Twenty-four
A young couple from Spokane, with a baby in a backpack, found the body on a nature hike on Monday’s sparkling afternoon.
Within minutes, Sam Winston stood over the body of a woman he’d known for three decades, and had liked every day of them.
Minutes later, Mason made his way through the woods to join him.
“I had to hope it wouldn’t end this way.”
“I’m sorry, very sorry, for your loss, Chief.”
“She’s everyone’s loss. Well.” Determined to do his best for her, Sam rubbed his hands over his face, shook it off. “Bound and gagged, naked, like Marla. Wounds are worse—he cut and beat her more severely.”
“He may be escalating. Or . . . it may be frustration that she wasn’t his first choice.”
“He brushed out any footprints—you can see how he stirred up the dirt, the layer of pine needles. So he’s careful. He had to carry her to this spot, most likely from the road—down the track. She’s easily one-fifty, so he’s got some muscle.”
Careful to touch nothing, disturb nothing, Mason crouched down, studied the wounds, the position of the body.
“She’s not posed, no attempt to cover or bury her. No remorse, nothing symbolic. He was simply finished, and dumped the body here, walked away.”
“She didn’t mean anything to him.”
“No. The first victim, she was laid out differently—the way her arms reached out. And he left her shoes. She was more important—may be a surrogate. Younger, blonde, attractive, slim.”
“Like Maxie would’ve been.”
“Yes. We’re not that far from my sister’s house. Is this trail popular?”
“It gets some use, yeah. A little farther west, toward the park, into the park, you get more hikers, but this area gets visitors pretty regularly. He wanted her found, and directly.”
“I agree. Do you mind if I take some pictures?”
“Go ahead. We’ll be taking our own—I wanted a minute with her first.”
And, Sam could admit to himself, had to resist the gnawing urge to cover her. Once again, he shook it off.
“My deputy back on the road, you probably saw him, is getting the statements from the couple who found her. They’ve got a three-month-old baby with them. Their first vacation as a family.” Sam sighed out air. “They won’t forget it.”
He looked into the woods, into the green deepening as spring slid toward summer. “We’ll get this taped off, do what we do, and do what we can. And once we do that here, I’ll go see her sister, her daughter.”
“Do you want me to go with you for the notifications?”
“I appreciate the offer, but they know me. It’ll be a little easier, as much as it can be, from somebody they know.”
—
Naomi understood a process came with death, and with murder that process became official. But she wouldn’t let Xander hear about his friend through a process.
She didn’t see him through the main opening of the garage, so she walked inside the noise, saw one of his crew plugging coins in the soda machine.
“Is Xander around?”
“Yeah, sure. Back in the machine shop—straight back, to the right. Can’t miss.”
“Thanks.”
She picked her way through, found she couldn’t miss.
He sat on a stool behind an engine on a stand, a wrench in his grease-smeared hands.
“Bearings shot to shit, crankshaft shot to shit.”
He took off another part, scowled at it, tossed it into a plastic tray with a dismissing thump. “Wonders why it’s got rod knock.”
“Xander.”
She spoke quietly, but he heard her voice over the clanging, the thumping, the music. And the instant he saw her face, grief clouded his eyes.
“Ah, hell.”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
She started toward him, hands out, but he shoved back on the stool and held his own up. “Don’t. I’ve got grease all over me.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does.” With sharp, angry moves, he snatched up a rag, rubbed it over his forearms, his hands. Tossed it down again, walked to a small, wall-hung sink that had seen its share of action.
With his back to her, he poured some sort of powder on his hands, dry-scrubbed them with a brush. “Where did they find her?”
“I’m not sure, I’m sorry. I just know the chief called Mason about a half hour ago and said they had. In a wooded area, was all he’d say. He was in a hurry to get there. I didn’t want you to hear—just hear.”
He nodded, kept scrubbing. “I knew it last night. If they hadn’t found her by last night . . . but until they do, you have to figure there’s a chance.”
He worked the powder up to his forearms, then turned on the water. “I need to tell Loo.”
Not the process, not procedure. And the hell with that. “Do you want me to go with you?”
“Not this time.”
He yanked paper towels out of a wall unit, dried off, tossed them in a big, widemouthed trash can.
“They have to notify her next of kin. I don’t know how long before they can.”
“Loo won’t want to talk to anybody. She won’t get in the way of that.”
“I’m so sorry, Xander. I wish there were something I could do.”
“You did it. You came to tell me.”
When she stepped toward him again, he looked at his hands.
“They’re clean enough,” she said, and moved into him.
“I guess they’ll do.” He got a grip on her, a tight one, held her in silence while the workday banged around them.
