Lisa Gardner - The killing hour

Quantico, Virginia

5:14 P . M .

Temperature: 97 degrees

MAC WAS STANDING OUTSIDE A CLASSROOM asking Genny if she happened to know of a good botanist in the state of Virginia, when the blurred form of a blue-clad figure came roaring down the hall. The next instant, he felt a sharp pain in his left shoulder, just had time to look up in surprise, and promptly got whacked again by his favorite new agent.

“You did not say anything about snakes !” Kimberly Quincy swung a solid right; he barely dodged left. “You did not say anything about leaving live vipers in their mouths !” She followed with a jab to the ribs; he fell back three steps. For a tiny thing, she really could hit.

“You lying, manipulating, cold-hearted bastard!” She took a good wind-up and he came to his senses just in time to block the blow, twist her arm behind her back, and turn her into the solid restraint of his body. She, of course, tried to flip him over her back.

“Sugar,” he murmured in her ear. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but maybe you’d like to wait ’til we’re alone.”

He felt the outrage scream through her stiffened frame, but then his words must’ve penetrated. She seemed to become aware of their surroundings. For example, as students generally didn’t assault other students in the halls of the Academy, she now had everyone’s full attention. Genny’s gaze was most amused. She had it locked on Mac’s face with blatantly unconcealed interest.

“Just practicing a little drill,” Mac drawled out loud. “You know, always happy to help out a new agent.” He gingerly released Kimberly’s arm. She didn’t hit him, or stomp on his foot, so he figured he was making some progress. “Now then, darlin’, why don’t we go outside where we can discuss other ways for ambushing a possible suspect?”

He hightailed it for the double doors. After another awkward moment, Kimberly scrambled after him. She managed to make it all the way around the corner of the building to a somewhat isolated flagstone patio before she went after him again.

“Why didn’t you warn me about the stitched-up mouth!” she yelled.

He threw up his hands in surrender. “Warn you about what? I still don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“He left a rattlesnake in her mouth. A real live rattler!”

“Well, that’ll put hair on your chest. Did you hit the rattler as hard as you hit me?”

“I threw a knife at it!”

“Of course.”

She scowled. “But I missed. Special Agent Kaplan shot it with his gun.”

Ah, no wonder she was pissed. Her big moment, and she missed throwing a knife at a striking viper. The girl did have her standards.

“I want my Glock!” she was still raging.

“I know, honey, I know.” His arms had come down. He was thinking hard. “A live snake,” he said at last. “I didn’t see that coming. Once he left an alligator’s egg down a girl’s throat. And for the last one, Mary Lynn, he used a snail. But I never… A live rattler. Damn, give a guy three years and he goes and gets mean.”

And that frightened him. God, that frightened him all the way down to his big Southern bones.

Kimberly didn’t seem to have heard him. Her hands were rubbing her arms compulsively, as if she were trying to ward off a chill in hundred-degree heat. She was also holding herself carefully, a woman made out of glass and trying not to shatter.

Shock, he realized. He belatedly pulled out one of the wrought-iron chairs and gestured to the seat. “Come on. Sit. Take a minute. Autopsy’s over, honey. Nothin’ can happen to you here.”

“Tell that to the dead girl,” Kimberly said roughly, but she accepted the chair and, for a moment, they both simply sat in silence.

Kimberly didn’t know it yet, but Mac had been doing his own investigative work that afternoon. For starters, he’d inquired all about her. And boy, it had been quite an education. In the good news department, his current partner-in-solving-crime came with a genuine law enforcement pedigree. Her father had reputedly been a brilliant profiler in his day. Handled a lot of cases, put away a lot of very bad guys.

Rumor had it that his daughter had inherited his brains and aptitude for anticipating the criminal mind.

Bad news, however-the daughter was also regarded as a little bit of a head case. Didn’t like authority figures. Didn’t like her fellow classmates. Didn’t seem to actually like much of anyone, which may explain why every time Mac ran into her, she was trying to kill him.

Of course, then there was what had happened to her family. Losing most of your relatives to a homicidal maniac was bound to make an impression on you. Perhaps Mac should just be grateful she hadn’t actually inflicted bodily harm on him yet.

Mac stole another glance beneath the cover of his eyelids. Kimberly’s gaze was off in the distance, her eyes unfocused. She appeared profoundly exhausted, haggard beyond measure, with deep shadows bruising her eyes and a patchwork of red scratches still welting her skin.

The girl definitely wasn’t sleeping at night. And that was before she’d met him.

“Was it an overdose?” he asked at last.

She seemed to rouse herself from her daze. “I don’t know the results of the tox screen. But she was hit first-and forcefully-by something in the upper left thigh. Later, probably after twelve to twenty-four hours had passed, she received the fatal injection in her upper left arm.”

“Intramuscular injections?” Mac asked.

“Yes.”

“All her clothes were intact? Her purse? No sexual assault?”

“Yes on all counts.”

“What about defensive wounds? Blood, skin, anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Shit,” Mac said heavily.

She nodded.

“They have an ID?”

“Not yet. They took her prints. They’ll need time to run them through the system.”

“We need to know who she is,” Mac murmured. “We’ll need a list of her friends and family, who she was out with last night. Where they went, what was the make and model of their car… Jesus.” He ran a hand through his hair, his mind beginning to race. “It’s already been at least twelve hours… Jesus. Who’s in charge of the case?”

“Special Agent Kaplan.”

“I’d better go talk to him.”

“Good luck,” Kimberly snorted.

“He let you watch the autopsy.”

“Only because I promised to throw up.”

“Did you?”

“I was thinking about it,” she admitted. “But the rattler put a damper on things. Then Kaplan exploded its head, and then we all had to debate how carefully to clean up snake guts, as you could consider them evidence.”

“You had quite a first autopsy,” Mac said seriously.

“Yeah,” she sighed. She seemed rather surprised by the notion herself. “I think other ones will be easier after this.”

“I think they will be.”

They both lapsed back into silence, Kimberly probably thinking of the snake she still wished she’d killed; Mac contemplating past cases that once more loomed larger than life.

The heat settled in on them, rolling in like a heavy blanket and pressing them deep into their chairs while their clothing glued to their skin. Mac used to not mind heat like this. It was perfect for sitting next to his parents’ pool. Put on a little Alan Jackson, drink a lot of homemade lemonade. And later, when dusk fell, watch the fireflies flicker and dart in the purple-tinged air.

He didn’t think of idyllic summer days anymore. Summer had become the enemy, when heat waves would roll in, and girls would no longer be safe, even when traveling in pairs.

He needed to call Atlanta. He needed to figure out how to best approach this Special Agent Kaplan. And then they were going to need resources. ASAP. The best experts they could find. A botanist, biologist, a forensic geologist, an entomologist, and God knows what other kind of ologists. Was there an expert on snakes? They should find someone who knew everything about rattlers and what it signified when one burst out of a dead girl’s mouth.