by Gerri Hill
“Andi, it’s Joey. Got a couple of hikers here. They said they saw a body out at—”
“Devil’s Playground,” Andrea finished for him. “We’re here now.”
“How did you know?”
“I’ll explain later. Listen, get Randy. Bring the rack and evidence bags. We’ve got to process the scene.”
“We’ll carry her out or bring the mule?”
“Mule and horses. The body is up on the outcroppings so we’ll have to carry him down a little ways.”
“Him? Not a—”
“No. Him. Agent Collie. He was working this case in Phoenix.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah. Make it quick, Joey. And bring someone else with you. We’ll need to close off this trail.”
“I’m on my way.”
Cameron was off the phone, but she was still visibly shaken. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest, her normally smiling mouth was tense, the blue, laughing eyes were shrouded—troubled.
Andrea was about to say “I’m sorry” but stopped herself. Cameron had told her often enough to quit apologizing for things that weren’t hers to control. Instead, Andrea kept it all business. She held her hand out.
“Let me have your camera and the GPS gadget you use.”
Cameron looked at her, blinking several times before answering. “No. That’s my job.”
“Let me do it, Cameron.”
“I should be able to process the goddamn scene,” she said loudly. “I’ve had team members die. I’ve lost partners.” She ran her hands through her hair. “Christ, you know he wasn’t careful. Patrick was probably in a dress and Collie thought some chick was coming on to him.”
“Cameron, you’ve lost people before in the name of war, in the line of duty. This is different. This man was murdered. And you knew him.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Cameron stared at her. “How could this happen? He’s a goddamn FBI agent. He should have been more aware of his surroundings. Hell, he never believed the Patrick angle. He probably never even read the damn file. He probably didn’t know Patrick dressed up as a woman.”
“Look, let me process the scene. You’re in no shape.” She moved closer, her voice softer now. “Cameron, let me do this for you. Please.”
The war of wills ensued for long seconds. Cameron finally conceded. She reached in her shoulder pack, pulling out the camera first, then the GPS finder. She kept the digital notebook.
“Here. Tell me what you find. I’ll log it,” she said.
“Okay. Thank you.”
Andrea moved away, then glanced back at Cameron. She’d found a spot on a rock under one of the small junipers. Andrea went to the body, noticing that, unlike the others, Agent Collie’s arms weren’t folded neatly across his stomach. They were out by his sides, one stretched out wide, the other against his body. It was almost like the killer had dropped him, leaving him to land as he may and not placed specifically like the others had been. Perhaps because Agent Collie was close to two hundred pounds and not like the slight frames of the young girls.
“What do you guess he weighs?”
“Two-twenty.”
“If Patrick looked like his brother, then he was a small man.”
Cameron stood up. “More evidence that he’s got help.”
“Why don’t you check the perimeter and see if he was dragged or not.”
Cameron walked in a circle around the area and Andrea went back to her work. She took several pictures from each angle, along with the surrounding areas, trying to determine from which direction he had been carried. Then she held the GPS out, waiting to get a reading.
“Don’t forget to mark elevation too,” Cameron called.
Andrea nodded, saving the information like she’d seen Cameron do. She walked closer, careful not to disturb the scene. She squatted down beside him and picked up one hand, noticing blood under the nails.
“Do you have any evidence bags?”
“Not with me. I didn’t think we’d be processing a scene. Why?”
“Trace under his nails. Blood.”
Cameron slowed her pace, bending down to inspect some rocks, Andrea supposed. “How good are your guys? Do we need to request CSI from Phoenix?”
“This isn’t a scene, it’s a dump site,” Andrea reminded her. “And my guys don’t process, I do,” she said.
“Okay. Just make sure you get pictures of everything. I don’t want to miss something.”
“I won’t.” She went back to inspecting the body, her eyes avoiding the bloody wound at his neck.
“Andrea? Come here for a second.”
She looked up. “What is it?”
“These rocks are disturbed. Looks like a drag pattern,” she said, pointing. “Bring the camera.”