“Stay with Loo as long as you need, as long as she needs. But would you let me know if you’re staying in town?”
“I’ll be coming out, but I don’t know when. If Kevin and the crew leave before I get there, before your brother gets back, stay home.” He drew her away. “Stay inside, and lock everything. Tell me you’ll do that.”
“I will. Don’t worry about me, just take care of Loo.”
“I’ll do that. I have to deal with some things here, get some coverage, then I’ll do that.”
When she got home she closed herself in her temporary office so she didn’t have to talk to Kevin or any of the crew, so they couldn’t sense what she knew.
Time dragged while she tried to lose herself in work. Feeling closed in, restless, she gave it up and took the dog out in the narrow backyard, thrilled him with a session of fetch the ball.
She saw Kevin start down the deck steps, and the expression on his face told her the news had gotten out.
“Xander called me. Ah, he said he’d be here within the hour, and look, Naomi, I’m staying until he gets here, or your brother does. I’ll sit out in the damn truck if you—”
She went with instinct, stepped up to hug him.
“What the hell’s happening? Jenny’s got a couple of neighbors and their kids over at the house so I don’t have to worry about her being alone. We’ve never had to worry. Donna—God, Donna, of all people. I can’t get ahold of it.”
“I know. I know.”
“He said Loo’s pretty steady now, and she’s going over to Donna’s house. Her—Donna’s—sister and daughter, and the family, I guess, are there. He had to make her swear she’d get the sister’s husband to take her home, make sure she’s inside and locked up. We never had to think about doing that. It’s always been safe here. My kids can go all over the neighborhood and you never worry.”
“I’ll go inside.” She stepped back. “I’ll go inside, lock the doors. You need to go home, you need to be with your family.”
His face went hard. “I’m staying. Until Xander gets here, I’m staying. Jenny’s with a dozen people.”
“Then let’s go up, sit down.”
“He said it was like Marla.” Now that hardness faded into grief. “Word’s going around.” With the dog between them, they started back to the house. “On a Friday night, too, the same as Marla. He dumped her over there.”
“Over . . .” She shuddered when he gestured toward the forest she thought of as her own.
“Just west of the bluff. You can’t go walking there on your own anymore, Naomi.” A friend, a brother, he grabbed her hand. “You can’t do that. Not until they find him.”
“I won’t, don’t worry. Sit down.”
In her forest, she thought. At the foot of her bluff, and in her forest.
Because it was remote, she told herself. Because he could slip through the dark with no one to see. That was all it was, and what it was, was bad enough.
She sat in the chair beside him.
“Your studio’s nearly finished,” he told her, and threw her off balance. “After tomorrow, day after latest, you can set it up.”
They’d talk of something else, she realized, of anything else but the unthinkable.
“Can’t wait.”
“We’ll get the desk, the equipment in there for you. A couple more weeks, we’re going to be out of here. Well, three. We should be out in three.”
“You’ve brought the house back to life, Kevin.”
“We have,” he said just before the dog leaped up and raced off the deck.
“Xander,” Naomi told him. “He just knows—the way the bike sounds, I guess. He doesn’t bark anymore when it’s Xander.”
“He’s nuts about you, you know—Xander. So’s the dog, but I’m talking about Xander, who’d kick my ass for saying it, but I need something good to balance things out. I’ve never seen him nuts about anybody.”
“Nobody?”
Shaking his head, Kevin smiled a little. “You’re the first.”
She got up and went to meet Xander as he came up the steps with the dog.
“Thanks.”
“How’s Loo?” she asked.
“She took it hard. Really hard.” Looking exhausted, he blew out a breath. “But she pulled it together, talked to Donna’s daughter. She’s over there now. Did you hear from your brother?”
“No, and I’ve had to stop myself from texting him a dozen times. He’ll tell us what he can when he can.”
“Would you let me know if there’s anything?” Kevin pushed to his feet. “It feels like if you just knew something it would start to make sense. I’m going to go on, get home. Keep this one close, Xan.”
“I intend to. Same for Jenny.”
He sat when Kevin left. “Her daughter—you don’t know her—she’s inconsolable. I wasn’t doing any good over there, so I got out of the way. She and Loo are better off huddling up together.”
“Kevin said she was found in the forest—over there.”
Eyes hard, Xander nodded. “Somewhere in that area—and too damn close to here. Like Marla.”
“Likely for the same reason. It’s out of town, hardly any houses, hardly any traffic on the road, or the water depending on how he comes in.”
“That’s probably what it is, all it is. But if what Mason said has weight, and if Maxie was the actual target, he has a type. Right? Young, blonde, attractive, slender. You’re all of that.”
