Lisa Gardner - The killing hour

“I had every right! I know this man. I have studied him for five goddamn years. And I’m telling you, we don’t have time for this kind of bullshit. Don’t you get it yet? This girl isn’t the only victim. Rule number three: he always kidnaps in pairs, because the first girl is just a map. She’s a tool to help you find where the real game is going down.”

“What do you mean, ‘where the real game is going down’?” Rainie asked.

“I mean there’s another girl out there, right now. She was traveling with this girl, maybe her sister or roommate or best friend. But she was with the first victim when they were both ambushed, and now she’s been taken somewhere. He picked out the place ahead of time. It’s somewhere geographically unique, but also very, very treacherous. In our state he chose a granite gorge, a vast farming county, then the banks of the Savannah River, and finally marshlands around the coast. He likes places exposed, with natural predators such as rattlesnakes and bears and bobcats. He likes places isolated, so even if the girls roam for days they still won’t run into anyone who can offer them help. He likes places that are environmentally important, but no one thinks about anymore.

“Then he turns these girls loose, drugged, dazed, and confused, and waits to see what will happen next. In this kind of heat, some of them probably don’t make it more than hours. But some of them-the smart ones, the tough ones-they might make it days. Maybe even a week. Long, tortured days, without food, without water, waiting for someone to come and save them.”

Rainie was looking at him in rapt fascination. “How many times did he do this before?”

“Four. Eight girls kidnapped. Seven dead.”

“So you got one back alive.”

“Nora Ray Watts. The last girl. We found her in time.”

“How?” Quincy spoke up.

Mac took a deep breath. His muscles were bunching again. He grimly fought his impatience down. “The man leaves clues on the first body. Evidence that, if you interpret correctly, will narrow down the location of the second girl.”

“What kind of clues?”

“Flora and fauna, soil, sediment, rocks, insects, snails, hell, whatever he can dream up. We didn’t understand the significance in the beginning. We bagged and tagged according to SOP, merrily trotted evidence off to the labs, and found only dead bodies after that. But hey, even we can be taught. By the fourth pair of kidnappings, we had a team of experienced specialists in place. Botanists, biologists, forensic geologists, you name it. Nora Ray had been traveling with her sister. Mary Lynn’s body was found with a substance on her shirt, samples of vegetation on her shoes and a foreign object down her throat.”

“Down her throat?” Kaplan spoke up sharply. Mac nodded his head. For the first time, the NCIS agent seemed to have gained real interest.

“The sediment on her shirt proved to be salt. The vegetation on her shoes was identified as Spartina alterniflora . Cord grass. And the biologist identified the foreign object as a marsh periwinkle shell. All three elements were consistent with what you would find in a salt marsh. We focused the search-and-rescue teams on the coast, and fifty-six hours later, a Coast Guard chopper spotted Nora Ray, frantically waving her bright red shirt.”

“She couldn’t help you identify the killer?” Rainie asked.

Mac shook his head. “Her last memory is of her tire going flat. The next she knew, she woke up ravenously thirsty in the middle of a damn marsh.”

“Was she drugged?” Watson interjected.

“Bruise still fading on her left thigh.”

“He ambushes them?”

“Our best guess-he scopes out bars. He looks for what he wants-young girls, no specific coloring required, traveling in pairs. I think he follows them to their car. While they get in, he drops a tack or two behind their back tire. Then he simply has to follow. Sooner or later the tire goes flat, he pulls over as if offering to help, and boom, he has them.”

“Sneaks up on them with a needle?” Watson asked skeptically.

“No. He nails them with a dart gun. Like the kind a big game hunter might use.”

In the quiet room came the unmistakable sound of sharply indrawn breaths. Mac regarded them all stonily. “You think we haven’t done our homework? For five years, we’ve been hunting this man. I can tell you his profile. I can tell you how he hunts his victims. I can tell you he doesn’t always get his way-after the fact, we learned about two different pairs of girls who got flat tires and had a man pull over behind them. They refused to roll down their windows, however, and they got to live another day.

“I can tell you that Mary Lynn, whose body we found the earliest, tested positive for a second drug-ketamine, which is used by vets and animal control officers for its quickly subduing effect. I can tell you ketamine is a controlled substance, but also readily available on the streets; kids use it in rave parties, calling it Kit Kat or Special K. I can tell you Ativan is also controlled, and also used by vets. But pursuing all vets got us nowhere. As did investigating members of various hunting groups, the Appalachian Mountain Club, or the Audubon Society.

“I can tell you the man is growing angrier. He went from striking once a year, which takes a tremendous amount of control in a serial killer, to striking twice in twelve weeks. And I can tell you the man’s game only gets tougher. The first time, if we’d been paying attention, one of the clues was a rare herb found only in a five-mile radius in all of Georgia. Identify that herb, and we would’ve gotten the girl for sure. The last time, for Nora Ray Watts, the clues only led us to salt marshes. There are nearly four hundred thousand acres of salt marshes in Georgia. Quite frankly, Nora Ray was the proverbial needle in a haystack.”

“And yet you found her,” Kimberly said.

“She kept herself alive,” Mac replied tightly.

Quincy, however, was regarding him intently. “Four hundred thousand acres is not a feasible search area. A chopper could not pick out a lone girl when covering that kind of terrain. You knew something else.”

“I had a theory. Call it geographic profiling.”

“The victims were related somehow? Had areas of geography in common?”

“No. The bodies did. When you put them on the map and identified the direction in which they were facing-”

“He used them as compasses,” Quincy breathed.

“Maps. The guy sees the first girls as nothing but maps. So why not line up Mary Lynn’s body to point to her sister? She’s just a tool, after all. Anything for the sake of his game.”

“Jesus,” Rainie murmured. And all around the room, they were silent.

After a moment, Kaplan cleared his throat. “The victim this morning, she wasn’t aligned in any particular manner. In fact, her arms and legs were spread in four different directions.”

“I know.”

“It’s another inconsistency.”

“I know.”

“She did have a rock in her hand, though,” Kaplan was saying, his eyes appraising Mac. “And a snake in her mouth. Can’t say I’ve seen much of that.”

“She also had a leaf in her hair,” Mac said. “The ME pulled it out at the scene. I retrieved it later. I’ll fetch it when we’re done.”

“You’ve destroyed chain of custody,” Watson spoke up immediately.

“So paddle my behind. You want the leaf or not?”

“It just doesn’t make sense,” Kaplan was saying, still looking troubled. “On the one hand, the snake. Seems to indicate something off the business-as-usual map. On the other hand, all you really have in common is a letter to the editor written six months ago. Otherwise… it’s been three years between bodies and this is the wrong state for your man. Could be related. Or your caller could just be some asshole jerking your chain, and this body a matter of chance. You got an equal shot of going either way.”