Shadow Fall (Tracers Series Book 9) (30 page)

And although Tara didn’t like Brannon’s needling, he brought up a good point. How did Liam feel about her seizing his computers? She didn’t know. After delivering the warrant, she’d left him three phone messages, and he hadn’t answered a single one.

“So, boss, don’t you want to hear what I did today?”

She shot him a look. “I thought you were helping Jason with the tapes.”

“No, Ingram was helping Jason. You should keep better track of your minions.”

She ignored the comment as a sheriff’s cruiser rode up on her bumper. She moved into the right-hand lane to let him pass.

“I went through some ViCAP records,” Brannon said.

Tara had already tried the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. “I checked,” she said. “Nothing with the same MO.”

“Yeah, but what about a broader MO? You heard the profiler this morning. Our UNSUB most likely built up to this gradually. So I was checking older crimes, anything involving strangulation.”

“And?”

“I got a ton of hits,” he said. “Hundreds. After I wade through everything, I’ll let you know.”

It sounded like a long shot, but Tara was glad he’d taken the initiative.

“When I get my list together,” she said, “we can cross-reference, see if any common names pop up.” She looked at Brannon. “The Delphi lab came through with a DNA profile and they think it belongs to our UNSUB.”

“You’re kidding. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I just found out. Problem is, the profile isn’t in the database.”

“So we need to come up with a suspect,” Brannon said.

“Exactly.”

“Shit, that’s a good idea. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Another sheriff’s cruiser blew past doing at least ninety. Tara’s stomach tightened, and she glanced at her phone in the console. No missed calls. She checked her mirror to switch lanes just as a sheriff’s SUV raced by.

“Damn it.” She changed lanes and floored the gas. “Something’s going down. You miss any calls?”

“No.”

She caught up to the SUV as it exited the highway. She thought she recognized the guy behind the wheel—one of Ingram’s men but not someone on the task force. And that was good, because whatever this was, it could be unrelated.

But then the deputy put on his turn signal, and Tara’s stomach plummeted. She gripped the wheel and followed him.

“Hey, isn’t this the way to—”

“Silver Springs Park,” she said.

Tara glanced around at the thick woods. Yesterday morning she’d driven this road with Liam, and the sky overhead had been a vibrant blue. But now it was lead gray, and the gravel road to the parking lot was dark and wet. A cold trickle of fear slid down Tara’s spine as she turned into the parking lot and spotted the mute ambulance.

“Oh, God,” she murmured.

“Don’t jump to conclusions. Some jogger could have had a coronary.”

Tara pulled over beside a row of police units and got out. She spied the cluster of cowboy hats near the trailhead, Sheriff Ingram’s towering above them all.

Tara walked straight up to him. He glanced over, and she knew the second she saw his eyes.

“Why wasn’t I called?” she demanded.

He looked across the crowd. “Jason was supposed to call you.”

The deputy met Tara’s gaze, his expression tight. “Sent you a text message.”

It was an outright lie, and Tara felt her face go red with outrage, for all the good it did her. She glanced around the scene, which had already been cordoned off with yellow tape. Deeper in the woods was another huddle of men. She recognized Dr. Greenwood’s bald head.

Tara’s gut clenched. She looked at Ingram as everyone watched her reaction.

“Same MO?”

He nodded.

She turned to Brannon. “Call Jacobs. We need an evidence response team here immediately. Then secure this perimeter. No deputies, no cops, no EMTs. No one goes back there besides myself, the sheriff, and the medical examiner’s people. Got it?”

Brannon nodded.

Tara sidestepped Ingram and set off down the path, careful to keep away from the trail itself. Greenwood, dressed for the weather in a gray raincoat, peeled away from a trio of uniformed police officers.

“Agent Rushing.” He gave her a nod.

“What do we have?”

“I’ll show you.”

She followed him into the woods, pushing through the foliage to avoid trampling the hiking path. Dread filled her as he led her deeper into the dank, dark forest. The air was cold and gloomy, and she could feel something terrible lurking in the shadows. Panic bubbled up inside her as she thought of what lay beyond the trees. Her palms felt clammy. She didn’t know if she could do it.

