She got out of the car and strolled quickly across the lot toward the minimart and restaurant. Dressed in a denim sundress, she moved with the kind of nervous energy and purpose a lone woman acquires late at night, her gaze fixed on the entrance, her sandals snapping rhythmically. She vanished inside the minimart for a moment.
A moment was all the killer needed. He emerged from the shadows behind a garbage Dumpster, then strode across the radiant lot with his head held high and casual, his arms at his side. A tall, sinewy man with a long, gaunt face streaked with filth, he reached the green SUV and paused by the front quarter panel, glancing once over his shoulder to be certain no one was watching. His movements were precise and deft, despite the fact that he wore rags and smelled of BO and dried feces. The thing inside him cared nothing of hygiene. The thing inside him cared only of its higher purpose.
The killer pulled a folding Buck knife from the back pocket of his stained, torn khaki pants. He worked quickly. Kneeling down by the front left tire, he unfolded the blade and slipped under the chassis. The task required less than a minute. Thirty seconds at the most. The killer found the proper cable and severed it with a flick of the knife.
By the time the woman in the sundress had returned to the SUV, the killer had retreated back behind the garbage Dumpster, where his own vehicle, a stolen Mercedes SL-500, sat idling in the dark. He climbed behind the wheel. The interior of the Mercedes reeked of urine, spoiled food, and old sweat, but the killer hardly noticed it.
The Honda SUV pulled out of the truck stop and started down Highway 15.
The killer followed.
The next thirty minutes or so were like a dance. The killer hovered behind the SUV, his headlights off, keeping just enough distance between him and the target to remain buried in the darkness of the desert. The woman named Carolyn Kenly drove above the speed limit. She seemed in a hurry to get somewhere. The killer watched as the rear of the SUV began to fishtail, the broken cable doing its job. Taillights flared. The SUV rattled over to the side of the highway.
The killer performed the rest of the procedure with tremendous accuracy and aplomb. A half mile or so behind the SUV, he pulled over to the shoulder, parked, and turned off his engine. His bow, quiver, and tools were in the trunk. He gathered them up, slung the quiver over his shoulder, strapped the tool belt to his waist, and gripped the bow tightly in his left hand. Then he started toward the SUV.
The desert was so dark, and the sky such a riot of stars, it was like walking across the dark side of the moon.
It took just under five minutes for the killer to reach the disabled SUV and the frantic woman. The Honda's hood was up. The woman was inside the vehicle, raving into her cell phone to somebody, probably her husband, or perhaps the clerk back at the Mason Dixon Truck Stop. It did not matter. The killer found an egg-sized rock and hurled it at the rear of the Honda.
The noise sounded like a pistol shot, and made the woman jerk as though someone had slapped the back of her neck. She moved instinctively, throwing open her door and lurching out of the vehicle. She stumbled. The killer watched from behind a grove of joshuas. The woman still held her cell phone and still babbled as she staggered across the deserted highway and into the scabrous pasture to the north.
“What was that? What was that!”
she stammered into her cell phone as she hobbled along.
“Danny, can you hear me? Danny, oh God, what was that? Danny, Dannnneeeeeee!”
The killer closed in.
Loping across hard-packed sand, not more than twenty yards behind her, not even breaking stride, he reached back over his shoulder to his quiver as if he were scratching his back. He was getting good at this part. With one graceful movement, he plucked an arrow out of the sheath and brought it up to eye level, snapping the bow back like a spring. The sling coiled. He held his breath, aimed, and let one go.
The arrow whispered through the night.
It hit the woman so hard in the back of her neck that her body rose off the ground. A yawp burst out of her that sounded like the squeal of air being forced out of a balloon, and she tumbled hard. Her body folded into the dirt, a rag doll tossed by a petulant child.
The killer approached.
Carolyn Kenly clung to life for several minutes. Over the course of those minutes, as she gasped for breath, choking on her own blood, convulsing in the agony of a pierced vertebra, she thought of her children, and she thought of her husband of twenty-two years, and she thought of her dreams and plans that would never come to fruition. But mostly she listened to the muffled footsteps approaching.
The woman expired just as the killer came into view, pulling a pair of rubber-handled pliers from his tool belt.
