CHAPTER 48

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for Gwen to host a meeting about a serial killer in her home. Agent Alonzo had managed to turn her warm and friendly dinner into a grotesque slide show. Her mind still reeled from her doctor’s phone call, making it difficult to concentrate. Several times when she looked across her huge mahogany dining room table she caught Julia Racine watching her. Thankfully the detective had the good sense to look away, even appearing a bit embarrassed at getting caught.

Once again, despite the wireless electronic gadgetry that Agent Alonzo had brought, he now focused on the paper map of the United States attached to a poster board. He had set it up at the end of the room on a very thin and sleek easel. It had reminded Gwen of a magician’s wand when Agent Alonzo unfolded it from a small bundle of foot-long rods that he had pulled out of a cute satchel. When she first saw that satchel she had smiled, thinking it looked like the agent had brought a toiletry kit for an overnight stay. That’s the way her mind was working tonight, ever since the phone call. She could take the simplest of things and turn them into the absurd. Perhaps that’s what cancer did to one’s mind.

When he took out pins and stuck them into the map, she wondered if it wouldn’t have been easier to keep track on a computer? And almost as soon as the thought came to her, she noticed a look exchanged between Assistant Director Kunze and Agent Alonzo, and she realized it was Kunze who insisted on the dinosaur equipment. And for a brief moment she found herself liking Kunze a little more.

We dinosaurs need to stick together.

Alonzo wore another purple button-down with khakis and Sperry Top-Siders. He had traded his wireless glasses for thick black-framed ones.

When had glasses become a revolving fashion accessory?

Her mind was all over the place. The others were discussing trace evidence and motives of murder while Gwen was evaluating the psychology of everyone’s fashion statements.

She didn’t think she had ever seen Keith Ganza without a white lab coat. His long gray ponytail actually went better with the T-shirt and suede vest he was wearing now, making him look hip instead of lab-coat nerd. Even Kunze had relaxed a little and wore a long-sleeved polo shirt, light blue, tucked neatly into the waistband of charcoal-colored trousers and nicely finished off with tasseled leather loafers.

Murder didn’t much interest Gwen at the moment. But shoes did and she knew shoes, men’s or women’s. It didn’t matter. Maggie teased her constantly about her shoe fetish. She’d never been able to get Tully to appreciate fine leather shoes, though she had bought him some sexy Italian leather loafers. And suddenly she missed them both terribly.

In the middle of her home, in the middle of this group of colleagues, she felt completely alone. The two people she loved and trusted and confided in were twelve hundred miles away. She felt like she was losing her mind, and it didn’t seem like a topic to cover sufficiently over the phone.

That’s when she noticed everyone in the room had stopped talking. What was worse, they were staring at her. Waiting. Had she missed something?

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Are you okay, Dr. Patterson?” Agent Alonzo asked.

“I’m fine. Just fine.”

“Before we get to Otis P. Dodd,” Kunze interrupted and she realized he was giving her a pass, “let’s go over the victims, the chronology, and what we know.”

“Sure,” Alonzo said, still eyeing Gwen with concern.

He replaced the poster-board map with a three-by-five whiteboard. Definitely Kunze’s idea, Gwen thought again. Agent Alonzo probably had a PowerPoint presentation ready to go.

Alonzo divided the board into six sections, then listed the name of each victim in order of their discovery at the top, left to right. He talked as he jotted down keywords, the data technician becoming professor.

“First is Orange Socks number one. Selena Thurber on her way home to Jacksonville, Florida. Her vehicle was found at a rest area off I-95 south of Richmond, Virginia. Her body was found in a culvert under a remote gravel road about a mile away. But only after Otis told a reporter where to look. It was recovered intact, though in very late stages of decomp. She had been missing for over a year. Identification was made from dental records. Coroner’s estimation is that she was killed shortly after being taken from the rest area.

“Victims number two and number three are Gloria Dobson and Zach Lester. Business colleagues from Concordia, Missouri. They were almost to their destination, a conference in Baltimore, when they were killed. Dobson was found in an alley beside a burning warehouse. Lester and their vehicle were recovered from a rest area off I-64 east of Covington, Virginia. Dobson’s face and teeth were bashed in, leaving her unrecognizable. She was ID’d by the serial number on her breast implants.”

Gwen refused to look at Racine, who would be watching her again. Gwen already knew this about Dobson. She also knew she had been a wife and mother of three, a breast cancer survivor. None of these victims was ordinary or an easy target.

Breast implants—good Lord, she hadn’t even thought about that.

She had missed the rest of Agent Alonzo’s rundown on Lester. Didn’t matter. She knew the poor man had been decapitated and his body eviscerated. “Left for the crows,” was how Tully had worded it.

Life was so fragile. In the end did it really matter whether it was cancer metastasizing through your body or a serial killer slicing out your guts or a bus plowing into you at an intersection? A quick glance and yes, Racine was watching her.

“Victim number four has been identified as Wendi Conroy from Philadelphia,” Agent Alonzo was saying. “She was on her way to Greensboro, North Carolina, to visit her sister. Her vehicle was discovered last month at a rest area off I-95 just south of Dale City, Virginia. Her body was found two days ago in a garbage bag buried at an Iowa farmstead. That property borders a rest area off I-29 just outside of Sioux City, Iowa. Her body was decapitated. She, too, was found wearing orange socks, but we believe they were put there by the killer postmortem. He left the receipt for the socks in the same bag he stuffed Ms. Conroy’s head into. He did us a favor and left her driver’s license with the body.

“At that same farmstead, inside the barn, was victim number five, a male. We’re still waiting for more information on him as well as an ID. Agents O’Dell and Tully did examine a tattoo that leads us to suspect the man may have been a motorcycle enthusiast.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Kunze interrupted again. “He was a biker with a Sturgis tattoo.”

“Yes, that’s correct.” Agent Alonzo didn’t take offense and continued. “The local coroner hasn’t performed an autopsy or given any assessment for time of death.

“Victim number six was discovered today. I heard from Agent Tully earlier. They believe the remains found in a ravine outside Manhattan, Kansas, are those of a missing teenager named Ethan Ames. He’s been missing for two days. His vehicle was left at a rest area off I-70. Also just outside of Manhattan. His body, according to Agent Tully’s early assessment, was partially dismembered. Oddly, however, the boy’s friend survived the attack but has provided no information on the attacker.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” Keith Ganza said. “How do we know this is the same killer?”

“Agent O’Dell’s phone number was left at the scene,” Alonzo said.

“In a plastic bag with the kid’s severed finger,” Kunze added. “It’s him. And he’s playing some jackass game.”

“What I don’t understand,” Racine spoke for the first time, “is why he was willing to give up such a primo dumping ground. That farmstead sounded perfect. Vacant for years with nobody around. He even had a house to stay in. He could come and go as he pleased.”