The Killing Hour

  So again: Why had their UNSUB chosen here?

  Quincy was beginning to have some ideas. He’d bet Rainie would also have a few opinions on the subject.

  “How are you making out?” Kaplan called out.

  He was coming down the dirt path, looking fresher than they did, so wherever he’d been, it had had air-conditioning. Quincy found himself resentful already.

  “Brought you bug spray,” Kaplan said merrily.

  “You’re the king of men,” Quincy assured him. “Now look behind you.”

  Kaplan obediently stopped and looked behind him. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Huh?”

  “Look down,” Rainie said impatiently, from twenty feet back. “Check out your footsteps.”

  Rainie had pulled her heavy chestnut hair back in a ponytail first thing this morning. It had come loose about an hour ago and was now plastered in sweaty tendrils against her neck. She looked wild, her hair curly with the humidity and her gray eyes nearly black with the heat. Having grown up on the Oregon coast with its relatively mild climate, Rainie absolutely loathed high heat and humidity. Quincy figured he had about another hour before she’d be driven to violence.

  “There aren’t any footsteps,” Kaplan said.

  “Exactly.” Quincy sighed and finally pulled his attention away from the scene. “According to reports on the Weather Channel, this area received two inches of rain five days ago. And if you venture off the path into the woods, there are patches where the ground is still marshy and soft to the touch. The thick trees protect the dirt from baking in the sun, plus I don’t think much can dry out given this humidity.”

  “But the path is solid.”

  “Yes. Apparently, nothing hard-packs soil quite like the daily grind of a few hundred pounding Marine and FBI trainees. The path is hard as a rock. It would take more than a two-hundred-pound person, plus a hundred-pound body, to dent it now.”

  Kaplan frowned at them both, still obviously confused. “I already said there weren’t any footprints. We looked.”

  Quincy wanted to sigh again. He so preferred working with Rainie, who was now regarding the NCIS special agent with a fresh level of annoyance.

  “If you simply walked off the road into the woods around here, what would happen?”

  “The ground is still soft; you’d leave a footprint.”

  “So to a casual visitor, the woods are marshy?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “And what’s thirty feet to my left?” Quincy asked crisply.

  “The PT course.”

  “The paved PT course.”

  “Sure, the paved PT course.”

  Quincy looked at him. “If you were carrying a body into the woods, wouldn’t you take the paved path? The one that offered you better footing? The one that would be guaranteed not to leave footprints, given the soft soil you see all around?”

  “The wooded path has less traffic,” Kaplan said slowly. “He’s better hidden.”

  “According to the ME’s report, the UNSUB probably dumped the body in the small hours of the morning. Given the late hour, the man’s already well hidden. Why take the dirt path? Why risk footprints?”

  “He’s not very bright?” But Kaplan was no longer convinced.

  Rainie shook her head impatiently, crossing over to them. “The UNSUB knew. He’s been on this path. He knew the ground was hard and would protect him, while the wide scope makes it less likely he’d bump the body against a tree limb or accidentally leave a scrap of fabric on a twig. Face it, Kaplan. The UNSUB isn’t some random guy. He knows this place. Hell, he’s probably run this course sometime in the last five days.”

  Kaplan was clearly discouraged as they trudged back to the Academy.

  “I spoke with the four Marines on duty Tuesday night,” he reported. “They had nothing out of the ordinary. No unusual vehicles, no suspicious drivers. Only thing they could think of was that it was a particularly busy night. A bunch of the National Academy students had hightailed it for air-conditioned bars, so they had cars coming and going right up until two A.M. Everyone showed proper ID, however. Nothing stood out in their minds.”

  “Do they keep a log of who comes and goes?” Rainie asked, walking beside Quincy.

  “No. All drivers have to show proper security passes, however. The Marine sentries may also ask for a license and the driver’s final destination.”

  “What does a security pass look like?”

