The Killing Hour

  She cried. She cried all alone in her pit, and it was all that she could do.

  Things came back to her in bits and pieces. Her glorious attempt at being a human spider. Her not-so-glorious fall. She lifted her arms again. Tried out her legs and inspected for damage. Technically speaking at least, she was still in one piece.

  She tried to take a step. Her right leg buckled and she immediately sank back into the mud. Gritting her teeth, she tried again, only to get the same results. Her legs were too weak. Her body had simply had enough.

  So she lay with her head in the cool, soothing muck. She watched the slime ooze and pop inches from her face. And she decided maybe dying wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  If she could just get water . . . Her mouth, her throat, her shriveled stomach. Her parched, festering skin.

  She stared at the mud a minute longer, then she staggered up onto her hands and knees.

  She shouldn’t . . . It would kill her. But did that matter anymore?

  Spreading her fingers, she flattened them into the muck. The small indent instantly filled with putrid, stinking water.

  Tina put down her head and drank like a dog.

  CHAPTER 42

  Wytheville, Virginia

  10:04 P.M.

  Temperature: 94 degrees

  KIMBERLY CHECKED THEM INTO THE TINY, ROADSIDE MOTEL. Ray and his team got their rooms. Kimberly booked another for Nora Ray, plus one for Dr. Ennunzio. Then she reserved one room for her and Mac to share.

  She couldn’t meet his eyes when she returned to the car. She distributed keys, deliberately omitting him, which earned her a curious glance. Then she was busy unloading bags from the trunk. They needed a game plan. Ray would ring Mac or Kimberly’s room when the team had a theory. They, in turn, would rouse the others. In the meantime, Mac had his cell phone on and seemed to be receiving a faint signal. Kimberly also turned hers on, in case her father needed her.

  Nothing left to do now but grab a shower and snatch a few hours’ sleep. Soon enough, they would all be up again.

  Kimberly watched Nora Ray disappear behind the plain white door of the single-story structure. Then she watched as Dr. Ennunzio crossed the parking lot to his wing of the motel. She waited until he was gone from view before finally turning toward Mac.

  “Here,” she said. “I got us a room.”

  If he was surprised, he didn’t say anything. He simply took the key from her trembling hand. Then he picked up their bags and carried them through the doorway.

  Inside she almost lost her courage again. The room was too beige, too generic, too worn. It could’ve been any room in any motel in any part of the country, and for some reason that nearly broke her heart. Just once she wanted something more out of life than desperate attempts at happiness. They should go to a bed-and-breakfast. One of those places with rose-patterned wallpaper and red quilted comforters and a giant four-poster bed. Where you could sink deep into the mattress and sleep well past noon and forget the real world ever existed.

  They didn’t have that kind of luxury. She supposed she wouldn’t have known what to do with it if she had.

  Mac set their bags down at the foot of the bed. “Why don’t you shower first,” he suggested quietly. She nodded and disappeared gratefully into the solitude of the tiny bath.

  She showered. First, hot and steamy to relax her tired muscles, then cool and crisp to eradicate all memories of the heat. She didn’t cry this time. She didn’t stand there with haunted images of her mother or sister. The worst of her grief had passed, and in some ways, she felt the most composed she’d been in weeks.

  They had tried again. They had failed again. And soon, maybe in a day, maybe in an hour, they would try yet again. That’s the way life worked. She could either quit now, or forge ahead, and for whatever reason, she wasn’t the quitting type. So that was it, then. She had chosen her path. She would keep trying, and keep trying, even if some days it broke her heart.

  She took her time drying off. She searched her small toiletry bag for the bottle of perfume she didn’t own. She wondered if she should do something with her hair, or put makeup on her wan face. She wished she possessed even a bottle of lotion to smooth over her sun-battered skin.

  But she wasn’t that kind of girl. She didn’t travel with those kinds of things.

  She walked back into the bedroom with a threadbare white towel wrapped self-consciously around her breasts. Mac still didn’t say anything. He merely grabbed his shaving kit and disappeared into the bathroom.

