She nodded, giving him nothing useful, as she looked into the open grave. “You should find something to help with identification-something small that a kid would carry.”
“Already found it.” He led her over to the police van. The back door hung open, and what he wanted was within easy reach. “This what you’re looking for?” He held up a bag with paperwork attached.
Through the clear plastic, she could see a small identification bracelet. “I can’t make out the engraving.”
“The metal’s c o rroded, but her little dress is still holding up. Can you believe that?”
Yes, she could. This was the upside of poverty. Cheap polyester and simulated leather would last forever in the ground.
He reached farther into the van and pulled out a charcoal rubbing. “The professor made this from the bracelet so we could make out the words.”
The tiny bracelet identified six-year-old Melissa as a diabetic.
At a more recent crime scene
twenty miles down the road, Dale Berman wondered aloud, “What does he do with their hands?” He looked down at the corpse of a middle-aged woman.
The dead body was laid out on the shoulder of the old highway. Her right hand had been chopped off at the wrist. Agent Nahlman noted that this mutilation was postmortem. The pool of blood had spilled from the wound to the throat. The rest of the pattern was also holding up. Tiny bones had been positioned near the stump, and so it was a child’s skeletal hand that pointed toward another roadside grave. State troopers with shovels owned this crime scene, and they were waiting on their own people to finish the job of uncovering the smaller of the two victims found early this morning.
Kronewald had been a bit late to share this information with the FBI.
The federal contingent was forced to watch the exhumation from behind a police barricade. Dale Berman leaned toward one of the young agents, saying to this man, “Get a picture of the woman’s face. Fa x it back to the moles at the restaurant. They might recognize her.”
“I can identify her,” said Nahlman. “She’s one of the parents who joined the caravan in Missouri.”
“Why in hell would she leave the group?” He asked this so innocently, as if Nahlman had not apprised him of the problem with the strays and the need for backup. He was still waiting for her explanation.
Of course.
He would want witnesses to
her
incompetence, her failure as the senior agent to keep the caravan together. Nahlman’s head lolled back. She was looking up from the abyss, that black hole for agents with down-spiraling careers, and she could see Dale waving good-bye to her as she fell from grace.
“Nahlman, I don’t b lame you for this.” His hand was on her shoulder, marking her with all but a Judas kiss, blaming her in front of all these people. He came off well before this audience, so generous with his forgiveness. And the little bastard knew he could depend upon on her not to defend herself.
“Well, we won’t lose any more of them,” said Berman. “I’m personally taking charge of the caravan. If we keep them moving on the interstate, it’ll be safer.”
“No,” said Nahlman. “It’s only faster. I explained why-” Her words trailed off. What was the point of trying anymore?
If he was annoyed by her contradiction, it did not show. He was wearing the smile of a charming boy, almost an invitation to skip school today. But she was immune to professional charm. Nahlman looked down at the dead woman, not listening to the company line any longer, as Dale babbled on about the importance of carrying out command decisions.
Agent Allen was running toward them, cell phone in hand. “The parents are getting ready to leave the restaurant.” When he stopped in front of them, he was out of breath but posture perfect, and Nahlman half expected him to salute his hero. “They’re going to-”
“I told them to stay put till we got back,” said Dale Berman, as if this mass disobedience of civilians were still inexplicable to him. “How many of them are leaving?”
“All of them, sir.”
“On whose authority?”
“That detective from New York, Riker.”
Dr. Paul Magritte
stood in the parking lot, placidly handing out area maps and the simple guidelines for picking up after themselves. Only yards away, an insurrection was going on with his approval and his blessing.
Detective Riker sat on the fender of the Mercedes-Benz, alternately sipping beer and shouting instructions to the people gathered all around him.
A young man who had passed himself off as a grieving parent now identified himself as a federal agent. He used his FBI credentials, waving his open wallet as he vied for the policeman’s attention, shouting, “You can’t do this!”
“I’m doing it,” said Riker. To the crowd around the car, he yelled, “Everybody top off the gas tank whether you think you need to or not! No stops till we get to the campsite! And from now on, keep more distance between the cars. Fa ster traffic can leapfrog the slower vehicles. We don’t want to turn the interstate into one long parking lot. At the next campsite, you will meet and greet the ladies and gentlemen of the press for your coast-to-coast publicity.”
