Before He Covets

Everyone looked at her in silence. Clements seemed to be sizing her up.

“Well, come on then,” Clements said, finally. “I’ll give you a ride back to your car.”

“No, that’s okay,” Mackenzie said a bit rudely. “I think I’d rather walk.”

Mackenzie and Bryers took their exit, heading back through the woods and toward the walking trail Clements had brought them down.

As they sank back into the forest, the stares of the state police, Clements and his men, and the park rangers at their backs, Mackenzie couldn’t help but appreciate the grand scale of the forest. It was eerie to think about how endless the possibilities were out here. She thought about what the ranger had said, about the countless crimes that took place in these forests, and something about that sent an icy chill through her.

If someone had it in them to slaughter people like the person who had been discovered within this taped-off triangle and they had a fairly decent knowledge of these forests, there were virtually no limits to the amount of menace they could cause.

And she felt sure that he would strike again.

CHAPTER SIX

Mackenzie settled down in her office just after six in the evening, exhausted from the long day and tidying up her notes to prepare for the debrief she had requested on their way back from Strasburg.

A knock came on her door and she looked up to find Bryers, looking as tired as she felt, holding a folder and a cup of coffee. He looked like he was trying his best to hide his exhaustion and it then occurred to her that he had been hands-off back in the state park, allowing her to take the lead with Clements, Smith, Holt, and the other egotistical men out in the forest. That, plus his coughing, made her wonder if he was coming down with something.

“The debrief is ready to roll,” he said.

Mackenzie got up and followed him to the conference room at the end of the hall. When she entered, she glanced around at the several agents and experts that made up the team on the Little Hill State Park case. There were seven people in all and while she personally thought that was too much manpower for a case this early on, it was not her place to say such a thing. This was Bryers’s and she was simply happy to be along for the ride. It was much better than reading up on immigration laws and swimming in paperwork.

“We have a busy day today,” Bryers said. “So let’s start things off with a quick recap.”

If he had been tired when he came in, he had shrugged it off. Mackenzie watched and listened with rapt attention as Bryers filled in the seven people in the room with what he and Mackenzie had discovered in the woods of Little Hill State Park that day. The others in the room took notes, some scribbling on pads, others typing it into tablets or smartphones.

“One thing to add,” one of the other agents said. “I got a ping about fifteen minutes ago. The case has officially hit the local news. They’ve already started calling this guy the Campground Killer.”

A moment of silence filled the room, and inwardly, Mackenzie sighed. This would make life much harder for them all.

“Man, that was fast,” Bryers said. “Damned media. How in the hell did they get their hands on it so fast?”

No one answered, but Mackenzie thought she knew. A small town like Strasburg was filled with people who loved to hear their town’s name on the news – even if it was for bad news. She could think of a few park rangers or local police that might fit into that category.

“Anyway,” Bryers went on, undeterred, “the last piece of information we got came from the state PD. They handed off details of the crime scene to forensics. We now know that the severed leg and the body to which it was formerly attached were exactly three and a half feet apart. We obviously have no idea if that is significant, but we’ll be looking into it. Also – ”

A knock at the door interrupted him. Another agent dashed into the room and handed a folder to Bryers. He whispered something quickly to Bryers and then made his exit.

“The coroner’s report from the newest body,” Bryers said, opening up the folder and looking inside. He scanned it quickly and then started to pass the three sheets around to the team. “As you’ll see, there were no marks from hungry predators on the body, though there were slight bruises along the back and shoulders. It’s believed the leg and right hand were severed with a rather dull knife or some other large blade. The bones looked to have been more broken than sawed through. This differs from the case from two years ago but, of course, that could just be because the killer doesn’t take care of his tools or weapons.”

Bryers gave them all a moment to look at the report. Mackenzie barely looked it over, perfectly fine with relying on Bryers’s rundown. She had already grown to trust him and while she knew the value of files and reports, there was nothing better than a straight verbal report as far as she was concerned.

“We also now know the name of the deceased: Jon Torrence, twenty-two years of age. He went missing about four weeks ago and was last seen at a bar in Strasburg. Some of you will have the not-so-fortunate task of speaking to his family members today. We’ve also dug up some information on the victim from two years ago. Agent White, would you like to fill the team in on that victim?”