  She put on a plain gray FBI T-shirt and waited as he showered.

  It was pitch black outside now. Still hot, she imagined. Was that easier on a missing person than being someplace cold and dark? Or by now, was the girl delirious with her need for something cool and soothing against her overheated skin? It must seem like a ridiculous joke for the air to remain so hot, long after the sun had retreated from the sky.

  Nora Ray had survived out there. She’d protected herself from the sun; she’d found a way to keep cool as endless day slipped into day. How small she must have felt, as she dug deeper into the marsh and waited for someone to find her in the vast line of a coastal horizon. She’d never given up hope, however. She’d never succumbed to panic. And in the end, she’d survived.

  Only to lose sight of the victory in her grief for her sister. She had won the battle, then lost the war. It was such an easy thing to do.

  The shower shut off. Kimberly heard the rake of metal as the shower curtain was pulled back. Her breathing grew uneven. She took a seat in the broken-down chair next to the TV. Her hands trembled on her thighs.

  The sound of running water in the sink. A toothbrush sudsing across teeth. Now some fresh splashes. He was probably shaving.

  Kimberly got up, paced the room. She had had final exams easier than this. She had held her first loaded firearm with less trepidation. Oh, how could this be so hard?

  Then the door opened. Mac was standing there, freshly showered, freshly shaven, with just a towel wrapped around his lean, tanned waist.

  “Hey, beautiful,” he said softly. “Come here often?”

  She crossed to him, placed her hands on his bare shoulders and it wasn’t so difficult after all.

  Nora Ray didn’t sleep. Alone at last in the motel room, she plopped down in an old chair and contemplated her traveling bag. She knew what she needed to do. Funny, now that the moment was at hand, she was stalling. She was nervous.

  She hadn’t thought it would feel like this. She’d expected to be stronger, more triumphant. Instead, she was terrified.

  She got up out of the chair, idly inspecting the room. The lumpy double bed. The cheap TV cabinet, covered in fresh nicks and ancient water rings. The TV itself, so old and small no one would even consider it worth stealing. She counted the cigarette burns in the carpet.

  Three years was such a long time. She could be wrong, but she didn’t think so. You didn’t forget your last moments with your sister. Nor one man’s voice saying, “You need some help, ladies?”

  So now here she was. And now here he was. What was she going to do?

  She crossed to her bag, unzipped the canvas top, reached in and pulled out the plastic Ziploc bag that passed as her toiletry kit. She hadn’t lied to Mac. There wasn’t much a young girl could get past airport security.

  But there was something. In fact, she had learned it straight from him.

  She pulled out the bottle of eyedrops. Then from the inside of her hiking boot, she found the long needle slipped between the sides of the rubber sole. It took her only a moment longer to retrieve the plastic syringe from her bottle of shampoo.

  She assembled the needle first. And then, very carefully, she squeezed out the liquid from the bottle of Visine. Once the tiny bottle had contained genuine eyedrops, but she had replaced the contents just last week.

  Now, it held ketamine. Fast acting. Powerful, and in the proper dosage, quite deadly.

  The man was dreaming. He thrashed from side to
side. Waved his hands and kicked his feet. He hated this dream, fought to bring himself back to waking. But the dream memory was stronger, sucking him back into the abyss.

  He was at a funeral. The sun burned starkly overhead, an unbearably hot day in an unbearably hot graveyard, while the priest droned on and on at a service no one else had bothered to attend. His mother gripped his hand too tightly. Her only black dress—long-sleeved and woolen—was too heavy for this weather. She rocked from side to side, panting pitifully, while he and his younger brother fought to keep her standing.

  It was finally done. The priest shut up. The coffin sank down. The sweaty gravedigger moved in, looking relieved to get his task under way.

  They went home, and the man was grateful.

