'If it's the guy I'm thinking of, there's a little history.' Hell, he and Jack boasted a millennium of history between them, but Slater wasn't about to share that information with Barrington.
'Whatever it is,' Barrington warned darkly, 'don't let it get in the way. Agent Holt will organize and head a task force. I expect full cooperation. ADA Torres will help.'
'Isabella won't be happy about that. She's working on the Vargas case.'
Barrington narrowed his eyes. 'That investigation can wait. Anyway, Vargas is Sac County's problem, not ours.'
'How do I get hold of Holt?'
'You don't. He'll contact you.'
Slater watched Barrington mince his way across the polished linoleum and out the doors of the courthouse. Previous district attorneys had made their offices in this impressive historic building, but not him. The day after he assumed office, Barrington moved his staff into the sleek new complex across the freeway.
Asshole, Slater thought. Barrington knew the Diego Vargas case was important to Isabella Torres.
He sighed and leaned back in his over-sized chair, pondering this new information. If the DA was allocating all his resources, including ADA Torres, to the federal case, it must be important. Agent Jackson Holt couldn't possibly be the kid he'd known in high school.
Coincidence or not, the news was a bitch.
The call about the dead body at Lake Tahoe's North Shore came in while Jack sat in the Bigler County Sheriff's office. Slater eased his solid length into a worn leather chair that spoke more of comfort than decor, and eyed Jack across a desk unit that looked ridiculously small. When he'd shaken Slater's hand a few moments ago, a surge of testosterone flared between them and he'd imagined the two of them arm wrestling like they used to in high school.
'Who'd have thought,' Slater drawled as he raked his eyes over Jack's physique. The desk phone buzzed. Slater ignored it. 'Heard you'd gone back to Texas, got killed in a knife fight.'
Jack didn't speak, just opened his credentials and held them up for inspection. He was taller and thinner than Slater, and he knew his clothes hung on him as if they were tailored to a mannequin in contrast to his old friend's casual jeans and shirt. Slater was broader, probably stronger, and had about twenty-five pounds on him. He had even teeth set in a square jaw, and right now his gray eyes were suspicious in a way that took Jack back in time.
Someone had gone looking for him, Jack thought, and wondered who had cared enough.
'So, the feds, huh,' Slater commented after a lengthy silence. 'Never expected you to end up there.'
Jack laughed harshly and without humor. 'You probably thought I'd be on the other side of the law.' He leaned backward in the chrome chair until the front legs tilted upward.
'Frankly, I didn't think of you at all until the district attorney got a call from Washington.'
The jibe rankled. 'Good, then I can expect your full cooperation.'
'Why not?' Slater paused, and like a dare added, 'As long as you don't disappear on us.' The
'What can I do for the federal government?' Slater asked before Jack could react.
Jack stretched his long legs out in front of him. 'I have an old cold case.'
'What's a federal cold case got to do with my office?'
'We have intelligence that our killer might've run to ground in this area.'
'Out of fifty states and thousands of counties, you think he's holed up in mine?' Slater lifted both brows and lazily rested his chin in his large hand.
Jack opened his mouth to explain, but the insistent buzzing of the phone stopped him.
'Hold on.' Slater lifted one finger in the air and punched the speaker button. 'What's wrong now, Connie?'
'Dispatch reports a 187 at North Shore, about a half mile past marker 19, two hundred yards from the water.'
'Harris?'
'Yep, got him on the other line.'
'Patch him through,' the Sheriff instructed, looking at Jack with mild curiosity.
The voice came through the speaker phone, tinny, but deep. 'Harris, here, Sheriff. Got a nude body off the highway, laying behind a log near the shore, female, possibly African-American.'
'Say again. Possibly?'
'Yes sir, body's badly beaten. Can't be sure.'
Jack went very still, all senses on full alert. This time as the headache slammed into him, he managed to control the pain of it. Still, the sounds of crushing bone and spattered blood echoed in his ears. Cries, young female cries, and the whimpers of fear and desperation, terror and pleading.
He smelled the bone, heard the blood, felt the cries. Mismatches, he thought, and battled back the sensory overload.
'Goddammit,' Slater muttered. 'I'll be there in forty.' He depressed the call button. 'Conn, get the techs out there ASAP.' He slammed the phone back in its cradle.
Not possible, Jack thought, at the same time he mentally calculated the distance between the Utah border, where the fourth body was found, and northern California. It was his man. He felt it in his bones. Pulling out the notepad where he'd taken notes on Olivia's student, he read his own broad scrawl.
Slater watched Jack's movement as he reached for his jacket.
When he reached the office door, Jack stood. 'Mind if I tag along?'
Slater lifted his broad shoulders. 'Why the hell not?'
A little less than an hour later, Jack and Slater stared down at the mass of bloody flesh nestled in the brush around North Shore, the California side of Lake Tahoe. A tall, burly deputy crouched beside the body, looking pale beneath his dusty black skin.
'Bus is on the way,' Slater said to his deputy, his gray eyes unreadable. 'How'd you come on it?'
Harris pointed to the square of red fabric flapping in the cool morning breeze. It was virtually unnoticeable from the highway. 'That caught my attention and I pulled off to investigate, climbed down to the rock by the shore.'
'Damn good eye,' Slater complimented.
The headache remained, but Jack couldn't feel the screams and wails up here, this close to the body. It was like the victim could rest now that she'd been found. He turned toward the peaceful, clear waters of the Lake Tahoe for a moment and then looked down at the body again.
The small mangled flesh was a dusty pink, a hue that might've begun as scarlet and was now pretty enough for a little girl's bedroom. If you didn't look at the tangled pieces of bone and flesh along the length of the body. The Dead Language Killer's handiwork, he was sure of it.
Harris had secured the scene, although on this section of the lake not a soul was around. Then he'd walked out a second, larger perimeter down to the lake shore, which consisted of brush and rock and very little sand on this side of Tahoe.
Slater stepped under the yellow crime scene tape of both perimeters and squatted down to examine the body. He snapped on disposable latex gloves. 'Be sure to get close-ups of the head and chest areas, Waylon. See this indentation?' He indicated the right side of the smashed head which faced them.
'Yes sir. You think it was a fall?' Harris looked back toward the road. 'She took a tumble down the embankment?'
Not a fall, Jack thought. The body looked like raw meat, something off the butcher's block, deliberately executed, not accidental. He ducked under the tape and pointed toward several pulpy sections of the torso. 'What