“Why would he drag him from up there?” she asked as she joined Cameron on the rocks. Her gaze traveled through the junipers. “Unless...”
“Unless what?”
Andrea looked back at the body. “He’s been dead a couple of days.” She met Cameron’s eyes. “You don’t think he killed him up here in the trees, stashed the body for a few days, then came back to display him, do you?”
“We’ve never found any of the murder scenes.”
“What if the desert has been the murder scene all along?”
Andrea followed the drag pattern into the junipers, ducking under the branches as she moved higher on the rocks. She stopped when she saw the dark pool of dried blood.
“Son of a bitch,” Cameron murmured from behind her.
“He didn’t have to carry him.”
“He made him walk,” they said in unison.
Andrea turned, clutching Cameron’s arm. “That means he’s been right under our noses all along. The others, we scanned the immediate area, but we didn’t do a thorough perimeter search. We assumed it was a dump site only.”
“As he meant for it to appear. The blood left in Tucson was just to confuse us.”
“And to play with us,” Andrea added. “I’m sorry. Do you want to call Phoenix in to process the scene?”
“No. We can do it. A three-day old scene, out in the elements, any kind of trace is sure to be gone.”
Andrea nodded. “Let me call Sheriff Baker and let him know what’s going on.”
“Okay. And I’ll—” But her cell interrupted and she answered, turning away from Andrea. “Yeah, Reynolds, I know.”
Andrea moved away, giving her some privacy, but she kept her attention on Cameron as she called Jim.
“I can process the goddamn scene, Reynolds.”
Andrea’s eyebrows shot up at Cameron’s raised voice.
“She knows what she’s doing, so don’t call her a yahoo country bumpkin.”
That would be me, Andrea assumed. But she didn’t blame them. One of their own was down. Stood to reason they’d want to be thorough and send in experts.
“Blame who you want, but the blame still lies with Collie. He refused to see the connection, refused to believe the serial killer angle. Hell, even when the knife wounds matched, he was still skeptical.” She paused. “I’m not. I worked with the man too, you know. Let me do my job. How about you guys find some answers instead of just sitting around with your heads up your asses waiting for the next goddamn press conference.”
Andrea was about to end her call when Jim’s voice sounded. “Jim, sorry. Let me get back with you.”
“Joey filled me in.”
“Yeah. Okay. I’ll call you right back.”
Andrea moved to Cameron who stood with her back to the scene, her shoulders tense. Her head was raised skyward but her eyes were closed.
“Cameron?” She reached out, gently touching her arm, then wrapping her fingers around her, squeezing lightly. “You want to talk?”
Cameron shook her head. “No. We have work to do. Just give me a minute.”
“I won’t be offended if they send in a CSI team.”
“You can do the job.” She turned then. “Right?”<
br />
Andrea nodded. “I have some experience in it, yes. I spent a year in forensics.” She raised her hands, palms up. “We just don’t have all the fancy equipment.”
“We already have DNA of the killer. What we’re looking for is trace evidence, fibers, something to give a clue as to where the bastard lives, where he stays, where he hides. And I’m fairly certain we’re not going to find that.”
Their eyes met and Andrea was shocked by the depth of sadness in Cameron’s. As far as she could tell, there was no love lost between Cameron and Agent Collie. In fact, she would have sworn their relationship bordered on hatred. But Cameron’s eyes told her how terribly wrong she was. Without thinking, she pulled Cameron into a quick, hard embrace, realizing, for Cameron, it was another chapter in her life with a tragic ending.
It took a few seconds before Cameron relaxed, accepting Andrea’s comfort for what it was. When she stepped back, Cameron nodded.
“Thank you.”
Andrea didn’t say anything. She just watched as Cameron’s expression changed, her professional mask slipping back into place.
“Let’s process this first,” Andrea suggested, following suit. “We’ll wait until the guys get here with the equipment before we start on...the body.”
“You want the recorder?”
