“ Has been dry.”
Jessica shook her head. “He must've simply run out of time. He's on the road again, likely 1-95 but who knows.”
“ Maybe he's going back to where he came from to begin with, north toward home, maybe?” suggested Combs. “New Jersey, maybe?”
They carefully stepped around the shoe prints just as the officer named Wil showed up with the plaster of paris mixture that would make the impressions permanent and portable.
As Jessica and Lorena were led through the final thicket, Stoffel said, “The crime against young Winona here… Well, it's the worst ever thing I've seen on the job aside from a motorcyclist we once had to get a crane for.”
“ A crane?”
“ To get his headless torso from the top of a pine tree out on County 345A. Fool had to have been hitting 110 when he left the rise at Three Forks. Had sixty or seventy lacerations, his clothes and most all of his skin'd been peeled and was hanging like bloody garland. Some of the officers on scene tried shaking the tree, but that only dislodged the head, which hit one of the officers on the skull and sent him in with a concussion. It took a crane and a lot of effort to peel the rest of the motorcyclist down from that tree.”
Deputy Stoffel spit out tobacco and pulled back the last of the branches and brush. They stepped into a farmer's open field where a tractor and discs sat idle some ten yards from the body of a young woman lying amid a field of decaying and turned under cornstalks. Neat rows of furrows led up to the body where the discs had turned under the dead stalks, weeds and earth, but the other side of the tractor looked like a burned out jungle. The heat and the rotting stalks, whipping now in the growing evening wind, sent up an odor of plant decay. When the killer had left the body, he would have been looking at a field of picked over, dead stalks, several miles of them. He likely did not expect the body to be discovered for some time.
In the distance, Jessica saw a white farmhouse with a green roof, little specks of movement and activity telling her that children were at play there.
“ We've already been up to the house; everything's all right there. Nobody being held hostage. No one being harbored or taken in,” said Stoffel.
“ The girl… you know her name.”
“ Winona Miller, yes.”
“ Does she belong to the house up there?” Jessica pointed.
“ Oh, no… no, that's the Pratt place. What happened was old Lyle Pratt come up on the body in the dark of early this morning.”
Jessica imagined the old man's fright and his proximity in time and space to the killer.
Stoffel continued speaking. “Winona Miller, the dead girl, is-was-a native of Savannah, and I'm told a good kid, normal kid…. You know, typical fun-loving, free-spirited, happy kid. Lived in Savannah with her aunt and uncle, dealing with the usual teen angst and rebellion.”
“ And her parents?”
“ They live in the city, too, but they had all agreed on a trial period with the girl at her aunt's place. Parents filed a missing persons rep›ort with Savannah PD after being told that Winona had failed to come home from a date.”
“ A date?” asked Jessica. “What about the boyfriend?”
“ Boyfriend has been grilled, but he appears to be of little help. Last saw her out his rearview mirror getting into a dark van, possibly navy blue, possibly black.”
“ Wait… the boyfriend saw something?” asked Jessica.
“ We got very little from Nathan. He's shook up pretty bad. Blaming himself for her disappearance. Don't know what he's going to do with the truth.”
“ I'll want to talk to this Nathan, right away,” insisted Jessica.
Combs agreed. “He's the only eyewitness of any sort that we have except for the girl in Fayetteville who may or may not have come across the killer's path. She also said the van was dark blue.”
“ We already canvassed the club where her boyfriend left her in the parking lot. According to Nathan, they'd had a fight, an argument, he says, over her using too many drugs and mixing them with alcohol.”
“ Toxicology can verify or refute that,” said Jessica.
“ Like I said, she was a good kid at heart, but a mixed up kid, too. She might've been using pills or sniffing this or that,” Stoffel said, “but no tracks on her. Still, I know it'll take an autopsy to tell for certain.”
“ Even if she were using drugs, that's no reason to wind up dead and having your g'damn head cut open and your g'damn brains stolen,” shouted a younger deputy who'd stood watch over the body. The anger in his thick-throated attempt to keep from losing complete control was understandable. His nameplate read Hayes. “She was basically a good kid, and she didn't have any real enemies, not a one.”
Beyond her addictions, Jessica guessed in silence.
“ You suppose she was without a care beyond school grades, makeup and make-out woes?” Combs cynically asked Jessica.
Stoffel put a hand on the younger deputy 's shoulder and said, “Jeff here was the first trooper to arrive to secure the scene. It's been a shock. He knows the family and has volunteered to break it to them. Fact is, Jeff s married to the victim's cousin, so I've OK'd his talking to them. So far, all they know is their daughter's missing. There's been no press on it, yet. So, if you don't mind, I'll let Jeff go over to Savannah to break the news to the parents.”
“ No objections,” Jessica said.
No one envied the young man his awful chore. Hayes disappeared into the brush, going back toward the squad cars. The thick brush and trees hid the road and the cars from view, even more so where Jessica squatted beside the body.
It had grown dusky, the sky darkening with clouds. Jessica dug out a flashlight and filled the open brain cavity with light, looking for the sign left on the previous victim.
“ Is it there?” asked Combs, dropping to her knees alongside the body, opposite Jessica.
“ Is what there?” asked Stoffel, inching closer.
At first Jessica had trouble finding it, but then it came into focus. The circle atop the horizontal and perpendicular lines forming a cross of sorts, roughly scratched into the bone at the back of the skull. As Jessica stared at it, a realization hit her, and Lorena saw it.
“ What is it, Jessica?”
“ I just remembered something that might be important. Several weeks ago at Quantico we were shown slides of the first two victims, and I noticed some imperfection on the screen in the grainy blowups. At least, I thought it was the screen. Santiva was impressing the hideous nature of the crimes on his agents. The photos of the violence done to each of the first two victims were external, but looking back now…”“The marks were present?”
“ Perhaps when one or more of the shots was taken, maybe the flash revealed some indication of the mark. But I'll have to verify that.”
“ What is it?” asked Stoffel, staring over Jessica's shoulder. “Some cult ritual thing?”
“ It's a sign of some sort, a signature the killer leaves behind,” explained Combs. “The mark is absolute proof it's the same killer. Milt, this is strictly taboo. Nobody outside law enforcement can know. It could be the Holy Grail to solving the case.”
“ No one but the three of us knows at this point, Deputy Stoffel,” Jessica added, lying to him. “If it leaks out, it can't be used effectively when and if we ever get this monster into an interrogation room.”
“ Understood.”
“ I've got to call Quantico, have an associate take a closer look at the photos of the first victims. I may have been staring at this evidence and simply missed it kltogether in the photo array.”
“ You wouldn't have been looking for it at the time,” countered Combs. “No one who autopsied the bodies reported it; obviously, no one saw it.”
“ It must mean something to the killer, a kind of cryptic code of his intent or motive.” Jessica got on her cellular phone and contacted headquarters. Unable to get Eriq on the line, she opted for Jere Anderson, a young female assistant in the lab, who asked cheerily, “How're you, Dr. Coran? We miss you around here.”