By the time we got to the federal building, the crime scene guys had already roped off half of the parking lot. Shock, anger, and sorrow had settled over every inch of the scene. Margaret was stalking back and forth shaking her head, one hand planted firmly on her hip, the other rubbing her forehead. Despite the fury orbiting her, she looked pale.
As we crossed the parking lot, Ralph whispered to Lien-hua and me, “He must have put the body in the trunk of her car early this morning before she left for work. She drove here with it in there. Got an email half an hour ago telling her to look in the trunk.”
“Can they trace the email?” I asked.
“Trying to. But the way it was routed, looks like the guy knew what he was doing.”
Tucker stood beside the car. He motioned for us to come closer. His face looked pasty, drained. “He blew up the house?”
Ralph nodded.
I looked at the car, couldn’t see inside. “She still in there?” I asked Tucker softly. He didn’t answer. Just stepped aside. I walked past the crime scene technicians and peered into the trunk.
The naked upper torso of a woman lay in the trunk of Margaret’s Lexus-but only the upper half. Jolene had been sawed in two just above the pelvis. She’d also been brutally tortured: dozens of cuts crisscrossed her torso, her face, her arms. Six cuts aren’t enough for him anymore, I thought.
Despite the fact that she’d been mostly drained of blood a pool of dark liquids leaked from the bottom of the corpse and spread across the carpeting in the trunk.
A metal tent stake was driven deep into Jolene’s chest, pinning down a note: “TOO SLOW. YOUR MOVE.” A white pawn was in her mouth. A ribbon in her hair.
My mind went numb, spinning, blaming, aching. For the first time in years I felt physically ill at a crime scene. Completely nauseous.
I’d been hoping maybe we would find her alive, save her, rescue her, hoping, hoping, hoping, trying to convince myself the Illusionist had been lying when he said it was too late to save her.
But he hadn’t been. Not at all.
It seemed like he’d planned everything, even timed the discovery of her body to coincide with the explosion.
I muttered an excuse to the people clustered around the car and pushed my way through the crowd. I needed some air. Some space. Actually, I needed to throw up, but I couldn’t let anyone see me. I slipped off behind a nearby car and just barely made it out of sight before I leaned over to retch.
I emptied my stomach onto the asphalt. There wasn’t much there. My entire life tasted like bile. I could hardly believe what was happening. Everything seemed to be spinning apart, the fabric of both my personal life and my career ripping right down the seams.
My stepdaughter hated me. This killer was mocking me. Christie was haunting me. I turned away from the mess of vomit and reached into my pocket to see if I had a handkerchief, anything, and found the jewelry store receipt instead. Evidence that I really had remembered Tessa’s birthday, that I really had visited that mall in Atlanta earlier this week, that I really did have a birthday present to give her.
We celebrate the days of our birth, moments of new life.
I was gone on her birthday.
The killer had mentioned her name.
Tessa.
He knew I had a daughter.
Stay focused, Pat. Don’t let him get to you.
Jolene was someone’s daughter. So was Mindy. So were the rest.
Christie would want me to find this guy, shut him down. To do anything I could to stop him from stealing birthdays from other young women. Other daughters like hers. Like mine.
“We know she’s going to be OK. We love you, Mindy,” her father had said on TV. He didn’t know she was already dead. “We’re here for you-”
But how could I catch this guy? He was smarter than I was, always one step ahead.
The only way to catch him is to stop playing by his rules. You need to make a move.
I thought of Jolene, what it would be like to lose a daughter like that, to have her mutilated, abused, slaughtered. I couldn’t even imagine it.
Right now, the Illusionist was somewhere laughing at us, probably watching us, mocking the pain he was causing. I couldn’t let him get away with it. I couldn’t.
With those thoughts, rage, white hot and unchained, began to rip through my soul. Howling anger sharpening its claws. Filling me. Boiling inside of me. Chasing away the nausea, chasing away everything and replacing it with a storm of fury. The rage both frightened and reassured me. Over the last eight months, wrath had started to feel right at home in me.
You gotta move out in front of him, Pat. Do what you do best.
I looked back at the people examining Margaret’s car.
Everyone was talking in whispers. A tumble of barely audible words skittered across the parking lot toward me. I heard someone mutter something about the media and warrants, and then someone started calling Grolin the names I’d been thinking of but just hadn’t gotten around to saying yet.
I had to stop him. And I would. For Christie.
I wiped my mouth on the sleeve of my windbreaker, stuffed the receipt into my pocket, and headed back to the crime scene.
I arrived just in time to hear Lien-hua gasp. “He sawed her in half?” Her voice broke in the middle of the sentence, and I wanted to save her from seeing the body and from the images she would never be able to erase from her mind, to protect her from doing her job, from becoming more like me. But I couldn’t protect her. I wasn’t here for that.
A few minutes later, Lien-hua, Ralph, and I drifted back together on the edge of the parking lot. Margaret strode up to us, jittery and tense. No one said a word. Then Agent Tucker and Sheriff Wallace found their way over to us, and I spoke softly, but to all of them. “When he talked to me last night, he called himself the Illusionist. He told me, ‘You can’t have her. I saw her first.’”
Ralph’s teeth were clenched. “The sawing the woman in half trick.”
“That’s sick,” said Sheriff Wallace.
Margaret turned to Lien-hua. “Where did you say Grolin works?”
“ MountainQuest magazine. He writes the outdoor column.”
Wallace nodded. “I know the place. It’s out on highway 25 on the way to Hendersonville.”
“Find him. Bring him in.”
Dante turned to me. “Dr. Bowers?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I have my phone back?”
“Oh yeah. Sure.” I reached into my pocket, pulled out the handful of parts that used to be his phone, and handed it to him.
“What on earth happened to it?”
Ralph answered for me. “He dropped it.”
“Something like that,” I mumbled. “I’m really sorry. I’ll buy you a new one.”
He shook his head, stuffed the pieces into his pocket, and then motioned to a couple of uniformed officers who followed him to a patrol car.
I felt bad, but then Margaret turned to me and I prepared to feel worse. I was sure she was going to rip into me about disregarding her orders and heading over to Grolin’s place. “Get that shoulder looked at,” she said. “Have the EMTs check it out.”
Now that was a surprise. Considering the circumstances, her concern was somewhat moving.
“I’ll be all right.”
“Dr. Bowers, there is a piece of wood sticking out of your back.”
No wonder it hurt.
“Get that taken out. You get an infection, it costs us more money. I don’t want the Bureau to have to spend any more money on you than it has to.”
Oh. Well. In that case.
“Ralph?” she said.
“Yeah?”
“I want you to do the questioning.” Her voice was iron. Flat and cold.
He nodded.
She tried to stay calm, but her voice began to quaver. “No kid gloves, Ralph. He put that girl in my car.”
He nodded again. “I understand.”
Joseph Grolin, here we come.