“One second, Tom, hold on,” Zorn said into the phone, then thrust his free hand out at Grove. “There he is!”
“Hey, Terry,” Grove said and shook the man’s hand. Zorn’s grip was firm and dry.
“Be right with ya,” Zorn said to Grove, gesturing with a single finger, then he murmured back into the phone, “I understand what you’re saying, Tom, don’t you worry, we’ll get it minty fresh this time.” Zorn laughed then, a conspiratorial sort of chuckle that, for some reason, made Grove look away. “We’re already at the damn airport. All we gotta do is hop a commuter down there. All right? Sound good? We’ll call ya from the scene. So long, Tom.”
Zorn clicked off his cell phone and turned to Grove. “You feel like gettin’ on a plane?”
“Excuse me?”
“Just got word from Quantico: Sun City’s been at it again.”
“Where?”
“Few miles outside of Vegas . . . C’mon.” Zorn gave Grove a friendly slap on the back, then started toward the bank of departure monitors, adding over his shoulder, “I’ll run down the details on the way.”
Grove let out a sigh, then followed.
5
Victimology
They sat in the rear of the Alaska Airlines 767 as the plane roared heavenward, executing a steep banking turn toward the south, the harsh sunlight slicing through the porthole windows. Turbulence rattled the overhead bins and galley cabinets, and Grove held on to his notes.
Zorn sat on Grove’s immediate right, scanning his notebook. “Jurisdictional issues aside, Vegas homicide’s got the primary on it.”
Grove looked at him. “And the dump?”
Zorn glanced down at his notebook. “Unincorporated area out in the desert.”
“That sounds like the state police.”
Zorn nodded. “Yeah, well, they don’t have the juice the Vegas PD’s got.”
They rode in silence for a while until Grove finally asked who flagged the desert murder as Sun City.
“I guess the primary recognized the signature,” Zorn replied, gazing down at his notes. “Captain name of Hauser.”
“Victim’s female, you said?”
“Right . . . got a positive ID . . . forty-three-year-old white female, name of Carolyn Kenly, married, mother of two, resident of Henderson, Nevada.”
“Anything on her sheet?”
“Nothing, no priors, lady’s pure civilian. Seems totally random again.”
Another stretch of silence. Grove could not get the face of the Iceman out of his head. Finally he turned to Zorn and said, “We’re talking the cervical vertebra again?”
Zorn gave him another nod. “Looks like it. No ballistics, no murder weapon found. They already got their ME down there.”
“Time of death?”
Zorn looked at the notes. “Let’s see . . . sometime between midnight and three o’clock.”
“Sharp trauma?”
“Yep.”
“And the staging, the pose?”
“No details yet, but . . . yeah, looks like they got Sun City on their hands.”
Grove gazed out his window at the ocean of clouds beneath the plane. Every few miles the cloud cover would break, and a vast maw of black mountains would come into view. Grove watched the rugged territory pass underneath the broken clouds, and wondered if he should have called Maura County to tell her about this impromptu journey. Technically he was not obligated to keep the journalist informed of his every move, but somehow Maura County had become more than a mere interview with some obscure science magazine. She had become an associate. Or perhaps associate was the wrong word. It had been so long since Grove had felt these kinds of feelings, he wasn’t sure how to process them. All he knew was that the fair-haired writer, for better or worse, was lingering in his mind.
The rest of the flight to Vegas was spent mostly in awkward silence. Every now and then, Zorn would make a bad joke about the mummy, or Grove would ask about another aspect of the Vegas murder, but mostly they rode in silence. The flight attendant approached them twice—once to take their drink orders, and once to serve them dinner—but other than that, the remainder of the flight was fairly uneventful, despite the nagging feeling in the back of Grove’s mind that Zorn had ulterior motives. There was a sharp edge to every joke, every comment.
The plane began its descent into McCarran International Airport around six o’clock that night, the dying light turning the horizon a brilliant display of pastels.
