Lisa Gardner - The killing hour

First rule of procedure, always secure the crime scene.

Second rule, call for backup.

Third rule, try hard not to think of what it means when young women aren’t safe even at the Academy. For this girl was quite dead, and by all appearances, it had happened recently.

Quantico, Virginia

10:03 A . M .

Temperature: 86 degrees

“ONE MORE TIME, Kimberly. How did you end up off the PT course?”

“I got a stitch in my side, I went off the course. I was trying to walk it out, and… I don’t think I realized how far I had wandered.”

“And you saw the body?”

“I saw something up ahead,” Kimberly said without blinking. “I headed toward it, and then… Well, you know the rest.”

Her class supervisor, Mark Watson, scowled at her, but finally leaned back. She was sitting across from him in his bright, expansive office. Mid-morning sun poured through the bank of windows. An orange monarch butterfly fluttered just outside the glass. It was such a beautiful day to be talking about death.

At Kimberly’s cry, two of her classmates had come running. She’d leaned forward and taken the girl’s pulse by then. Nothing, of course, but then Kimberly hadn’t expected any signs of life. And it wasn’t just the girl’s wide, sightless brown eyes that spoke of death. It was her violently stitched-up mouth, some kind of thick black thread sealing her waxy lips in macabre imitation of Raggedy Ann. Whoever had done this had made damn well sure the girl had never screamed.

The second classmate promptly threw up. But not Kimberly.

Someone had fetched Watson. Upon seeing her grisly find, he had immediately contacted the FBI police as well as the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Apparently, a death at the Academy’s front door did not belong to the FBI, but rather to NCIS. It was their job to protect and serve the Marines, after all.

Kimberly and her classmates had been hastily led away, while young Marines in dark green camouflage and more sophisticated special agents in white dress shirts descended upon the scene. Now, somewhere in the deep woods, real work was being done-death investigators photographing, sketching, and analyzing; an ME examining a young girl’s body for last desperate clues; other officers bagging and tagging evidence.

While Kimberly sat here. In an office. As far away from the discovery as a well-meaning FBI supervisor could bring her. One of her knees jogged nervously. She finally crossed her ankles beneath the chair.

“What will happen next?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t know.” Her supervisor paused. “I’ll be honest, Kimberly, we’ve never had this kind of situation before.”

“Well, that’s a good thing,” she murmured.

Watson smiled, but it was thin. “We had a tragedy a few years ago. A National Academy student dropped dead on the firearms course. He was relatively young, which led to speculation. The ME determined, however, that he had died of a sudden massive coronary. Still tragic, but not so shocking given the sheer numbers of people who pass through these grounds in any given year. This situation, on the other hand… A facility of this kind relies heavily on good relations with the neighboring communities. When word gets out that a local girl has been found dead…”

“How do you know she’s local?”

“Playing the law of averages. She appears too young to be an employee, and if she were either FBI or Marine, someone at the scene would’ve recognized her. Ergo, she’s an outsider.”

“She could be someone’s sweetheart,” Kimberly ventured. “The mouth… Maybe she talked back one too many times.”

“It’s possible.” Watson was eyeing her speculatively, so Kimberly pressed ahead.

“But you don’t think so,” she said.

“Why don’t I think so?”

“No violence. If it were a domestic situation, a crime of passion, she would show signs of battery. Bruises, cuts, abrasion. Instead… I saw her arms and legs. There was hardly a scratch on her. Except for the mouth, of course.”

“Maybe he only hit her where no one would see.”

“Maybe,” her tone was doubtful. “It still doesn’t explain why he would dump the body on a secured Marine base.”

“Why do you think the body was dumped?” Watson asked with a frown.

“Lack of disturbance at the scene,” Kimberly answered immediately. “Ground wasn’t even stirred up until I crashed in.” Her brow furrowed; she looked at him quizzically. “Do you think she was alive when he brought her onto the grounds? It’s not that easy to access the base. Last I saw, the Marines were operating at condition Bravo, meaning all entrances are guarded and all visitors must have proper ID. Dead or alive, not just anyone can access Academy grounds.”

“I don’t think we should-”

“That doesn’t make sense, either, though,” Kimberly persisted, her frown deepening. “If the girl’s alive, then she would have to have clearance, too, and two security passes are harder to find than one. So maybe she was dead. In the trunk of the car. I’ve never seen the guards search a vehicle, so she wouldn’t be too hard to sneak in that way. Of course, that theory implies that the man knowingly dumped a body on Quantico grounds.” She shook her head abruptly. “That doesn’t make sense. If you lived here and you killed someone, even accidentally, you wouldn’t take the remains into the woods. You’d hightail it off the base, and get the evidence as far away from here as possible. Leaving the body here is just plain stupid.”

“I don’t think we should make any assumptions at this time,” Watson said quietly.

“Do you think he’s trying to make a personal statement against the Academy?” Kimberly asked. “Or against the Marines?”

At that comment, Watson’s brows fired to life. Kimberly had definitely crossed some unspoken line, and his expression firmly indicated that their conversation was now over. He sat forward and said, “Listen, the NCIS will be handling the investigation from here on out. Do you know anything about the Naval Criminal Investigative Service?”

“No-”

“Well, you should. The NCIS has over eight hundred special agents, ready to be deployed anywhere around the globe at a moment’s notice. They’ve seen murder, rape, domestic abuse, fraud, drugs, racketeering, terrorism, you name it. They have their own cold case squad, they have their own forensics experts, they even have their own crime labs. For heaven’s sake, these are the agents who were called upon to investigate the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole . They can certainly handle one body found in the woods at a Marine base. Is that understood?”

“I didn’t mean to imply-”

“You’re a rookie, Kimberly. Not a special agent, but a new agent. Don’t forget that difference.”

“Yes, sir,” she said stiffly, chin up, eyes blazing at the unexpected reprimand.

Her supervisor’s voice finally softened. “Of course NCIS will have some questions for you,” he allowed. “Of course you will answer to the best of your ability. Cooperation with fellow law enforcement agencies is very important. But then you’re done, Kimberly. Out of the picture. Back to class. And-this should go without saying-as quiet as a church mouse.”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell?” she asked dryly.

Watson didn’t crack a smile. “There are many times in an FBI agent’s career when she must be the soul of discretion. Agents who can’t be prudent don’t belong on the job.”

Kimberly’s expression finally faltered. She stared down at the carpet. Watson’s tone was so stern, it seemed to border almost on threatening. She had found the body accidentally. And yet… He was treating her almost as if she were a troublemaker. As if she’d personally brought this upon the Academy. The safe course would be to do exactly as he said. To get up, seal her lips, and walk away.