“Yes, of course,” Gwen said too quickly and immediately wondered what tell she may have unconsciously given Maggie.

“You seem … I don’t know, tired?”

“Maybe a little.”

Maggie was quiet and Gwen knew she owed her more than that.

“I just had my yearly physical on Monday,” she added. “So I’m fine.” She hadn’t heard back on any of the lab results but they were always good. She took care of herself. She didn’t feel ill. Truth was, she didn’t want to admit to Maggie that being back out at Quantico and interviewing criminals—all of it was having an adverse effect on her. Silly, but she didn’t want to admit that perhaps she had lost her edge … or worse, her nerve.

So she changed the subject. “Do you think Otis made that up about a body in the barn? Is there even a barn? When I talked to Tully this morning he said some of the buildings had already been bulldozed.”

“I would have sooner believed it if the barn had been bulldozed. Then a body could have been buried where it once stood. But the barn’s still there,” Maggie said. “And I’m not sure how easy it would be to bury someone under its floor.”

Then she added as an afterthought, “I guess we’ll see if Otis likes to serve up his facts mixed with a little fiction.”

CHAPTER 26

Ryder Creed had stopped at a Drury Inn just outside Kansas City. He and Grace had gotten a couple of hours of sleep. He didn’t need much. As Hannah had reminded him, he had slept through an entire day. But he wanted a shower and a hot breakfast and he was even able to add some scrambled eggs to Grace’s meal, too.

Creed was particular about where he stopped and more so about where he stayed. He always used this hotel chain whenever he could because it treated pets as family and provided a large grassed area for his dogs, as well as a nice clean room that didn’t smell like an ashtray. He never understood interstate motels and hotels that put pet owners in smoking rooms, like the two were even related. Even after a long day’s work, his dogs never smelled as bad as a smoker’s room.

His GPS had them arriving at the site in a few minutes. Creed had already begun observing and assessing the terrain, determining what he and Grace would deal with. Lots of foliage just starting to bloom, but this far north he knew it had still been chilly at night. The cold and snow of winter usually preserved much more than what they had to deal with in the South. A real winter with cold temperatures for weeks, if not months, of frozen earth slowed down decomposition.

It was only March. In these parts that meant fewer insects, another slowdown. Most investigators would prefer those conditions. After all, they wanted to find as much of the remains intact as possible. But cold temperatures made it more challenging for an air-scent dog that depended on finding bodies by smelling all the by-products of the decaying process—the gases, liquids, and acids.

Creed took in the blue sky, not a cloud as far as he could see. The weather forecast called for more of the same later today and tomorrow. It was a gorgeous spring day, already close to seventy degrees, with no wind.

A perfect day for decay.

He caught himself smiling at that and wondered when he had started measuring the success of each day by his ability to find dead people. Maybe he really did need Hannah to schedule a search and rescue for him. Or even a bomb or drug search assignment. At least there was a fifty-fifty chance there’d be living people at the end of the search.

Grace had been watching all morning from the back of the Jeep. As soon as Creed turned into the long driveway she started getting excited.

“Sit back down,” he told her. “You know the rules.”

She wagged and squatted, pushing the envelope.

“All the way down.”

Finally, down went her butt. Her head stayed up, looking out at the surroundings. Halfway up the driveway a black-and-white sheriff’s department SUV blocked the gravel road. Creed still couldn’t see the farm buildings. Trees blocked his view. Before he stopped his Jeep a sheriff’s deputy was already walking down the middle of the road to head him off.

“Be good,” Creed told Grace. He grabbed his ID from the console and opened the driver’s window.

“You need to turn around,” the deputy said, stopping in front of the Jeep’s grill and motioning with one hand while keeping the other on his gun belt.

It looked like he wasn’t going to bother coming to the window, so Creed held up his ID to the windshield.

“My name’s Ryder Creed. I’m with CrimeScent K-9.”

The deputy looked young and nervous. He also didn’t seem to expect anyone who wasn’t in official law enforcement gear. He pulled out his cell phone and was punching in a number, trying to do it while not taking his eyes or his attention away from Creed.

He heard the deputy say, “Some guy with a dog,” not even bothering with Creed’s name or his business’s name. It didn’t matter. In seconds his face turned a bright red and he slipped the phone back into his uniform’s shirt pocket without saying anything.

He pulled his wide-brimmed hat low over his brow before he yelled to Creed, “You’re good to go.” And he waved his thumb over his shoulder. Then he headed back to his SUV to move it so Creed could pass by.

Creed shook his head. “Amateurs, Grace,” he said to the dog, glancing back at her in the rearview mirror. She was wagging her tail again but still sitting, still obeying despite her excitement. “They’ve got us working with a bunch of amateurs, girl.”

CHAPTER 27

Maggie shook her head at Tully while he opened the last Hostess Honey Bun that he had taken from the hotel’s complimentary breakfast bar. She hoped it meant that his appetite had returned and he was feeling better.

By the time they arrived at the farm, Sheriff Uniss and his men had set up a perimeter with security posts at three places where they believed the property might be vulnerable to intruders. And by intruders they knew he meant media.

As far as the sheriff was concerned, this was a crime scene that still needed to be protected and processed. He knew Tully had called for a K-9 unit, but neither Maggie nor Tully had shared with him the killer’s map or their suspicions about this being his dumping ground. Assuming most of the excitement was over, the sheriff had left, grumbling that he had to go deal with the governor’s press secretary. For his sake, Maggie hoped they didn’t find anything … or anyone … else.

Earlier when Maggie relayed Gwen’s prison visit she tried to ignore the pained look on Tully’s face. She knew he’d be remembering the last time Gwen had interviewed a convicted prisoner. He had been there. She went through the information quickly and prompted him to share what he had. Agent Alonzo was becoming their right-hand man despite being twelve hundred miles away. Now, as they walked along the grove of trees, out of earshot of the deputies, and toward the barn, Tully filled her in on what he knew.

“The receipt was for a Walmart outside of Council Bluffs, Iowa, just off Interstate 29.”

“Council Bluffs is next door to Omaha, right?” Maggie remembered from their own road trip yesterday morning. They had landed in Omaha and drove that same stretch of interstate highway.

Tully was trying to decipher the notes he’d taken while talking to Agent Alonzo. The crosshatch marks didn’t even resemble words but rather looked like someone had tried to test whether a pen still had ink.

“Alonzo said the Walmart does have security cameras in the parking lot. He’s checking but he said it’s doubtful they have anything. He said most of these places don’t store more than a week’s worth of footage. He’s got someone from the Omaha bureau checking on it. Sounds like a long shot that we’d even see this guy. He strikes me as someone who’d be conscious of where cameras would be and try to avoid them.”