“And I can promise you I know better than any young blonde woman in this town how to take care of myself. I can promise you, Xander, not to take unnecessary chances, and to take sensible precautions. I’ll also point out that both women he killed lived or worked in town. I think he must stalk them, or at least watch their routines. I don’t have a routine—and you have enough on your mind without worrying about me.”
“Nothing that’s on my mind is more important than you.”
He turned to her, took her breath away with one long, steady stare.
And once again, the dog raced off the deck, this time leading with a bark.
“It’s probably Mason.” She laid a hand on Xander’s tensed arm. “This son of a bitch comes at women in the dark, and I’ll bet from behind like a coward. He doesn’t walk up to them in the daylight.”
“You’re right. I’m edgy.”
He relaxed a little when Mason rounded the house with Tag.
“I have to make a couple calls. I’ll be down when I’m done and tell you what I can. Xander, I’m sorry about your friend.”
“Yeah, we all are.”
“I’m going to see what I have to throw together for dinner,” she told Xander.
“I can call in for pizza or whatever. You don’t have to cook.”
“I’m edgy, too. Cooking helps.”
“Have you thought about getting a grill? I can grill—you know, steaks, chops, even fish.” He shrugged when she stopped at the opening. “Give you a hand with meals sometime.”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve been looking at grills online.”
“You can’t buy a grill online.” Sincerely appalled, he stared at her—with some pity. “You have to see it, and—”
“Stroke it?” She offered a bright smile. “Speak to it?”
Appalled pity turned on a dime to a cool disdain that made her want to laugh. “You have to see it,” he repeated.
She made a humming sound, then went in to check her supplies and formulate a menu.
Moments later, he came in, grabbed a beer, sat at the counter. “I’m buying the grill.”
“What?”
“I said I’m buying the grill.”
Sauté some chicken breasts, she thought. Garlic, herbs, wine. Distracted, she turned to him. “The grill? Seriously, Xander.”
“Grills are serious.”
Now she did laugh. “I’d be the last one to say any cooking appliance or tool isn’t serious, which is why I’ve been researching and eliminating and considering online.”
“Have you ever bought a grill before?”
“No, but—”
“I’ll take care of it.”
It occurred to her he was thinking, and feeling, something other than grief. So she stretched it out. “You don’t know the features I want, the brand, the size. We’re having chicken, rice, mixed vegetables,” she decided.
“You don’t buy a grill online any more than you buy a car online.”
Because she felt better herself, she took another poke. “Have you ever bought a grill?”
“Kevin has, twice, and I was with him both times. It’s the same thing.”
She began to assemble her ingredients. “Well, there’s plenty of time to decide before summer.”
“There’s your first wrong turn—well, second since the whole online deal. You get the right grill, you use it year-round, especially when you can put it right outside the kitchen like you can here.”
She got a pot for the rice, put it on the stove, then came to the counter so she could face him while she minced garlic. “I had no idea you were so serious about outdoor grills. The things you learn.”
“I’m buying the grill.”
They’d see about that.
“Do you know how to peel carrots?”
Frowning, he took a slow sip of beer. “Probably.”
She pulled carrots out of the fridge, got a peeler, pushed them to his side of the counter. “Good, peel these.”
“I thought you scraped them off with a knife.”
It was her turn for pity. “Sure, if you want to take all day and make a mess out of it. You just . . .” She picked up a carrot and peeler and demonstrated.
“Okay, okay. I’ve got it.”
Mason came back in to see Xander with a small pile of carrot peels, scowling at the carrot he worked on stripping. And his sister at the stove sautéing garlic.
Pretty homey, he thought. Maybe Xander looked out of his milieu, but altogether, pretty homey.
“Mason, do you remember how to floret a cauliflower?”
“Um—”
“Sure you do.”
She handed him a knife, set the head on a cutting board.
“I don’t even like cauliflower.” But he sat, comfortable now in an old Harvard Crimson T-shirt and jeans, and picked up the knife.
“You do when it’s disguised with butter and herbs. It’s nice,” she said, “having line cooks.”
“It’s like home.” Mason cut away the thick stem, sliced through the core from the bottom, pulled the head into two halves. “Back in New York, only you’re head chef instead of Harry.”
“When they get here, I’ll abdicate, but only after he lets me show off. That gives me a couple of weeks to devise a show-off menu, outfit guest rooms, and hope Jenny can redo those dining room chairs.” She added chicken to the pan with a satisfying sizzle.
“I’m going to try to be here. I should be able to work out of the Seattle office temporarily.”