This requires a new best.

“Again this time, they found no car, no clothing,” Greenwood said. “He deposited her in a clearing.”

Tara picked her way through the leaves, ducking under low-hanging limbs. “Who found her?” she asked.

“You’ll have to ask Chief Becker. I received the call”—he halted and looked at his watch—“forty-six minutes ago and got here as fast as I could. Based on a cursory examination I’d estimate a postmortem interval of eighteen hours, possibly twenty.”

Tara checked her watch. “So she was killed between ten and midnight?”

“It’s an estimate.”

“We need to get the autopsy scheduled as soon as possible so we can get an ID.”

He stopped and turned around. “I believe they already know her.”

Tara stared at him. He started down the path again, and she followed, heart pounding now as she pushed through the branches. Her mind raced. She held her breath as they stepped into a clearing.

She was sprawled on a bed of leaves, another horrific tableau. Legs spread apart, arms outstretched. Viciously mutilated beyond recognition.

Except for the scarlet curtain of hair over her face.

Tara’s breath hissed out as she knelt beside her. “Oh, God. Oh, Crystal.”

C
rystal Marie Marshall was last seen by her coworkers at the Waffle Stop at 10:15 the previous night when she punched her time card at the end of her shift. Jeannie Wharton told investigators she’d been closing up the kitchen and helping Donny clean the griddle when Crystal left the diner wearing only a blue fleece hoodie over her yellow waitress uniform.

Silver Springs police found Crystal’s Toyota Corolla in the parking lot behind her two-story apartment complex on the east side of town, but they found no indication that Crystal had been inside since she’d left for work. Her mailbox was full, a pizza coupon was tucked into her doorjamb, and a hungry tabby cat greeted the landlord when he unlocked Crystal’s door for investigators.

Had she been abducted from her parking lot? Had she dropped off her car after work and gone out with someone she knew?

These and other questions remained pathetically unanswered as Tara scoured the hiking trails of Silver Springs Park alongside some of the Bureau’s top crime-scene technicians.

After hours of searching in the freezing drizzle, they’d bagged up every food wrapper, water bottle, and cigarette butt they could find. CSIs had collected soil samples, leaf samples, and blood samples from on and around the body, hoping something might offer a clue. The rain had all but obliterated any tire tracks, but an alert SSPD officer—a rookie, no less—had noticed a deep tire rut on a back road not far from the body, and he’d had the sense to peel off his poncho and erect a tarp over the impression while the FBI’s evidence response team was en route to the crime scene.

Tara crept through the forest now, shining her flashlight over every limb and tree root, searching for the slightest shred of missed evidence. Beside her, an FBI crime-scene tech did the same. This was their fourth sweep. The first had been conducted on hands and knees, as workers combed every inch of the park within a hundred-foot radius of the body. The crawling search had been followed by foot searches covering the entire park.

Water seeped into Tara’s eyes, and she blinked it away. Her nose felt raw, and her ears ached with cold. Inside her gloves, her fingers were stiff.

The CSI switched off her flashlight. “Okay, that’s it,” the woman said.

They’d reached the trailhead again. In the nearby parking lot, giant white klieg lights illuminated the scene as the last members of the evidence response team packed their kits into vans and collapsed the open-sided tent that had served as their temporary headquarters.

“Agent Rushing?”

She turned around to see the team leader, a lanky forty-something who looked skeletal in the glare of the lights.

“We’ll start with that tire impression.”

Tara looked at him numbly.

“I should have something for you by late morning,” he added.

Something, such as a vehicle. Likely the same pickup truck the UNSUB had used before. Tara wasn’t sure what good it would do, but she nodded anyway. “Thanks.”

“And let me know if you recover anything new at autopsy, trace-evidence-wise,” he said. “I have some pull at Quantico, so I can put in a call, speed things along for you.”

“I appreciate that.”

He gave a crisp nod. “No problem. Good night.”

