Dr. Abrieu used her finger to dig into the tiny hole she’d created, pulled an object out, and walked it over to a tray.
The item looked like a bolus of something mashed and white. Taking two mini forceps, Abrieu teased it apart, until it was clear that it was a scrap of paper, no more than one inch by two.
“Is something written on it?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “But I want to be careful that the paper doesn’t tear or smear.”
I took out my cell and snapped two good photos, each from a different angle. Then Abrieu used the forceps to pull the crumpled piece of paper even further apart.
“Part of a word,” she said.
There was the loop of an n, then a left-to-right mark that looked like the edge of another letter. A lowercase g, maybe.
“N-g,” I said aloud, then snapped a picture.
“Looks like it.”
“Someone jammed that in his mouth after he was dead?”
“I’d guess while he was semiconscious,” Abrieu said. “Then they manually stimulated his jaw.”
“You’re saying they forced him to eat this paper? That’s what caused the bruising?”
Abrieu nodded, and my phone buzzed. I took two steps back from the body.
Lanie was calling from Quantico.
“The call originated from a disposable cell,” she said. “The signal is moving north along Interstate 5 in Los Angeles.”
“Now?”
“Yes sir.”
I gazed down at the paper on Abrieu’s metal tray. “California Highway Patrol needs to get that car to the side of the road,” I said to Lanie. “Extreme precaution.”
“That’s gonna take a minute,” she said, then told me she’d ring me back.
I hung up and turned to Abrieu. I needed to be on the road to the Dallas airport. From there, LA.
“I want no mention of this paper in your report,” I said. “Anything else you come across, speak only to me.”
She nodded, and I headed toward the door. Before walking out, I turned.
“Good work, Doc.”
Ten minutes later, I was in my rental, on the way to DFW airport. I stared at the brochure with my handwritten notes.
Paddock, I thought.
Middle English. Germanic specifically. A field of grassland. A farm enclosure.
My cell rang, and I was patched through to our LA office. Assistant Chief Henry DeGallo told me that a patrol car had a family pulled over on the side of the 101 Freeway.
“The cell was hooked to a roof rack with a hiking carabiner, Agent Camden,” DeGallo said. “Mom and Dad are in the back of a police cruiser, but they claim they don’t know where the phone came from.”
DeGallo spoke like a drill sergeant, even when he wasn’t raising his voice.
“Can you patch me through to the officer on the scene?”
It took a minute, but soon I was speaking to a patrolman named Ruiz.
“Officer Ruiz,” I said. “Describe these people for me.”
“They’re from Germany,” Ruiz said. “Barely speak English. They were headed to Universal Studios Hollywood.”
“And their car?”
“It’s a rental,” he said. “From Avis. They told me they got off the five about twenty minutes before I pulled them over. Got gas at a Mobil station in Downey. The driver still has the receipt.”
I pictured the man who called himself “God” at the same gas station. Clipping the cell phone to the tourists’ car. “They remember anyone from the station?”
“No one, Agent Camden. The kids were on their phones. Dad went inside and got some snacks for the family. A couple bags of gummy worms are up on the dash. Matches the receipt.”
These people were clearly innocent, and I didn’t want them in this killer’s crosshairs.
“We can hold them,” Ruiz said, “but you should advise on what to do with the kids. They’re minors and not citizens.”
“Bag the phone and the carabiner for the Westwood office and let the tourists go,” I said. “Get me their info, please. Their hotel and itinerary.”
“Will do.”
“Can you go by and see if there are cameras at the gas station? You have a time stamp with the receipt, right?”
The cop agreed, and I hung up, glancing at the brochure on the passenger seat. I was moving along 183, ten minutes from DFW.
A gas station in LA? The killer had made another comment that I hadn’t written down. For me, the west is too hot.
He’d been referring to Tignon’s death in Ashland. But something about his tone didn’t ring true. Like it was another misdirect.
At least I knew where the killer was right now: Los Angeles. One more crazy in a city filled with them. I didn’t have a positive view of LA, thanks in large part to the man my mother had met in her fifties, an Angelino who’d moved her to Texas. He’d since passed away, leaving her in the Lone Star State largely for the continuity of her medical care.
As soon as I returned my rental car, I got Frank on the line.
“Who knew Shooter and I were coming here?” I asked.
“Me,” Frank said. “Cassie. Richie.”
Richie.
“Why?” Frank asked.
I explained about the call and the burner cell clipped to the tourists’ roof rack.
“Jesus, Gardner,” Frank said. “He called you guys at the FBI?”
As Frank said “guys,” I realized I’d forgotten to tell Shooter that I’d left the building. “Me,” I said. “Shooter had work to do. Grabbed a desk.”
“So he asked for you by name?”
“Yes,” I said, explaining to Frank that he wanted us to call him “God.”
“The heck with that,” he said. “What about ‘dog’ instead?”
God, backward.
“I presume you mean just among our team,” I said. “Not to the press.”
“Exactly,” Frank said.
“Then I’d rather we call him Mad Dog. He’s clearly a sociopath.”
“What do you need from us, Gardner?” Frank asked.
“Get on with the LA office and brief them,” I said. “Then get out there. Have Shooter get on a flight, too. We need to look at serials throughout Southern California. Start with men who made violent attacks on women. Convicted. Released. If his pace keeps up, murder number three happens after ten p.m. tonight.”
“Did he have an accent?” Frank asked.
“Inconsistent,” I said. “One moment, a touch of the southwest. Then immediately after, panhandly or southern. North Texas or Oklahoma. Arkansas, maybe.”
“These expressions you wrote down—send them to us, will you?”
I agreed.
“He knows who you are, Gardner,” Frank said. “You’ve thought this through, right? The director needs to be kept abreast.”
