by Ellie Marney
Emma looks to the left, where a gap between the trees reveals the hump of Mount Weather. The sun is gone, leaving only a thin line of brilliant orange against the black horizon. The sky has turned a shade of cobalt that reminds her of homesickness.
“You shouldn’t be doing this,” she says quietly. “This is a worse idea for you than it is for me. You actually want a career in law enforcement. Cooper has the clout to screw that up.”
“Cooper has clout, yeah. But if we can help, we should help. It’s the right thing to do.” Bell’s face is a composition of blue planes and sharp shadows by the lights from the dashboard. He shrugs. “I’m not scared.”
Your dad would be proud of you right now. It’s on the tip of her tongue to say it, but she holds back. She has a feeling he already knows.
They cross the Shenandoah in the half dark. Soon enough, Bell’s navigating the turn onto East Main Street, past a sign for Berryville Farm Supply.
“Okay, here we go,” Bell says. “Which way now?”
Emma sees the flash of a white van with a roof-mounted aerial. “There. Follow the media.”
The van turns past the rail line in the middle of town, so they turn, too, onto Lord Fairfax Highway, heading southwest. A state trooper tears past, turns left after Chip’s Auto Sales, and Bell follows doggedly. Half a mile farther on, an area on the left is swarmed with police cars, state troopers, floodlights.
Emma touches Bell’s forearm. “Don’t get too close.”
Bell noses the Diplomat onto the road shoulder behind a bunch of vehicles parked near a hurricane fence, kills the engine. He and Emma unbuckle, watch the people converging up ahead.
Emma drags her ID lanyard back over her head. “You ready?”
“Almost.” Bell buttons his collar, slings his tie around his neck. His eyes are intent on the scene through the windshield. “I hope this works.”
“Me too.” Emma cracks her door open. She suddenly feels nervous and sweaty and travel-worn. “I don’t look very FBI. At least you’re wearing a suit.”
“Take my jacket.” Bell reaches into the back, hands her his dark suit jacket, pushes his own door open with his foot.
Emma gets out, brushes herself down, and slips the jacket on. Wearing Bell’s clothes is becoming a habit. But the jacket functions as a kind of blazer over her pale T-shirt and jeans. It’s big through the shoulders and long in the sleeves—she rolls the cuffs three turns.
“Is this better?”
Bell is knotting his tie. “Yeah. It looks fine.” He grins. “Kind of a Talking Heads vibe.”
Emma presses a hand to her stomach. “Oh my god, what are we doing?”
“Lewis, relax.”
They make their way forward. A TV newshound is adjusting her mic, setting up for a live report in the middle of the road. A placard for Berryville Quarry and Asphalt on the fence, more moving bodies. The first uniform they come across is a Clarke County trooper, her hair tied back except for her Farrah Fawcett bangs.
“Ma’am?” Bell walks right up. “We’re here to see Special Agent Cooper. We’re with the bureau.”
He shows his ID. Emma scrambles to do the same, with the same aplomb.
“Heya. Thank you.” The woman examines their cards, expressionless. “Agent Cooper is on the far left of the site, at the crime scene. You need an escort?”
“No, thank you, but if you could point me at your sergeant, that would be great.”
The woman points helpfully. “Sergeant Donahee is closer in, he’s talking to the witness.”
Bell’s ears prick up. “We’ve got a witness?”
“Not to the deaths—the discovery. Jud Cleary, he’s a local gentleman. Usually goes out on a tear, ends up in a ditch somewhere until we pick him up and drive him back home. Tonight he decided he’d come visit his former place of employment, got a helluva shock. He’s with the ambulance over there.”
“Thank you, ma’am—can I say who sent us?”
“Senior Trooper Janelle Winshuttle. You just tell ’em Nelly sent you.”
Bell thanks her again and steers Emma away, speaking under his breath. “Always get a name.”
“Now we go see the sergeant?”
“Now we walk in his direction but avoid him. We just want Cooper. Keep your eyes out for our guys.”