Â
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Grove couldn't sleep again. He tried everything he could think of short of taking a sleeping pillâwhich he didn't like to do unless absolutely necessaryâbut nothing worked. He watched infomercials on TV, he paced, he turned the fan up on the heater in order to fill the air with white noise. All to no avail. The motel room with its burnt-orange carpet and hideous seascape paintings was the inside of a kettledrum, and Grove's heart beat its insidious music, pounding in his ear, keeping him awake. His mind refused to shut down.
A repeating series of images and feelings would not leave his brain: the vision of being on an ancient mountain in the snow, the fleck of gold in Maura County's eye, the day he found out about Hannah's cancer, the Iceman's contorted look of horror, the curve of Maura County's neck, a fragmented memory of the last time he had masturbated, when an unexpected tear fell from his eye and mixed with droplets of semen on his wrist. Finally, some time around four o'clock that morning, Grove gave up trying to sleep and got up.
For the next couple of hoursâright up until the moment dawn pushed back the shadows and sent rays of early morning light through his venetian blindsâthe profiler sat at the desk by the window, studying notes from the Iceman project and copies of X-rays and files from the Sun City murders. The clues were in front of him, buried in the documents, but the answers were still just out of reach. Like a word on the tip of Grove's tongue, a name or place just beyond his grasp.
At some time around six o'clock, Grove's cell phone tweeted, and when he answered it he was not at all surprised to hear Terry Zorn's impudent drawl in his ear. “Hope I didn't wake ya'll up,” the voice crackled.
“Terry . . . no . . . I was up already.”
“How's it going up there in the Great White North?”
“It's cold.”
“Understand y'all got some kinda mummy up there.”
“Uh . . . yeah, it's a long story.”
“I'd love to hear it. Y'all want some company?”
“Yeah, great. Tom mentioned he might be able to tear you off the Baltimore sniper.”
“I'm all yours, buddy.”
“Great.”
“Fixin' to get on the nine-oh-three outta Dulles, be touchin' down in Anchorage about one o'clock Alaska time. Any chance you could pick me up?”
“Of course. Be happy to. Give me your flight number.”
Zorn gave him the information, and Grove told him to have a good flight.
Grove clicked off his phone and felt a slight twinge of nervous tension in his belly. He had worked with Zorn a couple of times in the past, and respected the Texan's abilities, but there was something about the man that had always bothered Grove. Maybe it was the subtle contempt just beneath the surface of Zorn's constant joking, or the faint spark of hostility behind the man's gaze. And that good old boy facade had always gotten under Grove's skin. Zorn was the guy who had started the running gag at Quantico that Grove looked like a member of the Nation of Islam. The two men had worked together on the Oregon Happy Face Killer case, and Zorn had been a competent partner, but the jokes had really gotten to Grove on that job.
Was Grove too sensitive? Was he inordinately touchy about such things? He wondered sometimes if this tenderness was formed at an early age.
Â
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Ulysses Grove came from a place of clashing cultures, a place of dislocation. Raised in a working-class neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago, he was educated in the public schools, and tossed in with the general population who valued conformity over individuality. But it wasn't easy for young Ulysses to fit in. His Jamaican father, Georges Grove (né Groviere), had become nothing more than a bad memory by the time Grove was born, and Grove's mother, Vida, was not exactly Carol Brady. She would dress her son in multicolored
kitenge
tunics and dashikis, and send him to school with tribal adornments. And on the rare occasion that one of Grove's friends would visit the Grove household, Vida served traditional Kenyan cuisine and instead of providing silverware would make all the kids use the traditional
injera
âa doughy flat bread the consistency of human fleshâto pick up their food. Grove was teased unmercifully. But Vida was too proud to assimilate, and kept draping her reluctant son in African beads and sweet potato sacks.
All this cultural angst had much to do with Grove's estrangement from his mother. Now in her late seventies, the woman still lived alone in the same modest bungalow in Chicago, surrounded by her gourds and beads and tribal charms. But Grove hadn't seen her in years. He said good-bye to that life in the late 1970s when he left Chicago for the University of Michigan. And as his assimilation deepenedâfirst in the army, and later at the FBI academyâhis resentment toward his mother's stubborn ethnicity only festered. Nowadays he tried to think about it as little as possible.
Which was why he was currently clicking nervously through the radio presets in his rental car as he cruised south on Highway 3 on his way to Anchorage International.
