“That I did,” Nate said.
“He was right, and I am truly sorry. Second,” Cooper said, “I wanted to thank you both for your help in this case. Because of what you found, we’ve been able to open an FBI investigation. It was the evidence you uncovered that established the link between these deaths and allowed me to do that. Having an official case opens up a lot of resources—profilers, fast-track forensics, extra personnel. So thank you.”
Nate waited for me to respond, and when I didn’t, he said, “Glad to help you, Scott. Hope you find this dude quickly.” He rubbed his beard. “You figure out why this one’s different? Why he didn’t pose her, if it’s the same guy?”
“I think so.”
My ears perked up. I just could not turn off the investigator in me.
Scott picked up some grass and started drawing it out of his hand, blade by blade, and throwing it on the ground. “I interviewed the guy who took that potshot at you. We had cleared him for the murders, but when I pushed him, he remembered something interesting. He’d been in the woods the day after Sandy disappeared when he came across this guy on top of the cliff. He seemed out of place. Nervous. Said he was looking for his dog but Jackson—the shooter—saw the guy didn’t have a leash or anything. Just a knife on his belt.
I was in such a dark mood I was only half-listening, but Scott’s words triggered a memory. When I’d searched the suspect that dreadful night, after I’d cuffed him, I found a knife on his belt, an unusual one. Distracted by that, had I missed something else, a handcuff key, maybe? Hidden in a pocket?
I shook my head to dislodge the fresh shame and forced myself to listen to Scott.
“So the guy seemed off, and Jackson got concerned, and left quickly. He’d forgotten about it, though, until I talked to him again.”
“So maybe Jackson interrupted the murderer and that’s why he threw the body off the cliff?”
“That’s what we’re thinking.” Scott rose. “Jess, again, I’m really sorry.”
I nodded and hoped he didn’t see it in the dark.
Nate stood. “Let us know if we can help.”
“I sure will.” Cooper turned and walked to his car. When he started the ignition, his headlights were so bright I felt as though they were searching every inch of me. I got up abruptly and walked into my apartment.
Nate followed me. I heard the door close behind him. “It took a lot for him to do that. He’s a proud man.”
I turned to him. “Don’t even think about lecturing me on forgiveness. Don’t even go there.”
Nate raised his eyebrows.
Something flashed in my mind—the feeling of his hand on my head, his thumb between my eyes, his voice softly praying. My face grew hot, and I turned away.
“I ‘spect I should be goin’. Thanks for the run.” He hesitated. “You going to be okay?”
I took a deep breath, trying to get hold of my emotions. I faced him. “Yeah, thanks.”
He nodded and started to leave. At the door, he turned and looked at me. “You want practical? Just so you know, forgiveness is one of the most practical things a body can do.” And then he left.
26
As Scott Cooper walked into the Behavioral Analysis Unit, his mind flashed back to his new-agent training at the FBI Academy eleven years before. He and Suzanne had been married for two years. Amanda was just eighteen months old.
Maybe it had been selfish of him to pursue his dream of becoming an agent. Maybe he was single-minded and obsessed as his wife had claimed.
Still, he had loved every minute of his training. The classes, the camaraderie, the physical challenges … even the pepper-spray test, in which he’d had to defend himself and protect his gun after being sprayed in the face with capsaicin. It had been brutal, but he survived. In fact, he thrived at the Academy. In the end, he was elected class spokesman.
At the time, he’d hoped his wife would be proud. She wasn’t. She’d sat with his parents at graduation and smiled and nodded at the reception, but when they were alone, she’d complained. A lot.
The fact that his first office assignment was New York didn’t help. She was a California girl born and bred and living in a big East Coast city so far from her family seemed to keep her perpetually angry. Five years later, their marriage blew up altogether, forcing him to become a long-distance dad.
All those thoughts streamed across his mind like a tickertape. Up and down, good news and bad, day after day.
