“Where were the bodies?” Megan asked, her voice sounding unnatural. She should know better than to get emotional. But this double homicide hit her unusually hard. She should have been able to stop it. What had she done wrong? Had she missed something? Could she have been able to save the lives of these two young married lovers and their unborn child?
“Behind the facilities.” Warren led the way.
Jack was behind Megan. He put his hand on the small of her back, so lightly she wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not. She glanced over at him; looking straight ahead, he applied more pressure on her waist. She took a deep breath and pushed aside the unexpected emotion.
“Why did they park so far from the building?” Hans asked.
“Privacy,” Warren replied. “The restrooms are open twenty-four hours. Headlights from oncoming cars could be distracting. And over there, where the Hoff-mans parked, big rigs often park overnight. It’s not technically legal, but we never rouse them. I’d rather have them rested and living on the cheap than exceeding their limits.”
“Were they the only rig here last night?”
“We’re trying to find out. Probably not, there are usually a few on any given night.” He shook his head in disgust. “We’ve never had any problems here. Never had a serious crime. Nothing more than simple vandalism. Nothing like this.”
The assistant sheriff stopped in a clearing behind the restrooms, approximately fifty yards from the truck. There were half a dozen wooden picnic tables cemented to slabs of concrete surrounded by hearty grass and low-maintenance evergreens.
“We’ve had our best people out there going through the entire area with a fine-toothed comb,” Warren said. “The M.E. is performing the autopsies today, so we can extract the bullets and rush ballistics; half my off-duty cops are asking to work on their own time. The sheriff has the word of the attorney general that this case is a priority, but when I found out your people were involved, I was hoping we could ask for a bit of forensic assistance. Your ballistics capabilities are the best in the world, from what I’ve been told.”
Hans said firmly, “I’ll fly the bullets to the lab tonight and personally assure you that we’ll have a report in less than twenty-four hours, if I have to return to Quantico and do it myself.”
Hans’s raw voice surprised Megan. She glanced at him, saw that he was staring straight ahead, eyes dry but red. She’d seen him angry, she’d heard him express sorrow and frustration over victims or the system, but she’d never seen him emotionally involved at a crime scene.
He’d been quiet during the plane ride, but Megan thought he’d been asleep. Now she wondered.
Megan noted the evidence markers-one to the left of the facilities, one halfway between the picnic tables and the first victim. “Was the husband at the tables approaching his wife or here moving away?”
“We believe that the husband was at the picnic tables and his wife was here, near the facilities. Evidence in the restroom suggests she’d used the facilities to freshen up. A small trash bag was next to that table,” he gestured, “and we think they’d had breakfast, then Mrs. Hoffman entered the restroom. We don’t have a good indication as to which victim was shot first, and no idea why. The female victim was shot once in the chest at close range; her husband three times.”
“Robbery?” Megan asked.
“Not that we can tell. Mrs. Hoffman had her purse, with about forty dollars cash and two major credit cards. Mr. Hoffman had nearly two hundred dollars, credit and gas cards. The rig was unlocked, nothing appeared disturbed. My men have already printed it.”
“Where did you find the dog tag?” Megan asked.
Warren gestured for them to follow. Thirty feet from the building was another police marker. He said to one of his deputies, “Grab the dog tag. It’s in the van.”
Warren pointed to the ground. “Right there, on the asphalt. We were hoping initially that they belonged to the killer, but when we ran the name we learned he was recently murdered.”
“The killer took the I.D. off the body,” Megan said, glancing at Jack. He’d been so quiet she would have forgotten he was there except for his stalwart and commanding presence.
“It could have been another sign,” Hans said. “A sick way to connect these murders with the previous. Was Mr. Hoffman or his wife ever in the military?”
“I wouldn’t know, but I’ll have one of my deputies check immediately.”
Megan frowned. She didn’t want to disagree with Hans in front of anyone, but cautiously she said, “It doesn’t make sense. While these killers take risks, I don’t see them shooting someone and tossing evidence like garbage. If they’d planned on leaving the tag, it would be more purposeful, like when Price’s tag was mailed to me. They wouldn’t have dropped it here as if by accident. It would be with the bodies.”
“We can’t assume anything,” Hans snapped. “Sheriff, have you printed the bathrooms? Male and female? The dog tag? What about the picnic tables, looking for anything that might belong to the killer? Quantico has state-of-the-art facilities to help with trace evidence. Does your CSI unit have a forensic vacuum?”
Hans’s unusual brusque manner had Megan both concerned and irritated.
“Let me walk you through what we’ve done, Dr. Vigo,” Warren said, straightening his back, “and you can let me know if I’ve forgotten anything.”
Megan watched Hans walk off with the assistant sheriff. Jack said, “What do you think?”
“I think-” She stopped. She was committing an investigational sin, snap theories that could cloud her impartial judgment.
“We need more evidence,” she said.
“But you have a theory,” Jack prompted.
“I don’t have proof.”
“Lay it on me.”
Megan looked around. The rest stop-unseen from the road. The picnic tables-obscured, but not completely hidden, from where the killer’s car was presumably parked.
“The killers stopped here. To rest, to use the bathroom, to look at a map. It’s secluded and they would have the expectation of some privacy. With robbery as a motive pretty much ruled out, I don’t see why they killed the couple. For the thrill?”
“The thrill,” Jack said flatly.
“They’re not dumb criminals. They’ve killed too often and left too little evidence to be spontaneous and undisciplined. Maybe they heard a car approach and got out of the lot fast. Or panicked because the murders weren’t planned. Maybe the Hoffmans witnessed something or overheard the killers talking about murder. Our killers feared a witness. Something made them pull out fast. I’d stake my career on the theory that they didn’t know Scout’s dog tag was left behind.”
“Aren’t most criminals caught because they do something stupid? Wasn’t Ted Bundy pulled over for speeding or something?”
“Exactly. And that’s why I think they didn’t know about the dog tag. It’s a screwup, and let’s hope for more of them. They may well lead to our perps. We know much more about them now.”
“How so?”
“We know that they were in Hidalgo Tuesday night and killed Scout, and then here, near Joshua Tree, Thursday morning before ten a.m. That’s less than thirty-six hours. There’re not a lot of routes they could have taken here in that short time. The most likely route is I-10, which means we can contact all the motels immediately off the interstate, restaurants, gas stations. It might not yield anything, but it’s more than we had yesterday.”
“But we have no descriptions,” said Jack. “Nothing to show people.”
She sighed. “It’s still a thread to follow. With high-profile murders, we can call in extra people and resources and scour security tapes. Especially if we narrow it down.”
“How?”
“That there’s a woman involved.”
Jack thought on that for a moment. “You think the brunette who came by the church is involved?”