I can provide images that will be almost real,” she added. “There are even formulas you can use to come up with the most likely hair and eye color. ”
“That will help,” Jackson said. “We need to identify the other women ASAP. ”
“Of course,” Kat agreed. “And we have the best people in crime-scene forensics working on the site. Logan has seen to that. He knows the local technicians and scientists and labs. The place itself is a mess, but there’s got to be some bit of evidence. ”