time. Or the place. We’ve got a DB and I’m goddamn tired.” He turned to the Park Police officer. “Where’s the body?”
“Hold it,” Vail said, stepping forward. “I really need to talk with you. In private.”
Dixon and Burden shared a look. “Can’t that wait?” Burden said. “That DB may help us locate Robert.”
“Actually,” Vail said, “No. I need to find out-”
“We’ll talk later,” Hartman said. “Maybe.” He turned back to the officer. “Where’s the body?”
“This way.”
“Inspector!” The Zodiac officer was approaching on the run. “Dispatch wants an ETA on my return. You three need me to hang around?”
Vail remembered seeing a boat at the far end of the dock. She looked over and saw it was a Coast Guard cutter, with a uniformed man on deck. “I don’t think we need him hanging around. Who knows how long we’ll be here. We’ll find a way home.”
“Agreed.” Burden shooed him away with a hand. “Go on back, but stay on alert.”
Vail, Burden, and Dixon turned-and saw Hartman heading up the inclined roadway in a red, two-seater Toro flat-bed vehicle.
“Gotta be kidding me,” Vail said, her hands on her hips. “What an asshole.”
“Just an observation,” Burden said, starting up the hill. “He doesn’t like you.”
“No guessing required. Back in New York, after he was reassigned and given a new partner, I was involved in a bank shooting. He responded to my call for backup, his partner was killed, and Mike took some lead. Had nothing to do with me or anything I did, but I was a convenient scapegoat for him because I made the call. Anyway, he was laid up for months and thinks he got passed over for promotion because of it. Of course, none of this was an issue till I got the BAU gig. Then one day he goes off on me. Haven’t seen or heard from him since.”
As they trudged along the sharply inclined roadway at a quick pace, Dixon said, “You think the offender knows we’re here? We’re bumping up against the deadline.”
“Depends on how he’s tracking our movements. Out here, in the middle of the Bay, in a fog-socked night, I doubt he’s watching from the mainland.”
“Unless he’s monitoring the radio band,” Dixon said.
Burden swung his head over. “I’m him, that’s what I’d do. No way for us to track that. But if that’s the case, he knows we’re here.”
“It’s possible he’s here, too. On the island,” Dixon said.
“Anything’s possible,” Burden said. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with, then we’ll have a better idea as to when he killed this vic. I doubt he’d stick around, on an island. His getaway options’d be limited if the place was suddenly swarming with cops.”
Sodium vapor lights provided barely adequate illumination along the roadway, which was steep and took a good few minutes of uphill hiking. “Now I know why you stair climb at the gym,” Vail said between huffs. “So when you’re trudging up the hills at Alcatraz in search of an UNSUB, you’re able to do it without losing your breath.”
“Exactly,” Dixon called back, ten paces ahead of Burden and Vail. “Because I come here so often tracking serial killers.”
Ahead, the small vehicle that had transported Hartman was parked outside the Alcatraz cellhouse, an imposing, and aging, prison structure.
When they arrived at the top of the hill, they hung a right and entered the building through the main entrance, where an arched, three-dimensional sign over the door read, Administration Building. An eagle protruded from above, perched atop a rendition of the American flag-though the vertical red stripes were modified to read, FREE.
“Someone has a sense of humor,” Burden said.
They entered the facility where, ahead of them, a man in a suit held out a hand. Vail immediately pegged him as FBI.
“ID?”
Burden, Vail, and Dixon displayed their badges.
“This is federal jurisdiction,” the agent said, his gaze dwelling on Burden’s and Dixon’s state credentials.
“They’re with me,” Vail said. “We’ve got reason to believe this vic was done by the same offender we’re tracking in the city.”
The man waved them through.
They entered the large cellhouse. Ahead on a flesh-toned wall, a tourist-friendly sign read B BLOCK. The interior was in decent condition, the ceilings bright white and the cell bars wellworn but intact.
Off to the left, voices. They moved in that direction following another modern-era sign that read, Broadway. Down the main corridor, which featured cells on either side, stood a sharply dressed black man, US Park Police Detective Peter Carondolet, who was huddled with a suited Asian man. Mike Hartman was talking with a woman holding a camera-Sherri Price, the FBI forensic technician they had previously met at Inspiration Point.
Burden reached into his pocket and handed out paper booties.
“There’s your buddy,” Dixon said to Vail as she slipped a set over her shoes.
After heading down Broadway toward the knot of law enforcement personnel, they made introductions: the man they had not previously met was FBI Special Agent Ignatius Yeung, a field office colleague of Hartman’s.
“Who’s the vic?” Vail asked.
“Elderly male,” Hartman said. “Looks to be late seventies, early eighties. No I.D. A full set of upper dentures and two partials on his lower. Callused hands.”
“Is he in IAFIS?” Vail asked, referring to the FBI’s national automated biometric database.
“Don’t know yet,” Price said. “I took a set of prints and emailed them to the lab. Because it’s after hours, I don’t know how long it’ll take to get an answer. But I asked them to expedite.”
Vail asked the men to move aside so she, Burden and Dixon could get a look at the crime scene. Staring back at them was an elderly male standing upright, his legs and arms handcuffed to the bars, facing forward. The numeral 23 was drawn on his forehead. “Looks like our UNSUB.”
“As if there was a question?” Dixon asked.
“I meant the text he sent. He said he gave us ‘some latitude.’ I thought he meant he gave us some leniency, but there was a double meaning-those latitude/longitude readings. The missing number was 23.”
“TOD?” Burden asked.
“Just a guess at this point-I can’t even get to the body-but rigor hasn’t yet set in, so less than three hours.”
Hartman’s phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and moved off.
