LITMIR.BIZ

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them, as if they were pets. These were food animals, after all. It would be a bad idea to get very attached to any of them individually.

      Today he wanted to turn the yearling calves into the roadside pasture. The field they were in now was eaten down short, and the good legume and grass pasture down by the road was ready for grazing.

      Just as he swung wide gate open, he noticed something odd on the far side of the pasture. It looked like some kind of tangle or bundle over near the road.

      He grumbled aloud …

      “Whatever it is, it probably isn’t good.”

      He slipped through the opening and pushed the gate shut again, leaving the yearlings where they were. He didn’t want to turn his stock into this field until he found out what that strange object was.

      As he strode across the field, he grew more puzzled. It looked like a huge wad of barbed wire hanging from a fence post. Had a roll of the stuff bounced off of someone’s truck and wound up there somehow?

      But as he walked closer to it, he saw that it wasn’t a new roll. It was a tangle of old wire, wrapped in all directions.

      It didn’t make any sense.

      When he reached the bundle and stared into it, he realized that something was inside.

      He leaned toward it, peered closely, and felt a sudden cold chill of terror.

      “Holy hell!” he yelled, jumping backward.

      But maybe he was only imagining things. He forced himself to look again.

      There it was—a woman’s face, pale and wounded, contorted in agony.

      He grabbed the wire to pull it off her, but quickly stopped himself.

      It’s no use, he realized. She’s dead.

      He staggered over to next fencepost, leaned on it, and retched violently.

      Pull yourself together, he told himself.

      He had to call the police—right now.

      He staggered away and broke into a run toward his house.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      Special Agent Jake Crivaro sat bolt upright when his office phone rang.

      Things had been too quiet at Quantico since he got back yesterday.

      Now his gut told him instantly …

      It’s a new case.

      Sure enough, as soon as he picked up the phone, he heard the sonorous voice of Special Agent in Charge Erik Lehl …

      “Crivaro, I need you in my office right now.”

      “Right away, sir,” Crivaro said.

      He hung up the phone and grabbed his go bag, which he always kept at the ready. Agent Lehl was being even more laconic than usual, which surely meant urgent business. Crivaro was sure that he would be traveling somewhere soon—probably within the hour.

      He felt his heart pumping just a little faster as he hurried down the hall. It was a good feeling. After a 10-week stint serving as a mentor for the FBI’s Honors Internship Program, this was a welcome return to normality.

      During the first few days of the summer program he’d been pulled away by a murder case—the notorious “Clown Killer.” After that he’d settled in to the more mundane work of mentoring just one of the interns—a talented but exasperating kid named Riley Sweeney, who had shown startling brilliance helping him on the case.

      Even so, the program had passed too slowly for his taste. He wasn’t used to spending such a long period out of the field.

      When Jake walked into Lehl’s office, the lanky man rose up from his chair to greet him. Erik Lehl was so tall that he barely seemed to fit into any space he occupied. Other agents said that he looked like he was wearing stilts. He looked more to Jake as though he were made out of stilts—an awkwardly assembled assortment of lengths of lumber that somehow never seemed to be perfectly coordinated in their movements. But the man had been a crack agent and had earned his position at the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.

      “Don’t make yourself comfortable, Crivaro,” Lehl said. “You’re leaving right away.”

      Jake obediently stayed on his feet.

      Lehl looked at a manila folder that he was holding and heaved a grim sigh. Jake had long since observed Lehl’s tendency to take every case extremely seriously—even personally, as if he felt directly insulted by any sort of monstrous criminality.

      Not surprisingly, Jake couldn’t remember ever finding Lehl in a cheerful mood.

      After all …

      Monsters are our business.

      And Jake knew that Lehl wouldn’t be assigning him to this particular case if it weren’t unusually heinous. Jake was something of a specialist in cases that defied human imagination.

      Lehl handed the manila folder to Jake and said, “We’ve got a really ugly situation in West Virginia. Have a look.”

      Jake opened the folder and saw a black-and-white photo of a weird bundle held together by duct tape and barbed wire. The bundle was dangling against a fence post. It took a moment for Jake to realize that the bundle had a face and hands—that it was in fact a human being and obviously dead.

      Jake inhaled sharply.

      Even for him, this was a uniquely grisly sight.

      Lehl explained, “The photo was taken about a month ago. The body of a beauty parlor worker named Alice Gibson was found bound up with barbed wire and hanging from a fence post on a rural road near Hyland, West Virginia.”

      “Pretty nasty stuff,” Jake said. “How are the local cops handling it?”

      “They have a suspect in custody,” Lehl said.

      Jake’s eyes widened with surprise.

      He asked, “So what makes this an FBI case?”

      Lehl said, “We just got a call from the chief of police in Dighton, a town near Hyland. Another bundled-up body like this was found just this morning, hanging from a fence post on a road outside of town.”

      Jake was starting to understand. Being in a jail cell at the time of the second murder gave the suspect a pretty good alibi. And now things looked like a serial killer was just getting started.

      Lehl continued, “I’ve given orders that the current crime scene not be disturbed. So you need to get there ASAP. It would be a four-hour drive across the mountains, so I’ve got a helicopter waiting for you on the airstrip.”

      Jake was just turning to leave the office when Lehl added …

      “Do you want me to assign you a partner?”

      Jake turned and looked at Lehl. Somehow, he hadn’t expected the question.

      “I don’t need a partner,” Jake said. “But I’ll need a forensics team. The cops in rural West Virginia aren’t going to know how to get a good reading on the scene.”

      Lehl nodded and said, “I’ll get the team together right now. They’ll fly out with you.”

      Just as Jake was stepping out the door, Lehl said …

      “Agent Crivaro, sooner or later you’re going to need another regular partner.”

      Jake shrugged awkwardly and said, “If you say so, sir.”

      With a hint of a growl in his voice, Lehl said. “I do say so. It’s about time for you to learn to play nice with others.”

      Jake stared at him with surprise. It was rare for the taciturn Erik Lehl to say anything the least bit snide.

      I guess he really means it, Jake realized.

      Without another word, Jake left the office and headed through the building. As he walked briskly along, he thought about what Lehl had said about him getting a new partner. Jake was well-known

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