Angel Killer (7 page)

“What?” asks a confused Gimbal.

“Memory card packaging,” I explain. “Everything was being recorded.”

Gimbal finally understands. “Reporter?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. Maybe our perp. Maybe a gawker.”

Shannon stands up and takes another suspicious glance across the street. “We need to check with all the drugstores around here. If they needed to get a card, it means they probably filled up the other one.”

A cold wind blows down the street as a police car races by. The rain has soaked through my sweatshirt. My FBI jacket is somewhere in the cemetery, a pile of ashes on a corpse.

Shannon makes a gesture to give me his jacket. I wave him off. I’ve dealt with worse. Cold doesn’t bother me. It’s only a sense. When Grandfather and Father first refused to teach me how to perform escapes, telling me that I was too young and that it wasn’t appropriate for a girl, they found me later that night in a motel bathtub, half frozen from all the ice cubes I’d packed in there to practice an endurance stunt.

“We either teach her, or we have to come up with a convenient explanation for her suicide,” Grandfather had remarked after they dragged me out of the tub.

I look back at the roof and think about the fact that we were being watched the whole time. Our reactions, everything. Somebody was studying us.

I hope there’s enough evidence in the body to tell us if it was a timed fire or something remotely activated. If it was done by remote, then I’d bet everything on our voyeur being the Warlock.

The problem is that he would be cutting things very close. He’s seemed smart so far, why would he risk being this near to us? One of the first things investigators do is scan the scene for potential suspects.

Maybe it’s the thrill.

Or maybe it’s part of a bigger deception. He might just want us to think he’s that predictable. I’m overthinking things, but I can’t get the idea of the long burn out of my head.

Gimbal calls into his radio for someone to come bag the piece of cardboard. Shannon and I walk back to the fence, still the shortest path to the cemetery. He asks if I need a hand over the fence, but I’m already on the other side before the words leave his mouth.

A moment later he lands next to me, trying to hide the fact that he’s out of breath.

“Yoga” is all I can say.

Fire crews have managed to put the blaze out or it burned itself out. Gladys is still standing there, trying to make sense of it. As I get closer I can see her eyes are scrutinizing every detail. The fire marshal says something to her and she nods her head.

There’s an acrid tang in the air. “Potassium permanganate?” I ask.

She nods. “You study chemistry?”

“No. Only the kind that makes pretty flames.” Our garage was filled with many wonders for a child. Magic cabinets, costumes, props from a dozen different shows. My favorite part had been the workbench where my father has tinkered away on projects. Next to the tools and cans of paint was a rack of chemical compounds used to make puffs of smoke and magic flashes. Through trial, lots of error, and dog-eared science textbooks that belonged to Grandfather when he was a boy, I learned the basics of chemistry.

Her face has a pained expression. “I think he probably filled the poor girl’s stomach with the stuff and the body with glycerol.” She shakes her head at what’s left of the body. “Wants to make it look like spontaneous human combustion or something equally ridiculous.” She waves her hand at the body. “Of course, it’ll just be our word against theirs.”

“Theirs? Who do you mean?” I ask.

She points to the masts of the television trucks. “The people who want to believe this sort of thing. The ones that think you can talk to the dead or that ghosts are real. My niece even watches that garbage. We’ll try to explain what we think happened, but they won’t listen. I’m sure some of them will even accuse us of trying to destroy the body to hide the truth they think we’re hiding.” She gives me a frustrated look.

I don’t know what to say. In my mind it’s clear, or at least mostly clear, what we saw. But I think I understand. The Warlock only needs to create enough doubt. Tomorrow’s headlines are going to be filled with news about a dead girl crawling out of her grave and then erupting into flames in front of an army of helpless FBI agents. It’s a story too sensational to ignore.

The discussion is going to be about what happened. Not why. A girl was murdered just hours ago but the story is going to be on whether or not we’ve witnessed a miracle.

It’s a dirty, evil, vile trick.

The Warlock turned one girl’s death into a publicity stunt, killing another.