He shook his head to dislodge those thoughts, walked up to a receptionist, and identified himself. Gary Taylor, she said, was waiting.
Taylor was an old-school profiler, or behavioral analyst as they preferred to be known. Tall, gray-haired, and angular, he sat at the walnut conference table next to Scott going over the evidence from the file—the crime scene and autopsy reports, photos, police reports.
“Tell me again how you got involved in this?” Taylor asked.
Scott told him about victim number two, the body the dog found, and then noticing the similarities with the older case from near Warrenton. He didn’t tell Taylor about how his gut twisted at the thought of these murders, about the similarity of the victims to his sister.
Another agent entered the room. “Colleen Baker,” she said, introducing herself. She looked over Taylor’s shoulder at the pictures spread out over the table. “A serial murderer?”
“We think so,” Scott said.
“Is there a signature?”
“Two of the three were posed, lying on their backs in clearings deep in the woods. They looked almost peaceful,” Scott said.
“How about this third one?” Baker pointed to the body of Sandy Smith.
“Her neck was broken like the other two.”
“But she was, what? Thrown off a cliff?”
“It’s possible the guy was interrupted and had to get rid of her quickly,” Taylor said.
Scott nodded. “Thing is, near victims two and three, we found a little pile of wood shavings. It was weird.”
“But not victim one,” Baker said.
“Right.”
“And none of them were sexually assaulted.”
“Correct.” Scott looked at the two profilers and took a deep breath. “So what’s your process? Where do we go from here?”
Taylor and Baker looked at each other. “We’ll take a few days to analyze what’s here. You’ll want to do victimology on all three victims. We’ll help you set up a couple of questionnaires for investigators to use for that,” Taylor said. “Then we’ll sit in on any meetings you have and help you analyze what you’ve discovered.
Scott nodded. “This could take weeks.” He was thinking about his daughter’s upcoming visit.
“At least.”
Scott drew in a deep breath. “In the meantime, would you say we’re looking at an organized or disorganized killer?” He knew a little.
Taylor pursed his lips. “Based on the posing? And the fact their bodies were transported to a specific place? Possibly organized, but I’ll reserve judgment on that.”
“So if he’s organized, we’re talking what? An educated person? Average or above-average intelligence? What?”
The two profilers looked at each other. “It’s too soon to be definitive,” Baker said, “but organized killers are the ones who plan attacks, who use ruses or ambush strategies to snare their victims. They’re street-smart but may or may not be intelligent.” She folded her hands. “Tell you what. Give us some time to look over this, and then we’ll be ready to meet with your team. Sound good?”
What choice did he have?
Scott walked out of the building feeling weighed down. “Weeks” seemed like a long time. But he knew it could actually be years, or never.
He got in his vehicle and checked his watch. Five o’clock. When he pulled out of the parking lot, his thoughts nagged at him. Then, on impulse, instead of heading toward home, he headed southwest.
An hour later, his tires crunched over gravel as he drove down th
e tree-lined driveway toward Nate Tanner’s house. He’d stopped on the way and picked up barbeque at a place Nate said he liked when he called him to see if it was okay to stop by.
As Scott pulled up, the dog came barking at his car. He saw Nate on the south side of the house. He was splitting wood, lifting a log, placing it on a thick stump, then driving his axe down through it. A pile of firewood lay to his right. He had his shirt off, and even from the car Scott could see the sweat glistening on his back.
It wasn’t until Scott walked closer that he saw the scars. He took a deep breath, absorbing his shock, before saying, “Hey.”
Nate drove the axe through the oak log and threw the pieces on the woodpile. “How’s it going?” He squinted in the bright light.
“It’s going.” Scott held up the bag of food. “Ready to eat?”
“Sure. Meet you on the front porch.”
Scott walked up the six steps at the front of Nate’s cabin. The honey-colored wood seemed so natural. He wondered what it took to keep the bugs out of it. He set the food down on the small table and sat down.
