Hour Game (2 page)

T
HE SMALL CLEARING WAS SEEING QUITE A BIT OF ACTIVITY,
all of it man-made. A wide area had been cordoned off with yellow police tape intertwined among the trees. A two-person forensics team was foraging for clues directly around the crime scene, analyzing things that seemed far too small to be of any significance. Others hovered over the body of the dead woman, while still others were threading their way through the surrounding woods and underbrush looking for items of interest and possibly the ingress and egress of the killer. One uniformed officer had photographed and then videotaped the entire scene. All the cops wore floater masks to guard against the stench, and yet one by one they took turns hustling into the woods to empty their stomachs.

It all looked very efficient and orderly, but for a seasoned observer it was clearly bad guy one, good guys naught. They were finding zip.

Michelle stood off a ways and watched. Next to her was Sean King, her partner in the private investigation firm of King & Maxwell. King was in his forties, three inches taller than the five-foot-ten Michelle, and had short dark hair graying at the temples. He was trim and broad-shouldered but had gimpy knees and a shoulder that a bullet had ripped into years ago during an arrest that had gone awry while he was working a forgery investigation as a Secret Service agent. He’d also once been a volunteer deputy
police officer for Wrightsburg but had resigned, swearing off guns and law enforcement for the rest of his days.

Sean King had suffered through several tragedies in his life: a disgraceful end to his Secret Service career after a candidate he’d been guarding was assassinated right in front of him; a failed marriage and acrimonious divorce; and most recently, a plot to frame him for a series of local murders that had dredged up the painful details of his last days as a federal agent. These events had left King a very cautious man, unwilling to trust anyone, at least until Michelle Maxwell hurtled into his life. Though their relationship had started off on very rocky ground, she was now the one person he knew he could absolutely rely on.

Michelle Maxwell had started life at a dead run, streaking through college in three years, winning an Olympic silver medal in rowing and becoming a police officer in her native Tennessee before joining the Secret Service. Like King, her exit from the federal agency hadn’t been pleasant: she’d lost a protectee to an ingenious kidnapping scheme. It was the first time in her life she had failed at anything, and that debacle had nearly destroyed her. While investigating the kidnapping case she had met King. At first she’d taken an instant dislike to the man. Now, as his partner, she saw Sean King for what he was: the best pure investigative mind she had ever been associated with. And her closest friend.

Yet the two could not have been more different. While Michelle craved adrenaline highs and pushing her body to the limit with intensive, lung-and-limb-shocking physical activities, King preferred spending his leisure time hunting for appropriate wines to add to his collection, dabbling in owning the works of local artists, reading good books, as well as boating and fishing on the lake that his home backed to. He was an introspective man by nature; he liked to think things out thoroughly before taking action. Michelle tended to move at warp speed and let the pieces fall where they may. This partnership of supernova and steady glacier had somehow flourished.

“Did they find the boys?” she asked King.

He nodded. “I understand they were pretty traumatized.”

“Traumatized? They’ll probably need therapy all the way through college.”

Michelle had already given a detailed statement to the local police, in the person of Chief Todd Williams. The chief’s hair had become noticeably whiter after her and King’s first adventure in Wrightsburg. Today his features held a resigned expression, as though murder and mayhem were now to be expected in his tiny hamlet.

Michelle watched as a slender and attractive red-haired woman in her late thirties carrying a black satchel and a rape kit arrived on the scene, knelt down and started examining the body.

“That’s the deputy medical examiner assigned to this area,” King explained. “Sylvia Diaz.”

“Diaz? She looks more like Maureen O’Hara.”

“George Diaz was her husband. He was a very noted surgeon in the area. He was struck by a car and killed several years ago. Sylvia used to be a professor of forensic pathology at UVA. Now she’s a physician in private practice.”

“And a deputy M.E. on the side. Busy woman. Any children?”

“No. I guess her work is her life,” said King.

