The storm was rolling in fast. We needed to hurry.
I picked up my pace and tried to think of how I might save some time. “Okay, fill me in. What do we know?” I’d read the notes on the flight over but I wanted to hear it all again. Let it sink in. So I could look for patterns.
“Well, whoever our guy is, he knows how to leave a clean crime scene. We haven’t found much of anything so far. He even washes the bodies, sutures the wounds. Our victim has six stab wounds, but she died from being strangled, just like the others. Um, I mean, at least that’s the preliminary finding. We’re still waiting for the medical examiner to confirm it.”
I nodded. The killer had stabbed each of the women ritualistically in the chest and abdomen, but the mechanism of death in all of the murders so far had been cerebral hypoxia-which is just a fancy way of saying the brain didn’t get enough oxygen. You squeeze the throat long enough, you choke the brain.
“Wasn’t the first one done with the cord of a hair dryer?” asked Sheriff Wallace, who was puffing along beside us.
“Yeah,” said Ralph. “The last three with clothesline rope.”
“Why would he change his MO?” asked the sheriff.
“He came prepared the next time,” Agent Jiang said softly. “He wasn’t taking any chances. He brought his own rope.”
“I assume you’re tracing it?” said Wallace. “To see if it gives you any leads on a manufacturer?”
Ralph cleared his throat. “Already on that.”
Sheriff Wallace waddled in closer, struggling to keep up. Special Agent Jiang strode beside us in silence, watching the sky.
“The rope’s embedded a quarter of an inch into her neck,” said Ralph. “He might have even used something mechanical to tighten it.”
I felt my fists clench. After all these years, I should be used to hearing details like this, but it still disturbs me. It used to turn my stomach, now it fuels my anger. I guess in a way that’s good. It helps me focus on catching these guys.
“That and we found another chess piece.”
I thought back to the case files I’d read. At the first crime scene, the pawn had seemed like a great clue-the piece came from a hand-carved wooden set that the lab guys were able to trace to a wood-worker in Oregon who made them out of redwood and shipped them all over the world. The analysts were even able to nail down the dates when the set was made, since the carpenter switched the kind of lathe he was using two years and two months ago. It leaves a different kind of cut on the chess pieces, so the chess set our killer was using was at least two years old. There was no way to know yet which of the eight or nine sets in question our killer had gotten a hold of, but the woodworking guy was being helpful. Right now, some agents were going through his records, checking up on everyone who’d bought one of his sets in the last five years.
“What piece was left this time?” I asked.
“Another pawn. Black. What do you make of that?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe nothing.”
“What do you mean?” asked Sheriff Wallace. “It’s huge. He’s trying to tell us something.”
I shook my head. “Maybe, maybe not. These days, lots of killers leave intentional clues at crime scenes to throw off the investigators-someone else’s blood, hair, semen. Too many CSI episodes and serial killer movies. The smarter we get, the smarter they get. It might be there to throw us off. Or who knows, he might just like chess.”
Killers often leave taunting clues or notes at crime scenes. The most common were words scrawled in blood. Sometimes, a handwritten letter would show up. Usually if the killers left anything it was bloody and messy. I’d seen just about everything.
But not this guy. He left a hand-carved, redwood chess piece at the scene of each of his crimes. The first three were white pawns. Now these last three had been black.
What is he trying to say? That this is all a game to him? That everything is black and white? Who’s the pawn? Is he the pawn? Is the victim the pawn? Maybe the police. Maybe we’re the pawns?
And a ribbon. He tied a yellow ribbon in the victim’s hair.
I didn’t want to read too much into any of it. The trick is to keep everything in mind as you look at the big picture. That’s the secret to nabbing these guys. You assemble all the pieces first, before jumping to any conclusions. Hypothesize, test, revise. Never, ever assume.
We leaned under the police tape. The body lay at the base of a tree about twenty meters ahead of us.
“Did you get soil samples?” I asked Ralph.
“Yeah. Six different ones from around the scene. Just like you taught me.”
“Good.”
By then, the wind had picked up and the clouds we’d seen on the horizon were boiling over each other, racing toward us. This wasn’t good. Our crime scene was going to be wiped out in a matter of minutes.
“Get shots of the hills,” I yelled. “I want every angle-I want to see what he saw. And string up a tarp over her body. Don’t let her get wet. And the crowd too. I want pictures of everyone here. Video if we have it. Someone get this body covered!”
“Sir, we already checked over the body,” someone said.
“I know you have,” I said, trying my hardest to remain respectful. “But I haven’t.” I pulled on the latex gloves I always keep in my jeans pockets. Suddenly, I was glad there were so many people at the scene. We’d need them all to preserve evidence.
I looked around. This is what the killer was looking at. This is what he saw as he left her here. Why here? Why did you bring her here?
I scanned the horizon. Layers of dark mountains cascaded back toward the horizon. I figured that in the sunlight you could see twenty or thirty miles in any direction. Today you’d be lucky to see two. I tried to guess which entrance and exit routes he might have used. The nearby forest was thick, the terrain steep. Only a limited number of trails available.
There was no sign of vehicular traffic and no trail marks from a four-wheeler.
Did he know it was going to rain? Had he planned it just like this? That we would be rushing around here trying to collect evidence?
Mists were blowing in now, enshrouding the trees, covering the nearby peaks. Everything began to take on a ghostly, ethereal feel.
Did you carry her up here? Why carry her all the way up here?
Just then, the LongRanger pilot came running over. “Sir, this weather doesn’t look good. I’ve gotta take off or I’m gonna get stuck up here.”
“I’ll give you a ride to town,” Sheriff Wallace offered.
I shook my head. “All my stuff is in Atlanta. The conference finishes up tomorrow.”
“Do you have to speak again?” asked Ralph.
“No, I’m done, but-”
“Well, I’ll have your bags brought over,” said Ralph. “Stay here for a few days. Give us a hand.”
I hated being interrupted at a crime scene like this. “All right, whatever.” I waved him away. I just wanted to see the girl. At that, the pilot nodded and left us alone.
By then a couple of agents had draped a blue tarp over a tree limb above her. They didn’t look happy.
I stepped around them and looked at her.
She was nineteen or twenty. Caucasian. Blonde hair. She lay propped up with her back against a tree, posed, her hands still bound tightly behind her, probably with the same type of rope that was embedded into her neck. She still had her blue jeans and T-shirt on, which was consistent-there hadn’t been a sexual angle to any of the previous murders. I was thankful for that much at least. The cotton of her gray T-shirt was stained dark from the stab wounds in her torso.
The killer had tied a length of yellow ribbon in her neatly brushed hair. She was barefoot, just like all the victims had been, and had a toe ring on the third toe of her left foot. Some soil clung to the indentations on the ring. Mud.