A chorus of cheers rose up from every quarter.
“So,” Riker continued, “nobody goes off on their own. I don’t w anna see any cars taking exits back to the old road. Anyone who does that loses a shot at national TV coverage. Is everybody clear on this?”
“Yes!” was the rousing comeback from the crowd.
“Good. We take the interstate all the way to the exit on your maps. Just follow this car.” He slapped the Mercedes’ fender. “Remember-no side trips! Pee in the car if you have to, but nobody stops.”
There were nods all around the parking lot as people headed toward their vehicles, and Riker took his place in the passenger seat of the Mercedes. “Okay, Charles, let’s get in position. You’re the lead car.”
Charles Butler started the engine and proceeded to the front of the lot. Other cars were falling in behind him. “I wonder how many people we’ve already lost.”
“Don’t t hink about that anymore.”
After Officer Budrow
had introduced her as Kronewald’s cop on the scene, Mallory hunkered down beside the anthropology professor, a man ten years her senior. He was dusting arm bones still partially embedded in the dirt. His student, a teenage girl, ran a soft brush over the tiny shoes.
“Any marks from a weapon?”
“Not yet-nothing obvious,” said the professor. “I’ll know more when we get the bones back to the lab.”
The detective had heard this old song before back in New York City.
“Shallow grave,” said the cop called Bud. “The killer didn’t w aste much time with the digging.”
Mallory stared at the little dress on the skeleton. The dark brown stains began at the neck and spread down to the small shoes. “That’s blood.”
“It
could
be.” The teenage assistant wore a condescending smile, for she had just promoted herself to the wise woman of science. “We have to test the stains before-”
“I don’t,” said Mallory. “That’s blood from a wound to the throat.”
The detective moved a piece of the dress-the school dress-away from the skeleton’s neck. “Stop what you’re doing and clean these bones.”
The teenager leaned over the skeleton, brush at the ready, when the professor stayed her hand, saying, “No, Sandra. I think she means me.” And now the man bent over the exposed bones, and the student went back to cleaning the shoes.
Officer Budrow turned to the New York detective as his new source of expertise. “You think the freak did anything to Melissa before he killed her?”
Mallory recalled the reports of bodies found along this road. “There was a slashed throat on one fresh corpse and a few of the mummified bodies.”
The anthropology professor kept his eyes on his work when he said, “The mummified bodies won’t help you establish a pattern. Tearing of the skin around the neck is common-no matter what the cause of death.”
“No nicks on the spinal column,” chimed in the assistant, almost gleeful as she leaned in for a closer look. “No signs of a knife wound.”
The anthropologist shook his head as he worked his brush over the small neck. “I wouldn’t e x pect to see any nicks, not unless the murderer tried to decapitate this child.”
“So it wasn’t a deep wound.” Mallory looked up at Officer Budrow. “And now we know it wasn’t a rage killing. He just wanted her dead. All the blood stains come from one wound to the neck.”
“Well,” said Officer Budrow, “I guess there’s only so much you can tell from the bones. Any way to know if there was anything sexual? That’s what I was wondering. The parents will ask. They always do.”
“Well,” said the student, “science can’t help you there. Without flesh and fluids-”
“Melissa wasn’t molested,” said Mallory. Gerald Linden’s d e ath had been planned out for minimum physical contact with the victim, and this theme was also playing out with the children. “Pedophiles usually strangle the kids.”
Before Mallory could finish this thought, the student took over, saying to Officer Budrow, “So you see, the key is the hyoid bone.”
“No, Sandra, it’s not,” said the soft-spoken anthropology professor.
This man seemed tired, and so Mallory took over his student’s training. She planned to teach this girl not to interrupt one more time. “The hyoid bone wouldn’t fuse until Melissa was in her twenties.” The detective pointed to the remains of the child in the hole. “But she was only six years old.
