“So what are the similarities between the Georgia case and this one?” Rainie prodded.
“Cause of death,” Quincy said promptly. “There aren’t too many serial predators who kill using prescription tranquilizers. At least not male killers.”
“Women love poison,” Rainie said knowingly.
“Exactly. Your dear friend Watson, however, also raised some good points. First, the Georgian Eco-Killer always dumped the first victim near a major road, where his ‘map’ per se could be easily found. Following that pattern, the victim could still be left on the Marine base, but should be near such roads as MCB-4 or MCB-3. A dirt jogging path isn’t quite the same. Second, the stitched-up mouth bothers me. It shows an increased need for violence, postmortem mutilation of the victim, let alone the very obvious symbol of the victim keeping her mouth shut.”
“Or the killer is engaging in a more dangerous game, as Special Agent McCormack theorizes.”
“True. The new location, however, bothers me as well. I’ve only just glanced at the Georgia profile, but one of the main assumptions is that the man is local. His knowledge of certain areas is too intimate to be an outsider’s. In fact, the very nature of his game is that of someone who lives in and loves his surroundings. That’s not the kind of person who simply shifts to a whole new state.”
“Maybe he felt the police were getting too close.”
“It’s possible. For his game to work in Virginia, however, he’d have to do his homework.”
“What about the phone calls?” Rainie switched gears. “It seems more than coincidental that McCormack should start getting anonymous tips that the Eco-Killer would strike in Virginia right before the discovery of a new body. Seems to me the caller might know something.”
“The anonymous tips are what make it interesting,” Quincy agreed. He sighed again, then rubbed his temple. “Seems at the end of the day, we have six reasons why the cases shouldn’t be related, and half a dozen reasons why they should. Now we need a tiebreaker.” He looked at her. “You know what? We need to know the victim’s ID. Right now, we have one body, which may or may not bear resemblance to another case. If, however, we had concrete evidence that two girls had been kidnapped . . .”
“Then it would definitely point to the Eco-Killer,” Rainie filled in.
“Then I would definitely pay more attention to the Georgia case.”
“Has Kaplan checked missing persons reports?”
“He has someone going through old files. No new cases, however, have opened up in the last twenty-four hours. At least not for a young woman.”
“How sad,” Rainie murmured. “To be kidnapped and murdered, and have no one even realize that you’re gone yet.”
“Most colleges are on break,” Quincy said with a shrug. “If our victim is a student, the lack of a regular schedule might make it take longer for anyone to notice that she’s disappeared.”
“Maybe that’s why there’s no ID,” Rainie said after a moment. “If we don’t know who she is, we can’t know for sure that she—or a companion—is missing. The Eco-Killer has bought himself some time.”
Quincy eyed her speculatively. “But doesn’t that work both ways?”
“He either is the Eco-Killer and doesn’t want us to know it yet,” she said slowly.
“Or someone has done their homework,” Quincy concluded quietly. “Someone has committed murder, and now is seeking to cover his tracks by sending us off on a wild-goose chase.”
“Where do you want to start?” she asked.
“We start where we always start. Close to home. Right here.” His arms finally went around her waist. He drew her up against his chest. “Come on, Rainie,” he murmured in her ear. “Tell me the truth. Haven’t you always wanted to tear apart the FBI Academy?”
“You have no idea.”
And then, a moment later: “I’m trying,” he whispered.
“I know,” she said, and closed her eyes against the fresh sting of tears.
CHAPTER 16
Quantico, Virginia
9:46 P.M.
Temperature: 91 degrees
KIMBERLY SAT ALONE IN HER DORM ROOM. Lucy had returned briefly, dumping one pile of books on the cluttered desk before scooping up the next.
“Wow, you look worse than you did this morning,” she said by way of greeting.
“Been working on it all day,” Kimberly assured her.
“Finding a corpse must be hard on a girl.”
“So you heard.”