After a long beat of silence, Mason set the knife aside, picked up his wine. “Okay. I’m going to lay this out for you—as much as I can. While the ME will determine, it’s clear from the on-scene examination and the evidence gathered that Donna Lanier was abducted and killed by the same unsub as Marla Roth. You don’t need the details,” he added, and went back to the knife. “It’s my strong belief, shared by Chief Winston, that Lanier wasn’t his first choice. She was simply there. As with the first victim, she was held and killed at another location, then transported and dumped where she would be found quickly. He wants us to know he’s here, he’s hunting. He’s arrogant, enjoys both the attention and the fear he’s generating. He’s intelligent, organized, experienced.”
“You mean he’s done this before,” Naomi replied. “That’s what you mean by experienced.”
“Yeah. It’s unlikely a coincidence he took both victims on a Friday night, held them until Sunday. We can speculate he has his weekends free or has the privacy he needs during that time period.”
“You still think he lives here.” Xander finished the last carrot, waited for a reply.
“I can’t eliminate someone who lives in town, works in town, or works or lives in the area.”
“Why?” Xander demanded. “We haven’t had any rapes or murders, nothing like this around here before.”
“He may not have brought it home before. He may have taken a hitchhiker, a hiker, someone passing through, and buried or concealed the body. He may recently have acquired, through purchase, inheritance, divorce, a place he can use to do his work. So far, most of the rentals have been checked and eliminated. We’re also checking on seasonal workers, tenants, new residents, vacationers who’ve been in the area since the first victim was abducted. I’ll continue to research and analyze like crimes. If I find a pattern, if I find more, we’ll have the full resources of the FBI on this.
“I’ve asked a contact I have at the BAU to look over the files, to check my profile, to see if I’m on the right track or if I’ve gone wrong. But whether or not the unsub lives and works here or happened upon this location, he’s still here. It’s gone too well for him to move on.”
“Naomi fits his type.”
“Xander.” Annoyed, she turned the chicken.
“Yes, she does. I believe he has a type, and Naomi fits it. I trust her to take all reasonable precautions.”
“I said I would.”
“I love you, Naomi.”
She sighed, hugely. “I love you, too, Mason.”
“So even though I know you’re smart, you’re careful, and you can kick ass, I’m going to worry about you.”
“I worry about you, Special Agent Carson. Especially since I know you can’t always take what civilians consider reasonable precautions.”
“You could spend a couple weeks in Seattle,” Xander suggested. “Hang with your brother there, do some shopping or whatever, do some work. It’d give them a chance to do the floors in this place.”
“First, Kevin and I have a schedule and the floors are dead last. Second and all the other numbers after that, I’m not leaving here to run off to Seattle so my baby brother can look out for me.”
“You’ve got two years on me,” Mason objected. “That doesn’t make me baby brother. She won’t do it,” he added to Xander. “I walked through the conversation about it with her in my head, and always hit the same wall. But this might make you feel better about it. Did you tell him about the mugger, Naomi?”
“I haven’t thought about that in years.” She picked up the wine, dumped some into the skillet, then trapped the steam with a lid and lowered the heat.
“What mugger?”
“In New York. Naomi was home on summer break from college, working at the restaurant. Decided to walk home one night.”
“It was a nice night,” she added.
“The mugger thought so, too. Anyway, this guy comes up on her—with a knife—wants her money and her watch, her earrings, her phone.”
“I would have given it all to him, just like the uncles had impressed on both of us a million times.”
“Maybe you would have.” Mason shrugged. “But the asshole figured he had a defenseless woman, a scared one. And a pretty one. So he copped a feel.”
“And he smirked,” Naomi stated, and, remembering it all now, sneered.
“She bruised his balls, broke his nose, and dislocated his shoulder, called nine-one-one. He was still on the ground moaning when the cops got there.”
“He shouldn’t have grabbed my breast. He shouldn’t have touched me.”
“You broke his nose.” Purely fascinated by her, Xander studied those slim, almost elegant hands. “You like breaking noses.”
“The nose is a quick and reliable target—offense and defense. I like yours.” She gathered up the carrots, the cauliflower, the broccoli she’d prepped herself, in a big strainer, and took them to the sink to wash. “So don’t piss me off.”
“Just let me know if you’re not in the mood for me to cop a feel.”
She laughed, then brought the carrots back to slice for steaming. “You’ll be the first. Excellent florets and carrot peeling. You’re both dismissed from duty if you want to take the dog out or whatever. You’ve got about thirty.”
“Did you come over on your bike?” Mason asked Xander.
“Yeah.”
“I wouldn’t mind taking a look at it.”
“Sure.” Xander led the way out the back and around. “Just so you know, the landscape crew starts tomorrow. Early.”
“Define early.”
“By seven. Maybe a little before.”
