LITMIR.BIZ

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deserved it. He’d gotten fired for smearing the fingerprints on a piece of vital evidence in the so-called “Matchbook Killer” case. As a consequence, the case had gone cold—and there was little that Jake hated more than cold cases.

      On the Clown Killer case, Jake had worked with a DC agent named Mark McCune. McCune hadn’t been as bad as Bollinger, but he’d made stupid mistakes and thought too highly of himself for Jake’s taste. Jake was glad that their partnership had been only for that one case and that McCune remained in DC.

      As he stepped onto the tarmac where the helicopter waited, he thought about someone else he’d worked with recently …

      Riley Sweeney.

      He’d been impressed with her ever since she’d been a psych student who had helped him solve a serial case at Lanton University. When she’d graduated, he’d pulled strings and stirred up the ire of some his colleagues to get her into the Honors Internship Program. Perhaps against his own better judgment, he’d enlisted her help on the Clown Killer case.

      She’d done some really brilliant work. She’d also made some really outrageous mistakes. And she was a long way from learning how to obey orders, but he’d only known a handful of even seasoned agents with such powerful intuitions.

      One of those was himself.

      As Jake stooped below the spinning propeller blades and climbed up into the helicopter, he saw the four-man forensic team trotting across the tarmac. Then the forensics guys climbed into the chopper, which took to the air.

      It seemed silly to be thinking of Riley Sweeney right now. Quantico was a huge base, and even though she was at the FBI Academy, their paths weren’t likely to cross again.

      Jake opened the folder to read over the police report.

*

      After the helicopter cleared the Appalachian mountain ranges, it passed over rolling meadows dotted with Black Angus cattle. As the chopper descended, Jake could see where police vehicles had blocked off a stretch of gravel road to keep onlookers away from the crime scene.

      The helicopter set down in grassy pasture. Jake and the forensics team climbed out of the vehicle and headed over toward a small group of uniformed people and several official vehicles.

      The cops and the medical examiner’s team were standing on both sides of a barbed wire fence that ran along the road at the edge of the pasture. Jake could see what looked like a snarled bundle of wire hanging from a fencepost.

      A short, sturdy-looking man of about Jake’s height and build stepped forward to greet him.

      “I’m Graham Messenger, the chief of police here in Dighton,” he said, shaking hands with Jake. “We’ve had ourselves a couple of pretty awful incidents, at least for these parts. Let me show you.”

      The chief led the way to a fence post and, sure enough, a weird bundle was hanging from the post, all held together with duct tape and barbed wire. Again Jake was able spot a face and hands indicating that the bundle was actually a human being.

      Messenger said, “I guess you already know about Alice Gibson, the earlier victim over near Hyland. This looks like the same damn thing all over again. The victim this time is Hope Nelson.”

      Crivaro said, “Was she reported missing before the body was found?”

      “Yeah, I’m afraid so,” Messenger said, pointing pointed toward a stunned-looking middle-aged man standing near one of the vehicles. “Hope was married to Mason Nelson over there—the town mayor. She was working in their local farm supply store last night, but she didn’t come home when Mason expected. He called me in the middle of the night about it, sounding pretty alarmed.”

      The police chief shrugged guiltily.

      “Well, I’m kind of used to folks going missing for a spell, then turning up again. I told Mason I’d look into in today if she didn’t turn up. I had no idea …”

      Messenger’s voice trailed off. Then he sighed and shook his head and added …

      “The Nelsons own a lot of property in Dighton. They’ve always been good, respectable folks. Poor Hope didn’t deserve this. But then, I don’t reckon anybody does.”

      Another man stepped toward them. He had a long, aged face, white hair, and a bushy old-fashioned mustache. Chief Messenger introduced him as Hamish Cross, the county’s chief medical examiner. Chewing on a weed, Cross seemed relaxed and mildly curious about what was going on.

      He asked Jake, “Ever seen anything like this before?”

      Jake didn’t reply. The answer, of course, was no.

      Jake stooped down beside the bundle and examined it closely.

      He said to Cross, “I assume you worked on the earlier murder.”

      Cross nodded and stooped down beside Jake and twirled the weed in his mouth.

      “That I did,” Cross said. “And this one’s pretty near identical. She didn’t die here, that much is certain. She was abducted, bound up first with duct tape and then with barbed wire, and bled slowly to death. Either that or she suffocated first. Bound up tight like that, she’d hardly have been able to breathe at all. All that happened somewhere else—there’s no sign of bleeding here.”

      Jake could see that the face and hands were almost as white as paper, and they glistened in the late morning sunlight like pieces of china. The woman simply didn’t look real to Jake, but more like some kind of sick, grotesque sculpture.

      A few flies had gathered around the body. They kept landing, roaming around, then flying away again. They looked like they didn’t know what to do with this mysterious object.

      Jake rose to his feet and asked Chief Messenger, “Who found the body?”

      As if in reply, Jake heard a man’s voice calling out …

      “What the hell’s going on here? How much longer is this going to take?”

      Jake turned and saw a longhaired man with a scraggly beard coming toward them. He looked wild-eyed with anger, and his voice was shaking and shrill.

      He yelled, “When the hell are you taking this—this thing away? This is a huge inconvenience. I’ve had to keep my cattle in an overgrazed pasture because of all this. I’ve got lots of work to do today. How much longer is this going to take?”

      Jake turned to Hamish Cross and said quietly …

      “You can take the body away any time now.”

      Cross nodded and gave orders to his team. Then he led the angry man away and spoke to him quietly, apparently calming him down.

      Chief Messenger explained to Jake …

      “That’s Guy Dafoe, who owns this property. He’s an organic farmer—our local hippie, I guess you might say. He hasn’t been around for very long. It turns out this area is good for raising grass-fed organic beef. Organic farming’s been a real boost to the local economy.”

      The chief’s cellphone rang and he took the call. He listened for a moment, then said to Jake …

      “This is Dave Tallhamer, the sheriff over in Hyland. You may have heard there’s a suspect in custody for the first murder—Philip Cardin. He’s the victim’s ex-husband, and a bad sort who didn’t have an alibi at the time. Tallhamer thought he had him dead to rights. But I guess this new murder changes things, doesn’t it? Dave wants to know if he should let the guy go.”

      Jake thought for a moment, then said …

      “Not until I’ve had a chance to talk to him.”

      Chief Messenger squinted curiously and said, “Uh, doesn’t being locked in a jail cell when this woman was killed pretty much let him off the hook?”

      Jake suppressed a sigh of impatience.

      He repeated simply, “I’ll want to talk to him.”

      Messenger nodded and got back on the phone with the sheriff.

      Jake didn’t want to go

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