“Everyone’s heard, my dear. It’s the hottest topic around. This your first corpse?”
“You mean other than my mother and sister?”
Lucy stilled in front of the desk. The silence grew long. “Well, I’m off to study group,” she said finally. She turned, her expression gentle. “Want to come along, Kimberly? You know we don’t mind.”
“No,” Kimberly said flatly.
And then Lucy was gone.
She should sleep. Supervisor Watson was right. Her nerves were frayed, the adrenaline rush gone and leaving her feeling empty. She wanted to tip over on the narrow bed. Slip into the blessed numbness of sleep.
She’d dream about Mandy. She’d dream about her mother. She wasn’t sure which dream would hurt her worse.
She could find her father over at the Jefferson Dormitory. He would talk to her, he always did. But she knew already the look she’d see on his face. Slightly distracted, slightly puzzled. A man who had just started a terribly important assignment, and even as he listened to his daughter lament, the other half of his brain would be reshuffling crime-scene photos, murder books, investigator logs. Her father loved her. But she and Mandy had come to understand early on that he mostly belonged to the dead.
She couldn’t stand the empty room. She couldn’t stand the sound of footsteps in the hall. People meeting friends, sharing laughs, swapping stories, having a good time. Only Kimberly sat alone, the island she’d worked so hard to become.
She left the room, too. She took her knife and disappeared down the hall.
Outside it was hot. The dark, oppressive heat greeted her like a wall. Ten P.M. and still this unbearably sticky. Tomorrow would be punishing for sure.
She slogged forward, feeling blotches of dark gray sweat bloom across the front of her T-shirt, while more moisture began trailing down the small of her back. Her breath came out in shallow pants, her lungs laboring to find oxygen in air that was 90 percent water.
She could still hear fading laughter. She turned away from it and headed toward the welcoming dark of the firing range. No one came out here this time of night. Well, almost no one.
The thought came only briefly, and then she knew just how much trouble she was in.
“Been waitin’ for you,” Special Agent Mac McCormack drawled softly, pushing away from the entrance to the range.
“You shouldn’t have.”
“I don’t like to disappoint a pretty girl.”
“Did you bring a shotgun? Well then, too bad.”
He merely grinned at her, his teeth a flash of white in the dark. “I thought you’d spend more time with your father.”
“Can’t. He’s working the case and I’m not allowed.”
“Being family doesn’t entitle you to some perks?”
“You mean like a sneak peek of homicide photos? I think not. My father is a professional. He takes his job seriously.”
“Now, how many years of therapy has it taken you to say that in such a calm, clear voice?”
“More than most suspect,” she admitted grudgingly.
“Come on, sugar. Let’s take a seat.” He headed out into the green field of the range without looking back. It amazed her how easy it was to follow him.
The grass was nice. Soft beneath her battered body. Cool against her bare, sweat-slicked legs. She lay back, with her knees pointed at the sky and her short, serrated hunting knife snug against the inside of her left leg. Mac lay down beside her. Close. His shoulder brushing hers. She
found his proximity faintly shocking, but she didn’t move away.
He’d showered since their meeting with Kaplan and Watson. He smelled like soap and some kind of spicy men’s aftershave. She imagined that his hair was probably still damp. For that matter, his cheeks had appeared freshly shaven when he’d walked through the glow cast by the streetlight. Had he cleaned up for her? Would it matter if he had?
She liked the smell of his soap, she decided, and left it at that.
“Stars are out,” he said conversationally.
“They do that at night.”
“You noticed? Here I thought you driven new agent types were too busy for those kinds of things.”
“In personal combat training, we get to spend a lot of time on our backs. It helps.”
He reached over and brushed her cheek. The contact was so unexpected, she flinched.
“A blade of grass,” he said calmly. “Stuck to your cheek. Don’t worry, honey. I’m not gonna attack you. I know you’re armed.”
“And if I wasn’t?”