After a gentle landing, the two profilers filed off the plane and crossed the Jetway, immediately noticing the climactic change. The air was warm and blustery, a huge departure from the clammy chill of Alaska. They crossed the busy terminal, heading for the cab stand, ignoring the percolating slot machines at every juncture.
“Do you know if Tom urged the Vegas tactical guys to get pictures of the crowd at the scene?” Grove asked as the two men got in line for a taxi.
Zorn looked at him. “You think this guy’s a spectator?”
“I think there’s a lot of meaning here, a lot of ritual and ceremony.”
Zorn shook his head. “I don’t think he’d be dumb enough to hang around at the scene.”
“It’s not a matter of intelligence, it’s part of the experience.”
A yellow cab pulled up in front of them, the miniature billboard on its roof advertising the BARE ASSETS GENTLEMEN’S CLUB—ALL-NUDE REVUE. The two men slid into the backseat, and Zorn told the driver they needed to go to the Las Vegas City Courthouse where the Special Violent Crimes Unit of the LVPD was located. The cabbie—a Pakistani man in a baseball cap—flipped the meter down and rattled out of there.
On their way across town, skirting the neon canyons of the strip, Zorn said, “My take is, this guy’s a craftsman, a pro, somebody who’s very careful.”
Grove was staring out the window. “But there’s a deeper issue associated with it.”
“Did the mummy tell ya that?”
Grove looked at Zorn. “Pardon?”
“I’m just messin’ with ya, Grove.”
A few minutes later they pulled up in front of the court building, a great limestone pile rising up against the pale desert sky. Windows blazed.
Zorn paid the cabbie, and the two profilers strode across the concrete apron to the entrance.
The lobby was deserted except for a pair of security guards flanking a metal detector. Grove and Zorn flashed their IDs, then passed through the detector and went to the end of the main corridor. A glass door marked LVPD SPECIAL DIVISIONS directed them into another reception area, where they were greeted by an elderly woman with thick glasses. Zorn identified himself, and the woman punched an interoffice number on her switchboard. She told the captain the profilers had arrived, and then nodded and hung up the phone.
“Captain Hauser will be right out,” she told them, then went back to her typing.
Grove turned to Zorn and said under his breath, “As a matter of fact, the mummy did tell me a lot about Sun City.”
Zorn looked at him. “For instance?”
“The murders are not improvised.”
“You mean they’re premeditated?”
“I mean there’s heavy symbolism there, and it’s relevant to the mummy.”
“Yeah . . . go on.”
“I don’t have it yet—the connection—but I’m close.”
After a long moment Zorn grinned. “Maybe you’re too close.”
Grove looked away. “Whatever you say, Terry.”
Captain Ivan Hauser of the LVPD Violent Crimes Unit, a pachyderm of a man with a big walrus mustache and marine tattoos on his sun-weathered forearms, drove the two profilers out to the scene. The victim had been found in a field about fifteen miles northeast of town, near Nellis Air Force Base. The Kenly woman had either been dumped, or left for dead, about thirty yards north of the highway. Her body had been found by a rancher, out before sunrise to repair a nearby barbed wire fence. When the call had first come in, the dispatcher had sent a sta
te police prowler to the scene. The patrolman got one look at the mutilated body and called the investigative division.
By dawn, the area was bustling with law enforcement and forensic people.
That was almost twelve hours ago, and yet, even now, as Hauser’s unmarked Crown Victoria approached the scene, the number of crime lab vehicles and police cruisers clogging the half-mile stretch of desert highway had barely diminished. Scores of chaser lights danced on the horizon. Flashlights crisscrossed the distant landscape.
Zorn rode in front, in the shotgun seat. Grove rode in the rear, staring at the back of Zorn’s cowboy hat, feeling ridiculous and small and alienated. The two men had been arguing the whole way out to the scene, and now the tension in the car was as thick as a noxious gas.
“But what if there’s no connection?” Zorn wanted to know, staring out the windshield, his voice taut with anger. “What if this is just a fruitcake with a subscription to National Geographic? That’s what I’m trying to get through that thick skull of yours.”
