12

Romanski waited for Cash in the lobby of the Forensic Services division of the CBI. It was located in the suburban sprawl north of Denver, in the town of Arvada, wedged between a garbage collection company and a storage unit compound. The low white building looked more like a JCPenney than a state-of-the-art complex of forensic labs, morgue, and autopsy rooms.

Romanski had made a special effort to comb his hair before the briefing, and he had spent a few minutes more than usual picking out an outfit to wear under his lab coat, which he also made sure was freshly washed. It was still a bit rumpled from the dryer, as he drew the line at ironing. He knew he was the best Forensic Services director the CBI had ever had, and he expressed that by dressing down amid his blue-suited, french-cuffed colleagues.

Of all the agents he worked with, he liked Cash the best. She was a bit foul-mouthed like he was, and she had a solid, working-class background. Her dad had been a cop, and Romanski’s dad had been a ski-lift mechanic.

“The conference room’s packed,” Romanski said, falling into place beside her as they walked down the corridor. He had to hustle to keep up with her; she was big and moved fast. “Huge interest. McFaul’s pacing around, waiting for us.”

“Any news from the forensic front I should know?”

“Here’s the big takeaway: At least six killers. And the two victims are definitely dead.”

She stopped. “Six killers?”

“Or more. I’ll go into it at the meeting.”

She started walking again.

“So … what’s it like at the lodge?” Romanski asked. “Nice room?”

“No complaints.”

“Deluxe?”

“I barely spent three hours in it.”

“Chocolate and flowers on the pillow?”

“Fuck you,” said Cash.

“While you’ve been sleeping between bamboo sheets, I’ve been messing around with buckets of bloody dirt.”

“Poor you.”

The doors opened to the biology section, the smell of denatured alcohol washing over them. Beyond, they blew through a set of double doors into the main biology conference room. The loud murmuring from the waiting audience fell into silence, and every face turned. The place was packed—he’d never seen the room so full. It was hard to believe this many people even worked in the Arvada building. A lot must’ve come up from headquarters. Romanski loved it.

McFaul was on the stage, electronic pointer in hand.

“There you are,” he said, waving them up. “Finally. Let’s get going.”

They joined him onstage. A projector was ready to go, and the AV screen had been lowered.

McFaul launched into an introduction that had nothing new in it—but at least he got the facts straight. He talked about the confidential nature of the investigation and the near miracle that the press hadn’t yet gotten wind of it. He then introduced Romanski and Cash and turned the review over to her, as she was the agent in charge.

Cash kept her presentation strictly factual, no speculation, and under five minutes.

Romanski was impressed. She was doing well on this, her first case as AIC.

Cash turned the floor over to Romanski.

He stepped up to the podium. “As you all know, I’m Detective Romanski,” he said, plucking the mic out of its stand. “Director of Forensic Services. Okay, let’s review our findings so far.”

The AV guy dimmed the lights and turned on the projector. Romanski stepped away from the podium and picked up the remote in his left hand.

“Let’s start with the tent,” he said. “Here it is as we found it in the mountains”—the slide flashed up—“and here it is set up in the lab. Please note the tear—fifty-two centimeters long. We examined it under magnification.”

He flashed through the slides, showing a series of microscopic images of the cut.

“The top part of the cut is clean, made by a sharp knife edge. Then, in the middle part, the fabric, as you can see, becomes ragged. It’s more torn than sliced. And then toward the bottom, the cut becomes clean again.”

He took a turn on the stage. Romanski liked to pace during his presentations, like a preacher. And he did think of himself as a sort of preacher, dispensing truth to the multitudes. “It appears the knife that made this cut was defective, a portion of the blade damaged. When the perp starts the cut, it’s with the tip of the knife. But as the knife goes farther down through the fabric, the slicing part reaches the damaged portion of the blade, and the fabric begins to tear. Then the cut ends up clean at the bottom as the blade is withdrawn and the fabric is once again cut by the sharp part.”

More slides of the crime scene. It was beautiful, like a postcard—except for the two dark bloodstains near the tent. “The cut,” Romanski went on, “was probably made to flush them out of the tent. This has been done before. For example, the famous serial killer in Italy, known as the Monster of Florence, flushed his quarry out of a tent by cutting the fly in exactly this way. The man emerged to investigate and was shot, and then the killer went into the tent to kill the woman.”

He paused. Everyone was on the edge of their seats.

“That’s similar to what happened here. The man goes out to investigate. He’s assaulted. The woman then goes out. She’s assaulted. Both are likely killed immediately.”

He took another turn around the stage.

“How do we know they were killed and not just injured? Our medical examiner, Dr. Huizinga, estimated that each bloodstain represents three liters of blood, plus or minus fifty centiliters.”

More slides went past.

“Our crime scene reconstruction team mapped the scene—here it is. Note the matted grass, the location and position of the bloodstains, the locations of the dropped knives and headlamps. While the grass didn’t retain sharp footprints, our analysis of the number of depressions in the grass, the lack of dragging, and the rapidity with which the killers disappeared with their cargo of beheaded bodies, suggested there were most likely six killers. Possibly more.”

He paused for dramatic effect and was gratified by the riveted attention of his audience.

“This was a well-planned operation,” Romanski said. “And they must have had body bags or something similar to carry the bodies in, because there was no trail of blood from the scene. Not a drop. Those bodies and heads were immediately placed into waterproof containers and taken away—fast.”

He paused. He could sense the shock in the hall.

