Stranded (8 page)

QUANTICO, VIRGINIA

It didn’t seem like that long ago that Dr. Gwen Patterson had been to the FBI facility at Quantico. Her boyfriend and best friend worked there, so she heard about the place on a weekly basis. But when the guard at the security hut scrutinized her driver’s license—eyes darting from her face to the plastic ID card—she realized it had actually been several years. The guards used to hear her name and wave her through. A few of them would recognize her and lift the gate before she’d had a chance to roll down her car window.

She was no longer a recognizable figure. And for a good reason. Gwen had purposely tried to distance herself from the place. The last time she had worked as a consultant on an FBI case, a psychotic young cult member had attempted to stab a sharp pencil into her throat.

The scrutiny started all over again at the front desk.

“I don’t have a name badge for you,” the receptionist said, making it sound like it was Gwen’s fault. “Who are you here to see?”

“Assistant Director Raymond Kunze. In the Behavorial Science Unit.”

“And what is the nature of your business?” the woman asked, holding on to Gwen’s driver’s license while giving her a full body search with her eyes. This was worse than the guard at the hut, and Gwen wondered how the woman thought she had made it this far if she was a threat.

She needed to calm down. She had been through tougher interrogations. This was simply more annoying than intimidating. She kept still, containing a sigh and resisting the urge to shift her weight and cross her arms. Gwen had spent most of her career compensating for her petite frame by wearing three-inch heels and fine tailored power suits—skirts, never trousers, and dark or bold colors, never pastels. She had refined her Brooklyn roots to create a classy, don’t-screw-with-me attitude. She believed confidence and poise more than made up for her lack in stature. But being back at Quantico reminded her only of vulnerability and of that split second of mind-numbing fear.

The receptionist continued to stare at her, and Gwen fought the unexpected flicker of nausea in the pit of her stomach.

“It’s okay, Stacy, I’ll vouch for Dr. Patterson.”

Gwen turned to find Detective Julia Racine coming in through the front doors.

“She’s on the Highway Serial Killings Task Force,” Racine told the receptionist, who was already pulling out a different stack of folders.

“I wish people would tell me these things ahead of time.” The woman now seemed irritated by both Gwen and Racine as she riffled through one folder and then another.

Racine positioned her back to Stacy and rolled her eyes for Gwen to see. Gwen smiled but tried not to show the young detective how terribly relieved she was. Julia Racine was cocky enough
without knowing that she had just saved the District’s number-one psychologist to the politicos from launching into a panic attack over a misplaced name badge. And Gwen suddenly realized—and did not like it—how much she had changed since her last visit. What had become of her lately?

Turning fifty had sent her into a tailspin. Instead of focusing on her accomplishments, all she could think about were her physical challenges: tired, moody, uncharacteristically second-guessing herself. Not just herself, but second-guessing her choices, her career, her relationship, her life.

Focus on the here and now, damn it!

“So you’re on the task force, too,” Gwen said after she and Racine signed in and pinned on their badges.

She let Racine lead the way, though it hadn’t been so long ago that Gwen would have forgotten how to get to the BSU conference room.

“The homicide that tipped off this investigation is my case. Remember those arsons back in February? Three warehouses and a church in Arlington?”

“Of course.” The same arsonist had torched her friend Maggie O’Dell’s house before he turned himself in.

“We found a body in the alley next to one of the warehouses.”

Racine pulled open a door to the walkway and held it for Gwen to go through. It was a polite gesture that threw Gwen off coming from Racine. The detective was anything but polite. She’d built a reputation on being tough as nails, one she reinforced by wearing trousers and leather jackets and keeping her short hair spiked just enough to give her an edgy look. Yet the knit T-shirt beneath the bomber jacket couldn’t hide full breasts and the trousers only accentuated her long slender legs.

“The body,” Racine continued, “was Gloria Dobson. We’re
pretty sure she and her traveling partner were murdered at a rest area in Virginia, just off the interstate.”

“I remember Tully and Maggie talking about it.”

But Gwen was careful not to mention just how much she knew about the case. It still unnerved her to remember how upset Tully had been when describing the crime scene he and Maggie had stumbled upon at that rest area.

R. J. Tully was a veteran FBI agent. He was one of the most centered and even-tempered men Gwen knew. He had seen and witnessed some gruesome murders, so this scene had to be horrendous to leave him shaken. And now he and Maggie were somewhere in the Midwest searching for the killer who had ripped apart that strong, healthy young man and left Gloria Dobson’s bashed-in body in a District alley.

Being a part of the task force, Gwen would learn more of the details, whether she wanted to or not. That was probably Racine’s thought since she continued to fill Gwen in as they made their way through the training facility and finally down to the Behavioral Science Unit. Gwen had worked on only one case with Detective Julia Racine and the detective had not been so forthcoming at the time. Actually “worked” was probably not the correct term. Racine would insist Gwen had obstructed evidence and gotten in the way.

Bottom line, the two women were acquaintances by accident and circumstance, not by choice—and by their mutual friend, Maggie O’Dell. Gwen knew it was more for Maggie’s benefit than hers that Racine was even polite to her.

Three men waited for Gwen and Racine in the Behavioral Science Unit’s conference room. Assistant Director Raymond Kunze waved them to take seats across the table. Kunze was a linebacker of a man, barrel-chested with a thick neck that looked strangled
in his cheery yellow tie. Combined with a mauve sports jacket the colors almost looked clownish. Though there was nothing clownish about the assistant director.

Everyone else in the room appeared to know one another.

“I’ve asked Dr. Gwen Patterson to join our task force,” Kunze explained. “As a trained forensic psychologist and a sort of outsider—” He stopped himself and turned to Gwen, quickly adding, “No offense intended.”