Michelle put her hand up to her nose as the direction of the wind changed yet again, flinging the stench of the body directly at them. “Some life,” she said. “God, she isn’t even wearing a mask, and I’m about to hurl from back here.”

Twenty minutes later Diaz rose, spoke with the police, popped off her examination gloves and started snapping pictures of the body and surrounding area. Finished with that, she stowed her camera and started to walk away when she noticed King. She smiled warmly and headed toward them.

Michelle whispered, “And you forgot to tell me that you two dated?”

King looked at her surprised. “We went out a few times a while back. How’d you know that?”

“After spending close-up time with a dead body, you don’t get a smile like that unless there was a prior relationship.”

“Thanks for the astute observation. But be nice. Sylvia’s really wonderful.”

“I’m sure she was, but I don’t need to hear the details, Sean.”

“Rest assured, you’ll never hear the details while there’s breath in my body.”

“I see. You’re being quite the Virginia gentleman.”

“No, I just don’t want to be critiqued.”

S
YLVIA
D
IAZ GAVE
K
ING A HUG THAT LINGERED A BIT PAST
“friends” status, Michelle felt, and then King introduced the two women.

The deputy medical examiner looked at Michelle with what the latter perceived as an unfriendly gaze.

“I haven’t seen you in a while, Sean,” Sylvia said, turning back to him.

“We’d been swamped with investigative work, but things have finally slowed down.”

“So,” Michelle broke in, “do you have a cause of death on our corpse yet?”

Sylvia looked at her with a surprised expression. “That’s not really something I can discuss with you.”

“I was just wondering,” said Michelle innocently, “since I happened to be one of the first on the scene. I guess you won’t know for sure until you do the post.”

“You’ll be doing the autopsy here, won’t you?” asked King.

Sylvia nodded. “Yes, although suspicious deaths traditionally were sent over to Roanoke.”

“Why no longer?” asked Michelle.

“There used to be four official facilities certified to conduct autopsies in the state: Fairfax, Richmond, Tidewater and Roanoke. However, due to the generosity of John Poindexter, a very wealthy man who was also a past Speaker of the House in the
state General Assembly, we now have a certified forensics substation right here.”

“Strange donation, a morgue,” said Michelle.

“Poindexter’s daughter was killed here years ago. Wrightsburg falls on the jurisdictional line between the medical examiner’s office in Richmond and the western district office in Roanoke. Because of that, there was a fight over which office would perform the autopsy. Roanoke finally won out, but during the transfer of the body the vehicle was involved in an accident, and vital evidence was lost or compromised. Consequently, the girl’s killer was never caught, and as you can imagine, her father was not very happy. When Poindexter died, his will left the money to build a state-of-the-art facility.” Sylvia glanced over her shoulder at the body. “But even with a state-of-the-art facility the cause of death on this one might be tricky.”

“Any idea on how long she’s been dead?” asked King.

“A lot depends on the individual, environmental factors and degree of decomposition. With a body dead this long the postmortem may give us
some
idea of a time frame, but that’s all.”

“I see some of the fingers have been chewed off,” said King.

“Animals, clearly.” Sylvia added thoughtfully, “But still there should have been more signs of invasion. They’re trying to get an ID on her now.”

King said, “What do you make of the hand posed like that?”

“Afraid that’s for the official detectives, not me. I just tell them how the victim died and collect any evidence during the post that might be useful. I played Sherlock Holmes when I first started doing this job, and I was quickly put in my place.”

“There’s nothing wrong with using your specialized knowledge to help solve a crime,” commented Michelle.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Sylvia paused and said, “I can tell you that the arm was braced up by the stick and that it was done deliberately. Beyond that, I’m out of ideas.” She turned to King. “It was good to see you again, even if it was under these circumstances.” She put out her hand to Michelle, who shook it.

As the woman walked off, Michelle said, “I thought you said you
used
to date.”

“We did. It’s been over a year now.”

“I’m not sure she got the message.”

“I really appreciate the insight. Maybe you can read my palm next. You ready to go? Or do you want to finish your run?”