  He used the last of the coal to light their oven when they returned to the cabin. The air was too stuffy for the heat, but without electricity, it was the only way to get supper on the table. Tomorrow he’d have to find wood to feed the stove. And tomorrow after that, he’d have to think of something else. That was okay. This was now, and he just wanted to get food on the table and see some color in his mother’s cheeks.

  His brother was waiting with a saucepan to heat broth.

  They fed their mother wordlessly. Didn’t take a drop for themselves, but spooned beef bouillon past her bloodless lips, while tearing up chunks of stale bread. Finally she sighed, and he thought the worst had passed.

  “He’s gone, Mama,” he heard himself say. “Things will be better now. You’ll see.”

  And then her bloodless face came up. Her lifeless eyes turned vibrant, snapping blue, and her cheeks filled with a color that was frightening to behold.

  “Better? Better? You ungrateful little bastard! He put a roof over your head, he put food on the table. And what did he ever ask for in return? A little respect from his wife and kids? Was that too much, Frank? Was that really too goddamn much?”

  “No, Mama,” he tried to say, already frantically backing up from the table. His nervous gaze darted to his equally nervous brother. They had never seen her like this.

  She rose from the table, too pale, too thin, too bony, and stalked her older son across the room.

  “We have no food!”

  “I know, Mama—”

  “We have no money!”

  “I know, Mama—”

  “We will lose this house.”

  “No, Mama!”

  But she would not be placated; closer she came and closer. And now he had backed up all the way across the room, his shoulders pressed against the wall.

  “You are a bad boy, you are a filthy boy, you are a rotten, ungrateful, selfish little boy. What did I ever do to deserve a boy as bad as you!”

  His brother was weeping. The broth grew cold on the table. And the man-child realized now that there truly was no escape. His father had gone. A new monster had already arisen to take his place.

  The boy lowered his hands. He exposed his face. The first blow didn’t even feel that bad, nothing like his father’s. But his mother learned very quickly.

  And he did nothing. He kept his hands at his sides. He let his mother beat him. Then he slid down, down, down to the hot, dusty floor while his mother went to get his father’s belt.

  “Run away,” he told his brother. “Run now, while you still can.”

  But his brother was too terrified to move. And his mother was back soon enough, snapping the strip of leather through the air, and already getting a feel for its cutting hiss.

  The man woke up harshly. His breathing was ragged, his eyes were wild. Where was he? What had happened? For a moment, he thought the black void had taken over completely. Then he got his bearings.

  He was standing in the middle of a room. And in his hands, he held a box of matches, the first match already clutched between his fingers . . .

  The man gently laid the matches back on the table. Then he quickly stepped away, grabbing at his head and trying to tell himself he wasn’t yet insane.

  He needed aspirin. He needed water, he needed something far more potent than that. Not yet, not yet, no time. His fingers clawed his rough-shaven cheeks, sinking into his temples as if through sheer force of will he could keep his skull from shattering apart.

  He had to hold it together. Not much longer. Not much more time.

  Helplessly, he found himself staring at the matches again. And then he knew what he must do. He retrieved the box from the table. He held the precious sticks in the palm of his hand, and he thought of things he had not thought of in a long, long time.

  He thought of fire. He thought that all things of beauty must die. And then he allowed himself to remember that day in the cabin, and what had happened next.

  CHAPTER 43

  Lee County, Virginia

  1:24 A.M.

  Temperature: 94 degrees

  “THIS IS THE MOST IRRESPONSIBLE HANDLING OF A CASE I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s inappropriate and, frankly, it’s goddamn criminal! We lose this man, Quincy, and I swear to God I will spend the next two years making your life a living hell. I want you off this property as fast as you can drive. And don’t bother heading back to Quantico. I know about your little chats with Special Agents Kaplan and Ennunzio. So much as step one foot onto Academy grounds, and I’ll have you arrested at the gate. Your work on this case is over. As far as I’m concerned, your whole fucking career is over. Now get out of my sight.”