“Why then, I’d roll you right here and now, of course. Being a testosterone-bound male who’s prone to that kind of brutish behavior.”
“I don’t mean it that way.”
“You don’t like touching much, do you? I mean, biting, flipping and beating the bejesus out of me aside.”
“I’m not . . . used to it. My family was never very demonstrative.”
He seemed to consider that. “If you don’t mind me saying, your father seems wound a bit tight.”
“My father is wound way tight. And my mother came from an upper-class family. As you can imagine, holidays were a gay, frolicking time in our home. You wouldn’t believe the boisterous outbreaks.”
“My family’s loud,” he volunteered casually. “Not big, but definitely demonstrative. My father still grabs my mother around the waist and tries to lure her into dark corners. As an adult, I appreciate their relationship. As a kid . . . Hell, we were scared to death not to announce ourselves before walking down a darkened hall.”
Kimberly smiled faintly. “You got an education?”
“Heavens, yes. It’s sweet, though, I suppose. My father’s a civil engineer who designs roads for the state. My mother teaches high school English. Who would’ve thought they’d be so happy?”
“Siblings?”
“One sister. Younger, of course. I terrorized her for most of our childhood. On the other hand, every time I fell asleep in the family room, she put makeup on my face and took pictures. So I guess it evens itself out. Plus, I’m the only man you’ll ever meet who understands just how hard it is to remove waterproof mascara. And I guess I’ll never run for political office. The photos alone would ruin me.”
“What does she do now?”
“Marybeth’s a kindergarten teacher, so in other words, she’s tougher than most cops. Has gotta be to keep all those little critters in line. Maybe when they fall asleep, she puts makeup on their faces, too. I’m too scared to ask.”
“You’re the only police officer in your family.”
“I have a cuz who’s a fireman. That’s pretty close.”
She smiled again. “They sound like fun.”
“They are,” he agreed, and she heard the genuine affection in his voice. “I mean, they could still use some good training and all. But as families go, they’re keepers. Do you miss your mother and sister?” he asked abruptly.
“Yes.”
“Should I shut up?”
“Would you obey me if I said yes?”
“No. I suppose I need some training, too. Besides, the stars are out. You should always talk when you’re lying beneath the stars.”
“I hadn’t heard that before,” Kimberly said, but she turned her face up toward the night sky, feeling the hot air against her face, and it did make it easier. “My family wasn’t happy. Not in the typical way. But we tried. I give us credit for that. We wanted to be happy, so we tried. I guess you could say we were earnest.”
“Your parents divorced?”
“Eventually. When we were teens. But the problems were way before that. The usual cop stuff. My father had a demanding job, worked long hours. And my mom . . . She’d been raised expecting something different. She would’ve done well with a banker, I think. Or even a doctor; the hours would’ve been just as bad, but at least her husband would’ve held a title with a certain level of decorum. My father, on the other hand, was an FBI profiler. He dealt in death, extreme violent death each and every day. I don’t think she ever got used to that. I don’t think she ever stopped finding it distasteful.”
“It’s a good job,” Mac said quietly.
She turned toward him, finding herself surprisingly serious. “I think so. I was always proud of him. Even when he had to leave in the middle of birthday parties or missed them altogether. His job sounded so larger-than-life to me. Like something a superhero would do. People got hurt. And my father went to save the day. I missed him, I’m sure I had tantrums, but mostly I remember feeling proud. My daddy was cool. For my sister, however, it was another story.”
“Older or younger?”
“Mandy was older. She was also . . . different. High-strung. Sensitive. A little wild. I think my first memory of her is her being yelled at for breaking something. She struggled with our parents. I mean, really, truly struggled. They were so by-the-book and she was so color-outside-the-lines. And life was harder for her in other ways. She took things to heart too much. One harsh word and she was wounded for days. One wrong look and she’d be devastated. She had nightmares, was prone to crying jags and had genuine fits. My father’s job terrified her. My parents’ divorce shattered her. And adulthood didn’t get much easier.”
