“Unlike you, I have to be on site. I want to get a feel for the target.”
“Targets.”
“That bothers me,” Gant said as he walked onto the beach, Golden reluctantly following. “Did you find much evidence in your data gathering of a team of killers?”
“There have occasionally been pairs of killers,” Golden said. “The DC snipers. The Hillside Stranglers — Bianchi and Buono. Even cases of a small team, from two to five people.”
Gant came to a halt next to piece of PVC pipe stuck upright in the sand, the only way the police had been able to mark the site of the murder. The tide was out, but according to the report, there would have been about a foot of water at this spot when the girl was killed.
Golden obviously took his silence as an indication she was to continue. “Such a team is always led by a central figure who has a very specific fantasy. This fantasy gives energy to the other members of the team and they channel themselves to serve him. Often, without this central figure, the others would probably never cross the line into criminal activity. However, they all have psychotic traits to some degree and while some claim, after they get caught, that they were unwilling accomplices, the reality is that it is very difficult to coerce someone into murder.”
“That’s why we have armies,” Gant noted. “Sanctioned killing.”
Golden nodded. “Yes. It’s a delicate and controversial subject that occasionally came up during my work at Fort Bragg. Because technically speaking, often we were looking for people who could kill on command. Without remorse or hesitation, yet also follow orders.”
“Someone like me,” Gant said.
That silenced Golden for the moment.
Gant intruded into the silence. “You said fantasy. There’s been no evidence of anything sexual with any of the victims.”
“A fantasy doesn’t have to be sexual,” Golden said. “It’s an unreal framework someone makes up in their mind to allow them to justify whatever it is they’re doing.”
“I assume revenge can be a framework then?”
“One of the strongest.”
A car door slammed and Gant looked inland to see Padgett walking toward them. The Cellar’s forensic expert had already been on scene for several hours and participated in the autopsy on the Roberts girl, right after leaving the autopsy on the girl they had found chained to the tree. He also had been in contact with the Cellar, gathering more data. He had deep bags under his eyes.
“Anything significant from the Caulkins girl?” Gant asked him.
“Dehydration was the cause of death, as I said at the scene,” Padgett said. “The self-injury to the foot didn’t help things. There were nuts and grass in her stomach, undigested. Toxicology was interesting. She’d been drugged with something easily available so that’s not a lead. I only found trace amounts so her system had mostly flushed it, but I think that’s how our target was able to transport her from the site where she was kidnapped.”
“What do you have on this one?” Gant asked.
Padgett wiped his forehead with an already sopping handkerchief. “Drowned. Salt water in the lungs.”
Gant glanced at the PVC pipe. Even at high tide it wouldn’t have been very deep. “In one foot of water?”
“She was held down by the neck and back of the head,” Padgett said. “Strange thing, though. There were marks on her neck and head, but not like any I’ve ever seen before.” He reached into the thin file folder he was carrying and pulled out a photo.
Gant looked at the close-up of the girl’s neck, ignoring the unseeing eyes that stared at him from the glossy paper. The bruises were spaced where fingers would go. Then the next photo showed the back of her skull, the hair shaved off. The same, evenly spaced marks. “What’s strange about them?” He shifted, showing the picture to Golden who was close by his side. Too close. Gant caught a whiff of some fragrance, he wasn’t sure what it was.
“After the photo was taken,” Padgett said, “we cut and checked the flesh underneath. Either someone with extremely powerful hands or—“ he shrugged—“some sort of hand-like device was used, in order to make the extreme damage we saw. There were hairline fractures in her skull.”
“Prostheses?” Gant asked. Ever since the mess in Iraq, more and more troops were coming back missing pieces and parts. Body armor was effective in keeping people alive, but only went so far.
Padgett nodded. “I should have thought of that. That would explain it.”
“So we’re looking for a killer who is possibly missing a hand,” Golden said.
“And another whose face is scarred,” Gant added, remembering the report from the Svoboda killing. He tried to think of what would cause the scarring the boy at the daycare center had reported, but the details were too vague and the possible ways of getting wounded on the modern battlefield too wide. “Any sign of sexual assault?” Gant asked, even though the initial report had been negative. Golden’s comment about fantasies still bothered him.
“None. But whoever held her head underwater pushed her so hard into the sand, we found abrasions on her eyes and sand in her mouth and lungs. She inhaled quite a bit of sand along with seawater.”
“God,” Golden whispered. “That’s a lot of anger.”
“Add it to your database,” Gant said dryly.
“And what did you add to your database?” Golden snapped. She spread her arms. “Why did we come here?”
“It’s the scene of the freshest kill,” Gant said. “One-Hand was here less than twenty-four hours ago. And I don’t think this spot was chosen randomly. The cache site was specifically scouted and picked.”
“One-Hand?”
“We need to start getting this mission categorized,” Gant said. “We’ve got two, possibly three targets. One-Hand and Scar-Face for certain. And there’s probably another.”
“Why do you think that?” Padgett asked, sliding the photo back in the folder.
“If Emily Cranston is bait,” Gant said, “then someone’s watching her. So let’s accept there’s a third and call him the Watcher.” A team of three. Gant nodded to himself. He’d have to run that by the Cellar’s own database of covert operations. Small enough to get in and out of places without being noticed, large enough to do damage. Off the top of his head, Gant figured it had been either a reconnaissance or sniper team. He noted that the parking lot of the Florabama was already filling up with a late afternoon crowd.
“Popular place,” Golden said, following his gaze.
“Life goes on,” Gant said. It was one of the reasons he lived on Pritchards Island: the contrast of coming back from a place of violence such as Iraq to the ‘normalcy’ of day to day living in America had always been too jarring for him.
Padgett was looking at the police report. “And One-Hand was able to do this and no one, according to the police report, remembers seeing him. Roberts just disappeared into the crowd and then ended up here. She wasn’t dragged out kicking and screaming.”
“So she went willingly,” Golden said.
“Why would she do that?” Gant asked. “Go off with a stranger?”
Golden looked at him. “She was on Spring Break. She probably felt like she was on top of the world and could do whatever she wanted. Also the crowd probably gave her a false sense of security. We think there’s safety in numbers when it’s often the exact opposite.”
Gant agreed with that: which was why he preferred working alone, but he didn’t think this was the time to bring that up.
“Any drugs in her system?” Golden asked Padgett.
He nodded. “Marijuana. Her blood alcohol was high. One point two.”
“Another reason she went off with a stranger,” Golden said.
“Are we sure it was a stranger?” Gant asked. “Maybe it was somebody she knew. Her father was CIA. Could have been someone she met through her father.”