  Special Agent Harkoos finally wrapped up his tirade and stormed away. His navy-blue blazer hung limply in the heavy heat. His face, covered in sweat before he’d started yelling, was dripping. In other words, he looked about the same as the other FBI agents now swarming the abandoned sawmill.

  “I don’t think he likes you much,” Rainie said to Quincy.

  He turned toward her. “Be honest with me. Do I look that ridiculous in a navy blue suit?”

  “Most of the time.”

  “Huh. The things you learn thirty years too late.”

  They started walking toward their car. Their light tones fooled neither of them. Harkoos’s dressing-down had been thorough and honest. They were fired from the case, banned from the Academy, and once word of this disaster spread, probably finished as consultants in the tight, incestuous world of high-profile law enforcement investigations. Reputations were built in a lifetime, but ruined in only a matter of minutes.

  Quincy had a hollow, sick feeling in his stomach, one he hadn’t had in ages.

  “When we catch the Eco-Killer, they’ll quickly forget about this,” Rainie offered.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Irresponsible is only irresponsible if you fail. Succeed, however, and irresponsible quickly becomes merely unorthodox.”

  “True.”

  “Quincy, those guys had the same body and same evidence we did last night, and they weren’t even in the area when you gave them a call. Frankly, if we hadn’t gone off the deep end, that girl would still be floating in a cavern, and the fourth victim would be no closer to discovery. Harkoos is just mad because you beat him to the punch. There’s nothing more embarrassing than being upstaged, especially by a bunch of outsiders.”

  Quincy stopped walking. “I’m sick of this,” he said abruptly.

  “Politics is never fun.”

  “No! I don’t mean this damn case. Fuck this case. You’re absolutely right. Failure today, hero tomorrow. It’s always changing and none of it means a thing.”

  Rainie had stopped moving completely. He could see her pale face in the thin moonlight. He rarely swore, and the fact that he was driven to it now had her both fascinated and frightened.

  “I don’t want things to be like this between us, Rainie.”

  Her expression faltered. She looked down at the ground. “I know.”

  “You are the best thing that ever happened to me, and if I don’t tell you that enough, then I am a total idiot.”

  “You’re not a total idiot.”

  “I don’t know about kids. I’ll be honest: the very though
t scares me to death. I was not a great father, Rainie. I’m still not a great father. But I am willing to talk about it. If this is what you really, truly want, then I can at least explore the notion.”

  “I want.”

  “All right, then you have to be honest with me. Is it only kids you want? Because I tried . . . I thought . . . Rainie, each time I’ve asked you to marry me, why have you never said yes?”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Because I thought you’d never stop asking. You’re not the idiot, Quincy. It’s me.”

  He felt the world spin again. He had thought . . . Had been so sure . . . “Does that mean . . .”

  “You think you’re scared of kids? Hell, Quince, I’m scared of everything. I’m scared of commitment and I’m scared of responsibility. I’m afraid I’ll disappoint you and I’m afraid one day I’ll physically harm my child. We all get a little older, but we never completely outgrow our past. And mine is looming behind me now, this big giant shadow I want so desperately to leave behind.”

  “Oh, Rainie . . .”

  “I tell myself to be happy with what I’ve got. You, me, this is a good gig, better than anything I thought I’d have. And we do important work and meet important people, and hey, that’s not bad for a woman who used to be a human punching bag. But . . . but I get so restless now. Maybe happiness is like a drug. You get a little, then you want a lot. I don’t know, Quincy. I want so badly not to want so much, but I think I can’t help it anymore. I want more you. I want more me. I want . . . kids and white picket fences and maybe tea cozies, except I’m not sure I know what a tea cozy is. Maybe you’re frightened. But I’m pretty sure I’ve lost my mind.”

  “Rainie, you are the strongest, bravest woman I know.”

  “Oh, you’re just saying that so I don’t whoop your ass.”

  She kicked at the ground in disgust, and Quincy finally smiled. It amazed him how much better he already felt. The world had righted. His hands had steadied. It was as if a crushing weight he didn’t even know he’d been carrying had suddenly been lifted off his chest.