“I need to take a look at your injury,” Max said calmly as he rolled the boy over onto his back. The boy groaned in pain, but managed to nod understanding. “Down, Kona.” Max gestured for Kona to lie next to the boy. The dog read the shift from hunter mode to victim care and she pressed her warm body against his side.
“You’re going to be okay.” As he peeled away the burlap, Max found a belt cinched around the boy’s upper thigh. His fingers probed gently until he found the wound. Barely warm blood seeped slowly between his fingers. “I see you tried to put on a tourniquet. Well done. I’m Max, and this here is Kona. What’s your name?”
“Declan…” the boy whispered.
“Hi, Declan, nice to meet you. You’ve got a gunshot wound to the upper thigh,” Max narrated, trying to keep the boy focused on his voice as he pulled a tourniquet from his kit. “You weren’t able to get the belt tight enough, but this will be able to stop the bleeding while we wait for the ambulance that’s on its way here right now.”
Ignoring the boy’s breathless gasp of pain, Max pulled the black nylon belt over the boy’s thigh and tightened the windlass.
“This might hurt,” Max said softly. He inserted a wad of gauze deep into the bullet hole and then pressed hard against the wound.
The boy squeezed his eyes shut and moaned again.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood, but you’re going to be okay. We’ll have you fixed up in no time.” Max kept the patter of his voice steady and calm. He knew from experience that someone this hurt would need a lifeline to cling to while they waited for the EMTs.
Less than ten minutes later, the ambulance arrived and the medics swarmed the boy. They had him into the ambulance in a matter of minutes and screeched away, sirens blaring.
Shivering slightly in the cold, Max looked down at the fresh blood on his hands. He tried to wipe it on his pants, but it just spread into a sticky smear along his palms. Max felt the familiar wave of dread that always hit him after something like this. It wasn’t the sight of blood that bothered him. He’d seen plenty of that. It was the look in Declan’s eyes—the pleading fear that people always had when they were that close to death.
Shaking off the hollow sensation, Max put on his game face for Kona. “What a good girl, Kona!” he said in his singsong happy voice. Kona’s thick tail waved back and forth, but she was still on high alert, eyes roving the silent marsh around them. It always took them both a little time to come down after a high-intensity search like this one.
Max looked at the map on his phone and realized they were less than a mile from Sayer’s location along a nearby gravel road.
Glad to have the cooldown time, Max clicked off his headlamp and he and Kona set off toward the gas station under the predawn stars.
ABANDONED GAS STATION, WOODBRIDGE, VA
Sayer watched the ambulance carrying the injured boy scream past the gas station toward the hospital. Max and Kona had called to let her know the latest and said they would walk back to her. Sayer knew they both probably needed the exercise to work out the adrenaline of a search.
The back of her neck prickled as she went to the edge of the road to watch the medical examiners finalize the bodies for transport. Though she knew Kona would’ve sniffed them out, Sayer couldn’t shake the sensation that someone was watching from the darkness. Her breath came out in short puffs and she realized that her shoulders were practically up around her ears. She tried to lower them, but a shiver rocked her body. Between the cold and the dead bodies, she wouldn’t be relaxing anytime soon.
Lights glowed farther down the road where the media was reporting on the scene. Despite her attempt to keep the media back, Sayer couldn’t prevent their helicopters from filming the procession of black body bags being rolled to the waiting vans one by one.
Silence descended among the FBI teams as the boys were taken away. In the distance, even the chatter of the reporters grew quiet as the bodies kept coming.
Looking at the faint glow of true morning beyond the media lights, Sayer frowned at the impending dawn. The birth of a new day should bring renewed hope, but instead the pale light illuminated the black bags containing nothing but sorrow and loss.
“So much for ‘as above, so below,’” Sayer muttered as she readied herself for the ride back to Quantico in the rising sun.
