“Actually, I checked on that,” Alonzo said. “When the owner passed away she left instructions in her will for her executor to donate the farmstead for a wildlife preserve within ten years of her death. The deadline was coming up. The executor’s in the process of handing over the land to the federal government.”

“Which makes me wonder if this killer has another place like this,” Kunze said. “Otis told Dr. Patterson that Jack has other dumping grounds. Otis claims to know exactly where another one is. If it’s like the Iowa farm and he feels comfortable enough to come and go, we might be able to take him by surprise. Or at least find something that could incriminate him, reveal who he is.”

“You’re actually thinking of taking Otis up on his offer?” Gwen asked.

“They’re digging up remains of possibly five more people on that Iowa farm. We already know of six victims. Four of them were murdered in the last month. Maybe that’s a fluke or maybe that’s his monthly kill number. Heaven forbid. Both Tully and O’Dell seem to think he’s accelerating. Could be he wants more bodies just for this crazy game he’s playing with us. I don’t know. What I do know is that we may not get this close again. If he gets bored with us, he could slip away to one of his hiding places. He’s a smart guy. He goes quiet for a while. Doesn’t mean he stops killing.”

Kunze looked around the table at each of them. No one disagreed.

“Otis was on target about the first woman with the orange socks.” Kunze looked at the whiteboard then added her name. “Selena Thurber. The Iowa farm is all over the national news now, but two days ago it hadn’t made the local news and yet Otis knew exactly where this dumping ground was. And he knew about the tattooed biker in the barn. Not just that there was a body in the barn, but a tattooed biker.”

Kunze looked to Gwen. “What do you think, Dr. Patterson? Should we take Otis P. Dodd up on his offer?”

All eyes were on Gwen. The director had given her a pass earlier. She may have been brought onto this task force for political cover, maybe even as a scapegoat, but Kunze was now sincere in eliciting her advice. Advice, not just her opinion.

“When I met Otis he was quick to point out that he was a ‘powermaniac,’ not a ‘pyromaniac.’ ” Gwen tried to focus. Her mind had been scattered all evening. “I’ve studied a good deal of his arsons. They were big fires. They were dangerous ones. But for all his talk about power, his fires have amazingly had no casualties. That would indicate that he enjoys and craves the excitement and the attention. He’s been in prison for about a year now. He knows he has valuable information and he wants something in return.”

“Actually he’s added a caveat to his original request,” Kunze said.

“I won’t go along,” Gwen said quickly. “I’m not trained.”

“No, no, it’s not you he wants to tag along. All the recent media coverage of the Iowa farm got his attention. He wants that pretty FBI agent to come along.”

“Maggie?” But Gwen wasn’t surprised. She remembered how charming Otis had been when she suggested she was too old for him. Like a teenage boy with a crush.

“He knows the two of you are friends.”

“The CNN profile?”

A reporter had done a profile on Maggie last month during the arson investigations in the District. He had been very thorough.

“They’ve played the piece a couple of times already. It doesn’t matter. This trip would be part of O’Dell and Tully’s scavenger hunt. Of course, I would want them along. But does it affect your decision about Otis?”

Gwen glanced at Racine, Ganza, and Alonzo. If she said no, there could be another dozen bodies that would never be found. And they wouldn’t be any closer to finding Jack.

“Let Otis have his trip.”

CHAPTER 49

When Tully suggested the three of them go out for a late dinner, Maggie welcomed the escape despite her exhaustion. Had they stayed in their adjoining rooms she knew the space would be too confining—two’s company, three’s a crowd, especially when two of the three were sending sparks off each other.

Not far from the hotel and not far from the university’s campus was a section of the city called Aggieville that included shops, eateries, nightclubs, and bars and grills. They decided on New York style pizza, appropriate for a city nicknamed the Little Apple. Tully took the liberty of ordering them a large pizza called the 18th and 8th, one of the restaurant’s specialties that included pepperoni, ground beef, Italian sausage, pork sausage, and Canadian bacon. Maggie added a salad. Creed was pleased to see sweet tea on the menu. Tully ordered draft beer. Maggie asked for a Diet Pepsi, not trusting herself, not wanting to let her guard down.

Tully filled them in on the recovery effort of Ethan’s body. The pizza arrived when Tully was pulling up the photo gallery on his smartphone. He slid the phone across the table to Maggie and Creed. It was a round bistro table that allowed the three of them their own space quite comfortably, but in order to see the smartphone’s screen Creed scooted his chair closer to Maggie. While Tully served up the pizza, Maggie slid her finger over the screen, going from one photo to the next, taking in each gruesome discovery, just as Tully and Detective Lopez’s crew had.

The body was a mess and at some point Maggie realized Creed had moved his chair back away to his original place. She remembered him telling her and Tully, when Grace alerted in the barn, that he didn’t help with the digging. But certainly he must have seen plenty of dead bodies, many of them brutalized.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Not my favorite part of the job.”

He chugged down the rest of his iced tea and started looking for the waiter to order another. Maggie wondered if he wished the tea were something stronger.

“Oh, hold on,” Tully said and took the smartphone back. “I have a picture of the boots they found in the garbage from the rest area. I showed the boots to Creed earlier,” he told Maggie as he searched for the photo. His finger swiped across the screen several times. “Lopez agreed to let me overnight them to Alonzo. So that’s what I did after I dropped Creed at the hotel.”

Finally, he found the one he wanted and handed the phone to Maggie.

They looked like ordinary, lace-up hiking boots, but on the toes she could see rust-colored splatters.

“Blood?”

“Won’t know till the lab tests it but it sure looks like it. Notice the white stain?”

The bottom quarter of the leather was covered in a zigzag white powdery stain.

“What is it?”

“Creed said it looked like—well, you go ahead and tell her.”

“My boots get that way after I’ve spent some time walking in brackish water.” He scooped up a slice of pizza in one hand and took a bite. Whatever squeamishness he’d had was thankfully gone.

“Brackish?” she asked.

“Mix of salt water and fresh water. Usually a bay where a river meets the ocean or the gulf.”

“If the boots are Jack’s,” Tully said, “it could mean he lives someplace close to the ocean or the gulf.”

“Are we sure they’re not Ethan’s?”

“They’re not Ethan’s,” Tully assured her. “His feet are still in his sneakers. They’re just not attached to his legs.”

“So Jack spends a good deal of his time in a coastal area. That doesn’t narrow it down much.”

“Creed showed me the map you two were looking over.”

Maggie almost choked on a bite of pizza. Her eyes darted to Creed and she hated that a flush was already spreading to her face. Tully, however, didn’t notice any of this. He was busy searching his pockets for a piece of paper and finally settled on a napkin, his second favorite thing to write on. He pulled out a pen, and Maggie, searching to get her mind on anything other than Creed and what had happened back at the hotel, pointed at Tully’s pen. This thing was fancy. Nothing like the cheap throwaway pens Tully usually had in his pocket.