“She sounds intense.”
“She was.” For a moment, Kimberly was silent. “You know what gets to me, though? You know what’s truly ironic?”
“What?”
“She needed us. She was exactly the kind of person that my father and I have sworn our lives to protect. She wasn’t tough. She made bad choices. She drank too much, she dated the wrong men, she believed anyone’s pack of lies. God, she desperately needed someone to save her from herself. And we didn’t do it. I spent so much of my childhood resenting her. Crying, complaining Mandy who was always upset about something. Now, I just wonder why we didn’t take better care of her. She was in our own family. How could we fail her so completely?”
Mac didn’t say anything. He touched her cheek again. Gently. With his thumb. She felt the slow rasp of his work-roughened skin all the way down to her jaw line. It made her shiver. Then it made her want to close her eyes, and arch her back like a cat.
“Another blade of grass?” she whispered.
“No,” he said softly.
She turned toward him then, knowing her eyes said too much, knowing she needed more armor, but helpless to find it now.
“They don’t believe you,” she said softly.
“I know.” His fingers traced along her jaw, lingered at the curve of her ear.
“My father’s good. Very good. But like all investigators, he’s meticulous. He’s going to start at the very beginning and have to work his way toward your conclusion. Maybe on another case it wouldn’t matter. But if you’re right, and there’s another girl already out there . . .”
“Clock’s ticking,” Mac murmured. The rough pads of his fingers returned along her jaw, then feathered down her neck. She could feel her chest rising and falling faster. As if she were running once more through the woods. Was she running toward something this time, or was she still running away?
“You’re very relaxed about all this,” she said brusquely.
“The case? Not really.” His fingers stopped moving. They rested at the base of her neck, his fingers bracing her collarbone and her skittering pulse. He was gazing at her with an intense look. A man about to kiss a woman? A cop obsessed with a difficult case? She was no good at this sort of thing. The Quincy women had a long history of being unlucky
at love. In fact, the last man her mother and Mandy thought they had loved had killed them both. That was female intuition for you.
She wished suddenly that she didn’t think of her family so much. She wished suddenly that she really were an island, that she could be born again without any attachments, without any past. What would her life have become if her family hadn’t been murdered? Who would’ve Kimberly Quincy been then?
Kinder, softer, gentler? The kind of woman capable of kissing a handsome man under the stars? Maybe a woman actually capable of falling in love?
She turned her head away. Pulled her body away from his touch. It didn’t matter anymore. She suddenly hurt too much to look him in the eye.
“You’re going to work this, aren’t you?” she asked, giving him her back.
“I did a little reading on Virginia this afternoon,” he said conversationally, as if she hadn’t just jerked away. “Did you know this state has over forty thousand square acres of beaches, mountains, rivers, lakes, bays, swamps, reservoirs, and caverns? We’re talking several major mountain ranges offering over a thousand miles of hiking trails. Two million acres of public land. Then we have the Chesapeake Bay, which is the largest coastal estuary in the United States. Plus, four thousand caverns and several reservoirs that have been formed by flooding complete towns. You want rare and ecologically sensitive? Virginia has rare and ecologically sensitive. You want dangerous? Virginia has dangerous. In short, Virginia is perfect for Eco-Killer, and hell yes, I’m definitely gonna pursue a few things.”
“You don’t have jurisdiction.”
“All’s fair in love and war. I called my supervisor. We both believe this is the first solid lead we’ve had in months. If I take off from the National Academy to do a little sidebar exploration, he’s not gonna cry any rivers. Besides, your father and NCIS are moving too slow. By the time they realize what we already know, the second girl will be long dead. I don’t want that, Kimberly. After all these years, I’m tired of being too late.”
“What will you do?”
“First thing tomorrow morning, I’m meeting with a botanist from the U.S. Geological Survey team. Then I’ll take it from there.”