FBI COMMAND CENTER, QUANTICO, VA
Sayer stood at the front of the command center, looking out at the room of shell-shocked faces. Even the most seasoned agents had rarely confronted something quite this horrific. Ezra sat surrounded by three laptops at the front table. Max sat next to Ezra, face tired but eyes sharp. Kona lay sound asleep at his feet, clearly wiped out from the excitement of the short search.
“All right, everyone.” Sayer called the room to attention. “I know it’s early, but let’s get the task force meeting started. This case has snowballed from a double murder to a mass murder and kidnapping so I want us to take a step back and start from the beginning.” She began to pace while she summarized everything they’d found at the abandoned gas station.
Once she finished, Ezra put up an image of the snow-covered bodies on the ground. Not a single soul in the room moved as they stared at the carnage.
“So”—Sayer stopped pacing—“where are we identifying the victims at the gas station? And what about the single male survivor?”
“We’re still working to match names to each of the dead boys,” Ezra said. “But it does look like we found the boys that were on that bus with Rowena Chang.”
The next photo showed a smiling blond boy in a red-and-gold soccer uniform.
“One boy,” Ezra continued, “Declan Iverson, managed to escape and was found hiding about a mile from the abduction site. Declan is eighteen, a student at Wilkerson High in D.C.”
“Have we gotten any word on his condition?” Sayer asked.
“It sounds like he’s already in surgery, but the doctors seem optimistic. He lost a lot of blood, but the gunshot missed the artery. They expect him to recover.”
“Okay, thanks, Ezra. I’ll send a victim’s advocacy team to sit with the boy’s family. See if they can be of help. Maybe get a statement once he’s out of surgery.” Sayer lifted one of the files off the table in front of her and dropped it onto the stack with a loud thunk. “I’ve had a chance to skim the files on the kids and their families. Heartbreaking stuff. Far as we can tell, all of these kids were squeaky-clean. There’s nothing here to suggest that there was anything personal going on here. We have anything on sex offenders in the area?”
“Nothing,” Ezra said. “And the Human Trafficking Task Force isn’t seeing any activity, either. Homeland Security says they’ve got no terrorist chatter about this.”
“Evidence teams have anything?” Sayer asked.
Ezra shook his head. “We pulled prints off the car that match the one on Rowena’s cheek. No match to them in any database. There’s no usable footprints. No trace on any of the bodies. The only trace in the car came from a pair of jeans. They’ve towed the Crown Victoria back to the garage, so they’ll do another in-depth look for prints, but there’s nothing so far.” He looked at Sayer, eyes pinched. “The team is still out processing the gas station but, far as I can tell, this guy’s a ghost.”
“Damn, all right. So the kidnapping happened sometime at or around five. Now that we know the abduction site, what about the traffic cams?”
“Still no luck there. The traffic camera team hadn’t been able to locate the bus anywhere,” Ezra said. “The unsub chose an area with very few cameras nearby.”
Sayer scowled. “Yet another thing suggesting that this was preplanned by a very smart killer. Max? Did you two manage to track the bus at all?”
Max’s intense stare tightened with frustration. “We followed the scent to I-95, but it jumped on the highway and we lost the scent. Only thing I can say is that the bus got on I-95 northbound.”
“So maybe back into the city?” Ezra said.
“Or New York.
Or Canada…” Sayer added, not wanting them to make any assumptions. “Anything from the bodies yet?”
Ezra shook his head. “They’re just starting to process the bodies from the gas station now, but so far nothing surprising. It will take them a few days to get through all the victims.”
“Okay, so we don’t have anything actionable on the kidnapping for now. What about Rowena’s murder. Have we sourced the baboon figurines?”
“Nothing yet,” Ezra said tightly. “The profiler did just send an update.” He looked down at his screen. “Our unsub could be a lone thirty- to forty-year-old white male. Possibly former military or law enforcement based on the ability to control a large group. But this could also be the actions of a cult or another similar group.”
