Terry Hoder was as tall and slim as Darby remembered, but his hair, once jet-black, had gone entirely grey, and he wore the full weight of his fifty-six years in his face. In his ill-fitting suit and bland tie, he looked like a tired professor who had been coerced out of retirement to give one last, important lecture.

But his appearance was disarming. Behind his rumpled façade – his drowsy eyes and soft voice that still carried traces of his Texas accent – lurked one of the brightest and fiercest minds the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit had ever produced.

Hoder leaned on a cane, and he saw her staring at it as she drew closer to him. ‘Had my knee replaced the week before Thanksgiving,’ he said. ‘Still on the mend, and the cold makes it throb like a mad bastard, to use one of my father’s old sayings. Pleasure to meet you, Dr McCormick.’

‘Darby.’ She shook his hand. ‘We’ve met before, actually. Long time ago, I don’t expect you to remember.’

‘Where?’

‘Quantico. I took your course “The Motivational Models of Sexual Homicide”.’

‘Well, I hope it comes in handy here, since our man likes rope.’ Hoder smiled wryly. ‘Thank you for joining us. It’ll be good to have another pair of eyes on this.’

Then his brow furrowed, his gaze narrowing slightly. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the people in Investigative Support. They’re all fine men and women.’

Darby was surprised to hear her thought spoken out loud.

‘The problem is that, at the core, they’re all academics,’ Hoder said. ‘I don’t mean that disparagingly; I include myself in that group. Over the past two decades, ISU has, unfortunately, been denigrated to an advisory role. Law enforcement either visit us or they send us their case files, and then I sit around a big conference table with my people, studying files and crime scene photos, tossing theories back and forth about what kind of offender we’re looking for.

‘Have our profiles helped? Yes, absolutely. But it’s mostly after the fact. Nothing can replace working an actual case. Or field experience.’

Is this a lecture or a sales pitch? Darby wondered. Maybe it was a little bit of both.

‘This is my rather long-winded way of explaining that I’m hoping to get ISU to change its ways before I retire – to get more seasoned investigators like yourself into the fold, and to have them actively involved in working serial and mass murder investigations on the ground.’

‘So the Red Hill Ripper is, what, some sort of test case?’ Darby asked.

‘More like a trial run for what I hope will be a new approach to multiple homicide investigations. By giving law enforcement agencies direct lab access and the country’s best and brightest people, I believe we can shorten the duration of a serial investigation and, hopefully, save lives.’ Then, with a frown, he glanced at his watch and added, ‘Speaking of which, the MoFo should’ve arrived by now.’

‘MoFo? Who’s that?’

‘What they called the MFU, the Mobile Forensics Unit,’ Hoder said. ‘Denver office is loaning us theirs, along with two forensics agents. It’s a complete working lab, everything we can possibly need. We’ll have satellite access to all our databases as well as anything we need at our main lab. I should go back to the hotel and call, see what the holdup is. Coop tell you about the problem with cell signals out here?’

Darby nodded. ‘FBI’s really pulling out all the stops with this one.’

Hoder picked up on the slight edge in her voice. ‘I understand your past experiences with the Bureau have been, shall we say, less than ideal.’

Don’t say it, Darby thought. Then she did.

‘I was thinking more along the lines of gross negligence.’

Hoder chuckled, his smile wide and bright. It erased a good decade from his face. ‘Please don’t hold back on my account,’ he said.

‘Have you been inside?’

‘No. Detective Williams wanted the scene secured. He’s the only one who’s been in there.’

‘Good.’

‘I know you’re anxious to get to it, but before you go …’ Hoder shifted his weight on his cane and looked over his car roof at the murder house. The front porch lights were on, and the Christmas decorations were still up – a big wreath on the door and tiny white lights wrapped around the stair railing and porch columns.

The afternoon sun warm against her face, Darby took in the windows facing the street. All the shades were drawn. She wondered if the killer had done that.

Hoder said, ‘You caught two serials on your own, with no help from ISU – one of which, I’m embarrassed to say, was right under my nose.’

His gaze settled on the faint hairline scar on her left cheek. It was two inches long and it never tanned.

An axe had done that. It had smashed through a door while she’d been protecting a young woman inside a dungeon of horrors. The surgeons had replaced her shattered cheekbone with an implant. She was damn lucky she hadn’t lost an eye.

Hoder cleared his throat. When he spoke, he sounded contrite. ‘I’m the one who was responsible for coming up with the profile on that particular … person.’ His tone and voice remained soft, but his eyes had hardened. ‘Clearly, I was wrong. In fact, everything I pontificated about in that profile turned out to be, well, complete bullshit.’

Darby found herself being seduced by the man’s easy Southern charm. He had used it when interviewing serial killers, getting them to open up and discuss the dark impulses that drove them. In some cases he got the killers to disclose where they had buried certain bodies.

‘What I’m saying is, don’t be afraid to challenge me.’

Darby smiled. ‘Believe me, you got nothing to worry about on that front.’

4

Darby joined Coop at the back of the Jeep as Hoder drove off. He had been unloading their forensics gear while she’d been talking.

‘Why didn’t you join us?’

Coop pulled out the bulky Alternative Light Source unit. ‘I wanted him to experience the full measure of your glowing personality.’

‘Mission accomplished.’

‘Judging by what I heard, I’d say so.’ Coop shut the hatchback, the sound echoing for a beat. ‘Never give an inch, do you?’

‘Why live a life of half-measures? Come on, let’s boogie.’

Having grown up and worked in a city where sirens and traffic and people yelling at one another were nothing more than background noises, as common as birds tweeting, Darby was struck by just how unbelievably quiet this place was. The wind picked up, shaking the towering pines, but after it died she could hear the ticking of the SUV’s engine; the melting snow from the home’s roof pinging its way down the gutters, which were packed with ice; and the click and scrape of her boots and the suitcase’s rolling wheels as she walked with Coop, who was dragging their equipment.

The air here … she had never smelled anything so wonderfully clean. Invigorating. She felt like someone who had experienced the world’s best night of sleep and woken up clear-headed and energized.

Or maybe it all had to do with her adrenalin – not from nerves. The adrenalin was psychologically induced from something only another cop would understand: the odd, palpable excitement of being on the hunt.

‘What’re you smiling at?’ Coop asked.

‘Just thinking about how much I miss this.’

‘Working together?’

‘Yeah.’ She did miss working with him. But that hadn’t been her first thought.

‘I know it’s going to be difficult, but please try not to jump my bones in there. It would be weird, not to mention unprofessional.’

‘I’ll try to control myself.’

Coop eased open the door. A white tarp covered the blond-wood foyer floor. Bright sunlight flooded through the windows in the surrounding rooms, and the cool air was fragrant with coffee and a tinge of wood smoke.

Hanging on the white-paned wall on her left were five artfully arranged framed pictures of a young brunette woman with a strong jaw and full lips. High school and college graduation photos, one of her as a baby and another as a toddler, the camera capturing her mid-jump on a bed and in a state of pure bliss.