Rachel knew what was coming but let Alpert have his say. He moved toward the front of the RV and pointed vthrough the windshield out into the desert. Rachel followed his line but couldn't see anything but the mountain ridge.

"Well, you can't really see it from this angle," Alpert said, "but out there lying on the ground we've got a great big sign. It says in big letters, filming-no flyovers, no noise. That's for anybody up there who might get curious about all these tents and vehicles. Pretty good idea, huh? They think it's a movie set. Helps keep them away from us."

"And your point?"

"My point? My point is we have thrown a real thick blanket over all of this. Nobody knows and we want to keep it that way."

"And you are suggesting I am a media leak?"

"No, I am not suggesting that. I am giving you the same talk I give everybody that comes out here. I don't want this in the media. I want to control it this time. Is that understood?"

More like bureau command or the Office of Professional Responsibility wants to control it this time, she thought. The Backus revelations almost decimated the ranks and reputation of the Behavioral Sciences unit last time, not to mention the colossal public relations fiasco it was for the bureau as a whole. Now with the failings of 9/11 and the bureau's competition with Homeland Security for budget dollars as well as headlines, media focus on a mad killer agent was not what bureau command or the OPR had in mind. Especially when the general public had been led to believe that the mad killer agent was long since dead.

"I understand," Rachel said coolly. "You won't have to worry about me. Can I go out now?"

"One other thing."

He hesitated for a moment. Whatever it was, it was delicate. "Not everyone involved in this investigation is aware of the connection to Robert Backus. It's 'need to know' and I want to keep it that way."

"What do you mean? The people working out there don't know it was Backus who did this? They should be-"

"Agent Walling, this is not your investigation. Don't try to make it yours. You were brought here to observe and help, leave it at that. We don't know for sure it was Backus and until we do-"

"Right. His fingerprints were only all over the GPS and his MO all over everything else."

Alpert glanced at Dei, throwing her a look of annoyance.

"Cherie should not have told you about the prints and as far as the MO goes, there is nothing known about that for sure."

"Just because she shouldn't have told me doesn't mean it isn't true. You're not going to be able to cover this up, Agent Alpert."

Alpert laughed in frustration.

"Who said anything about a cover-up? Look, all we're doing right now is controlling information. There is a right time for revealing data. That is all I am telling you. Your presence alone here will be revealing enough, okay? I just don't want you deciding what to reveal and who to reveal it to. That's my job. Understood?"

Rachel nodded without conviction. She glanced at Dei as she did so.

"Perfectly."

"Good. Then, Cherie, take her away. Take her sightseeing." They left the RV and Dei led her toward the first small tent.

"You certainly ingratiated yourself with him," she said to Rachel as they went.

"It's funny. Some things just never change. I think it might be impossible for a bureaucracy to evolve, to learn anything from its mistakes. Anyway, never mind. What do we have here?"

"So far we have eight bags and gas on another two. We just haven't gotten to them yet. Classic inverted pyramid."

Rachel knew the shorthand. She had invented some of it. Dei was saying eight bodies had been recovered and readings from gas probes indicated there were another two bodies still interred and waiting for excavation. Tragic history created data from which models of similar behavior were formed. It had been seen before, a killer who returns with victims to the same burial spot follows a pattern, the newer burials radiating out from the original in an inverted pyramid or V pattern. So was the case here, with Backus either unintentionally or consciously following a pattern based on data he helped accumulate as an agent.

"Let me ask you one thing," Rachel said. "He was talking to Brass Doran on the phone in there. She's got to know about the Backus connection, right?"

"Yes, she knows. She found the prints on the package."

Rachel nodded. At least.she had one confederate she could trust and who was in the know.

They reached the tent and Dei pulled back the entry flap. Rachel went in first. Because the overhead venting flap was open it was not dark in the tent. It was only dim. Rachel's eyes adjusted immediately and she saw a large rectangular hole in the center of the tent. There was no fill pile. She assumed the dirt and rock and sand removed from the grave had been shipped to Quantico or the field office lab for sifting and analysis.

"This first site is where the anomalies are," Dei said. "The others are straight burials. Very clean."

"What are the anomalies?"

"The reading on the GPS came back to this spot. Sitting here when they got here was a boat. It was-"

"A boat? Here in the desert?"

"You remember that preacher I told you started this place? He dug a canal for the spring water to fill. We figure the boat came from back then. It had been sitting here for decades. Anyway, we moved it, sank a probe and started digging. Anomaly number two is that the grave contained the first two victims. All the other graves are individual."

"These first two, were they buried at the same time?"

"Yes. One on top of the other. But one was wrapped in plastic and he had been dead a lot longer than the other. Seven months longer, we think."

"So he sat on one body for a while. Wrapped it for safekeeping. And when he had the second he realized he had to do something and so he came out to the desert to bury them. He used the boat as a marker. As a sort of gravestone and for himself because he knew he'd be back with more."

"Maybe. But why'd he need the boat if he had the GPS?"

Rachel nodded and felt a little buzz of adrenaline start to tick in her blood. The brainstorming had always been the best part of the job.

"The GPS came later. Recently. That was just for us."

"Us?"

"You. The bureau. Me."

Rachel moved to the edge and looked down into the hole. It had not been deep, especially for two bodies. She stopped breathing through her mouth and took the fetid air in through her nose. She wanted to remember this.

"IDs yet?"

"Nothing official. No contact with kin yet. But we know who some of them were. Five of them at least. The first one was three years ago. The second seven months after that."

"Have you built a cycle?"

"Yes, we have it. About an eight percent reduction. We think the last two will bring us up to November."

Meaning that the intervals between the killings were decreasing by eight percent from the initial seven-month period between killings one and two. Again, it was familiar. The decreasing interval was common in case history, a symptom of the killer's diminishing control of his urges at the same time his belief in his invincibility grows. You get away with the first one and the second comes easier and sooner. And so on.

"I guess that makes him overdue," Rachel said.

"Supposedly."

"Supposedly?"

"Come on, Rachel, it's Backus. He knows what we know. He's just playing with us. It's like Amsterdam. He's gone before we even recognize it is him. Same here. He's moved on. I mean, why send us the GPS if he hasn't? He's split already. He's not overdue and he's not coming back here. He's somewhere laughing at us, watching us follow our models and routines, knowing that we won't get any closer to him than we did the last time."

Rachel nodded. She knew Dei was right but decided to be optimistic.