“So, basically useless.” Sayer couldn’t keep the frustration from her voice. “What about similar crimes? This is a really unusual modus operandi, mass kidnapping and then ritualized murder. There’s no way this is his first rodeo.”
“Nothing even remotely similar showed up on ViCAP,” Ezra said, referring to the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program.
“Bullets match anything?” Sayer asked.
An analyst spoke up. “Ballistics so far have come back with no ID to the gun used on the bus victims, but the bullets did match the bullet from the dead police officer.”
“So that at least confirms that the kidnapping and Rowena’s murder are directly related.” Sayer began to pace. “So, we’ve got no sightings. No evidence. And no leads. Is that right?”
The room remained silent.
“Fantastic.” She stopped herself, realizing that part of her job as team lead was to keep everyone focused and motivated. “All right. This is where we do some good old-fashioned investigative work. Who knew about this bus trip? The kidnapper had to have known the route and timing. Someone dig into who knew what. Someone else focus on Rowena. Her murder is significantly different than the mass killing at the gas station. Why was she chosen? Dig into her life, friends, school, everything. I want to know what she used to call her teddy bear as a girl. The rest of you, focus on the other kids. Could one of them be an accomplice? Could one of them be the primary target and we just don’t know it yet? Last but not least, we’ve got to figure out what the symbolism of the writing and baboons mean. Anything I’m missing?”
Sayer looked out at the room full of grim faces.
She dismissed the task force and they filed out, a pall of gloom hanging over their heads. Sayer sat down next to Ezra and Max at the conference table and opened the files on the missing girls. They had been gone for fourteen hours now and she still had nothing. She glanced up at the door, knowing perfectly well what she had to do next.
Unable to put it off any longer, Sayer reluctantly put the files down and went to see the families of the missing and the dead.
FAMILY CONFERENCE ROOM, QUANTICO, VA
Sayer stood outside the conference room looking through the narrow window at the families of the missing girls. They all had the same shell-shocked look—glazed eyes swollen from crying, bodies listless with the fatigue of fear. Some slept awkwardly propped up in chairs or lying on the floor, heads resting on winter jackets. One woman sat by herself, hands knotted, eyes blinking rapidly. Another woman held her head in her hands, husband hovering behind her, unsure what to do. A young man tried to smile at his overtired toddler, but his eyes betrayed his fear. Some families clung together, arms wrapped around one another, while other families stood apart, pillars of sorrow alone in their suffering.
The tableau reminded Sayer of Picasso’s Guernica, a painting flowing with the raw destruction of grief.
A TV flickered in the far corner, tuned to a twenty-four-hour news channel. The missing girls’ faces flashed on the screen as reporters delved deep into their lives. The story of mass murder and a missing busload of teenage girls was on nonstop rotation as the nation was gripped by the sensationalistic story.
The family liaison, Agent Robbins, scowled at the TV as she moved gently among the families, speaking to each of them, proffering warm drinks and a sympathetic face. Robbins was clearly good at offering comfort, something Sayer had no clue how to do. But it was her job now to walk in there and reassure them, even though she knew nothing she said would break the spell of dread gripping their hearts. After this, she would have to walk into the room of the dead boys’ families. She wasn’t sure which room would be worse.
The families all looked up with a mixture of apprehension and hope as she pushed through the door.
“I’m sorry, there’s no news.” She held up her hands apologetically. “My name is Senior Special Agent Sayer Altair and I’m the lead investigator on this case. I just wanted to come by and let you know that we have every resource of the FBI and local law enforcement working to find your children.”
“How can you have no news?” the woman sitting by herself demanded. “How could an entire bus just disappear?”
The families all murmured agreement.
“I understand how frightening this is,” Sayer said cautiously. She understood how easily fear could turn into anger. “But I promise we are doing everything we can.”
“Why are you keeping us all here? What if Kendra shows up at home?” the man with the toddler asked.