Grove stared at the oncoming blue streaks of light. “There’s a connection,” he murmured.
“It’s a goddamn mummy, Ulysses. A six-thousand-year-old stiff.”
“The pose is identical.”
“So what?”
“It’s my experience, you follow everything out.”
The Texan shook his head. “And while you’re dickin’ around up there in the twilight zone, the perp’s headin’ to Disneyland.”
Grove wanted to put his fist through the back of Zorn’s seat. “You want to say something, Terry, why don’t you just come out and say it?”
“I’m saying it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I’m saying it.”
“No, I don’t think you are. I don’t think you’re saying what you really think.”
“What—are you profiling me now? You profiling me?”
“For the love of Gawd!” Hauser boomed suddenly. He yanked the car over to the shoulder and slammed on the brakes, the Crown Victoria scudding to a stop in a thunderhead of dust. “I been listening to you two boys mix it up since we left the courthouse, and I’ve just about had it. I thought you two were on the same team.”
Zorn was staring out at the night, the blue light flashing off his face. He pulled a pair of rubber surgical gloves from his pocket. “It’s all part of the process, Cap—it’s how we do things.”
“You gotta be shitting me,” the captain said.
“Just say it, Terry,” Grove urged from the backseat, digging in his own pocket for his rubber gloves. He kept them in a sandwich baggie.
“What do you want me to say?” Zorn was snapping his surgical gloves over his hands.
“Just say what you really want to say.”
“This is ridiculous—”
Zorn opened his door and got out, flexing his fingers into the gloves. Grove followed. The captain stayed in the car to have a smoke, and perhaps enjoy some blessed relief away from the bickering FBI agents.
The two profilers crossed the highway, which was blocked off by flares, wooden sawhorses, and yellow crime scene tape flapping in the night breezes. They stepped over a dry creek bed on the other side of the road, then headed toward the pool of tungsten light thirty yards away. Technicians still swarmed around the broken rag doll of a body, an ambulance canted nearby with the door gaping. High-intensity lights mounted on C-stands shone down at the human remains.
As he strode toward the victim, Grove felt his gut burning with anger. “Why don’t you just say it?”
Zorn paused, turned to Grove, then spoke in a low growl. “Okay, you’re a joke. You’re burned out, you’re toast. You got no credibility anymore.”
“I’m a joke. Is that right?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Why do you think Geisel sent you on that stupid mummy hunt?”
“I’m a joke.”
“Let’s face it, partner . . . your days of slam dunks are over. You ain’t helped clear a goddamn case in three years, and Sun City’s turning out to be an embarrassment to the whole goddamn division. And this mummy thing now is just the frosting on the cake—”
“You want to take off, Terry, you want to go back home, that’s fine by me.”
“You don’t get it, partner. Anybody’s going home, it’s gonna be you.”
Grove laughed at that one. “Oh yeah? I’m going home? I’m going home now, Terry?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“I’m going home . . . and how many cases have you cleared lately, Terry?”
“Yeah . . . eat shit!”
“That’s quite a brilliant re—”
Grove was about to say the word retort with about as much venom as he could muster, but something snapped the word off in his throat. He stood there for a moment, staring past Zorn toward the corona of silver light that illuminated the dark pasture. Grove could not move. He stared at the body lying in that pool of light on the hardpack fifteen yards away. He stared and stared, and felt the revelation turning in his gut like a worm. Zorn was saying something nasty under his breath, but Grove could no longer hear anything but the buzzing in his ears. He realized right then he had discovered the key to Sun City, the connection between the mummy and the present-day crimes.
“Grove? Hey! Grove!” Zorn barked.
Grove turned to the Texan and said very softly, “Get everybody back.”
“What?”
“Everybody, even the ME—I want everybody back.” Grove started toward the body.
Zorn hurried after him, grabbing his arm. “Hey! What’s going on? You see something?”