“None taken,” she answered.

Why was everyone being so damned polite? Like she was something old and fragile? She’d had her yearly physical yesterday. She was being overly sensitive. But she also trusted her instincts and she wished she had never agreed to this.

“I’m counting on Dr. Patterson to offer some fresh insights,” AD Kunze told his group.

Gwen smiled, thinking that wasn’t entirely true. While Kunze had, indeed, asked Gwen to be a part of this task force, it wasn’t his idea. A high-ranking senator had strong-armed Kunze to include her. It was a high-profile case. The Highway Serial Killings Initiative happened to be a program that Senator Delanor-Ramos had pushed through Congress. Everything in the District was about politics these days. Gwen joining this task force may have been sold as an outsider’s “fresh insights” but she knew it was really about covering the senator’s professional ass. She’d be the easy scapegoat if the project didn’t produce results quickly.

“Dr. Patterson has worked with the FBI on several cases,” Kunze was explaining to his team. “So she already has a working relationship.”

As Kunze continued his introduction, Gwen couldn’t help wondering if her familiarity might be as much a hindrance as a benefit. After all, her significant other and her best friend were assigned
to this task force. Gwen hated the fact that AD Kunze may have agreed so enthusiastically to her presence to use her against Tully and Maggie. The assistant director had made both his agents’ lives a working hell since he took over the unit. So she couldn’t help but be suspicious of Kunze’s motive, of his agreeing so easily to her being foisted on his team.

“You’ve met Detective Julia Racine,” Kunze was saying. “The District was good enough to loan her to us.”

Gwen also knew Keith Ganza, the director of the FBI crime lab. The tall, skinny agent wore a white lab coat, frayed at the cuffs. His long gray hair was tied back in a ponytail, adding to his look of a reclusive scientist. Gwen had often heard Maggie claim the man to be a mild-mannered genius who could see more in a piece of lint or a clump of dirt than any trace evidence specialist she’d ever worked with.

Gwen had not, however, met Antonio Alonzo before. The handsome, young black man wore frameless rectangular glasses and a purple button-down shirt with the sleeves neatly rolled up. Kunze called Agent Alonzo a computer wizard, on loan from ViCAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program). The young man seemed unfazed by the praise, which made Gwen instantly like him.

For all the talk of technology, however, when Kunze finally settled in and started the session he directed their attention to the front of the room where an old-fashioned paper map of the United States—three feet tall by five feet wide—had been spread out and hung up on a poster board. Bright-colored stick pins marked prominent areas across the country, some clustered together, others alone.

“Each of these pins represents a suspected murder victim. If they’re here it’s because they were found along our country’s interstate
systems in the last ten years. Or at least part of them was found. They’ve been entered into a separate database under the Highway Serial Killings Initiative.

“Many of these victims are transients who lived high-risk lives—prostitutes, drug users and dealers, hitchhikers, runaway teenagers. But there are about two hundred who were ordinary folks, traveling from one place to another like Gloria Dobson and Zach Lester.

“The idea behind the initiative was to organize a way to assist local law enforcement, to help them connect some of the dots. Until now it’s been tough for them to track since many of these victims disappeared from one state and their bodies showed up in another. The highway systems, by nature, create some unique challenges.

“Think of it this way—the crime scenes are also transient. The interstate system provides immediate and easy escape routes. A killer can simply get back on the road and be three hundred to four hundred miles away before the body is even discovered.

“Just since the database was created, two serial killers have been apprehended and convicted. Both long-haul truck drivers. We believe there are possibly several serial killers out on the roads using the rest areas and truck stops to supply them with easy targets.”

“When you say ‘several,’ how many do you really suspect?” asked Gwen.

Kunze didn’t hesitate. “Possibly a dozen.”

Gwen glanced around the table. None of the others flinched at this number.

“You can’t be serious,” Gwen said. “You’re saying there could be a dozen different killers—serial killers? Today? Driving the
highways, undetected. Stopping at rest areas and truck stops to find their victims? And essentially getting away with murder?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. We believe Agents O’Dell and Tully are close on the trail of one of them right now. The guy who killed Gloria Dobson and Zach Lester. We think he’s killed more. This particular task force is assigned to catch this guy.”

Kunze rubbed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. That’s when Gwen noticed the man’s fatigue and his attempt to downplay his frustration.

He looked around the table at them and there was a hint of anger in his voice when he said, “He’s dared us to find him, to catch him. We probably have a window of a week or two before this bastard simply changes his route. Chooses another part of the country. Revises his killing pattern. And when he does, he’ll be gone again. But one thing is certain—he won’t stop killing.”

CHAPTER 14

IOWA

Maggie had already guessed what was inside the white plastic bag.

She and Tully let the CSU techs take charge. They stood back with the others at the bottom of the dirt pile and watched as Ryan, the taller of the two male techs, carried the small bag. Janet had handed it down to him, both as careful as though they were handling fine china.

After helping to free the bag from the dirt, Maggie had lifted and felt the contents. She could tell it was double bagged. There was a large solid mass inside and she noted the squishy mess that had pooled at the bottom. She estimated its weight at about ten to eleven pounds, and she had a good idea what it was.

With the bag free of the chunks of mud, it was easy to see the Walmart logo.

“The contents of this one might not even be related to the bigger one.” It was Matt, the other tech, but even as he said it, he was spreading out and preparing a body bag, anticipating that it was human remains.

Maggie glanced around at the men. Of course no one believed it held someone’s discarded impulse buy at the twenty-four-hour
retail store. All of them were eager but there was a nervous quiet. The air had started to cool with dusk settling in around them. Maggie could feel their contradictory emotions—they wanted to see, but maybe they didn’t want to see.