I search the rooftops again for any sign of someone watching. I know he’s long gone, but part of me still has that feeling that I’m being watched. This dark show has only started.

O
UR JET LEAVES
Michigan a little past 4 a.m. When I check my phone there’s a message from my ex-boyfriend. He’s in from New York and wants to know if I want to grab a late dinner.

I send him an e-mail explaining why I couldn’t return his call and tell him maybe next time. Secretly, I’m thankful I didn’t have to turn him down over the phone. Our breakup was long and awkward. A campaign fund-raiser for a New York senator, he seemed like my workaholic match until I caught him reading the CNN closed captioning in the middle of sex. I may not be the most imaginative girl in the bedroom, but I have to draw a line somewhere.

By the time we land, there’s already a meeting scheduled for later that day to fill in the rest of the bureau on what happened. I make it home long enough to get a shower and take a three-hour nap. While I change into something more suitable for the office, I watch the news for the media reaction from yesterday.

What should be a quiet Sunday morning is filled with high-def video of the flames from the body over the iron gates of the cemetery. The fire looks like a stretched-out tornado as it twists into the sky and ends in a dark plume of smoke.

Photos are already popping up online. Some people saying they can see ghastly images and spectral eyes looking down on them. A commentator flicking through different images calls attention to the most striking ones. I have to admit that some of the freeze frames are ominous-looking. No matter what I know about statistics and psychology—you’re bound to get some photos that can be anthropomorphized into faces—it doesn’t change my emotional reaction when I see a dark skeletal image leering at the camera.

I send a quick e-mail to Ailes while I put on my makeup, something I never learned properly until a college roommate showed me how. All I knew up until then was show makeup, designed for bright lights and big theaters. I used to either look like a drag queen or wore none at all. Now I go for a simple not-made-up-unless-you-look-closely style. It takes just as long as anything else.

We’re so image-obsessed, if the Warlock really wanted to mess with us, it would be simple for him to Photoshop an image or digitally manipulate some video and then post it somewhere online. It would be the twenty-first-century way to leave a calling card.

Watching the news replay the video and play up the mystery is frustrating. I keep hearing the phrase “a case that has the FBI baffled” over and over again.

For Christ sake, we’ve only been on the case for less than twenty-four hours. Give us some time . . .

But there may not be time, I realize. The Warlock may be playing a game with us, but it’s not one we’re meant to win.

A young paramedic, one I think I remember from the scene, is talking to a reporter. His face is wide open with surprise. Not shock. It’s awe.

“I can’t explain it. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. One moment the girl is just there and then BOOM! She’s erupted into flames reaching the sky.” He looks up, expecting to still see the fire.

“Do the authorities have any idea what caused this?” asks the reporter.

The paramedic shakes his head. “No. Nothing. They don’t have a clue. Look to your Bible, that’s all I’m saying.”

I turn the television off, disgusted. I don’t think it’s time to give up on rationality and reason just yet. I hope he’s just one excitable young man, but I can’t help think that his reaction is similar to that of many other people watching this around the world.

Somewhere the Warlock is also watching this. Laughing to himself.

I finish getting dressed and head back to Quantico for a conference with Danielle’s forensic unit, the assistant director, the head of behavioral sciences, in addition to a man from behavioral analysis and a few other people I don’t recognize. It’s a large room with about thirty seats around the table. Another thirty people are sitting and standing around us. When Ailes sees me, he pulls me from a chair by the wall and sits me next to him at the table.

I’m sitting still, trying not to call attention to myself. I don’t belong here. Everyone else has piles of folders in front of them, like they’re showing off their homework. I just have a folder with the notes I wrote on the plane, which I already typed up and e-mailed to the newly appointed supervisor of the investigation, a squat bald man named Joseph Knoll. He has a face like a prizefighter, the calculating kind that knows where to hit.

After getting a nod from the assistant director, Knoll calls the meeting to a start and begins with a PowerPoint presentation of what happened between the hacking and yesterday. He plays a video of the body in flames, taken by a sheriff’s deputy. This is a much closer view than the one on the news taken from atop a news truck.