“I’ll send him a note.”
Grabbing my bag, I headed toward the airport. Since leaving the Dallas office, my brain had been building up theories about the paper found in Tignon’s mouth and the cuts, which resembled those a hunter might make. But as I entered Terminal C, I wasn’t focused on any of that.
I had a mentor, the killer had said. He used to tell me that some people don’t take things seriously until they have skin in the game.
I stood at the American Airlines counter while a clerk filled out the Armed Passenger Authorization form.
Maybe that’s what you need, Agent Camden, he’d said. Something personal, to get your blood pumping.
“Can you hold on a second?” I told the woman.
She looked up. “You don’t want the flight to LA?”
“Give me two minutes.”
I stepped away from the desk and found the Favorites screen on my phone. Hit the button beside Camila’s name, which rang to her iPad.
A blipping sound. 7:03 p.m. Florida time. Camila did not answer.
I called Rosa next. After five rings, I heard her voicemail.
I began backtracking over the last three hours. A green Toyota I’d seen on the way to the house near Ashland, then seemingly again on I-35. The security guard at the Dallas office who got up when I walked into the FBI.
He’s in LA, the voice in my head said. The rational voice I hear every day.
But another voice was creeping in.
My mentor, he’d said.
Frank and I had wondered if the work was too much for one killer. Was it possible Mad Dog didn’t work alone? He had referred to personal sacrifice. To getting my blood pumping. He’d called it a game.
I hit redial.
“Rosa,” I said when Camila’s grandmother finally picked up. “Where are you?”
“I’m on 95,” she said.
“You got my text, right? About not being able to come?”
“I didn’t get the impression it was negotiable,” she said. “So I didn’t call you back.”
My relationship with Rosa was cordial, but complicated.
“Is Camila with you?” I asked. This would have been unusual, since my ex forbade Rosa from bringing her daughter to see her.
“Camila’s with a friend of mine,” Rosa said.
“I need to speak with her. Make sure she’s safe.”
Behind Rosa, I heard the sounds of the highway. “She’s very safe, Gardner, you know that. She gets straight As. She lives in a good home.”
“Rosa,” I said. “Are they staying at your place? Your friend who’s watching Camila?”
“No, but they may go back there. My friend has a one bedroom. Camila would have to sleep on the couch.”
A single friend of Rosa’s. My mother-in-law had gone through a revitalization after she hit fifty-five. With no husband around, Rosa took salsa classes and dated. She was part of a particular social scene in Miami, one that sometimes required babysitters and friends doing favors to watch Camila when Rosa went out.
I thought of the call coming into the ME’s office.
Was it possible that Mad Dog was in Dallas and had seen me? Or his mentor had?
“Rosa,” I said. “I want them to stay put. At your friend’s place. Did you talk with anyone about where you were going?”
“I talk to lots of people,” she said. “Gardner, you’re scaring me.”
I had not raised my voice with Rosa, but perhaps the nature of the questions had put her on alert. I attempted to flatten my speech. “Have any strangers engaged you in conversation recently? White men? Midthirties. Brown hair?”
I heard the noise of a trucker, laying on a horn. “I don’t know,” Rosa said. “What kind of question is that?”
I thought of who I knew in the Miami office. Agents from years ago. But if I called in a favor, asked someone to keep an eye on Camila, the conversation would be logged in our system. And if the killer had access to that, as we had speculated, I could be the one putting Camila in danger.
“Text me your friend’s address,” I told Rosa. “I promise to call in ten minutes and tell you more.”
“Okay,” Rosa said.
The line went dead, and I stood there.
He’s in LA, I told myself.
Unless he was working with an accomplice, and one of them had been in Texas, following me. I estimated the odds on this at 37 percent and walked back to the woman at the American Airlines counter. “What if I wanted to go to Miami instead?” I asked.
She looked at her computer screen. “Tonight? You’re gonna get in after midnight. Or there’s a red-eye with a stop.”
Mad Dog knew my name. Where I’d traveled from. If he or his accomplice was in Dallas, one of them could’ve easily beaten me to the airport. They could be on their way to Miami right now.
“Let me ask you a question,” I said. “Other Miami flights from here that might’ve left before the one you’re looking at … flights in the last hour. What time would they get in?”
“I’m not following.”
“If someone got here an hour before me, how much earlier would they get to Miami?” I asked. “I’m trying to make up time. To see how far behind I am.”
She paged through several screens on her terminal, then looked back up. “An hour and ten minutes maybe, if they got lucky. More likely forty minutes.”
“You can see all the airlines in there?”
She nodded, and my phone buzzed. A text from Rosa.
I cannot reach my friend. Should I be worried?
I pulled my work bag onto the counter and rummaged through it until I found a business card. The one Travis had left after the private jet trip the other night. I computed the difference in travel times: commercial airliner versus Gulfstream. A faster flight by one hour and thirty-eight minutes.
Travis answered on the first ring, and I reminded him who I was.
“If I needed to get to Miami,” I said, “in a rush, what are the chances of there being a plane today? Something private out of Dallas?”
“My colleague is fueling up right now,” he said. “Leaves in twenty. But I haven’t seen a request from the agency.”
“This is personal,” I said. “A personal emergency.”
Was it?
These were not things I said or did. I am not a person who acts rashly.
But Camila …
Travis checked on the details, and I waited on hold.
“It’s a private charter,” he said when he came back. “Three guys going sport-fishing. I told them how low maintenance you are, and the guy hosting agreed to share the plane if you kicked in thirty-five hundred bucks.”
I considered my savings. What I sent to my mother’s nursing home each month. To Rosa for Camila. And what was left.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I said.