When You See Me (Detective D.D. Warren #11)(27)

“Are the new bodies also female?”

“We have to wait for Dr. Jackson for proper exhumation. She was adamant her team and only her team handle the grave site. At this stage, soil, bug exoskeletons, flora, and fauna, all of it will matter. We’re not the right people for the job.”

“But you’re betting female,” Mac guessed.

“The skulls appear small, which would be consistent with female. Also, I have to believe this grave is related to Lilah Abenito’s, and she was a teenage girl. I don’t know. Are we seeing what we want to see? Have I approached this case all wrong from the start? Honestly, I’ve never felt so stupid, and I’m supposed to be leading this taskforce.”

Kimberly sighed again. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she rubbed her temples, where she could feel a budding headache.

“You called for reinforcements?” Mac checked.

“Marshall agreed to activate ERT.” Marshall was her boss, and the Evidence Response Team was the FBI’s elite group of specialists who assisted with particularly involved evidence collection. Kimberly herself was a member. Sometimes ERTs assisted in jurisdictions that couldn’t afford to have evidence techs of their own, or lacked the FBI’s lineup of sophisticated toys. Other situations, such as plane crashes or mass casualty events, simply demanded greater resources. Kimberly’s Atlanta team had been called to work the Pentagon site after 9/11. One of her instructors had talked about raking the debris for days to recover a single gold wedding band. The look on the widow’s face, she said, when they were able to give at least that much of her husband back to her . . .

Kimberly’s instructor had passed away five years later. Cancer. Most likely from exposure to hazardous chemicals at the site. FBI agents often talked about having a call to serve. Very few civilians understood just what that meant.

“You doing okay?” Mac asked softly now.

“I’m struggling,” Kimberly admitted. “With how to manage this mess—the amount of people to supervise, the pressure for immediate answers to horrific questions . . .”

“You think the graves are Jacob Ness’s handiwork?”

“I think we’d be lucky if that was the answer. Old dumping grounds from a deceased predator.”

“Fits expectations while minimizing fear. And given you didn’t find any new remains, works with the timeline of a guy who’s now dead.”

“We know serials don’t magically quit,” Kimberly considered out loud. “And to the extent all the bodies we’ve currently found are fully skeletonized, I would guess we’ve made a fresh discovery of an old crime. That fits the timeline for Ness, while making for a compelling narrative: Ness started off kidnapping girls near or around his trucking route. He brought them back to the relative quiet of the mountains, then dumped the bodies. Until he built up the confidence and resources for longer term abduction scenarios, such as what he did with Flora.”

“What does Flora think of the new discovery?”

“She’s . . . troubled. Could Ness have killed and buried four young women? Absolutely. But Jacob hiking up a mountain, wandering through the woods while carrying a corpse . . . According to her, not in a million years. He was the laziest kidnapper who ever existed.”

“Could Jacob have driven up to a different trailhead, then hiked down to where you found the bodies?”

“That’s a good question. We haven’t had time to scope out the full network of trails up here. Everyone wants answers now, of course. If only it were so simple.”

“Yep.”

They both fell silent for a moment. Kimberly leaned her head against the wall and listened to the steady rhythm of her husband’s breathing, as familiar as her own. No more sounds of their daughters, meaning Eliza and Macey had either settled in for the night or, more likely, were engaged in some kind of criminal conspiracy. She should let Mac go. Let him return to his responsibilities while she tended to hers. But she wasn’t ready yet. She needed this. A moment of calm in the storm.

“Wasn’t Jacob Ness known for his binges?” Mac asked at last. “Drinking, drugs, that sort of thing?”

“Yes.”

“Could that be what the three girls represent? Homicidal rampage? Ted Bundy certainly had his infamous night where he attacked an entire sorority.”

“Bundy was frenzied that evening. He struck and moved on. That’s easier than transporting, then dumping three bodies in a single grave.”

“Which brings you back to wondering about an accomplice. Someone with local ties, who drew Jacob to the area. In that scenario, three girls isn’t so implausible.”

“Want to come to Niche, Georgia? The locals keep eyeing us with suspicion, and the mountains are dotted with skeletal remains, but other than that, what’s not to love?”

“Oh no, you got this. Besides, all cases get worse before they get better. It’s the nature of the beast.”

“True.” She shook out her shoulders, sat up straighter. Time to get to it.

“Call if you need to talk. Even in the middle of the night. I don’t mind.”

“The joy of our jobs.”

“The key to our marriage,” Mac corrected gently.

Kimberly smiled. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

“Mac, the girls have left you alone for a very long time . . .”