“Hey, dog,” he said, holding out his hand to Nate’s springer. She had followed him onto the porch, but Scott couldn’t remember her name.
The dog sniffed his hand, her tail wagging, then turned as the door opened and Nate emerged from the house, wearing an army-green shirt and carrying two glasses in his hands. “Lemonade okay?” he asked, setting them on the table.
Scott grinned. “You trying to turn me into a teetotaler?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.”
Nate sat down and said grace before they began working on the pulled-pork sandwiches Scott had brought. The sun had dropped behind the house, casting a long shadow on the front lawn. He soaked in the peacefulness of Nate’s place, the black-and-white dog lying on the porch, her ball at her nose; the rich, green garden; the woodpile promising heat in the winter.
But he couldn’t get his mind off the scars on Nate’s body. “What happened to you?”
Nate raised his eyebrows.
“Those burn scars.”
“RPG. Afghanistan.”
“Wow.” He shook his head. “That must have been hell to get over.”
“Changed my life, it did. And not all in bad ways.” Nate took a big drink of lemonade. “So what’s up with you, Scott? Why the visit?”
Nate’s question pulled Scott out of his own murky thoughts about pain and suffering and the purpose of it all. He put down his sandwich, wiping the grease off his fingers on a napkin, and began telling Nate about BAU and profiling and organized versus disorganized killers. He talked about signatures and forensics and patterns of behavior. He talked about the time it would take to identify a suspect.
Talking about that stuff put him back in his wheelhouse, in control, and he liked that. “So, they said the posing—that and some other stuff—trends toward an organized killer, someone who uses ruses, who plans his attacks, someone with street smarts. So my question is, how does that fit with someone who sits on a log cutting wood with a knife?”
Nate rubbed his beard and stared out across the field in front of his house as if the answer would emerge from the grass like a butterfly taking flight. “Most folks who like to whittle come from the country. It’s a nervous habit, or they’re getting ready to make a fire, or they just like cutting wood.” He looked straight at Scott. “Maybe that fact is an outlier—or the rest of it is.”
“You mean their assumptions?” He picked up his sandwich.
Nate shrugged. “I haven’t studied murderers. I’m looking at it in a different way. These girls were carried deep in the woods. Who does that? Someone who’s familiar with the woods, knows how not to get lost, and isn’t afraid of what’s back there. So I’d be looking for a hunter. A woodchuck—”
“Woodchuck?” Scott took the last bite of his sandwich and wiped his mouth.
“Someone who cuts and sells firewood by the truckload, usually in the suburbs. I’d be looking for someone like that, or maybe even a hiker. Park ranger.” Nate shifted his jaw. “The guy’s strong too. Think about it. Carrying even a hundred-pound body deep in the woods—that’s not easy.”
“So what’s with the wood chips?”
Nate shrugged. “Maybe he needs to think a while. Maybe he’s not ready to leave her. Maybe he’s recovering from his hike.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out his pipe. “I sit and stick this in my mouth a lot. Don’t even smoke it. Just like the comfort of it. Maybe he’s that way with a knife and whittlin’.” He put the pipe back in his pocket.
Scott thought about Nate’s theory, trying to fit what he knew about serial killers with what the dog man said.
“God knows who this guy is,” Nate said after a pause. “I’ll pray he’ll let you know too.”
A flash of anger pushed Scott to his feet. He walked over to the porch railing and leaned against a post while he stared out into the yard. The dog nudged her ball. He picked it up and threw it, launching it across the front field. Sprite went racing after it.
Nate whistled. “You play baseball?”
“Pitcher,” Scott said, turning to Nate, “in high school and college.”
“You try out for the majors?”
Scott shook his head. “I got scouted, but I knew what I wanted—the Bureau.” He took a deep breath. “Can I try my hand at your axe?”
“Sure!” Nate rose. “Let me put this stuff in the trash, and I’ll meet you out back.” He picked up the remains of their meal.