“Remember, we have officers stationed at each of your homes. At this point we’re just trying to centralize everything. The most critical thing right now is making sure we can gather as much information as possible as quickly as possible, so we are asking that you stay until we have a better sense of what’s going on.”
“What is going on?” the woman sitting apart asked. “No one’s telling us anything. My daughter, Becky, is on that bus and I demand answers. We’ve heard that all the boys were killed, is that true?”
Sayer glanced over at Robbins, who gestured for her to be forthcoming.
“I wish I had more to tell you, but here’s what we know. At approximately five o’clock, someone, most likely pretending to be a police officer, boarded the bus heading to Atlanta. He shot the driver, a teacher, and eleven male students.”
“My God,” a woman gasped.
A few parents wailed.
“One boy escaped and we have a team waiting at the hospital to talk to him as soon as he’s out of surgery,” Sayer continued. “One girl that we believe was taken on the bus has been found dead.”
“Rowena, right?” the woman sitting alone asked. “I spoke with Steven Chang and he said she was dead. Murdered.”
“That’s right,” Sayer confirmed.
“What about the rest of our children? Can’t you locate their cell phones? Becky has a cell phone and a tablet.”
“The kidnapper gathered the electronics and left them at the abduction site,” Sayer said reluctantly. The collection of their phones meant that he was smart and that this abduction was well planned. Something the families would certainly understand.
“Why is this happening?” another parent asked. “What’s he going to do with them? Are they even still alive?” His voice cracked.
“Honestly, we don’t know. What I do know is that we’ve got every resource at our disposal working to bring them home. We will keep you up-to-date on any developments and Agent Robbins will be here with you if you have any questions or need anything.”
Robbins bowed slightly.
Sayer was about to excuse herself when her phone buzzed. She read the text from Ezra. Found source of baboons! Come see ASAP.
“What is it? Is there news?” the lone woman asked, her voice husky with emotion. All eyes in the room were on Sayer, faces full of hope and fear.
“No, I’m sorry, just a possible lead. We aren’t sure if it’s anything yet.” The families wilted at her response. “I’m going to get back to work. I promise we’re doing everything we can.” Sayer tried to look confident as she hurried from the room, but the pleading eyes of the families felt like a coil of grief tightening around her throat as she left.
UNKNOWN LO
CATION
When their abductor didn’t reappear for many hours, the mood on the bus slowly shifted from abject terror to resigned silence.
Kate eventually had to go to the bathroom so she stood up. In the faint light, a few other girls watched her as she walked to the back of the bus.
In the bathroom, her inability to freely move her hands almost made her scream. She felt like a trapped animal and she tried to pull on the zip tie, but the plastic just cut into her wrists.
Think, Kate.
She forced herself to stop straining against the tie and looked closely at the lock mechanism. Inside the small plastic box, she could see a ratchet pin holding the tie in place. All she needed to do was get something between the locking pin and the tie.
Her mom had just pinned up the torn lining of her old winter jacket. Maybe a safety pin would work?
She fumbled the pin open and used her teeth to pull the zip tie around so she could angle the sharp metal point into the locking mechanism. It slid in easily, releasing the tension of the tie.
With a small cry, she loosened it enough to slip it off.
She stretched her stiff shoulders and shook out her arms before putting her head down in her hands. For a moment, Kate wished she had a friend here. All the other girls were from the science magnet school and so they all knew one another. Kate was the only one from Wilkerson High. She’d had Declan, but she’d seen him get shot. Now he was dead on the side of the road.
Refusing to dwell on the image of the boys’ bodies falling, Kate focused on what to do next.
Even if Walter—which she had started calling their abductor in her mind—even if Walter was nearby, there was no way he was close enough to hear what was happening on the bus. They should be able to talk as long as they whispered. They needed to figure out a plan.
Determined, she exited the bathroom and walked to the front of the bus.
“We need to figure out what to do while he’s gone,” Kate spoke at a sharp whisper.
Cut to the Bone Page 6