Carol O’Connell - Find Me

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.

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.