Mackenzie had read the details in a document sent over from Officer Smith and his state PD team on their drive between Strasburg and Quantico. She’d memorized the details within ten minutes and, as such, was able to recite them to the team with confidence.

“The first body was that of Marjorie Leinhart. Her head was almost completely severed from her body. The killer cut off all of her fingers and her right leg from the knee down. None of the severed parts were ever discovered. At the time of her death, she was twenty-seven years old. Her mother was the only surviving relative as Marjorie was an only child and her father died while stationed in Afghanistan in 2006. But Mrs. Leinhart committed suicide a week after her daughter’s body was discovered. Vigorous searches revealed only one other relative – an estranged uncle living in London – that knows nothing about the family. There were no boyfriends and the few close friends that were questioned all checked out. So there is literally no one to question there.”

“Thank you, Agent White. So there you have it. That’s all we have for right now. So I’m going to want some of you on family detail, one or two of you to help with forensics, and someone else to do some digging about any violent crimes in or around Little Hill State Park over the last twenty-five years or so. Does anyone else have anything to add?”

“This could be ritualistic,” one of the older agents offered. “Dismemberment in such a capacity is telltale of ritualistic murders. I’d be interested to see if there have been any reports of Satanism or cultlike gatherings in or around Strasburg.”

“Good point,” Bryers said, making a quick note on one of his papers.

Mackenzie raised her hand. A few of the agents within the room – all seasoned and well-decorated – rolled their eyes. Of course you have something to add, they all seemed to think.

“Yes, Agent White?” Bryers asked. He gave her a knowing little smile as the rest of the room looked her way.

“Looking through some old case files that the state PD sent over, I found a documented case of a child abduction right around the Little Hill area nineteen years ago. A boy named Will Albrecht. He was taken right from under his parents’ noses. When the parents were questioned, they stated that their son loved to ride his bike around the trails in Little Hill State Park. The connection is tenuous at best but, I think, worth looking into.”

“Absolutely,” Bryers said. “Can you make sure everyone on the team gets that file?”

“I’m on it,” she said, already pulling the e-mail up on her phone.

“And why would that be relevant?” another agent asked.

Never one to back down from a challenge, Mackenzie answered right away. “I’m working on the theory that whoever did this knew the area well. To randomly dump a body in such a non-selective place speaks of a knowledge of the forest. Throw in Marjorie Leinhart from two years ago and that only backs it up further.”

“I still don’t see how that stacks up with a kidnapping,” yet another agent said.

“To take a kid while his parents were very close by and get away with it…you’d have to know the lay of the land. They never even came close to finding the abductor.”

That apparently gave them enough to dangle on. She got a few appreciative nods but most everyone else in the room simply looked to their phones or the table in front of them.

“Anything else?” Bryers asked. As he waited for a response, he let out a hearty cough into his elbow.

“That’s it then,” Bryers said after three seconds of silence. “Let’s get to work and land ourselves a killer.”

The team started to murmur and mumble excitedly as they filed out. Mackenzie stayed behind, curious to see if Bryers needed anything else before they called it a day.

“You know,” Bryers said. “I’m going to task someone with looking into that abduction you mentioned. If it turns out to be nothing, you’re going to have an enemy or two.”

“So, business as usual?”

“I guess so,” he said with a grin. “But you know…maybe you and I handle that detail. We’ll drive back up to Strasburg tomorrow and kill two birds with one stone. We’ll also talk to the family of Jon Torrence. You up for another drive out into the country?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

They arrived in Strasburg shortly after nine o’clock the following morning and as they drove into the town, Mackenzie thought she could understand the charm of a place like this. To be rooted so deeply in history had, to her, seemed a little silly at first. But there was also something rustic and respectable about it as well. American flags hung nearly everywhere (along with Confederate flags here and there, a staple of small-town Virginia, she assumed) and a lot of the local businesses had been named after Civil War troops.

Mackenzie knew that it was a foolish trap to think that the most deranged killers came from these sorts of unsuspecting towns. Statistics showed that a crazed killer was just as likely to step out of New York or LA as they were a small backwoods town in Virginia. Still, there was something quiet and just a bit morose about a town like this – a town where everything seemed perfect while passing through, making it easy to forget that there were dark secrets possibly hiding behind every charming little front door.