Scott walked around to the side of the house. He’d swung an axe before, in Scouts, but it had been a long time. He lifted the axe, felt the blade, and jiggled the head to make sure it was secure. Then he picked up an oak log and set it on the stump. As Nate walked out of the house, he swung the axe over his head and planted it in the log. It split with a loud crack!
“Not bad,” Nate said, grinning. He picked up the two pieces and threw them on the woodpile. “I’ll set ‘em up for you.”
They worked together for the next half hour, Nate lifting logs onto the stump, Scott splitting them. Some of them were big enough he needed to make multiple cuts. But the feel of the axe in his hand, the sound of it hitting the wood, and the smell of freshly cut oak affected him right down to the core.
With every new log, Scott felt the challenge; with every crack, he felt his strength. Helplessness and frustration flowed out of him in his sweat. Finally, chest heaving, he held the axe and looked at Nate. “We never found the guy who killed my sister.” Scott wiped his brow with his arm, glancing at Nate as he did.
Nate’s eyes widened. “Your sister?”
He fought the inevitable nausea, closed his eyes, and nodded. Then he gestured toward the stump, and Nate put another log on it.
“When was this?” Nate asked.
Crack!
“I was seventeen. So, nineteen years ago.”
The oak made a solid thud as Nate pitched the pieces on the pile, picked up a new log, and set it in place.
Crack!
“Snuck out one night to see a boy and never came home. We found her body the next day in a park. She’d been raped and strangled.” Even now he could feel the weight in his chest and the stinging in his eyes.
“That’s terrible.”
Crack!
His breath was coming hard now. “So, all I’m saying is, God may know who this killer is, but he may just keep that to himself. Like he did …”
Crack!
“… like he did my sister’s.”
Nate didn’t argue with him. “You joined the Bureau to try to find that guy?”
“No, to put as many of those guys away as I could. But no matter how hard I work,” Scott said, “the murders just keep coming.” Sweat rolled down between his shoulder blades.
“And the pain doesn’t go away,” Nate added for him.
Scott didn’t answer. He couldn’t. A snake had wrapped itself around his voice.
Nate put the last log on the stump. Scott hit it har
d. Three times. Then he drove the axe into the stump itself, deep enough for it to stick. He wiped his hands on his khakis. “Thanks, Nate.”
“Yeah, man.” Nate cocked his head, looking at him with those bright blue eyes. Scott looked away, unable to hold his gaze. The snake squeezed again. The dog man clapped him on the shoulder and kept his hand there for a minute. “You want to talk about it?”
He shook his head. “Nah.”
“Now, or any time,” Nate said. “I’m available.”
“I gotta get home.” Scott turned toward his car, then stopped. “I don’t get it. She was just a normal girl. Why her?”
“That’s the question. It’s hard, Scott, what you been through.”
Scott took two more strides toward his car, then turned. “How’s Jessica doing?”
“She’s got some healing to do.”
Scott shook his head. “I talked to a friend in Fairfax. Jess got a raw deal. I’m sorry I added on to that.”
Nate nodded. “I’ll tell her you asked after her.”
27
Two weeks after my mad dash down the mountain, I still felt raw from Scott’s exposing me. “Exposing” is what it felt like anyway. They say love is the strongest force in the universe. I think it might be shame.
I was also ashamed of my idiotic response. I could have killed someone driving down the mountain like that. Just thinking of it made my stomach clench.
With all my failures, I found it amazing that Nate hadn’t given up on me. He’d seen my craziness, but he’d remained steady. Like an anchor.
Still, I worried. Had Scott said anything to anyone else? Had Emily heard what I’d done? Susan? SAR volunteers were tough people, almost like cops. Once word got out, was I going to face the same kind of rejection from them as I had from my fellow LEOs in Fairfax? Would I have the courage to face them at the next callout?
Luke had slept in my bed every night the last two weeks, pressing his body against my legs, comforting me. He seemed to accurately read my stress levels. I could only imagine he was picking up some pheromone I was giving off.
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