Duff arched a brow. “Last I knew, scout troops hiked either trail. So we’re still looking for a trailhead next to either Woody Gap on Highway Sixty or Slaughter Gap on One-eighty.”

“Or around the other side entirely,” Harold interjected, his lanky frame bent over the map. He drew several lines with his finger. “Look, you could access, here, here, or here. By the time you crest the summit, you’re looking down on either trail. And any of these options would be safer than trying to hike up parallel to a major trail, plus over here in particular, you have a nice smooth ascent. That’s what I’d look at. You know, if I were to haul bodies up a mountain.”

He glanced up in time to catch them all watching him curiously. “Well, I am a hiker.”

“I think the problem,” Rachel Childs started to say from her position beside Harold, “is that there are too many options for accessing the summit. You’re talking a good eight miles just to get from the trailhead of Woody Gap to the summit of Blood Mountain. Then there’s the Slaughter Gap side, the connection with the AT, and miscellaneous other ascents. From an ERT perspective, it’s a huge search area in very difficult terrain and in very difficult conditions.”

She gestured absently toward the outside, where the rain fell in a steady drizzle.

“True, true,” Duff conceded. “But if they were carrying bodies up the trail on litters, they must have trod a pretty decent path. We’re not talking bushwhacking our way up a mountain. More like searching the bottom perimeter for the proper opening-”

“Easier said than done given the dense underbrush,” Rainie cut in.

“It will be accessible.” Quincy spoke up abruptly. “Given what we know about the UNSUB, his skill as an outdoorsman, his aptitude for secrecy, it’s quite possible that he’s covered or disguised the entranceway to the trail. But the UNSUB is obviously quite familiar with this area and Blood Mountain. And the dumping grounds in particular are even more special to him, something geographic profilers refer to as a ‘totem place.’ It’s where he can relive his fantasies, as well as alleviate his anxieties. It’s the one place he feels powerful and in control. Naturally, he will want to reconnect with that feeling as much as possible by returning to the totem place.”

“So,” Rachel Childs quizzed drily, “if we just whisper Abracadabra, the secret passageway will magically open up and show us the way up the mountain? Either way, we gotta find the opening to the trail. And to do that, we’re gonna need help.”

“You mean the National Guard?” Duff scowled.

“No, I mean trained search experts. Presumably with dogs.”

Duff’s eyes widened. “You think cadaver dogs could catch a scent? I haven’t worked with ’em much myself, but like you said, it’s a good eight miles from trailhead to summit. Can a dog really catch the whiff of a decaying corpse eight miles away?”

Rachel pursed her lips. “I don’t know. I’m not a dog handler. Special Agent Quincy said the subject reported dragging the bodies up the mountain on a litter. That should leave a scent trail.”

But Harold, their resident expert on everything, was shaking his head. “Dogs work off of scent. The human body is constantly shedding skin rafts and bacteria, creating an odor we never notice but is discernible to dogs’ keen sense of smell. In the case of cadaver dogs, the scent is from decomp and starts off strong, but fades as more organic matter disappears. If these dumping grounds are too old, and too far away, there might not be enough scent for the dogs to home in on.”

“I once worked with a pair of dogs that hit on fully skeletalized bones in a dry creek bed,” Rachel countered. “There wasn’t any decaying matter left at that point, either, and they still found the bones.”

“Was the dry creek bed your target area?”

“Yes-”

“Well, there you go. The dogs were working a limited target area, which enabled them to home in on a fainter odor. But in your own words, we’re not a small geographical search area. We got a whole friggin’ mountain.”

“Search dogs,” Kimberly interrupted quietly. “Forget a cadaver dog. What we need are search dogs.”

Her two teammates stopped squabbling long enough to study her.

“Why search dogs?” Rachel spoke up first. “I thought we were looking for the bodies. At the magic totem place.”

“Who were carried up the mountain by two men, one of whom’s clothing we now possess.”

Harold got it first. “Get the socks from the boy’s body,” he filled in excitedly. “Give ’em to the dogs-”

“And tell the dogs to look for the boy. With any luck, they’ll pick up his trail and follow it straight up to the dumping grounds,” Kimberly finished for him, taking another sip of scalding coffee. Her father had finally relaxed beside her, a tacit sign of approval.

“God knows the last time the men headed up the mountain,” Duff spoke up, “I thought, for trailing dogs to work, they had to be on track within hours.”

“Not bloodhounds!” Harold supplied cheerfully. “They can follow a scent that is weeks old, especially in these kinds of cool conditions. Sure, Labs make better cadaver dogs, but still nothing like a pair of bluetick hounds for tracking the escaped felon. Find us a pair of bloodhounds, and we have a chance.”

Everyone stared at the local cop.

“Bloodhounds? In Georgia?” Duff smiled. “Let me make a call.”

The bloodhounds were named LuLu and Fancy, and they were handled by an old-timer who called himself Skeeter. Skeeter wore faded blue overalls and wasn’t much of a people person. He spoke to Sheriff Duffy in a series of shoulder shrugs and head bobs. He didn’t speak to the rest of them at all.

At Harold’s insistence, they started at Highway 180, following a ridgeline Harold had picked up from the elevation map and considered the best hiking option. Despite some mutterings about “totems,” the team had taken to heart Quincy’s assertion that the subject would favor a trail that was accessible and manageable. Even killers were practical.

LuLu and Fancy started working the underbrush with Skeeter, while a German shepherd named Danielle was sent over to the Woody Gap trail with her handler. Another search team was on its way from Atlanta and would be ready to go after lunch, picking up at Lake Winfield Scott.

With LuLu and Fancy on the job, there was nothing for the rest of the task force members to do but stand around, watching the rain drip off the brim of their caps.

Kimberly wandered over to where Rachel and Harold were hanging out under the relative cover of a large fir tree, each wearing a bright yellow rain slicker. The rest of the team was parked along the road in a short train of cars, led by one very big white crime scene trailer. The trailer was their basic model, stocked with a large canopy, evidence bags and tags, surveying equipment, protective eye gear, all-weather gear, generator, tarps, and rolls of butcher paper. Already, Kimberly could tell Rachel wished she’d brought the Green Gator all-terrain vehicles for roaring over Blood Mountain. The life of an ERT leader: so many toys, so little time.

Rachel had just lifted a hand in greeting when the cell phone finally rang at Kimberly’s waist. She checked the digital display, keeping her features calm while giving Rachel an apologetic shrug and heading for a quieter spot on the other side of a tree. She had to push back the hood of her raincoat to place the phone against her ear. It took her trembling fingers two tries to get it right.

“Hey,” she said into the phone, voice slightly breathless, pulse accelerated.

“Hey yourself,” Mac replied.

“Your night?”

“Bagged eight dealers, seized couple hundred pounds of cocaine. You know, the usual.”

She smiled, pinching the bridge of her nose against the pressure building behind her eyeballs. “When’d you wrap up?”