The Impaler

brought it to my attention was because of how they were killed. Morbid curiosity more than official business.”

“Mara Salvatrucha,” Gates said. “Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans mostly. Raleigh’s been having trouble with them these last couple of years, but the local homicide and gang units want to keep the media out of it. Don’t want to give them any more recognition than they’re already getting. That’s one of the reasons why the details of the lawyer’s murder were kept out of the papers—why the media has yet to make the connection to Rodriguez and Guerrera.”

“And Homicide has been able to keep the details of the Hispanics’ murders quiet, too?”

“For the most part. They were lucky a policeman found Rodriguez and Guerrera. Drove by the cemetery on an anonymous tip and discovered them in the adjoining field. Cemetery is in Clayton, country town about fifteen minutes south of Raleigh. Papers said the victims were found together, shot and stabbed and, I quote, ‘put on display.’ Guer-rera also had some tattoos common among the pandilleros.”

“Sounds similar to what’s being going on in South America,” Markham said. “The drug cartels cutting off people’s heads and skewering them on pikes, bodies propped up on stakes with warning signs around their necks.”

“Still, not a real public interest piece,” Gates said. “Low-income, Hispanic immigrants from the projects. Story received barely a byline and quickly died down. Wasn’t so easy with the lawyer. He was found by a groundskeeper who needed a little convincing to keep his mouth shut. But he’ll talk eventually. They always do.”

“And you’re saying this lawyer—I’m sorry, what’s his name again?”

“Donovan. Randall Donovan.

“Donovan. They found him displayed exactly like Rodriguez and Guerrera?”

“For the most part, yes. Impaled with a wooden stake through the rectum, exit wound here at the base of the neck, just under the collarbone. Only difference, the Hispanics’ heads were tied to their stakes across their faces. Donovan’s head was tied to his stake at his neck. He was found in a baseball field; Rodriguez and Guerrera outside the cemetery walls. Willow Brook is the cemetery’s name.”

“May I see Donovan’s file?”

Gates slid the file across the table and Markham opened it. The first page was an eight-by-ten photograph of the crime scene: Randall Donovan’s naked, lifeless body skewered about a foot off the ground. His eyes were open, his neck lashed to the stake with a thin black cord—but his neck appeared to be broken, his head arched unnaturally backwards, giving him the appearance that he was screaming up at the sky. Donovan’s killer had also left on the lawyer’s glasses. Markham made a mental note of it, quickly studied the series of close-ups, and then turned to the victim profile.

“Criminal defense attorney,” Markham said, reading, flipping. “Forty-five years old, married, father of two. Runs with some loveable characters, I see. This was the guy who got that mobster off last year? Raymond Galotti, Junior, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“He also represented Ernesto Morales on the trafficking and obstruction-of-justice rap. I read about that in the papers. The Bureau’s evidence was overwhelming, but Donovan got him a nice plea deal. Will do only a few years.”

“Donovan saved the Colombian’s family from being deported, too.”

“I didn’t know the Colombians were using MS-13 on the interstate level. Didn’t think the gang was organized or dependable enough for that kind of thing.”

“They’re not. An operation like Morales’s, the distribution from Miami all the way to DC, would be too high- maintenance for MS-13. Still a lot of territorial infighting, and the Colombians don’t trust them. Keep all the big- money stuff close to the vest.”

“But a hit like Donovan is right up their alley, don’t you think?”

“Maybe,” said Gates. “But the Colombian connection to MS-13 in Raleigh is all but nonexistent. They’re actually in competition with them, at least on the lower-level stuff. Rise of the new Honduran drug lords and that kind of thing.”

“But what does this have to do with BAU? This isn’t our fight.”

Gates turned from the window and loosened his tie. Q&A is over, Markham thought. Yes, any second now his boss would adjust his glasses, would push the silver wire up on his nose and then gently straighten the arms. It was Alan Gates’s “tell,” Markham discovered many years ago—his signal that he was getting down to business. He used to do the same thing in his lectures at the Academy. Back then, the naive trainee secretly wished to play the unit chief in poker; wanted to see if the old man would tip his hand as he so often did in class. However, over the years, Markham began to suspect that Gates was fully aware of his tell, and would probably sucker the shirt off his back.

And sure enough, when his boss began fiddling with his specs, Markham suddenly felt anxious. As if Gates had just put him in for all his chips.

“Rodriguez and Guerrera,” Gates began, “were both shot in the head. Close range, same nine-millimeter handgun.”

“Ballistics report?”

“Originally from Homicide, but turned up nothing. The state medical examiner reported that the Hispanics had been dead before they were skewered. Donovan, however, was not.”

“You mean he was impaled alive?”

“Yes. They found his body early Sunday morning; had deep ligature marks around his wrists, his ankles, and across his waist as if he’d been strapped down. However, the state medical examiner found nothing near his mouth or on his face to indicate he’d been gagged. Killer wasn’t worried about anyone hearing him scream. He’d been dead for almost four days before he turned up in center field.”

Markham was silent.

“Homicide still doesn’t know where Rodriguez and Guerrera were shot. Rodriguez was reported missing by his parents the day after he disappeared, but no one said anything about Guerrera until the authorities found him. Prints turned up a match in IAFIS. Both lived in the Fox Run apartment complex in the southeast part of town.”

“And their bodies? Discovered in the same general area as Donovan’s?”

“No. The two crime scenes are in rural areas on opposite sides of Raleigh, neither site near Fox Run. Rodriguez and Guerrera had both been dead for about forty-eight hours and appear to have been shot at roughly the same time. MS-13 activity has picked up recently in the Fox Run area, but it looks as if Rodriguez was not associated with the gang or any of its enemies. Guerrera, on the other hand, is known to have been a member of a low-level gang back in Mexico. Can’t tie him to anything here. Problem is, we can’t tie Rodriguez and Guerrera to each other, either.”

“I’m sure Raleigh has their informants. What’s the word on the street?”

“Nothing. No chatter at all about any gang connections.”

“What about Donovan?”

“Only thing we know for sure is that he was taken from outside his home in Cary, next town over from Raleigh. Happened late Saturday night, a week and a day before he turned up dead. He’d just returned from a fund- raiser downtown. Wife and kids asleep. No blood, no sign of a struggle, keys to his fancy Peugeot found in the driveway. ME said the back of his head showed blunt-force trauma. Killer used chloroform on him, too.”

“You said killer. How do you know there was only one?”

“There’s a wall of hedges separating Donovan’s property from his neighbor’s. Forensics found a set of fresh footprints in the surrounding mulch. Same tread, only one set, size twelve. Matched a group of partials from the baseball field. Forensics is working on tracking down the shoe model.”

“And where the Hispanics were found?”

“Again one set, same tread partial. Looks like our boy uses a posthole digger. Kicks up a lot of dirt, doesn’t seem too concerned about covering his tracks.”

“May I see the file on Rodriguez and Guerrera?”

Gates slid it across the table.

Jose Rodriguez, age seventeen, born in Honduras; Alex Guerrera, age twenty-seven, originally from Mexico. Rodriguez: legal, clean, high-school senior. Guerrera: illegal, back and forth across the border at least twice, and a bit of a record—gang activity in Mexico, petty theft, misdemeanor drug possession in the States. Nothing hardcore,