Heather Graham - Picture Me Dead

The jogger, he noted, was still on the scene. She was a middle-aged woman with a pretty, too-skinny face, a sweatband around her forehead, and the typical shorts, T-shirt and sneakers found among those who chose the quiet paths out in the farm district for their morning rituals. She was badly shaken by her discovery. He could hear her sobbing softly, speaking to the officers, who had supplied her with a blanket and hot coffee.

“My God, I was just running and then…there she was. I saw her…and it was so dark, I didn’t even realize at first. And so I doubled back. And I was so frightened I could barely punch the numbers into my cell phone. Thank God for cell phones! I know now that I’ll never go out jogging when it isn’t full light again. I don’t care if I have to learn to run around my own living room, I’ll never, never come out like that again. It’s so terrifying. But then, of course…she was just left on the road, right? She might not have been killed there, right?”

Jake could hear one of the uniformed officers telling her that they had no facts right then, but that she didn’t need to worry, one of the officers would get her back home.

Lady, you shouldn’t go out jogging along this path alone before the sun is up in any way, shape or form, Jake thought. They were in what most people in the county considered to be the country. Far south in Miami-Dade, an area where the old encroached on the new, where waterways connected to the deep river of grass that was Everglades. There was good land out here. Some people kept large tracts with beautiful homes, and some had acreage where they grew strawberries, tomatoes and other produce.

Good earth for growing intermingled with sawgrass, deep dark muck and tangled trees.

Much of the land, such as this immediate area, was county owned. It was often heavily wooded, and where there weren’t actually trees, the foliage was thick and dense.

A good place to dispose of human remains, a place where nature could inflict tremendous damage on a corpse and render many of the clues it might have given up hard to discern, even destroy them. Over the years, a number of criminals had tried to dispose of bodies and evidence on land much like this. And, God knew, many of them had succeeded.

The jogger was just the poor civilian who had happened upon the physical remnants of a brutal crime. There would be little, if anything, she could tell him. Still, he would speak with her himself for a moment. Later.

For now…

The victim.

“Where’s the M.E.?” he asked.

“Right over there, talking with Pentillo, who was first officer on the scene. The M.E. is Tristan Gannet. Mandy’s taking the last of the pictures he requested right now.”

“Good. I’m glad we’ve got Gannet and Nightingale.”

Mandy Nightingale, one of their best photographers, was snapping photos as they carefully approached the position of the body.

“Hi, Jake,” she said, acknowledging his arrival with a quick nod before she snapped another photo.

“Mandy, good to see you here.”

They had worked together many times. She was thin as a wraith, with steel gray, close-cropped hair, and a strong, Native-American facial structure that defied age entirely. She was quick and efficient, careful to snap a crime scene in its entirety, to make sure that she not only got excellent photographs of the body but of the surrounding elements as well.

“Thanks, Jake. I’ll be out of your way in just a second.”

“Take your time, Mandy,” he told her. “There’s no hurry for this one now.”

“I think I’ve gotten just about everything I can and everything that Dr. Gannet specified,” she assured them, squatting low to focus on a last photograph. “I’ll be over with Pentillo, hanging around ’til the M.E. moves the body and I can take the rest of the shots,” she told them.

“Thanks, Mandy.”

She nodded. “I think Dr. Gannet knows you’re here. I’ll send him right over.”

Jake hunkered down on the balls of his feet to study the body in the position in which it had been found.

He didn’t need the medical examiner to tell him that the woman had been dead for some time. She had been exposed to the elements and to the small animals that called the area home. There were places where she was down to no more than bone, and places where flesh clung precariously to the body. It appeared that she had been left without clothing of any kind. A quick look, using his pen to shift fallen foliage for a better view, showed that unfortunately the hands had decomposed almost fully, as had much of the face.

Another murder in the county. It happened. Put millions of people together, and murder happened.

But he knew exactly why Martin had been so tense when he had called him, urging him to reach the scene as quickly as possible.

The face, though maintaining few of the qualities that marked men and women as human, had apparently not taken the same abuse as the hands.

And it was apparent that what had once been the ears had been slashed.

A chill crept through him, along with a bitterness he could actually taste.

Déjà vu.

Peter Bordon, also known as Papa Pierre, had been locked up for a long time now. Five years. But even a seconds-long, cursory inspection of this body was eerily reminiscent of the victims that had been discovered during Bordon’s reign as leader of the bizarre cult called People for Principle.

“Yes, he’s still in prison,” Martin said, reading his partner’s mind.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. I called and checked the moment I saw the body, right after I called you,” Martin said. “He’s in prison—whether it really matters or not, that’s where he is.”

“Sorry,” Jake murmured. He couldn’t quite help having a tense attitude on this one. Peter Bordon had garnered a group around him as if he had been a true modern-day prophet. He had preached about community, working for the benefit of all mankind and giving up the luxuries of a sinful life. For most of his followers, that had meant donating everything they had ever worked for to Bordon’s own bank account.

Three of his alleged followers had wound up dead. Discovered in fields and canals.

With their ears slashed.

No weapons had ever been found. No real leads had ever been discovered. Bordon had been the only suspect, but there had been nothing whatsoever to prove he might be guilty. The police had managed to obtain a search warrant for his holdings, but nothing had been found except for some illegal financial activity, which in the end had been enough to earn him jail time.

Late one night, an itinerant man had come bursting into one of the small precinct stations, confessing to the murders.

While homicide was being notified of his arrival and confession, the young man had hanged himself with his belt in his cell.

And that should have been it.

But Jake and most of his task force hadn’t believed that one crazed man had been responsible for a series of killings that had been so meticulously carried out. The case had never been officially closed, but with the death of the man who had confessed, the imprisonment of Bordon based on what they were able to bring into court, and the fact that no more bodies had been discovered, they had been forced to move on to new investigations.

Jake had never been satisfied, though. For him, it had never ended.

They hadn’t gotten Bordon on murder.

Bordon had been involved. He was sure of it. But there was no proof. Jake had never thought that Bordon had physically carried out the crimes; they had been done at his command.

Now he was in prison, but there was no reason in hell why he couldn’t be calling the shots from his cell.

Bordon had a power far greater than strength or any material weapon. He had the ability to manipulate men and women. To get into their minds.