Lisa Gardner - The killing hour

“But the path is solid.”

“Yes. Apparently, nothing hard-packs soil quite like the daily grind of a few hundred pounding Marine and FBI trainees. The path is hard as a rock. It would take more than a two-hundred-pound person, plus a hundred-pound body, to dent it now.”

Kaplan frowned at them both, still obviously confused. “I already said there weren’t any footprints. We looked.”

Quincy wanted to sigh again. He so preferred working with Rainie, who was now regarding the NCIS special agent with a fresh level of annoyance.

“If you simply walked off the road into the woods around here, what would happen?”

“The ground is still soft; you’d leave a footprint.”

“So to a casual visitor, the woods are marshy?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“And what’s thirty feet to my left?” Quincy asked crisply.

“The PT course.”

“The paved PT course.”

“Sure, the paved PT course.”

Quincy looked at him. “If you were carrying a body into the woods, wouldn’t you take the paved path? The one that offered you better footing? The one that would be guaranteed not to leave footprints, given the soft soil you see all around?”

“The wooded path has less traffic,” Kaplan said slowly. “He’s better hidden.”

“According to the ME’s report, the UNSUB probably dumped the body in the small hours of the morning. Given the late hour, the man’s already well hidden. Why take the dirt path? Why risk footprints?”

“He’s not very bright?” But Kaplan was no longer convinced.

Rainie shook her head impatiently, crossing over to them. “The UNSUB knew. He’s been on this path. He knew the ground was hard and would protect him, while the wide scope makes it less likely he’d bump the body against a tree limb or accidentally leave a scrap of fabric on a twig. Face it, Kaplan. The UNSUB isn’t some random guy. He knows this place. Hell, he’s probably run this course sometime in the last five days.”

Kaplan was clearly discouraged as they trudged back to the Academy.

“I spoke with the four Marines on duty Tuesday night,” he reported. “They had nothing out of the ordinary. No unusual vehicles, no suspicious drivers. Only thing they could think of was that it was a particularly busy night. A bunch of the National Academy students had hightailed it for air-conditioned bars, so they had cars coming and going right up until two A.M. Everyone showed proper ID, however. Nothing stood out in their minds.”

“Do they keep a log of who comes and goes?” Rainie asked, walking beside Quincy.

“No. All drivers have to show proper security passes, however. The Marine sentries may also ask for a license and the driver’s final destination.”

“What does a security pass look like?”

Kaplan gestured to Rainie’s shirt, where a white plastic card dangled from her collar. “It looks like that, except in a variety of colors. Some are blue, some are white, some yellow. Each color indicates a certain level of clearance. A yellow card indicates an unescorted guest pass, someone who’s allowed full access. We also have cards reading Escorted Guests, which means they wouldn’t be allowed back onto the base without being in the company of the proper person. That sort of thing.”

Rainie glanced down. “They don’t look that complicated to me. Couldn’t someone just swipe one?”

“You have to sign a badge in and out. And believe me, the FBI police keep tabs on that sort of thing. None of us would feel particularly good if just any Tom, Dick, or Harry could swipe a card.”

“Just asking,” Rainie said mildly.

Kaplan scowled at her anyway. Their earlier conversation had obviously wounded his ego. “You can’t steal a badge. You can’t just walk onto this base. For God’s sake, we take this kind of thing very seriously. Look, you’re probably right. It probably is an insider. Which really depresses me, though I don’t know why. If all the good guys were really good people, I wouldn’t have a job, would I?”

“That’s not an encouraging thought,” Rainie said.

“Ma’am, it’s the worst thought in the world.” He glanced at Quincy. “You know, I’ve been thinking… Given the lack of sexual assault, and that the ‘weapon,’ so to speak, was a drug, shouldn’t we be looking at women, too?”

“No,” Quincy said.

“But women are the ones who predominantly kill with poison. And the lack of sexual assault bothers me. A guy doesn’t just OD a woman and dump her body in the woods. Men are sexual predators. And did you see how this girl was dressed?”

Quincy drew up short. “The victim,” he said curtly, “was wearing a short skirt, not uncommon for this time of year. To imply that a certain manner of dress invites sexual assault-”

“That’s not what I was saying!” Kaplan interrupted immediately.

“It’s not about sex for any predator,” Quincy continued as if Kaplan hadn’t spoken. “It’s about power. We’ve had many serial killers who were not sexual-sadist predators. Berkowitz, for one, was strictly a triggerman, so to speak. He picked his victims, walked up to the car, opened fire on the couple, and walked away. Kaczynski was content to kill and maim long-distance. Even more recently, we had the Beltway Snipers, who held most of the East Coast in absolute terror by picking off victims from the trunk of their car. Murder isn’t about sex. It’s about power. And in this context, then, drugs make perfect sense, as drugs are weapons of control.”

“Besides,” Rainie spoke up, “there’s no way a woman carried a dead body half a mile into the woods. We don’t have that kind of upper-body strength.”

They finally emerged from the relative comfort of the woods. Immediately, the sun struck them like a ball-peen hammer while waves of heat shimmered above the paved road.

“Holy Lord,” Kaplan said. “And it’s not even noon.”

“It’s going to be a hot one,” Quincy murmured.

And Rainie said, “Fuck the Academy, I’m putting on shorts.”

“One last thing,” Kaplan said, holding up a hand. “Something you should both know.”

Rainie halted with an impatient sigh. Quincy waited with a far more prescient sense of something significant about to break.

“We have the tox report back on the victim. Two drugs were found in her system. A small dose of ketamine, and a significantly larger dose-no doubt lethal dose-of the benzodiazepine, Ativan. In other words…”

“Special Agent McCormack listed them both last night,” Quincy murmured.

“Yeah,” Kaplan said slowly. “McCormack knew the drugs. Now how about that?”

Quantico, Virginia

11:48 A . M .

Temperature: 95 degrees

MAC DROVE UNTIL THEY’D LEFT THE CONCRETE COLUMNS of Richmond behind them. He headed west on Interstate 64, where a towering line of dark green mountains stood out in vivid contrast to the bright blue sky and drew them steadily forward.

They stopped at Texaco for gas. Then they stopped at a Wal-Mart to cover the essentials: bug spray, first-aid kit, hiking socks, energy bars, chocolate bars, extra water bottles, and a whole case of water. Mac already had a compass, Swiss army knife, and waterproof matches in his backpack. They grabbed an extra set for Kimberly to carry, just in case.

When they returned to his rented Toyota, Mac discovered a message on his cell phone from Ray Lee Chee. The botanist, Kathy Levine, would meet them at Big Meadows Lodge in the Shenandoah National Park at one-thirty. Without a word, they started driving again.

Cities came and went. Major housing developments bloomed alongside the road, then slowly withered away. They headed deeper west, where the land opened up like an emerald sea and took Mac’s breath away.