“Yes. I’ll let you handle the camera, if that’s okay.”
“I can manage that.”
Andrea took her cap off and brushed her damp hair off of her forehead. She pulled the cap back on as Cameron handed her the digital recorder. She turned it on, her gaze immediately finding the blood pool under the juniper where Agent Collie had been killed.
“Blood splatter on the limb here,” she said, pointing it out to Cameron. “He was standing,” she said, moving closer to the spot, “here. The killer came from behind him.” She followed the scenario in her mind, turning. She reached out, fingering the limp juniper branch. “Broken branch here. Overturned rocks. Blood is contained. He fell here. It doesn’t appear the body was moved.” She looked up. “Until it was placed on Devil’s Bridge,” she added. “We’ll need a blood sample, just to make sure he didn’t stage this like he did the apartment in Tucson.”
She moved in a circle, looking for anything out of place. There were no torn shards of cloths, no strange fibers. There were more displaced rocks opposite the others. She frowned, her head tilting as she saw it in her mind.
“He covered him,” she said.
“What?”
“Look,” she said, pointing to the rocks. “Here. These rocks are flipped over.” She moved to the other imaginary corner of a square. “And here. He covered him with something, then weighted it down with rocks in each corner.”
“Like a tarp or something.”
“Camouflage. He didn’t want someone finding the body before he was ready.”
“He could have snatched him the night he went to the homeless shelter. Brought him up here and killed him that night.”
“Covered the body and left.”
“Came back two days later to display it.”
Andrea nodded. “Which means he’s probably done that with all of them. He doesn’t abduct them and hold them. He abducts them, kills them and hides them.”
“It’s like you said, he’s been under our noses all along.”
“Why Collie? Why deviate from his pattern?”
“Probably saw him giving his press conferences, knew he was the one looking for him. What better way to say fuck you to the FBI?”
“But Cameron, that’s taking a huge risk. How would Patrick have known that Collie was alone? For that matter, how would Patrick have known Collie would show up at the homeless shelter?”
“Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he saw him, recognized his face from TV and panicked. Maybe he thought Collie was on to him.”
“Okay.” Andrea paced now as her mind jumped from scene to scene. “But, it doesn’t make sense. If Patrick is as smart as we all make him out to be, why would he even be at the shelter in the first place? He has to know we’ve connected him to Dallas. Surely he wouldn’t follow the same pattern and try to blend in with the homeless. He has to know we’d look there.”
“So what’s your thought? That he was following Collie?”
“Maybe. If you’re the hunted, don’t you want to keep the hunter in your sights?”
“Dangerous,” Cameron said. “If the FBI is looking for you, you’re not going to be following them around. That’s crazy.”
“Okay. So maybe it was planned. He watches the news, sees Collie at the press conference, then targets him as his next victim. Conveniently, Collie leaves the hotel alone, giving Patrick his chance.”
“Follows him to the homeless shelter and nabs him? Come on, Patrick is a thin, small man. Collie is over two hundred pounds, a trained FBI agent. No way Patrick abducts him.”
Andrea put her hands on her hips, facing Cameron. “Well, obviously he did. We have a body to prove it.”
Chapter Twenty
Cameron watched as Andrea slipped on latex gloves before beginning her exam of the body. The other victims, as Andrea had told her, were assumed dumped. The scenes were processed superficially only. This one, she would go over methodically, looking for any foreign material that might help them find Patrick Doe.
She stood maybe twenty feet away from Andrea, Randy and Joey beside her. All three were fixed on Andrea’s movements. Cameron noted that Andrea’s gaze seemed to avoid Collie’s face. Who could blame her? Cameron had been able to do nothing more than give him a quick glance before looking away. Andrea was right. She’d lost team members in the name of war. Never like this. Never intentionally murdered, their throat slashed open in such a horrific manner.
“Got blood under the nails,” she said, looking at Cameron. “Epithelial.”
Cameron nodded.
“Epi what?” Randy asked quietly.
Cameron glanced at him. “Skin cells.”