All he could find was either shrill country-western music or annoying right-wing talk radio, so he finally turned off the radio and concentrated on driving the Nissan Maxima through the canyons of granite rock-cuts that bordered the outskirts of Anchorage. The spring sun had broken through the clouds a few hours ago, and now the rugged landscape seemed to be thawing before Grove's eyes. The highway teemed with traffic, and Grove had to squint against the glare in order to see the exit signs.
A symbol of an airplane loomed on an oncoming sign, and Grove took the next exit ramp.
Ten minutes later he was pulling into the short-term parking lot adjacent to the terminal. He parked and took the underground walkway into the building. An escalator brought him up into the bustling noise and light of the terminal, and he consulted a piece of notepaper on which he had written Terry Zorn's flight number and arrival gate.
Grove found the Texan standing next to a phone booth, a suit bag thrown over his shoulder, his cowboy hat cocked at a jaunty angle on his bald head. Zorn was on the phone, making notes. His eyes lit up when he saw Grove approaching.
“One second, Tom, hold on,” Zorn said into the phone, then thrust his free hand out at Grove. “There he is!”
“Hey, Terry,” Grove said and shook the man's hand. Zorn's grip was firm and dry.
“Be right with ya,” Zorn said to Grove, gesturing with a single finger, then he murmured back into the phone, “I understand what you're saying, Tom, don't you worry, we'll get it minty fresh this time.” Zorn laughed then, a conspiratorial sort of chuckle that, for some reason, made Grove look away. “We're already
at
the damn airport. All we gotta do is hop a commuter down there. All right? Sound good? We'll call ya from the scene. So long, Tom.”
Zorn clicked off his cell phone and turned to Grove. “You feel like gettin' on a plane?”
“Excuse me?”
“Just got word from Quantico: Sun City's been at it again.”
“Where?”
“Few miles outside of Vegas . . . C'mon.” Zorn gave Grove a friendly slap on the back, then started toward the bank of departure monitors, adding over his shoulder, “I'll run down the details on the way.”
Grove let out a sigh, then followed.
5
Victimology
They sat in the rear of the Alaska Airlines 767 as the plane roared heavenward, executing a steep banking turn toward the south, the harsh sunlight slicing through the porthole windows. Turbulence rattled the overhead bins and galley cabinets, and Grove held on to his notes.
Zorn sat on Grove's immediate right, scanning his notebook. “Jurisdictional issues aside, Vegas homicide's got the primary on it.”
Grove looked at him. “And the dump?”
Zorn glanced down at his notebook. “Unincorporated area out in the desert.”
“That sounds like the state police.”
Zorn nodded. “Yeah, well, they don't have the juice the Vegas PD's got.”
They rode in silence for a while until Grove finally asked who flagged the desert murder as Sun City.
“I guess the primary recognized the signature,” Zorn replied, gazing down at his notes. “Captain name of Hauser.”
“Victim's female, you said?”
“Right . . . got a positive ID . . . forty-three-year-old white female, name of Carolyn Kenly, married, mother of two, resident of Henderson, Nevada.”
“Anything on her sheet?”
“Nothing, no priors, lady's pure civilian. Seems totally random again.”
Another stretch of silence. Grove could not get the face of the Iceman out of his head. Finally he turned to Zorn and said, “We're talking the cervical vertebra again?”
Zorn gave him another nod. “Looks like it. No ballistics, no murder weapon found. They already got their ME down there.”
“Time of death?”
Zorn looked at the notes. “Let's see . . . sometime between midnight and three o'clock.”
“Sharp trauma?”
“Yep.”
“And the staging, the pose?”
“No details yet, but . . . yeah, looks like they got Sun City on their hands.”
Grove gazed out his window at the ocean of clouds beneath the plane. Every few miles the cloud cover would break, and a vast maw of black mountains would come into view. Grove watched the rugged territory pass underneath the broken clouds, and wondered if he should have called Maura County to tell her about this impromptu journey. Technically he was not obligated to keep the journalist informed of his every move, but somehow Maura County had become more than a mere interview with some obscure science magazine. She had become an associate. Or perhaps
associate
was the wrong word. It had been so long since Grove had felt these kinds of feelings, he wasn't sure how to process them. All he knew was that the fair-haired writer, for better or worse, was lingering in his mind.