Melissa died too young. If she was strangled, the hyoid would only flex- it wouldn’t b reak.” And now for the lesson of simple observation. “Look at the blood pattern on her dress-it flows down to the shoes. That tells you Melissa was standing when he hurt her. So she wasn’t fatally injured yet-not when he cut her. And killers so seldom strangle little girls
after
slashing their throats.”
The student had lost her annoying smile and turned sullen-and learned nothing.
“So that’s settled,” said Officer Budrow. “The perp favors a knife.”
“And that’s odd for this kind of murder,” said Mallory. “I don’t t hink he likes to touch the victims-not while they’re still alive.” The detective looked down the road the way she had come. “That other crime scene you mentioned-the one with the fresh corpse. Did they find another grave near the victim’s body?”
“Yeah,” said Budrow, “a state trooper found a woman’s c o rpse on the road. It was left out in plain sight. One hand was chopped off and…”
“A woman,” said Mallory. “What was her name?”
When she was told that the victim was April Waylon, the detective wanted to hunt that dead woman down and kill her all over again.
11
The caravan vehicles followed
Riker’s instructions, via waving arms and hand signals, to form a tight configuration around the campsite. This was inspiration from a childhood of cowboy movies: always pull the wagons into a circle. The detective smiled as FBI agents arrived en masse to find parking spaces on the fringe, their cars exiled from the little city.
Supplies were disgorged from one of the mobile homes, but these were automotive: cans of oil, transmission fluid, plugs and points and patch kits for threadbare tires. One of the parents, a mechanic, traveled from one old clunker to another like a doctor making hospital rounds. He listened to odd pings and grinds and other engine noises that only he could decode. On the Internet, he was known as Lostmyalice, but the other parents called him Miracle Man.
Come twilight, Riker and Charles accepted the hospitality of Dr. Magritte, who prepared rib eye steaks from the freezer of a larder on wheels that doled out similar fare to other campers. And now they learned that three of the mobile homes were leased by the doctor and driven by parents who had no vehicles of their own. The old man was a good cook. He favored a grill set over an open fire, and he had actually paid good money for it.
“But the best grills,” in the detective’s opinion, “are those little fold-out pieces you steal from shopping carts.”
Throughout this tasty meal, Riker was working, albeit casually. He chewed his meat and sipped his coffee while noting every new face-there were many-and watching for signs of trouble. He found them. “Doc, your people are scared. Check out the weapons.” With one moving finger, he pointed out pup tents and lean-tos where deer rifles and a few shotguns had been propped up in plain view. “I always knew about the guns, but yesterday they were kept out of sight. Tonight they’re on display.”
“It makes them feel more secure,” said Dr. Magritte. “And the FBI agents haven’t objected.”
“And you know why,” said Riker. “Except for Nahlman, all the agents here are kids. You noticed that, right?”
Paul Magritte opened a cooler to win back Riker’s goodwill with a cold bottle of beer. The old man smiled. The detective did not. But he took the beer.
“And then there’s the problem of the handguns,” said Riker.
This startled Magritte, and he looked around him, squinting to see the distant campfires.
“You’ll never see them,” said Riker, “but they’re here, tucked away in tents and bedrolls-like bombs waiting to go off.” The detective stood up to take his leave of Charles and the doctor. He thanked the man for his dinner and said, in parting, “Don’t go walking after dark. This is a very scary place.”
The detective glanced at his watch. It was time to walk the wolf.
George Hastings, alias Jill’s D ad, led the animal on a chain, and Riker followed them outside the circle of vehicles. None of the camp dogs barked when the wolf was out and about, for every mutt loved its own life; they quieted down and cowered on their bellies, hoping death would walk past them tonight. Man and beast walked a straight line into the dark landscape, and Riker sat down on the ground with his flashlight, a gun and a six-pack of beer. Stone sober he was not a great shot, but, if he had to kill a charging animal, a little alcohol might steady his hand, and four or five spent bullets should hit some vital organ. He had trained Jill’s D ad not to stray beyond the flashlight beam. Riker only took his eyes off the wolf one time to look up at a sky unspoiled by the lights of the caravan city. The evening stars were popping out, one by one, when he heard the first helicopter.