Quincy approached the two Marines. “You were both on duty for the night shift, July fifteenth?”

“Sir, yes sir.”

“Both of you stopped each vehicle and checked each driver for proper ID?”

“We stopped all incoming vehicles, sir!”

“Did you check passengers for proper identification?”

“All visitors to the base must show proper identification, sir!”

Quincy shot Rainie another dry look. She didn’t dare meet his eye or she would start giggling or burst into tears or both. The morning had already taken on a surreal quality, and now it felt as if they were interviewing two trained seals.

“What kind of vehicles did you stop that night?” Quincy asked.

For the first time, no immediate answer was shouted forth. Both recruits were still staring straight ahead as procedure dictated, but it was clear they were confused.

Quincy tried again. “Special Agent Kaplan said you both reported heavy traffic that night.”

“Sir, yes sir!” both Marines cried out promptly.

“The majority of this traffic seemed to be National Academy students returning to the dorms.”

“Sir, yes sir!”

“Is it fair to say that these people mostly drove rental cars or their own personal vehicles? I would guess you saw a lot of small, nondescript automobiles.”

“Sir, yes sir.” Not quite as vehement, but still an affirmative.

“What about vans?” Quincy asked gently. “Particularly a cargo van arriving in the early morning hours?”

Quiet again. Both sentries wore a frown.

“We did see a few vans, sir,” one finally reported.

“Did you happen to note these vehicles in your logs, or glance at the license plates?”

“No, sir.”

Quincy’s turn to frown. “Why not? I would think you’d see mostly cars coming and going off the base. A cargo van should be unusual.”

“No, sir. Construction, sir.”

Quincy looked blankly at Kaplan, who seemed to get it. “We have a number of projects active here on the base,” the special agent explained. “New firing ranges, new labs, new admin buildings. It’s been a busy summer, and most of those crews are driving vans or trucks. Hell, we’ve cleared guys on forklifts.”

Quincy closed his eyes. Rainie could already see the anger building behind his deceptively quiet façade. The little details no one thought to mention in the beginning. The one little detail, of course, that could make all the difference in a case.

“You have a ton of construction personnel active on this base,” Quincy said in a steely voice. His eyes opened. He looked straight at Kaplan. “And you never mentioned this before?”

Kaplan shifted uneasily. “Didn’t come up.”

“You have a murder on the base, and you don’t think to mention that you have an abnormally high number of eighteen-to-thirty-five-year-old males engaged in transient, menial labor, in other words, men who fit the murderer’s profile, passing through these gates?”

Now even the two Marine sentries were regarding Kaplan with interest. “Each and every person who receives authorization to enter this base must first pass security clearance,” Kaplan replied evenly. “Yeah, I got a list of the names, and yeah, my people have been reviewing them. But we don’t allow people with records on this base period-not as personnel, not as contractors, not as guests, and not as students. So it’s a clean list.”

“That’s wonderful,” Quincy said crisply. “Except for one thing, Special Agent Kaplan. Our UNSUB doesn’t have a record-he hasn’t been caught yet!”

Kaplan’s face blazed red. He was definitely aware of the two sentries watching him, and he was definitely aware of Quincy’s growing fury. But still he didn’t back down. “We pulled the list. We analyzed the names. No one has a history of violence or a record of assault. In other words, there is nothing to indicate any one of those contractors should be pursued as a suspect. Unless, excuse me, you want me to start attacking any guy who drives a cargo van.”

“It would be a start.”

“It would be half the list!”

“Yes, but then how many of those people once lived in Georgia!”

Kaplan drew up short, blinked, and Quincy finally nodded in grim satisfaction. “A simple credit report, Special Agent. That’s all you have to do. It’ll give you previous addresses and we can identify anyone who also has ties to Georgia. And then we’d have a suspect list. Don’t you think?”

“It… but… well… Yeah, okay.”

“There are two more girls out there,” Quincy said quietly. “And this UNSUB has gotten away with this for far too long.”

“You don’t know that he’s really a member of the construction crews,” Kaplan said stubbornly.

“No, but we should at least be asking these questions. You can’t let the UNSUB control the game. Take it from me,” Quincy’s gaze had taken on a faraway look. “You have to take control, or you will lose. With these kinds of predators, it’s all about gamesmanship. Winner takes all.”

“I’ll put my people on the list,” Kaplan said. “Give us a few hours. Where will you be?”

“At the BSU, talking to Dr. Ennunzio.”

“Has he learned anything from the ad?”

“I don’t know. But let’s hope he’s been lucky. Because the rest of us certainly haven’t.”

Virginia

11:34 A . M .

Temperature: 97 degrees

TINA HAD GONE NATIVE. Mud streaked her arms, her legs, her pretty green sundress. She had stinking ooze coating her face and neck, primordial slime squishing between her toes. Now she picked up another sticky handful and smeared it across her chest.

She remembered reading a book in high school, Lord of the Flies. According to one of the notations in the handy yellow Cliffs Notes, Lord of the Flies was really about a wet dream. Tina hadn’t gotten that part. Mostly she remembered the stranded kids turning into little savages, first taking on wild boars, then taking on one another. The book possessed a fearful edgy quality that was also definitely sexy. So maybe it was about wet dreams after all. She couldn’t tell if the guys in her class had read it with any more enthusiasm than they’d read the other literary classics.

But that wasn’t really the point. The point was that Tina Krahn, knocked-up college student and madman’s current plaything, was finally getting a real-life lesson in literature. Who said high school didn’t teach you anything?

She started mucking up first thing this morning, the sun already climbing in the sky and threatening to fry her like a bug caught in the glare of a magnifying glass. The mud stank to high heaven, but it sure did feel good against her flesh. It went on cool and thick, coating her festering skin with a thick layer of protection not even the damn mosquitoes could penetrate. It filled her nostrils with a putrid, musky smell. And it made her head practically swim with relief.

The mud liked her. The mud would save her. The mud was her friend. Now she stared at the bubbling, popping mess and she wondered why she didn’t eat a handful as well. Her water was gone. Crackers, too. Her stomach had a too-tight, pained feeling, like she was on the verge of the world’s worst menstrual cramps. The baby was probably leaving her. She had been a bad mother, and now the baby wanted the mud, too.

Was she crying? It was so hard to tell, with the heavy weight of drying filth on her cheeks.

The mud was wet. It would feel so good sliding down her parched, ravenous throat. It would fill her stomach with a heavy, rotten mass. She could stop digesting her stomach lining, and dine on dirt instead.

It would be so easy. Pick up another oozing handful. Slide it past her lips.

Delirious, the voice in the back of her brain whispered. The heat and dehydration had finally taken their toll. She had chills even in the burning heat. The world swam uneasily every time she moved. Sometimes she found herself laughing, though she didn’t know why. Sometimes she sat and sobbed, though at least that made some kind of sense.