  Kaplan gestured to Rainie’s shirt, where a white plastic card dangled from her collar. “It looks like that, except in a variety of colors. Some are blue, some are white, some yellow. Each color indicates a certain level of clearance. A yellow card indicates an unescorted guest pass, someone who’s allowed full access. We also have cards reading Escorted Guests, which means they wouldn’t be allowed back onto the base without being in the company of the proper person. That sort of thing.”

  Rainie glanced down. “They don’t look that complicated to me. Couldn’t someone just swipe one?”

  “You have to sign a badge in and out. And believe me, the FBI police keep tabs on that sort of thing. None of us would feel particularly good if just any Tom, Dick, or Harry could swipe a card.”

  “Just asking,” Rainie said mildly.

  Kaplan scowled at her anyway. Their earlier conversation had obviously wounded his ego. “You can’t steal a badge. You can’t just walk onto this base. For God’s sake, we take this kind of thing very seriously. Look, you’re probably right. It probably is an insider. Which really depresses me, though I don’t know why. If all the good guys were really good people, I wouldn’t have a job, would I?”

  “That’s not an encouraging thought,” Rainie said.

  “Ma’am, it’s the worst thought in the world.” He glanced at Quincy. “You know, I’ve been thinking . . . Given the lack of sexual assault, and that the ‘weapon,’ so to speak, was a drug, shouldn’t we be looking at women, too?”

  “No,” Quincy said.

  “But women are the ones who predominantly kill with poison. And the lack of sexual assault bothers me. A guy doesn’t just OD a woman and dump her body in the woods. Men are sexual predators. And did you see how this girl was dressed?”

  Quincy drew up short. “The victim,” he said curtly, “was wearing a short skirt, not uncommon for this time of year. To imply that a certain manner of dress invites sexual assault—”

  “That’s not what I was saying!” Kaplan interrupted immediately.

  “It’s not about sex for any predator,” Quincy continued as if Kaplan hadn’t spoken. “It’s about power. We’ve had many serial killers who were not sexual-sadist predators. Berkowitz, for one, was strictly a triggerman, so to speak. He picked his victims, walked up to the car, opened fire on the couple, and walked away. Kaczynski was content to kill and maim long-distance. Even more recently, we had the Beltway Snipers, who held most of the East Coast in absolute terror by picking off victims from the trunk of their car. Murder isn’t about sex. It’s about power. And in this context, then, drugs make perfect sense, as drugs are weapons of control.”

  “Besides,” Rainie spoke up, “there’s no way a woman carried a dead body half a mile into the woods. We don’t have that kind of upper-body strength.”

  They finally emerged from the relative comfort of the woods. Immediately, the sun struck them like a ball-peen hammer while waves of heat shimmered above the paved road.

  “Holy Lord,” Kaplan said. “And it’s not even noon.”

  “It’s going to be a hot one,” Quincy murmured.

  And Rainie said, “Fuck the Academy, I’m putting on shorts.”

  “One last thing,” Kaplan said, holding up a hand. “Something you should both know.”

  Rainie halted with an impatient sigh. Quincy waited with a far more prescient sense of something significant about to break.

  “We have the tox report back on the victim. Two drugs were found in her system. A sma
ll dose of ketamine, and a significantly larger dose—no doubt lethal dose—of the benzodiazepine, Ativan. In other words . . .”

  “Special Agent McCormack listed them both last night,” Quincy murmured.

  “Yeah,” Kaplan said slowly. “McCormack knew the drugs. Now how about that?”

  CHAPTER 21

  Quantico, Virginia

  11:48 A.M.

  Temperature: 95 degrees

  MAC DROVE UNTIL THEY’D LEFT THE CONCRETE COLUMNS of Richmond behind them. He headed west on Interstate 64, where a towering line of dark green mountains stood out in vivid contrast to the bright blue sky and drew them steadily forward.

  They stopped at Texaco for gas. Then they stopped at a Wal-Mart to cover the essentials: bug spray, first-aid kit, hiking socks, energy bars, chocolate bars, extra water bottles, and a whole case of water. Mac already had a compass, Swiss army knife, and waterproof matches in his backpack. They grabbed an extra set for Kimberly to carry, just in case.