A helicopter circles overhead. Farther into the wide quarry area, the rough gravel crunches under Emma’s running shoes. The hot mix plant juts up at the right of what is basically a big truck parking area. Above the illumination of the floods, silos and gantry rigging loom like the backstage set of an enormous theater production.
When they hit an orange tape line, Bell finds another trooper and explains that Nelly sent them. They duck under the tape, blood thumping in Emma’s face when she bends over. Outbuildings and warehouse structures are straight ahead. She spots a figure in a crime scene hazard suit, tugs on Bell’s sleeve.
“There.”
Bell narrows his eyes, heads them both in that direction, left of a giant heavy roller and through a gap in a broken wire fence. Other people pass in and out of the area. A corrugated red storehouse, with a newer silver tin door, stands surrounded by yellow barricade tape.
People are moving around it, in suits and uniforms. Through pinhole rust in the walls, Emma can see the lightning flare of flashes going off inside the building.
She swallows hard. The night is clammy on her skin. New-made ghosts live inside those walls, and now she’s not sure she wants to know them.
Bell touches her arm—there. By the refracted light of the floods, Emma can see the furrows in Cooper’s brow as he peels off a set of latex gloves.
“Do we go to him?”
“No.” Bell fixes her in place. “We wait. He’ll see us.”
He’s right. Cooper scans the site as he talks to a county officer. When his eyes hit Emma and Bell, they stop.
Emma gets a wash of guilt, talks out of the side of her mouth. “Let me take the blame for this. You can do a set-pick off me, say I made you drive—”
“No way,” Bell says. “I initiated this. I earned it.”
Cooper approaches in his own good time. He does not look happy. “What are you doing here?”
Bell stands straight. “We decided to come, sir.”
“You decided to come.” Cooper mashes his lips into a zippered line. “I gave you very specific instructions—”
“We know,” Emma says. Suddenly she understands why this is important. “But we need to see it. And you need us.”
“I don’t need a pair of unqualified, rule-breaking teenagers haring around this crime scene—”
“That’s right,” Emma says. “We’re teenagers. And these victims are all teenagers. We can tell you more about them in five minutes than an adult officer would be able to tell you in an hour, just by looking.”
Cooper doesn’t seem to know how to reply to that. He turns to Bell. “Are you on board with this? Did she make you—”
“She didn’t make me do anything,” Bell says calmly. “I made my own choice on this, sir. Lewis is right. We’re as much a part of this case as anybody else. And we might see things from a different perspective.”
Emma finds her voice has gone imploring. “Mr. Cooper, you’re hunting a killer of juveniles. All the evidence suggests the perpetrator is a juvenile himself. We’re the only juveniles you have. Let us help.”
Cooper tongues his back teeth, still frowning. But the frown looks speculative now. Finally he makes a deep exhale. “I am gonna get my ass kicked halfway to Sunday for this.…”
“We won’t tell,” Emma blurts.
“Somebody will,” Cooper says darkly. “All right. You can view the scene. Tell me what you see.” He stops Emma with an upraised palm as she opens her mouth. “You do exactly what I say. Exactly. Can you follow instructions this time, Miss Lewis, or am I going to have to make you wait out here?”
Emma restrains herself, nods. “Yes. I mean, I can follow instructions.”
“Stay here,”
Cooper says. “That’s instruction number one.”
He looks at them both, shakes his head, and turns away. For a moment, Emma thinks he’s fixing to block them and walk. But he’s simply retrieving two packages from the open back of a nearby white van. When he returns, he hands them the plastic-wrapped packets.
“Put these on. There should be booties. I’m going to find someone to give you an escort.”
He leaves again, heading back toward the doorway of the red storehouse.
Emma turns to Bell, wanting to jump up and down, careful not to. “Holy shit.”
Bell lets out an immense breath. “Jesus, I can’t believe that worked.”
She grabs a handful of plastic packaging and yanks it away. “Hurry up, let’s do this before he changes his mind.”
Bell moves equally quickly. The hazmat suits inside the wrapping are a kind of durable blue paper, and they’re a little awkward to step into—once Emma ditches Bell’s jacket on top of a nearby gallon drum, it’s easier. They fit their booties over their shoes.