“Get ’em all back,” Grove said, approaching the cluster of people crowding the body, snapping his surgical gloves. A half dozen specialists hovered there: two plainclothes detectives from the LVPD, an ambulance attendant, a pathologist, an FBI evidence technician, and the medical examiner, a graying man in a white lab coat.
Zorn pulled his ID from his lapel and flashed it. “Folks, this is Special Agent Grove from the Serial Crime Unit, my name is Special Agent Zorn, and we’d appreciate it if y’all would give us a minute alone with the vic.”
After an awkward beat, the crowd slowly parted, moving back as Grove knelt down by the body.
The woman’s flesh looked like gray marble in the halogen light, her denim sundress spattered with a Rorschach pattern of dried blood the color of old rubies. Her eyes were still open and filmed over with a milky substance known to pathologists as adipocere. One arm was pinned behind her back, the other raised in the trademark pose of all the other victims, including the Iceman. It looked as though she were shielding her dead face from some invisible sun. Her neck was coated with dried blood. Grove carefully slipped one hand under her shoulder blades and turned her over.
The neck wound was identical to all the others, a ragged pucker the size of a half dollar. But that’s not what Grove was looking for. He pulled a penlight from his inner pocket and thumbed it on. The delicate circle of light traveled down the woman’s spine to the small of her back. Grove stared at the fabric of the sundress, which was torn and soaked in blood. With his rubberized fingertip he prodded open the rip. The same inexplicable flesh wounds crisscrossed the woman’s taut flesh: perpendicular fissures already scabbed and crusted. Like all the others, these looked hastily produced by a serrated blade.
“They’re superficial,” Grove murmured to himself, tracing the wounds with his fingertip, then pressing down on them. The skin held like the head of a drum, confirming something Grove had already been told by over a dozen medical examiners. But up until now, the fact had held very little significance.
“What? What’s superficial?” Zorn was standing over him, waiting impatiently.
Grove rose. “The difference between this victim and the Iceman.”
“The hell are you talking about?”
Grove started toward Hauser’s Crown Victoria, walking briskly. “It’s all about seeing, observing the victimology,” he muttered.
Zorn hurried after him. “What did you see? What’s going on?”
Grove was peeling off his gloves as he walked. “We’re gonna need to talk to the first-on-the-scene in Alaska.”
“What in the good Lord’s name are you talking about? There’s no scene in Alaska!”
“When they found the mummy, when they took it out of the ice. The mummy’s the doorway.”
Zorn finally caught up with Grove and grabbed his arm. “What doorway? What the hell are you babbling about, Grove?”
Grove paused, gazing directly into Zorn’s eyes. “The mummy’s missing internal organs. Sun City victims are intact. That’s the key. The exit wounds were never made public, they were never part of the Discover articles.”
Grove turned and continued striding toward the captain’s car when Zorn suddenly grabbed him. “Wait! Grove, wait. I still ain’t followin’.”
Again Grove looked into Zorn’s eyes. “The guy we’re looking for, the Sun City killer. He saw the Iceman.”
“How do you know?”
“The internal organs were removed from the Iceman. That’s the part the killer is getting wrong.”
“Yeah so?”
“Because he couldn’t see that part, he couldn’t see it. It’s all about seeing.”
Zorn frowned. “You’re awful sure about this.”
“He was there, Terry. When they found the mummy he was there, he saw it.”
Grove turned and strode toward the captain’s car, leaving Zorn standing there in the flashing shadows, speechless.
6
Unseen Forces
Michael Okuda enclosed himself in the stall, the squeak of his hiking boot on the tile echoing in the deserted men’s room. The noise made Okuda doubly lonely and jittery. He had decided to come to the lab early, before dawn, in order to get a head start on the busy work Dr. Mathis had given him—an entire Pendaflex folder full of mitochondrial test results that needed filing—and now he was starting to regret the decision. He could be home sleeping. Or better yet, he could be working on his own stuff—maybe finishing that curriculum vitae so that he could maybe find an appointment somewhere with at least a remote possibility of advancement.
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