  When they returned to his rented Toyota, Mac discovered a message on his cell phone from Ray Lee Chee. The botanist, Kathy Levine, would meet them at Big Meadows Lodge in the Shenandoah National Park at one-thirty. Without a word, they started driving again.

  Cities came and went. Major housing developments bloomed alongside the road, then slowly withered away. They headed deeper west, where the land opened up like an emerald sea and took Mac’s breath away.

  “God’s country,” his father would say. There wasn’t much of this kind of land left.

  As Kimberly navigated, they turned off the interstate for the rolling lanes of U.S. 15, leading to U.S. 33. They swept by vast fields, each dotted by a single redbrick ranch house with a fresh-painted white porch. They passed dairy farms, horse stables, vineyards, and agricultural spreads.

  Outside the car, everything took on a green hue, a rolling patchwork of square fields seamed by groves of dark green trees. They passed horses and cows. They came upon tiny towns defined by run-down delis, old gas stations, and pristine Baptist churches. Then, in the blink of an eye, the towns disappeared and they headed deeper into the growing shade cast by a towering mountain range. Slowly but surely, they started to climb.

  Kimberly had been quiet since their meeting with the geologist. Her visor was down, casting a shadow across the top half of her face and making it difficult to read her expression.

  Mac was worried about her. She’d shown up bright and early this morning with the gaunt cheeks and feverish eyes of a woman who’d had little sleep. She wore linen trousers, topped with a white dress shirt and matching linen jacket. The outfit looked sharp and professional, but he suspected she’d chosen the long pants to hide her knife, and the jacket to cover the discreet bulge of the Glock strapped to her waist. In other words, she was a woman going to war.

  He suspected she went to war a lot. He suspected that since the deaths of her mother and sister, life for her had essentially been one long battle. The thought pained him in a way he hadn’t expected.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said at last.

  She finally shifted in her seat, giving him a brief glance before stretching out her legs. “Yes.”

  “You like the mountains? Or are you a city gal?”

  She shook her head. “City gal. Technically speaking, I grew up in Alexandria, close to these mountains. But Alexandria functions more as a suburb of D.C. than Richmond. And let’s just say my mother’s interests ran more to the Smithsonian Institution than the Shenandoah Mountains. Then I went off to school in New York. You?”

  “I love mountains. Hell, I love rivers, fields, orchards, streams, woods, you name it. I was lucky growing up. My grandparents—my mother’s parents—own a hundred-acre peach orchard. As their kids married, they gifted each one with three acres of land to build a home; that way all the siblings could live close by. Basically, my sister and I grew up in booneyville, surrounded by a dozen cousins, and a ton of open space. Each day my mom would kick us out of the house, tell us not to die, and come home in time for dinner. So we did.”

  “You must have liked your cousins.”

  “Nah, we annoyed the snot out of each other. But that was half the fun. We made up games, we got into trouble. We basically ran around like heathens. And then at night,” he slanted her a look, “we played board games.”

  “Your whole family? Every night?” Her voice was skeptical.

  “Yep. We’d rotate around each aunt and uncle’s house and off we’d go. My mom started it. She hates TV, thinks it rots the brain. The Boob Tube, she calls it. When I turned twelve, she threw ours out. I’m not sure my father’s ever recovered from the loss, but after that we had to do something to pass the time.”

  “So you played games?”

  “All the good ones. Monopoly, Scrabble, Yahtzee, Boggle, Life, and my personal favorite, Risk.”

  Kimberly raised a brow. “And who won?”

  “I did, of course.”

  “I believe that,” she said seriously. “You attempt this whole laid-back Southern routine, but deep down inside, you’re a natural-born competitor. I can see it every time you talk about this case. You don’t like to lose.”

  “The person who said there are no winners or losers obviously lost.”