Cooper returns with a young man who’s also in Tyvek, his huge camera slung around his neck by a wide strap. “This is Henry Burns, he’s the county ME photographer.”
“Hi,” Henry says, makes a little wave. He’s about twenty-five and looks like he’d be friendly under different circumstances. As things stand, he’s pale-faced and solemn.
“Mr. Burns is going to take you inside,” Cooper says. “People are working in there. Don’t disrupt them, and don’t talk to them. Don’t go more than three feet into the interior of the building. Stick to the wall if you can.”
“Yes, sir,” Bell says.
“You can’t take anything in. No notepads, pencils, nothing. Don’t touch anything. I mean it—if you touch anything, Gerry will have you inked up for fingerprints before you can blink, and I don’t want any record of you ever having been in there, d’you understand?”
“Yes,” Emma says. “No touching. Got it.”
“Get under the tape.”
Cooper holds the tape up for them. Once they’ve breached that barrier, Emma feels a chill—they’re getting closer. To what, she doesn’t want to imagine.
Instead of leading them to the tin door, which is a mess of personnel and tape rolls and piles of equipment, Cooper walks them around to the left. There’s no noticeable path, but the way is marked by the pressed-down fronds of ryegrass and devil’s tail vine.
Far at the back, out of sight of the main quarry area, a wide piece of water-stained corrugated iron is pulled up like the curling cover of a paperback novel to make a sneak’s door.
“This is where Cleary entered?” Bell asks.
“Yes.” Cooper turns to them. “And it’s where the perpetrator entered. You’ll be seeing it as he saw it. This is a disused outbuilding. The owners have this part of the site security-checked, but only once a month and then just the exteriors. If Cleary hadn’t walked into it, it might never have been discovered.”
“This isn’t a garbage dump.” It’s the first thing Emma can think of to say.
“That’s right. And this scene’s different in other ways, too. I want your first impressions, including any thoughts you might have about the victims. You can’t take notes—you’ll just have to record everything behind your eyes. And I want your questions. Questions usually lead to new questions, new ideas. I’ll take whatever you’ve got.” Cooper stops, looks at them both. “Okay, tell me now. Are you sure you want to go in? Because this is it. Once you see this stuff, you can’t unsee it. It changes you.”
Emma realizes her hands are shaking. She squeezes them into fists. “I’ve seen this stuff before, Mr. Cooper.”
Bell just nods, very sober.
Cooper gives them a final up-and-down, as if he’s documenting the people they were before entering. For a moment, his face looks very sad and wise. Emma thinks he’s going to say something more, but he just closes his mouth and indicates the entry point with his chin.
Burns ushers them over. Before they can go through the sneak’s door, a uniformed deputy exits, looking ashen. Emma and Bell stand back. The deputy makes it about five good paces out of the building before he gags and throws up into a patch of gravel.
Emma glances at Bell, sees him swallow. Then Burns is saying, “Excuse me? This way,” and time slows down.
Ducking low, into the smell of rust and old brick. And then the rank smell of blood.
They’re inside now. Air wafts around her, indicating the size of the space. Neither she nor Bell look at each other. Emma looks at the floor, notices the pulverized remains of mortar under her covered shoes. In the crack where part of the concrete floor has split, a wild strawberry is growing.
Camera flashes go off nearby. Something inside her is starting to coalesce. A familiar feeling. She doesn’t want to look up. She hears the hiss and static of handheld radios, the click of shutters, the sizzle of tripod lights, muted conversation. People move in her peripheral vision, all made anonymous in blue Tyvek. She recognizes Glenn Neilsen’s fishing tackle box, set to one side.
A stack of bricks occupies a corner near the illegal entryway, and by it, a pile of clothing protected by scene tape and evidence markers. Emma sees a red T-shirt with glitter on it. Faded jeans. A pair of striped shorts with a brown leather belt, flopped open. Beside the pile lies a tumble of shoes—a pair of Keds with the laces untied, a running shoe, a green sandal. At least three victims, then. She closes her eyes.
Somewhere far off, in her own head, a thin, high keening sound.
