Lisa Gardner - The killing hour

Nora Ray stared at Rainie with hard eyes. “She wasn’t your sister.”

Rainie sighed. “So what are you going to do now, Nora Ray?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you believe Dr. Ennunzio’s story?”

“Do you?” asked the girl.

“I’m thinking about it. If we turn you loose, are you going to attack Dr. Ennunzio again?”

“I don’t know.” Her overbright gaze swung to Ennunzio. “So maybe it was your brother instead of you. You should still be ashamed of yourself! You’re an FBI agent, you’re supposed to be protecting people. Instead, you knew something about a killer and you said nothing.”

“I had nothing to add, not a name, not a location-”

“You knew his past!”

“I didn’t know his present. All I could do was watch and wait. And I swear, the minute I saw my brother’s note suddenly resurface in a Virginia paper, I mailed a copy to the GBI. I wanted Special Agent McCormack involved. I did everything in my power to get the police’s attention. Surely that must count for something-”

“Three girls are dead,” Nora Ray spat out. “You tell me how valuable your efforts have been.”

“If I could’ve been sure…” Ennunzio murmured.

“Coward,” Nora Ray countered savagely and Ennunzio finally shut up.

Quincy took a deep breath. He regarded Rainie, Mac, and Kimberly. “So where does this leave us?”

“Still short one killer and still short one victim,” Mac said. “Now we’ve got motive, but that’s only going to help us at trial. Bottom line is that it’s the middle of the night, scary hot, and another girl’s still out there. So cough it up, Ennunzio. He’s your brother. Start thinking like him.”

The forensic linguist, however, merely shook his head. “I understood some of the clues in the beginning, only because I’ve also spent a lot of time outdoors. But the evidence you’re seeing now-water samples, sediment, pollen. That’s way over my head. You need the experts.”

“Doesn’t your brother have any favorite places?”

“We grew up dirt poor in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The only favorite places we knew were the ones we could walk to.”

“You knew the cave.”

“Because I used to be into caving. And of all the places Frank’s chosen, that’s been the most local.”

“So we should look at the Appalachian Mountains, stay in the area,” Rainie spoke up.

Both Mac and Ennunzio, however, were shaking their heads.

“My brother’s methodology may be influenced by the past,” Ennunzio told them, “perhaps even triggered by the trauma of heat spells, but the places themselves aren’t tied to our family. I didn’t even know he lived in Georgia.”

“Ennunzio’s right,” Mac said. “Whatever hang-ups got this guy started, he’s moved beyond them now. He’s sticking to his game plan, and that means diversity. Wherever we are now, the last girl will be the farthest point away.”

“We need Ray’s team,” Kimberly said.

“I’ll go check on them,” Mac said.

But in the end, he didn’t have to. Ray met him halfway across the parking lot, already on his way to Mac’s room.

“We have a winner,” the USGS worker said excitedly. “Lloyd’s soil samples turned out to contain three kinds of pollen from three types of trees-bald cypress, tupelo gum, and red maple-while the crushed plant matter is actually a sorely abused log fern. The shoes were also covered in peat moss. Which could only mean…”

“We’re going to DisneyLand?”

“Better. The Dismal Swamp.”

Four A.M., the group made their decision to divide and conquer. Quincy, as elder statesman, once more inherited the responsibility of contacting the official FBI case team. He and Rainie also assumed watch over Nora Ray, whom nobody trusted alone.

The USGS team members were packing up their gear and loading up their vehicles. According to Kathy Levine’s debriefing, the Dismal Swamp was six hundred square miles of bugs, poisonous snakes, black bears, and bobcats. Trees grew to stupendous sizes, while a dense underbrush of brier bushes and wild vines made sections of the swamp virtually impassable.

They needed water. They needed insect repellent. They needed machetes. In other words, they needed all the help they could get.

Mac and Kimberly had Ennunzio in the back of their car. They would follow Ray’s team to the site. That gave them seven people to search an area that had daunted even George Washington. While the sun once again peeked over the horizon, and the mosquitoes started to swarm.

“Ready?” Mac asked Kimberly as he climbed into the car.

“Ready as I’m gonna get.”

His gaze rested on Ennunzio in the rearview mirror. The agent was wearily rubbing his head; he looked like he had just aged twenty years. “Why didn’t they arrest your brother after the fire?” Mac asked crisply.

“I don’t think they ever found him.”

“Did you tell anyone what happened?”

“Of course.”

“Because you never hold back the truth.”

“I’m a federal agent,” Ennunzio said curtly. “I know what needs to be done.”

“Good, because finding this next girl is only half the battle. After that we go after your brother, and we don’t stop until we’ve found him.”

“He’ll never surrender. He’s not the type to spend the rest of his life in a cage.”

“Then you’d better be prepared,” Mac said grimly, “because we’re not the types to let him go.”

Dismal Swamp, Virginia

6:33 A . M .

Temperature: 96 degrees

HER MOTHER WAS YELLING AT HER. “I sent you to college for an education. So you could make something of yourself. Well, you’ve certainly made something, now haven’t you?”

Tina yelled back. “Woman, bring me a goddamn glass of water. And get those tuxedoed waiters out of here.”

Then she sat down and watched the blue butterfly.

Water. Lakes. Ice-cold streams. Potato chips. Oh, she was hot, hot, hot. Skin on fire. She longed to peel it off in strips. Peel down to the bone and roll in the muck. Wouldn’t that feel good?

The flesh on her forearm squirmed. She watched bloody sores ripple and ooze. Maggots. Horrible little white worms. Writhing under her flesh, feasting on meat. She should pull them out and pop them in her mouth. Would they taste like chicken?

Pretty blue butterfly. How it glided along the air. Dancing up, up, and away. She longed to dance like that. To dance and glide and soar. To drift off to the comforting shade of a giant beech tree… or lake… or cool mountain stream.

Itched. Her skin itched and itched. She scratched and scratched. Didn’t make a difference. Hot, hot, hot. So thirsty. Sun, coming up. Going to burn, burn, burn. She would cry, but no moisture left. She slathered on the mud, flattened out puddles and sought desperately to wet her tongue.

Her mother was hollering at her again. Now look at what you’ve done . She didn’t have the strength to yell back.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Then she closed her eyes. She dreamt of deep Minnesotan winters. She dreamt of her mother holding out her arms to her. And she prayed the end would happen quick.

It took over two hours to drive due east to the swamp. The visitors’ entrance was in North Carolina on the east side. Operating under the assumption that the killer would stick to the Virginian playing field, however, Kathy Levine led their little caravan to a hiking entrance in Virginia, on the west side. All three vehicles pulled into the dirt parking lot and Kathy, the official search-and-rescue member of their party, assumed command. First, she handed out whistles.

“Remember, three blasts signifies the international call for distress. Get in trouble, stay put, blow away, and we’ll find you.”