By the time Jack investigated the death at Mammoth and drove as far as Reno, he decided to grab a motel and a few hours of sleep. Refreshed and feeling more himself, he rose early the next morning and ordered room service. While waiting for breakfast to arrive, he showered and shaved, then set up his laptop to work at the businessman's desk tucked into the corner of the motel room. By the time the food arrived, he'd reviewed the first murder case again.
The perpetrator of the initial three cases had chosen victims whose families filed missing persons reports. A college student, an attorney, a waitress. But there was no such report on the unidentified woman buried on the Utah federal property.
After the room service attendant set up breakfast and left, Jack sat at the desk, chewing on a bagel with cream cheese and sipping black coffee while he examined the second victim's folder. Case Number SX-29201. Henry Walker, male, age twenty-nine, death by exsanguination, January 23, the year following the first murder.
The body was discovered hanging on a crude cross, made of intersecting pairs of two by fours. Walker had been drugged and strapped to the beams with bailing wire, and he was very much alive when the first nail pierced his wrist. Autopsy showed that a minute nick in the femoral artery quickened the slow bleed from wrists and feet and hastened death. Walker's remains were found in an auto dismantling yard thirty-five miles southwest of Las Vegas.
Jack shoved the breakfast plate away and added several comments into his laptop.
The third victim was Angela Buckley, beaten to death with a hard, metal club, possibly a tire iron or pipe. Metal shavings were found in the wounds. Her head and torso were so badly damaged that she had to be identified through dental records. The body was discovered less than forty-eight hours after she was reported missing May 15, the same year as the Walker man. She was a thirty-one-year-old waitress from South Bend, Indiana.
They'd believed she was the killer's final victim.
Jack put the file aside and opened a fourth, slender envelope which contained copies of the Latin notes they'd received from the killer, notes the Gant woman could help with – the woman whose first name Olivia had to be a coincidence because even the Judge wasn't that manipulative.
As the lead investigator, Jack hadn't believed the cases were connected until the notes arrived. The first one came after Henry Walker's death and was mailed from Plano, Texas. No useful prints on the letter or envelope, no clues of any kind. The note was word-processed on standard bond paper with an ink-jet printer.
The Quantico profiling team speculated that the killer, impatient with the behavioral unit's slow investigation, was taunting them. Inside their ranks, they named the UNSUB the DLK for Dead Language Killer. The profilers pointed out the inherent dark humor in the old chant, 'Latin is a dead language, dead as dead can be, it killed all the Romans and now it's killing me.'
Having never studied Latin, Jack figured the bastard was just showing off.
He had no way of knowing which note referred to which death, but Jack decided to take another look at the victims' backgrounds. Both Walker and Buckley were squeaky clean in every way – finances, criminal background, relationships – but the Peterson girl had an astonishing sexual history. It was a slim lead, but Jack took it. They interviewed boyfriends, girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, ex-girlfriends. Anyone with whom Laura Jean had a relationship, sexual or platonic.
They discovered that at least half a dozen young men and two young women admitted to some kind of sexual encounter with the victim. Each one, however, had a solid alibi for the time in question. Jack's slim lead ground to another halt.
He mentally ran through the first three cases – Peterson, Walker, Buckley. Finally, a fourth death, mimicking the first – the woman buried alive in the salt flats of Utah. No evidence, no note, no toxicology yet. Were they connected? Was this a copycat? Or was Jack's old nemesis starting again?
Jack pushed back from the desk, saved his data, and closed his laptop. He sucked in a deep breath as he felt another rush of adrenalin enhancing his body's chemical changes. He turned his hands, palms upward. Piano fingers, he'd once considered them – long ago when he entertained such youthful fantasies. The slender fingers that used to play with such fluidity were now fleshy pads, calloused and swollen.
He glanced at his wristwatch. He had a moment to peruse the Gant woman's dossier. PhD in Ancient Students, Greek and Roman history and culture. Linguist extraordinaire, according to Myron Higgins, the Judge's assistant who had approached Gant two months ago. She refused in June and again in July, cited school bylaws prohibiting outside consultations by their professors. She was supposedly some kind of whiz kid in her field, on sabbatical from the University of California at Berkley to teach at Our Lady of Fatima University, a private Catholic college in southeast Bigler County.
Jack looked over her teaching schedule. He still had a two-hour drive to Sacramento and thought he could catch her on break. He'd drop in without an appointment. Although he had no leverage to use on the Gant woman, he knew everyone had skeletons in the closet. If he couldn't persuade her with his charm, he thought wryly, he'd find another way to get her assistance.
He always did.
Chapter Six
Dr. Gant's office at the university was the second door down a well-lighted hallway in St. Joseph's Administration Building. Jack lingered at the entrance and examined the small, crowded office.
The woman bent over a file drawer, her light gray sweater riding up from the waist of a black skirt to expose a strip of smooth flesh. From an ancient boom box resting on a corner file cabinet, James Brown crooned about not wanting to be alone tonight. The view and the music jarred some ancient, buried memory that Jack briskly put aside as he rapped on the open door.
He recognized her the second she turned to face him. A giant fist squeezed his heart, his throat spasmed and choked off air, and the soul he'd been sure he no longer had shriveled with momentary shock. He saw at once the gangly girl inside the self-possessed woman who turned to greet him, and another long-suppressed image slammed him with gale force. The young girl who'd whispered his name in the night. Bundled in layers of clothing that she removed one item at a time, all sad innocence and sure purpose. The soft pleading in her voice when she begged him to…
For an endless moment, his feet riveted to the spot. A sickening fear smacked him in the gut. Fear that every dirty misstep of his life dangled in plain view – hung out like so much soiled laundry – and barred any hope of salvation.
Not that he'd believed in heaven or redemption for a long time. But still…
'Oh my God,' Olivia said, her pretty face a mask of stunned confusion.
Not pretty, he thought, but striking, interesting. High cheekbones and clearly defined brows. Green eyes set far apart, wide and large in a smooth face. Dark hair now wound tightly in a knot at the back of her head, but which he remembered tangling riotously around slender shoulders. A small woman, with fragile bones covering a steely determination.
Time resumed as Olivia sank into the worn office chair behind a utilitarian desk and regarded him with a wide- eyed expression. 'Jackie Holt.'
Astonishment, bewilderment, and another indefinable emotion crossed her face until she shut it down. Shut it down hard, he could see by the set of her jaw and the flash of those brilliant eyes sharp as cut glass. Impossible that the full, soft lips he remembered now thinned to taut rubber bands, stretched so tight they threatened to snap back viciously.
'Jackson Holt,' she repeated.
Under the visual indictment, he remembered with regret the throb of his youthful desire. But God, she'd been so desirable. So sure as she'd insinuated herself into his life in a way neither of them realized would change him forever.
Anger flashed across her face before she narrowed her eyes and shut that down too. 'What do you want?'