Her heartbeat hammers her ribs. God, she’s so tired. But she has to look at this. It’s what she came here to see.
She takes a shuddering breath in through her nose, registers the ozone scent of decaying metal. The smell of heat from the lights, and sweat from the people in the space. The low, raw notes of slaughter.
Emma opens her eyes.
The shock of it. Breathless at the scale of it. The hanging bodies. The ropes and chains and hooks. The throat wounds. The blood in pools and puddles underneath. The smell. The quality of the light.
The poignancy of the bodies. The stillness of them. The way they’re suspended like slabs of meat in a freezer, the wrongness of it. The way their hands are bound at the front, arms tied again around the waist, faces obscured with blood. No hair—he’s shaved them this time.
The keening in her head magnifies. Resolves itself into a piercing, endless scream.
She looks for as long as she can. Records everything behind her eyes, as Cooper instructed. Records it also in her viscera, in the marrow of her bones, in the sinews of her legs, in the mysterious recesses of her mind where no light enters.
Cold sweat pops on her skin, like she felt in Huxton’s basement. She sways on the spot.
Finds herself reeled in. Looks down and is surprised to discover that she and Bell are holding hands. Looks up and he is staring at the bodies, too. His expression is one of absolute despair. Then his eyes close with the awareness that nothing will ever be the same.
CHAPTER TWENTY
After working the scene with Cooper and the Scientific Analysis team for two hours, they peel off their paper suits, collect Bell’s jacket, walk back to the Diplomat, and begin the long return drive to Quantico.
They should feel hungry, but neither of them wants to eat anything. Near Manassas, the car develops a subtle yaw as Bell starts to shut down. Emma makes him pull over on the side of the parkway so they can switch drivers. In the passenger seat, he complains that he’s not tired. Five minutes later, Emma looks over and his head is heavy against the window, his breathing deep and even. He wakes just before Southbridge with a jolting start.
She rolls the car into an exterior parking space near Jefferson at about 01:30.
“The car needs to go back to the motor pool,” Bell says dully.
“Doubt the gate will be open yet.” Emma unbuckles and rubs her neck.
Neither of them has the energy to get out. They just sit there listening to t
he engine tick as it cools. Finally, Bell rouses himself.
“We should go to the dorms. Get some sleep.”
“You sleepy again?”
“Nope.”
“Me either.”
“I’m too wired. I shouldn’t have napped.” Bell sighs deeply, pushes open his door.
“It was nap or become a road fatality.” Emma sticks her tongue in her cheek. She shouldn’t have mentioned fatalities. “Wait.”
“What’s up?”
“I know what we need.”
She gets out of the Diplomat, stiff-legged. Brushes crumbs off the driver’s seat and shoos Bell out, locks up. Then she walks fifteen feet to her own Rabbit. Keys, keys. She finds them in the back pocket of her jeans. The trunk has a sticky lock, and it’s been nearly a week since she’s paid the car any attention. She pats one cold taillight affectionately.
Bell stands in the parking lot, moonlight giving him gravitas and a thin shadow. “Did you leave something?”
“Yes. But I left it on purpose.” She hunts through the open trunk by feel. “Okay. Got it.” She lifts up her prize.
“Tequila?” Now Bell sounds interested.
“Hey, we drink tequila in Ohio, too.”
Emma’s not sure where to go, because alcohol is forbidden in the federal buildings and specifically in the dorms. Bell vetoes drinking in the parking lot, but shows how they can cut across the lawn to reach the grove. There’s something about the springy texture of the grass underfoot that Emma finds deeply restorative.
The grove is the paved area where agents and staff can take their cafeteria food to eat outside. At this time of night it’s lit only by shadow; the café tables all have their blue umbrellas folded.
Emma pulls out a plastic chair and plonks herself down. “Smoke ’em if you got ’em.”
“No glasses.” Bell, still standing, grimaces and pats down his front as if he’ll somehow find them there.
“Oh no, whatever will we do.” Emma unscrews the cap from the bottle and takes a sip. Holds it out.
Bell seems to realize he’s being ridiculous because he’s tired. He takes the bottle, regards it. “You know this is terrible tequila.”