“No physical traces of a trail were found. We tracked the scent trail with dogs, but lost it among an area of, ah, mammoth dung. These killers knew exactly what they were doing. This homicidal operation, ladies and gentlemen, was choreographed.”

Romanski paused dramatically.

“Moving on to fiber and latents,” he said. “We pulled latents from the knives, tent, headlamps, and a bunch of other stuff. There was no evidence the perps were wearing gloves. After ruling out fingerprints of the victims and guide, we ended up with over a dozen full latents and many partials. No hits in the databases yet.” He paused. “Think about that for a moment. The murder was planned like a military campaign, and yet … they didn’t bother to wear gloves. And none of these latents are in our databases—none of them had a criminal record, or worked for the government, or had any job requiring fingerprinting.”

Another dramatic sweep of the audience with his eyes.

“Moving on to hair and fiber: we collected many samples from the campsite—human and animal hairs, as well as miscellaneous fibers. Unfortunately, this area has been used as a campsite for about ten years. A couple of the hairs had roots attached, and we’re running DNA on those. We swabbed the area for other genetic traces—the grass, the two knives and headlamps, the cut in the tent, et cetera. We’re currently running PCR tests on those samples to sequence the DNA. That’s gonna take another eight days.”

He paused, cast his eyes over the audience. Even McFaul was transfixed.

“Finally, we did trace tox on the blood. Nothing of note—a small amount of alcohol present in the male victim’s blood, nothing in the female’s. No drugs present. We confirmed that the female victim was pregnant.”

He looked around and pressed his hands together. “And that’s it, folks—so far.”

McFaul stepped back into the center. “Thank you, Detective Romanski. I’d like to open the floor to questions, comments, theories.”

Hands shot up. There were questions. Romanski answered them as best he could, but most were unanswerable as of yet. Several ideas about the crime were mooted about, but nothing that made any sense to Romanski.

When the discussion period was over, McFaul came back to the podium and read out team assignments, and then the meeting broke up.

As they were stepping down from the stage, McFaul came up to Romanski and Cash. “See you two in my office?”

They followed him up to the second floor. He seated himself behind his desk while Romanski took a seat in front, Cash settling down in the seat on the opposite side. McFaul looked better dressed than usual, his suit just a cut above the bargain-basement stylishness he usually sported. He looked fired up.

“This is the most goddamned case I can think of,” McFaul said. He looked at Cash. “You got any theories, guesses? I mean, privately.”

“Not yet,” she said.

He frowned. “The case is two days old. I’m not criticizing, but I have to point out that it doesn’t seem you’ve made much progress. No bodies, no motive, no hot leads.”

“We’re working flat out, sir,” said Cash.

McFaul paused, gathering his thoughts, his brow wrinkling. “It’s your first case as agent in charge, and it’s okay if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed. If you like, we can assign you an experienced partner, a sort of co-AIC, and no one would think twice about it. This is a challenging case.”

Romanski could feel the heat coming off Cash. But Cash stayed calm. “Not necessary, sir,” she said. “I’ve got the case firmly in hand, and I’m certain we’re making the best progress possible. It does have some unusual elements, sir, but we’re going to crack this case, I promise you.”

A long silence, and McFaul finally nodded. “Okay. No lack of confidence intended. We’re here to throw any and all our resources into this case—all you have to do is ask.”

“Thank you.”

“And how’s working with Sheriff Colcord?”

“Colcord’s fine,” said Cash. “He’s an old-fashioned kind of guy, quiet. The department there in Eagle isn’t very big, just him and a deputy and a dozen officers.”

“Are you getting cooperation from Erebus?”

“Yes, sir. They’ve got at least half their on-site employees out there beating the bush. The security chief, Andrew Maximilian, has been cooperative, and they’ve done everything we’ve asked.” She paused. “There is one thing, though.”

“Yes?”

“The sheriff and I would like to interview Maitland Barrow.”

“Why? I understand he wasn’t there.”

“The father of the male victim, Rolf Gunnerson, made a statement that implied Barrow might know something.”

“Like what?”

“He wouldn’t say.”

McFaul fell silent, his short fingers drumming on his desk. “Ask for a voluntary interview.” He then leaned forward, folding his hands. “There’s something you should know, Agent Cash.” He started tapping a finger on the desktop. “Just before the meeting, I got a call from Nicky Boswell at The Denver Post.”

“Boswell, the guy with the fat cheeks and John Lennon glasses?” Cash said. “Uh-oh.”

“He’s onto the story,” McFaul said. “He’s gotten his grubby hands on a source, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already writing it up. We need to be proactive and control the narrative.”

“Which means?” Cash asked.

“A presser,” said McFaul. “I’ll handle it myself. You won’t have time.”

“Thank you,” Cash said.

“And me?” Romanski asked. He loved pressers.

“You need to get back to Erebus and keep this case moving forward.” He looked at his watch. “We’re going to announce the presser now and give the media ninety minutes to show up. That’ll make it around three. The shit will hit the fan for sure, so be ready.”

“You sure you won’t need me for the presser?” Romanski asked.

“No, Bart. You’re too busy.”

Romanski felt pissed. It seemed to him McFaul was hogging the limelight—no surprise.

“We’re closing the airspace over Erebus,” McFaul said, “so those media people don’t interfere with the search. The press will be kept out of the valley for now.”

“I appreciate that, sir,” said Cash.

“Good.” He rose. “It goes without saying that we need to show progress—and fast.”