  “I’m not disagreeing.”

  His lips curved. “I didn’t think you would.”

  “My family didn’t play board games,” she volunteered finally. “We read books.”

  “Serious stuff or fun stuff?”

  “Serious, of course. At least when my mother was watching. After lights out, however, Mandy used to sneak in copies of Sweet Valley High. We’d read them under the covers using a flashlight. Oh, we giggled ourselves sick.”

  “Sweet Valley High? And here I figured you for a Nancy Drew kind of gal.”

  “I liked Nancy, but Mandy was better at smuggling contraband, and she preferred Sweet Valley High. And booze for that matter, but that’s another story.”

  “You rebel.”

  “We all have our moments. So.” She turned toward him. “Big charming Southern man. You ever been in love?”

  “Uh oh.”

  She stared at him intently, and he finally relented with a sigh. “Yeah. Once. One of my sister’s friends. She set us up, we hit it off, and things went pretty well for a while.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s no kind of answer.”

  “Honey, coming from a man, that’s the only kind of answer.”

  She resumed staring and he caved again. “I was probably an idiot. Rachel was a nice girl. Funny, athletic, sweet. She taught second grade and was really good with kids. I certainly could’ve done worse.”

  “So you ended it, broke your sister’s best friend’s heart?”

  He shrugged. “More like I let it trickle out. Rachel was the kind of girl a guy should marry, then settle down and raise two point two kids. I wasn’t there yet. You know how this job is. You get a call, you have to go. And God knows when you’re comin’ home. I had visions of her waiting more and more and smiling less and less. It didn’t seem the thing to do.”

  “Do you miss her?”

  “Honestly, I hadn’t thought of her in years.”

  “Why? She sounds perfect.”

  Mac shot her an impatient glance. “Nobody’s perfect, Kimberly, and if you must know, we did have a problem. A significant problem, in my mind. We never fought.”

  “You never fought?”

  “Never. And a man and woman should fight. Frankly, they should have a good head-to-head battle about every six months, then make love until they break the box springs. At least that’s my opinion. Your turn. What was his name?”

  “I don’t have a name.”

  “Honey, everyone’s got a name. The boy you sat behind in math class. The college quarterback who got away. Your sister’s boyfriend who you secretly wished was your own. Come on. Confession’s good for the soul.”

  “And I still don’t
have a name. Honest. I’ve never been in love. I don’t think I’m the type.”

  He frowned at her. “Everyone falls in love.”

  “That’s not true,” she countered immediately. “Love’s not for everyone. There are people who live their whole lives alone and are very happy that way. To fall in love . . . It involves giving. It involves weakening. I’m not very good at that.”

  Mac gave her a slow, lingering look. “Ah, honey, you obviously haven’t met the right man yet.”

  Kimberly’s cheeks grew red. She turned away from him and resumed staring out the window. The road was steep now; they’d officially hit the Blue Ridge Mountains and were now making the grinding climb through Swift Run Gap. They zigzagged around sharp corners, getting teasing glimpses of million-dollar views. Then they were up the side, cresting at twenty-four hundred feet and watching the world open up like a deep green blanket. Before them, green valleys plunged, gray granite soared, and blue sky stretched for as far as the eye could see.

  “Wow,” Kimberly said simply and Mac couldn’t think of a better response.

  He took the entrance into the Shenandoah National Park. He paid the fee and in turn they got a map of all the various lookout points. They headed north, toward Big Meadows, on Skyline Drive.

  The going was slower here, the speed limit a steady 35 mph, which was just as well because suddenly there were a million things to see and not nearly enough time to look. Wild grass bordered the winding road, thickly dotted with yellow and white flowers, while deeper in the woods a vast array of ferns spread out like a thick green carpet. Towering oak trees and majestic beeches wove their branches overhead, breaking the sun into a dozen pieces of gold. A yellow butterfly darted in front of them. Kimberly gasped, and Mac turned just in time to see a mother and fawn cross the road behind them.