“Oh.”
Andrea carefully bagged his hands, then placed them by his side. She looked up again. “Where would he keep his FBI credentials?”
“I think upper coat pocket,” she said, trying to remember Collie’s habit.
Andrea opened the coat, patting each pocket. She then slightly rolled him over, feeling his backside. She shook her head. “Nothing. How did he carry his weapon?”
Christ. Cameron hadn’t even thought about his weapon. She pointed to her hip where her own holster was clipped. “Like mine. He should also have a secondary weapon strapped to his leg.” Should being the key word. A lot of agents, when out in the field, used different means to conceal their backup weapon.
“Nothing. He’s clean. No ID, no wallet, no weapons.”
“Follows the others. They had nothing on them either.” She stepped away from the guys and pulled out her cell. “I need to notify Murdock that his service weapon and credentials are missing.”
“Fine. There’s nothing here. Nothing out of place. No smudges, no tracks. Nothing,” Andrea said.
“Like the others,” Cameron said, then turned her attention to Murdock. “It’s me. Just finished processing the scenes up here. There’s nothing—”
“Do you want me to request CSI from Phoenix?” he asked, interrupting her. “Reynolds thinks—”
“Look, Murdock, she’s had training in forensics. I’ve had training. There’s nothing here.”
“Just want to cover all the bases, Agent Ross.”
“Special Agent Murdock, are we going to get all formal now? Reynolds been complaining about me already?”
“Of course. I’m sorry, Cameron. I just don’t want anything to slip through.”
“Well, we have a different angle, that’s for sure. We found where he was killed.”
“What? He wasn’t dumped like the others?”
“He was laid out like the others, but when we were doing a perimeter check, we found drag marks. We followed them up a ravine about fifty yards. He was killed there, under some sm
all trees.” She turned, seeing Randy and Joey helping Andrea lift Collie onto the rack. She quickly averted her eyes. “Judging by the overturned rocks, Deputy Sullivan thinks—and I agree—that he was killed two days ago, then covered with something to camouflage him. The killer then came back and dragged him down to the trail, where he’d be found.”
“So you think they all may have been killed there?”
“Possible. Probable, even, since there’s been no other discovery of a murder scene.”
“Jesus, Cameron, we were going on the assumption that they weren’t killed there. The initial reports from the sheriff’s office were that the bodies were dumped.”
“They were dumped. Christ, this isn’t a fucking city street here, Murdock. It’s a remote wilderness. A high mountain desert. Have you bothered to look at any of the photos I included in my reports?” Her voice was raised and she glanced quickly at Andrea, seeing a sympathetic look in her eyes. “It was quite by accident we found the drag marks, and it’s probably because Collie weighed over two hundred pounds and the killer couldn’t carry him. The girls, they were all small. He could have killed them anywhere up here and moved them. Nothing to drag.”
“Okay, okay. So now what? Do you want to move the whole team out there?”
“No. I don’t think that’s a good idea. In fact, it’s probably futile. There are dozens of trails and hundreds of miles of them. Besides, if we move the focus of the investigation here, we might just send him under again. He’ll move on and resurface in another place a year from now.”
“So you’re still going with the theory of the ten-year killing spree that Patrick’s been on?”
“Just because Collie didn’t agree with it, doesn’t mean I don’t. It’s plausible. In fact, quite probable.”
“I agree. I’ve got the geeks in Quantico going over Sullivan’s report. They’re going to pull in the ME records from all the cases and compare them—strangulation patterns, knife wounds, everything.”
“Good. But let’s stay focused here. First of all, Reynolds needs to find where the hell Collie was abducted from. Any luck with the surveillance tapes?”
“They’re still going over them. I need to set up a meeting with Reynolds. I want you there. I’ve got a meeting in Washington tomorrow so I’ll have to video-feed in, but I want you and Reynolds in the same room. You need to talk this out, share everything you’ve found so far and come up with a plan of action. We need to nail this bastard and soon.”