It was a pointed statement, and she knew what he really meant was that she needed to leave now. It was after two, and she’d been testing the team leader’s patience by hanging around until the bitter end, as if she might be able to show some of the world’s most highly trained crime-scene technicians a thing or two.

Tara trudged to her SUV just as the lights went out, throwing the parking lot into darkness. She climbed behind the wheel and looked around. Everyone was gone—the police, the sheriff’s deputies, the other agents, including Jacobs with his grim mouth and disappointed eyes.

Tara navigated her way back to the main road and saw that even the last pushy reporter had packed it in for the night. Only a lone police unit remained stationed at the park entrance. The officer sat in his vehicle, his face aglow as he gazed down at his cell phone.

The rain picked up. Tara adjusted her wipers. She headed back to town with her fingers frozen on the steering wheel. Several rigs passed her, splashing copious amounts of water at her windows as they roared by.

She took the exit for Dunn’s Landing and drove through town. The gas station was dark. The Waffle Stop. The motel. Even the neon sign was off, probably because no one at Big Pines had given a thought to turning it on after the sheriff pulled up to break the news.

Tara parked at the edge of the motel lot and sat there in the dimness. She pictured Leo Marshall in the interview room at the police station. He’d looked pale and wet and stricken, as though a lifetime’s worth of grief had rained down on him in the few short hours since he’d learned of his daughter’s death.

Tara pushed her door open and leaned out, sure she’d be sick. But it wouldn’t come.

She crossed the parking lot, not bothering to bow her head against the rain as she was already soaked to the skin. M.J.’s room was dark, but a light glowed in Brannon’s window.

“Hey.” She turned to see him stepping out from the vending-machine alcove. He still wore his suit, but the tie had disappeared. He held up a bag of Cheetos. “Join me for dinner?”

She stepped beneath the overhang, which offered only slight protection from the drizzle.

“No. Thank you.”

“You okay?” He walked closer.

“Fine. Just tired.”

“You sure?”

It was a loaded question, and they both knew it. This was a familiar setup for them. All that pent-up tension after a raid or a takedown, all the suppressed energy that wanted release. But the thought of touching another person right now made Tara’s skin crawl.

“I’m sure.” She turned around and dug for her key card, hoping to hear receding footsteps as he returned to his room. All she heard was rain on the blacktop.

“Tara.”

She turned around.

“There was nothing you could have done.”

Her stomach tightened as she looked at him standing there in the light of the Coke machine. “Good night,” she said, and let herself into her room.

She shut the door and leaned back against it. The room was cold and silent. Wan light from outside seeped through the gap in the curtains, casting a band of gray over the bed and the wall. Tara tipped her head back and stared up at the water-stained ceiling. She felt wet and frozen to her very bones. Her gaze drifted over the dismal space, and she remembered another cheap room and another cheap dresser with a yogurt cup sitting on top of it. Her mind flashed back to a pair of wide, dark eyes.

Where are they? You can tell me. Where are all the girls?

They’re gone.

Tara bit her lip. Too late that day and too late now.

Her chest squeezed, a tight fist of panic. She pushed away from the wall and stripped off her windbreaker. It was drenched. Her blazer, too. She pulled off her shoes and her holster, her shirt and her pants and her bra and her panties and her sodden socks. And then she stood naked in the frigid room, engulfed in silence except for the drumming rain and her own chattering teeth.

In the bathroom, she turned on the shower. Before it could heat, she stepped into the stall and stood under the spray as the water went from cold to cool to lukewarm. Her legs quivered. Her stomach roiled. She leaned her forehead against the stall and squeezed her eyes shut as the fist in her chest tightened again. She slid down to the floor, pulling herself into a ball as the spray pummeled her back, but the tremors wouldn’t stop. Finally, she reached up and turned the knob. The bathroom went silent, and she huddled in the darkness in a cloud of steam. She wanted to retch. Or cry or punch or scream, but all she could do was clutch her knees to her chest and shiver, and she felt like the girl, the one she’d found beneath the sink, and she knew she
was
that girl, at least sometimes, more often than she could stand to admit. And she felt like her now, small and shaken, without the faintest spark of will left to overcome the dark.