I inspected her ankles, gently pulling back the hem of her jeans. No ligature marks or bruises. Her feet hadn’t been bound.
“Has she been moved?” I asked Ralph.
“No,” he said.
So, this was how the killer had positioned her.
I gently tipped the body to the side. Touching her like this, moving her, felt like some kind of violation. I heard a voice in my head asking her to forgive me, to accept my touch as long as it would help me find the person who’d done this to her.
There was no dirt or debris on her back like there would have been if she’d been raped out here or dragged along the trail. I looked around. If he didn’t drag her, did he carry her? All the way up here? Was this the primary crime scene after all? Did he meet her here, maybe?
Somewhere behind me the chopper roared to life, but its sound was quickly drowned out by the howling wind of the coming storm.
Daylight was dying around us. I pulled my Mini Maglite flashlight out of the sheath on my belt, flipped it on, and studied the girl’s face. Her ocean-blue eyes were open, staring forward. Forever staring forward. No longer bright and alive, now cloudy and opaque. I leaned over and looked deeply into her sightless eyes. The eyes that had seen the man who killed her. Had watched him. There was an old wives’ tale that the eyes of the dying record, like a photograph, the face of the killer. But there was no face captured on her eyes.
“She has contacts,” I said, still staring at her.
I heard Sheriff Wallace shuffle in close behind me. “Huh?”
“Contacts. This girl wears contact lenses.”
“So?”
“The information Ralph sent me didn’t mention contact lenses.”
Agent Hawkins glared at the crime scene technicians. “I guess we didn’t notice.”
“Does it matter?” asked Wallace.
“Everything matters,” I said. The wind flipped a wisp of the young woman’s hair across her face. I pushed it back. “I worked one case where the killer put contacts into a girl’s eyes after he killed her. He left fingerprints on the lenses. Everything matters.”
I carefully removed her contact lenses and put them into an evidence bag. Then I examined her neck and cheeks and sighed softly. “He tortured her.” I didn’t realize I’d said the words aloud until Agent Jiang leaned over beside me. I caught the scent of her shampoo. Vanilla.
“How can you tell?”
I pointed. “See those tiny dots? Around her eyes there?”
“Those purplish reddish ones?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Some kind of hemorrhaging?”
“Petechial hemorrhaging-caused from asphyxiation. Usually, even in strangulation, the dots are small-sometimes only the size of a speck of dust, and only appear around the eyes or eyelids. She has them all across her face, even down here around her neck and shoulders. See?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” said someone behind me, “he didn’t just strangle her, he choked her into unconsciousness and then revived her again. Over and over. It must have gone on for a while.”
I glanced over my shoulder.
A strikingly handsome man in his late twenties knelt beside me. “Special Agent Brent Tucker,” he said. “Forensics.” Dark hair, neat, trim. He looked serious about his work and moved with the confidence of someone who’s used to getting things right the first time.
“Yeah,” I said to Agent Jiang. “That’s what it means.”
“You’re Dr. Bowers, aren’t you?” Agent Tucker asked.
“Yeah.”
“It’s an honor to meet you.”
“You too.”
A chess piece lay in the palm of the girl’s right hand. A black pawn.
“What do you estimate for her time of death?” I asked Tucker.
He glanced at his notepad. “Hmm… They took her temp sixty minutes ago… she’s clothed”-he was thinking aloud-“it’s cool and windy on this mountain, and she wasn’t in direct sunlight… I’d say sometime this morning. Maybe between eight and ten.”
I nodded.
Sheriff Dante Wallace shook his head. “I can’t believe our guy carried her to the top of this mountain. How do you know he didn’t do her up here?”
Ralph deferred to me, and I pointed to the girl. “There’s no sign of a struggle,” I said. “The ground isn’t disturbed. And look at her hair. It’s clean and neatly combed. No leaves. No dirt. She was probably killed indoors.” Probably, I thought. But this guy might be toying with us. I’m not sure about anything yet.
I turned to Ralph. “You said some hikers found her?”
“A couple locals, yeah,” he said, “just before I called you. We took them in for questioning. So far they look pretty clean.”
“Do we know her name yet?”
Ralph shook his head. “No ID. But there was a girl from Black Mountain reported missing yesterday named Mindy Travelca. We think it might be her. We’re checking.”
“He wanted her found,” I said.
“Then why did he bring her all the way out here?” Agent Tucker asked.
That’s what I’m here to find out, I thought. But I didn’t say it. I didn’t say anything. I just knelt there and stared at the unblinking eyes of a girl who should have been making out with her boyfriend or studying for her college exams or eating a pizza with her roommate or chatting with her friends online instead of lying dead on top of this mountain.
Someone’s daughter. Someone lost his daughter today.
Just like me, I thought, even though Tessa was alive and well and wasn’t exactly my daughter at all. Someone just like me.
I reached down and gently closed the eyes of the girl who might have been named Mindy just as the first raindrops began to fall, like tears from the eyes of God, splattering on the tarp above me.
4
The Illusionist watched as they carefully wrapped and removed the body, as the rain began, as the storm arrived. Everything was going according to plan. Everything!
It would take them at least half an hour to carry the body down the trail to the ambulance. He wished he could stay to watch the show, he really did, but with the storm rolling in and so much work to do, he would have to be going. He glanced at his watch. Oh, yes, he needed to be on his way. There was so much to do yet tonight.
5
After we left the mountain, I rode with Sheriff Dante Wallace to a hotel about eight miles outside of Asheville. Dark sheets of angry rain slanted against the windshield. I was lost in thought, staring at the water running off the windshield wiper blades when he asked, “So how do you do it?”
I turned and looked at him in the dim light. “Do what?”
“Chase these monsters all the time.”
I considered my words for a moment. “Well, I try to tell myself they’re just as human as I am. It helps some. Makes it more personal.”
Tension hardened the lines around his jaw. His voice took on an edge. “How is someone who rapes little babies or dissects his wife and eats her for supper just as human as I am?”
Actually, it was a good question, although I’d never heard it put quite like that. It’s hard not to think of these killers as monsters or aliens or subhumans; I struggle with it myself sometimes. “I try to think in terms of the similarities not the differences, Sheriff Wallace. Criminals interact with the world just like everyone does. They have patterns, follow routines, try to save time and money. They eat, drink, sleep, work, get into arguments, avoid the things they don’t like, and cover up the things they do wrong so they won’t get caught. Just like all of us. I know it sounds cold and unfeeling to say all that, but it helps me catch them. Understanding how people act helps me understand how killers act, and it helps me track them down.”
He drove in silence for a few moments letting my words sink in. At last he turned off the highway and let out a coarse cough. “Well,” he said tersely, “you’re the expert.”
A few minutes later he slowed to a stop in front of a Comfort Inn. “It ain’t the Hyatt,” he said. “But it should do ya for tonight.”