“One week ago, the FBI’s public information website was hacked into and a number was placed there and an invitation for us to decode it. Almost seven days to the hour later, our cryptanalysts using our best number cruncher found the hidden code. It was the GPS coordinates of a cemetery in Michigan. That’s where we found the body of a girl that resembles, in every detail we could check, a murder victim from almost two years prior. However, a preliminary investigation showed that she had died just hours before. Apparently from asphyxiation and exhaustion from trying to crawl out of her own grave.

“When we proceeded to move the body from the grave, it erupted into flames caused by some chemical reaction we’re still trying to determine. It’s been suggested this was done as a means to conceal the true identity of the girl. Despite what the Warlock wants us to believe, the dead do not come back to life.” He ends the recap by freezing on the face of the girl we’re still calling Chloe, fire erupting out of her mouth.

It’s a hellish sight, much higher resolution than anything on the news. She looks like a demon screaming fire in a medieval painting, almost biblical.

Knoll points to Danielle. “Our forensic team brought back what we could to look at in our labs. We’ll probably know within a few hours if we can get a tissue match between this and the preserved samples from the first murder victim nineteen months ago. As you can imagine, it’s a bit of a challenge. We still haven’t identified the particular incendiary device used to cause the combustion. Field tests show high levels of potassium, indicating that it was some kind of autocatalytic reaction. This still leaves two questions: who and how. Danielle?”

A tech pulls up the 3-D image of the coffin in the ground as Danielle walks over to the screen. Her voice is clipped. I can tell she hasn’t slept since she got back. I feel guilty for my nap. “Density tests and soil oxidization levels indicate this casket has been in this position for at least six months, likely much longer, which implies that this was planned at least that far back. The real Chloe, or original victim, was probably removed at that time. The whereabouts of her body are still unknown. It would seem evident that the original Chloe was murdered by the same individual who staged this. He drew her blood, saved it and injects it into the second victim to confuse a preliminary forensic examination. Or at least that’s the prevailing theory.”

As she says this I begin to have doubts. I don’t know why. Something is out of place. The long burn . . .

A blond woman with glasses stops taking notes and raises her pen. “Would a more thorough examination have revealed the transfusion?”

“I think so. Given the extreme circumstances, we would have done skin scraping as well and compared them with samples from the original autopsy. If it was just a regional medical examination, then possibly, but I’d like to think they would have caught it too.”

“Are we sure there are two girls?” asks the woman.

Danielle thinks the question over carefully. We all know it can’t be just one girl, but she’s rational enough to know we can’t always go by what we “know.” “The first girl’s body would likely have much more advanced necrosis. It’s possible the body could have been preserved. But a cellular analysis would confirm this. Because we stand a good chance of getting a skin sample from the portion of the body that was still in the ground and didn’t undergo complete combustion, I’m reasonably confident we will be able to know in a few hours.” She looks in my direction. “Thanks to Agent Blackwood, we can be thankful we have that much. If the techs had pulled the body all the way out of the ground, we might have a different story and be looking only at a pile of ash.”

I feel awkward about the praise. If I’d said something sooner last night, if I hadn’t been distracted, we might have had more to go on. Like everyone else, I was still too dazzled by the show to see where it was going. Danielle may be trying to pay me a compliment, but it’s just a reminder to me that I failed.

Knoll thanks Danielle and takes over the podium. “We have several areas we need to investigate. We need to identify who the second victim is. How was she chosen? Does she fit a type the Warlock has? Was she just a lucky find for him? Did he find her after murdering Chloe McDonald? The scars on her chest matched the original stab wounds. The question we have now, without the full body, is whether those were genuine or makeup effects? If they were genuine scars that healed over, that suggests a whole different level of premeditation. Based upon the evidence on hand, the assistant director has suggested we proceed to treat this as a serial killer investigation. To help us with that, we’ve brought in an expert to assist the analysis unit in giving us a profile.”