“Thanks, but I’ve had enough stimulation for one day.”

As they passed close by the body, King stopped and stared at the hand that was still pointing to the sky, his face suddenly tense.

“What is it?” Michelle asked, watching him closely.

“The watch,” he said.

She glanced at it, now seeing that it was set to one o’clock and didn’t appear to be running. “What about it?”

“Michelle, it’s a Zodiac watch.”

“Zodiac?”

“Something tells me we’re going to see this person’s work again,” said King.

T
HE ISOLATED AREA ON A BLUFF OVERLOOKING ONE OF THE
main channels of thirty-mile-long Cardinal Lake had long been a favorite place for the teenagers in Wrightsburg to gather and perform a variety of acts their parents wouldn’t approve of. The night being overcast and drizzly with a wind rattling the trees, there was only one car parked up on the bluff, but the occupants were putting on an energetic show nonetheless.

The girl was already naked, her dress and undergarments folded neatly in the backseat next to her shoes. The young man was frantically trying to pull his shirt over his head while the girl was undoing his pants; it was tough going in the cramped quarters. The shirt finally came off about the time his pants and underwear were ripped down by the hard-breathing young lady, for whom patience, at least under these circumstances, was clearly not a virtue.

He slid toward the middle of the front seat after putting on a condom, and she climbed astride him, facing him. The windows of the car were fogging up now. Over her shoulder he stared out the windshield, his own breath growing faster as he closed his eyes. It was his first time, though his partner appeared far more experienced. He’d been dreaming of this moment for at least two years, his hormones building to levels of utter agony. He smiled as she moaned and rocked on top of him.

Then he opened his eyes and stopped smiling.

The figure in the black hood stared back at him through the
windshield. Through the thickening condensation on the glass he saw the shotgun muzzle come up. He started to throw the girl off him, instinctively thinking he would start the car and get out of here. He never made it. The glass exploded inward. The impact of the buckshot against her back slammed the girl into him, yet her body shielded him. Still the collision with her head broke his nose, almost knocking him out. Awash in her blood but as yet not critically wounded, he clutched the dead body against his chest, as though it were a cherished security blanket capable of warding off the bogeyman. He wanted to scream yet couldn’t. He finally let the girl go as he slid toward the driver’s side. His movements were clumsy, his mind clouded.
Had he been shot?
He didn’t know it but he was suffering from shock, his rapidly rising and falling blood pressure dragging his body through levels of stress it wasn’t designed for.

He started to turn the key in the ignition when the driver’s side door opened and there was the black hood again. As he stared helplessly, the shotgun muzzle glided at him like the deadliest snake in the world. The boy started to beg and then to cry, the blood pouring from his destroyed nose. He inched back away from the gunman, until he bumped against the girl’s body.
“Please!”
he wailed.
“No, God, no!”

The nine pellets of the shotgun blast hit him in the head with the collective force of a gigantic hammer, and he fell next to the dead girl. The front of her was unmarked; however, the other side was obliterated. Looking at the girl lying there on her back, one couldn’t tell what had killed the young woman. The cause of death of her boyfriend was far more obvious, considering he no longer had a face.

The killer leaned his shotgun against the car’s passenger side, opened the door and reached in. He placed a watch on the young man’s wrist, bracing the arm up against the dash, finally wedging it between the dash and the door. Next he fiddled with the watch that the dead girl was already wearing. Then he pulled off the cheap amethyst ring the girl had on and put it in his pocket.
He lifted a St. Christopher’s medal from around the young man’s neck. That also went into the hooded man’s pocket.

Over the boy’s body he said, “I’m sorry. You’re not personally guilty, but you were part of the original sin. You didn’t die in vain. You righted a long-overdue wrong. Take comfort in that.”

He didn’t bother praying over the girl. He took an object from his pocket and laid it on the floor of the car, shut the door and lumbered off. As the rain came in through the shattered windshield, the two dead and naked young people seemed to be clinging to each other.

On the floorboard was the object the killer had placed there.

It was a dog collar.