“As early as or earlier than the bang-and-clang crew inside. Oh well. I wanted to say I feel comfortable working out of Seattle, coming over a couple times a week, because you’re going to keep an eye on her. And I didn’t want to say that where she could hear me.”
“I got that. I feel more comfortable knowing she can dislocate some asshole’s shoulder. And still.”
“Still. I don’t know a goddamn thing about motorcycles.” Head angled, Mason studied it. “Except it looks impressive.”
“Okay.”
“Both women were taken in town, so I have to consider that, for now, as his hunting ground. But Naomi’s his type, and she shops and banks and has business in town. She’s the sort he looks for.”
“I got that, too. I’m going to be here every night. We play this Friday at Loo’s. I’ll make sure she comes, and make sure Kevin and Jenny stick with her until we close.”
“If I can be here, I will be. She’ll be careful, but I believe this guy works fast, takes his target quickly.”
As he spoke, Mason studied the house as if looking for security breaches.
“No defensive wounds on either victim. They didn’t have a chance to fight back. Anybody can be taken by surprise, even if they’re careful, even if they’ve studied martial arts and self-defense, so she’s going to have to deal with not having as much time alone as she likes for a while.”
“She’s doing all right with people around.”
“Better than she imagined she would, I’ll bet. She doesn’t know you’re in love with her.”
Saying nothing, Xander held Mason’s steady gaze.
“I’m going there because she’s the most important person in my world. We lived through a nightmare you never come all the way out of, because he’s sitting in a cell in West Virginia. Our mother wasn’t strong enough to keep living on the edge of that nightmare. Naomi found her—came home to pick something up on lunch break from school, and found her, already cold.”
“I know—at least some of it. I looked up what I could after I figured out about Bowes. And I found the piece she wrote back then, for the New York Times. I didn’t want to hit a sore spot by accident, so I read what I could find. I’m sorry about your mother, man.”
“It put another hole in Naomi. Me? Sure, I lived with it and through it, but I’m not the one who saw firsthand what our father had done. I’m not the one who helped pull a victim out of a hole in the ground and half carry her through the woods. I’m not the one who came home from school and found our mother dead by her own hand. Naomi has no degree of separation. And she might deny it—would,” he corrected, “but there’s a part of her that doesn’t see herself worthy of being loved.”
“She’d be wrong about that.”
“Yeah, she’d be wrong. We had counseling, we had the uncles, but no one else has those images of what our parents did, to themselves, to others, to us, in their head the way she does. So there’s a part of her that doesn’t think she’s capable of loving outside of me and the uncles, or worthy of being loved.”
“Well.” Xander jerked a shoulder. “She’ll have to get used to it.”
The simplicity, the carelessness of the remark, made Mason smile. “You’re good for her. That irritated me a little when I first came into it, saw that. I’m pretty much over that now.”
“Did you run my background?”
“Oh yeah, right off.”
“I’d have thought less of you if you hadn’t. I’m never going to hurt her. That’s bullshit,” Xander said immediately. “Why do people say that? Of course I’ll end up hurting her. Everybody does or says something stupid or petty or acts like an asshole sometime and ends up hurting somebody else. What I mean is—”
“I know what you mean, and I believe you. So, are we good?”
“Yeah, we’re good.”
Mason held out a hand; they shook.
Then he studied the bike again. “How about you let me drive it?”
Considering, Xander rocked back on his heels. “Have you ever been on a bike before—at the controls?”
“No. But I’m an FBI agent, I should know how to drive a bike. Right? What if, in the pursuit of a criminal, I had to hop on a motorcycle, and due to lack of knowledge and experience, said criminal escaped justice? None of us would feel good about that.”
Amused, Xander unclipped the helmet. “Okay.”
“Really? Are you serious?” And beaming like a boy on Christmas morning, Mason took the helmet.
“Sure. You wreck it, you pay for repairs. You end up needing the ER, dinner’s going to get cold. I can go with that.”
“I don’t have a motorcycle license.”
“You’re FBI.”
“Damn fucking straight.” Delighted, Mason swung a leg over, settled. “Now what the hell do I do?”
Before long, drawn by the revving engine and Mason’s war whoops, Naomi came out the front door.
“Is that— Is Mason on your bike?”
“Yeah.” Xander sat on the steps with the dog.
“When did he learn to drive a motorcycle?”
“Pretty much now.”
“Oh, dear God. Get him off before he hurts himself.”
“He’s fine, Mom.”
She huffed. “Well, get him off because dinner’s ready.”
“Done.”
He got up as she went back in, and decided it was best all around that Mason waited until her back was turned to pop a wheelie.
Her brother was a quick study.