The rest of the flight to Vegas was spent mostly in awkward silence. Every now and then, Zorn would make a bad joke about the mummy, or Grove would ask about another aspect of the Vegas murder, but mostly they rode in silence. The flight attendant approached them twiceâonce to take their drink orders, and once to serve them dinnerâbut other than that, the remainder of the flight was fairly uneventful, despite the nagging feeling in the back of Grove's mind that Zorn had ulterior motives. There was a sharp edge to every joke, every comment.
The plane began its descent into McCarran International Airport around six o'clock that night, the dying light turning the horizon a brilliant display of pastels.
After a gentle landing, the two profilers filed off the plane and crossed the Jetway, immediately noticing the climactic change. The air was warm and blustery, a huge departure from the clammy chill of Alaska. They crossed the busy terminal, heading for the cab stand, ignoring the percolating slot machines at every juncture.
“Do you know if Tom urged the Vegas tactical guys to get pictures of the crowd at the scene?” Grove asked as the two men got in line for a taxi.
Zorn looked at him. “You think this guy's a spectator?”
“I think there's a lot of meaning here, a lot of ritual and ceremony.”
Zorn shook his head. “I don't think he'd be dumb enough to hang around at the scene.”
“It's not a matter of intelligence, it's part of the experience.”
A yellow cab pulled up in front of them, the miniature billboard on its roof advertising the
BARE ASSETS GENTLEMEN'S CLUBâALL-NUDE REVUE.
The two men slid into the backseat, and Zorn told the driver they needed to go to the Las Vegas City Courthouse where the Special Violent Crimes Unit of the LVPD was located. The cabbieâa Pakistani man in a baseball capâflipped the meter down and rattled out of there.
On their way across town, skirting the neon canyons of the strip, Zorn said, “My take is, this guy's a craftsman, a pro, somebody who's very careful.”
Grove was staring out the window. “But there's a deeper issue associated with it.”
“Did the mummy tell ya that?”
Grove looked at Zorn. “Pardon?”
“I'm just messin' with ya, Grove.”
A few minutes later they pulled up in front of the court building, a great limestone pile rising up against the pale desert sky. Windows blazed.
Zorn paid the cabbie, and the two profilers strode across the concrete apron to the entrance.
The lobby was deserted except for a pair of security guards flanking a metal detector. Grove and Zorn flashed their IDs, then passed through the detector and went to the end of the main corridor. A glass door marked
LVPD SPECIAL DIVISIONS
directed them into another reception area, where they were greeted by an elderly woman with thick glasses. Zorn identified himself, and the woman punched an interoffice number on her switchboard. She told the captain the profilers had arrived, and then nodded and hung up the phone.
“Captain Hauser will be right out,” she told them, then went back to her typing.
Grove turned to Zorn and said under his breath, “As a matter of fact, the mummy did tell me a lot about Sun City.”
Zorn looked at him. “For instance?”
“The murders are not improvised.”
“You mean they're premeditated?”
“I mean there's heavy symbolism there, and it's relevant to the mummy.”
“Yeah . . . go on.”
“I don't have it yetâthe connectionâbut I'm close.”
After a long moment Zorn grinned. “Maybe you're too close.”
Grove looked away. “Whatever you say, Terry.”
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Captain Ivan Hauser of the LVPD Violent Crimes Unit, a pachyderm of a man with a big walrus mustache and marine tattoos on his sun-weathered forearms, drove the two profilers out to the scene. The victim had been found in a field about fifteen miles northeast of town, near Nellis Air Force Base. The Kenly woman had either been dumped, or left for dead, about thirty yards north of the highway. Her body had been found by a rancher, out before sunrise to repair a nearby barbed wire fence. When the call had first come in, the dispatcher had sent a state police prowler to the scene. The patrolman got one look at the mutilated body and called the investigative division.
By dawn, the area was bustling with law enforcement and forensic people.
That was almost twelve hours ago, and yet, even now, as Hauser's unmarked Crown Victoria approached the scene, the number of crime lab vehicles and police cruisers clogging the half-mile stretch of desert highway had barely diminished. Scores of chaser lights danced on the horizon. Flashlights crisscrossed the distant landscape.
