Lisa Gardner - Say Goodbye

First day the swelling went down, I slept for four consecutive hours. I told Henrietta she was brilliant. And I knew at that moment, I was going to survive. I was going to win. Henrietta had saved me.

Then one day I saw him. He was playing basketball in the park. Undersized, but wiry. The scrawny little kid who’s learned to compensate for his lack of height by moving fast. He went for a layup, and I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye. For a moment, I had a sense of déjà vu so strong I couldn’t breathe.

The boy looked exactly like me. Twenty years ago. When I had had a name. When I had had a family. When I had had a future.

And I knew what I must do.

You think you’re safe. You think you’re middle-class, suburban, the right car, the nice home. You think bad things happen to other people-maybe the poor schmucks in trailer parks where the ratio of kids to registered sex offenders can be as low as four to one.

But not to you, never to you. You’re too good for this.

Do you own a computer? Because if you do, I am in your child’s bedroom.

Do you have an online personal profile? Because if you do, I know your child’s name, pet, and favorite hobbies.

Do you have a webcam? Because if you do, I’m right now convincing your child to take off his or her shirt in return for fifty bucks. Just a shirt. What can it hurt? Come on, it’s fifty bucks.

Listen to me. I am the Burgerman.

And I’m coming for you.

KIMBERLY DIDN’T SEE ANYTHING AT FIRST. THEN THE wind blew and she caught the shape, swaying gently fifteen feet above her head, almost like a pinecone, except the size was much too large.

“Rachel! Harold!” she cried out excitedly. “Everyone, look up! The bodies are in the trees! They’re hanging from the tree limbs.”

She was vaguely aware of other people, leaping to their feet with startled exclamations, and stumbling back to regard the branches overhead. Mostly she kept her eyes on a long, oblong shape swathed in a mottled green and brown fabric. Now she could make out the narrow tip of bound feet, moving up to the wider expanse of shoulders, the rounded shape of a head. It looked like an Egyptian mummy, wrapped in cloth and rope, then suspended for all eternity.

The wind blew again, the long, narrow form rocking with an eerie quiet that prickled the skin of her forearms.

“What the hell,” Sal whispered beside her. Behind them came another shout, then another, as others started to spot the macabre forms dangling above their heads.

“He thinks he’s a spider, remember?” Kimberly murmured. “So he’s wrapped them in a cocoon, suspended them from his web. My God, no wonder no one ever found them. Whoever thinks to look up?”

“Silk,” Quincy supplied behind them. “Old Army parachutes, that would be my guess. Silk because it’s fitting, Army camouflage because it blends better with the trees.”

“Nylon,” Kimberly stated. “Aaron told me. It’s a practical concern-silk is fragile, yielding to total decay in under thirty-five months. Same with wool. Cotton does slightly better, making it to forty-eight months, while nylon shows no sign of deterioration even after four years. It’s the toughest fabric around.”

Her father was regarding her with a small smile. “I stand corrected. Nice work, Agent.”

“Well, don’t get all mushy on me yet. I still have no idea how we’re going to get the corpses down.”

Harold had returned to the center of the clearing. Rachel, too. Kimberly and Sal went to meet them, huddling for a powwow, while the deputies and ERT members continued to search the branches overhead.

“We’re up to ten bodies and counting,” Harold exclaimed. “I’m sticking a yellow flag at the base of every tree, on the side where the body is hung.”

“We’ll need the Total Station,” Rachel declared, chewing her lower lip as she worked through the logistics of their next moves. “Only way to graph a crime scene that’s literally in midair. I’ll call down, have Jorge and Louise bring it up. We’ll need a survey marker, however, as our reference point. Harold?”

“I can check the USGS map in my pack. Otherwise, the command post can access the website for the nearest marker. I’m sure it’s somewhere fairly accessible; the USGS folks don’t like traipsing through the underbrush any more than the rest of us.”

“Okay. We’ll bring up the Total Station, shoot the reference point, then start by graphing the site as a whole, before diagramming each body as a mini scene. Speaking of which, we’ll need rolls of butcher paper, body bags, evidence bags for the rope, and litters to get the bodies off the mountain. We should also put a call in to the ME’s office, so they can arrange transport. Let’s see, that leaves us with…generator, floodlights… Can I get a Green Gator up that trail we just hiked?”

“No,” Harold said.

“Different path?”

“No.”

“Shit.” Rachel went back to chewing her bottom lip. “I’m activating two more teams. If hiking’s the only way we’re gonna get this done, we need more legs-”

“Hey, hey, HEY!” came a fresh cry from deep in the woods. “I got movement. I swear to God-this one’s alive .”

“Holy crap!” Rachel said, then they all started to run.

“We need a ladder,” one of the deputies was declaring.

“No, wait, I can shoot it down,” declared another.

Rachel muscled her way between the two uniforms, standing staunchly beneath a thick fir tree. “Back away. Bodies are my business.”

The deputies backed away.

Rachel stood with her hands on her hips, studying the wrapped shape overhead. Kimberly spotted the activity the same time her team leader did. A bulge down low. Then a faint ripple up high.

It sent a fresh chill up her neck and she could tell from the uneasy look on Rachel’s face that the team leader didn’t think the body was alive, either.

“Harold?” Rachel asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Harold said, his voice as subdued as Kimberly had ever heard it.

“We have to check,” Rachel murmured. “Just in case. You never know.” But she didn’t sound happy about it. She sounded deeply concerned.

The team leader took a deep breath. “All right, we lay down tarp, right over here.” She delineated an area with her finger, roughly below the dangling cocoon. “We’ll need to lower the form onto the tarp, then we can safely unwrap it. Harold?”

He had wandered over to the trunk of the tree, which he was now skimming with his fingers. “See these holes? At regular intervals? I’m thinking the subject has spiked shoes, maybe like the kind worn by utility workers to climb telephone poles. He used them to ascend the tree to throw the rope over the higher branches. Then he could return below and pull on the end of the rope. Would take a fair amount of muscle, but then again, there might be some kind of pulley system at the top. Or, he had help. Or both.”

“Can you tell what kind of rope?” Rachel wanted to know.

“Let’s find out.” Harold dug out a pair of binoculars and started to adjust them. “Looks like…nylon. Holy crap! The whole thing’s dancing now. Rachel, I don’t think…”

“I know, I know. But we gotta be sure, Harold. It’s the only way.”