Zorn rode in front, in the shotgun seat. Grove rode in the rear, staring at the back of Zorn's cowboy hat, feeling ridiculous and small and alienated. The two men had been arguing the whole way out to the scene, and now the tension in the car was as thick as a noxious gas.
“But what if there's no connection?” Zorn wanted to know, staring out the windshield, his voice taut with anger. “What if this is just a fruitcake with a subscription to
National Geographic
? That's what I'm trying to get through that thick skull of yours.”
Grove stared at the oncoming blue streaks of light. “There's a connection,” he murmured.
“It's a goddamn mummy, Ulysses. A six-thousand-year-old stiff.”
“The pose is identical.”
“So what?”
“It's my experience, you follow everything out.”
The Texan shook his head. “And while you're dickin' around up there in the twilight zone, the perp's headin' to Disneyland.”
Grove wanted to put his fist through the back of Zorn's seat. “You want to say something, Terry, why don't you just come out and say it?”
“I'm saying it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I'm saying it.”
“No, I don't think you are. I don't think you're saying what you really think.”
“Whatâare you profiling me now? You profiling
me
?”
“For the love of Gawd!” Hauser boomed suddenly. He yanked the car over to the shoulder and slammed on the brakes, the Crown Victoria scudding to a stop in a thunderhead of dust. “I been listening to you two boys mix it up since we left the courthouse, and I've just about had it. I thought you two were on the same team.”
Zorn was staring out at the night, the blue light flashing off his face. He pulled a pair of rubber surgical gloves from his pocket. “It's all part of the process, Capâit's how we do things.”
“You gotta be shitting me,” the captain said.
“Just say it, Terry,” Grove urged from the backseat, digging in his own pocket for his rubber gloves. He kept them in a sandwich baggie.
“What do you want me to say?” Zorn was snapping his surgical gloves over his hands.
“Just say what you really want to say.”
“This is ridiculousâ”
Zorn opened his door and got out, flexing his fingers into the gloves. Grove followed. The captain stayed in the car to have a smoke, and perhaps enjoy some blessed relief away from the bickering FBI agents.
The two profilers crossed the highway, which was blocked off by flares, wooden sawhorses, and yellow crime scene tape flapping in the night breezes. They stepped over a dry creek bed on the other side of the road, then headed toward the pool of tungsten light thirty yards away. Technicians still swarmed around the broken rag doll of a body, an ambulance canted nearby with the door gaping. High-intensity lights mounted on C-stands shone down at the human remains.
As he strode toward the victim, Grove felt his gut burning with anger. “Why don't you just say it?”
Zorn paused, turned to Grove, then spoke in a low growl. “Okay, you're a joke. You're burned out, you're toast. You got no credibility anymore.”
“I'm a joke. Is that right?”
“Yeah, that's right. Why do you think Geisel sent you on that stupid mummy hunt?”
“I'm a joke.”
“Let's face it, partner . . . your days of slam dunks are over. You ain't helped clear a goddamn case in three years, and Sun City's turning out to be an embarrassment to the whole goddamn division. And this mummy thing now is just the frosting on the cakeâ”
“You want to take off, Terry, you want to go back home, that's fine by me.”
“You don't get it, partner. Anybody's going home, it's gonna be you.”
Grove laughed at that one. “Oh yeah? I'm going home? I'm going home now, Terry?”
“Yeah, that's right.”
“I'm going home . . . and how many cases have you cleared lately, Terry?”
“Yeah . . . eat shit!”
“That's quite a
brilliant
reâ”
Grove was about to say the word
retort
with about as much venom as he could muster, but something snapped the word off in his throat. He stood there for a moment, staring past Zorn toward the corona of silver light that illuminated the dark pasture. Grove could not move. He stared at the body lying in that pool of light on the hardpack fifteen yards away. He stared and stared, and felt the revelation turning in his gut like a worm. Zorn was saying something nasty under his breath, but Grove could no longer hear anything but the buzzing in his ears. He realized right then he had discovered the key to Sun City, the connection between the mummy and the present-day crimes.
“Grove? Hey! Grove!” Zorn barked.
Grove turned to the Texan and said very softly, “Get everybody back.”
“What?”
“Everybody, even the MEâI want everybody back.” Grove started toward the body.
Zorn hurried after him, grabbing his arm. “Hey! What's going on? You see something?”