The woman lay in a heap like discarded rubbish that hadn’t quite made it into the Dumpster. Her arms were tucked under her torso and her legs tangled over each other. He wondered about Racine’s theory. Rigor mortis sets in twelve to thirty-six hours after death, but what most people don’t realize is that after thirty-six hours the body becomes pliable again. This woman had been dead for almost two days. Racine was right. No way was this body lying here unnoticed for that long.
Tully suspected her killer dumped her body just before the first fire. It wasn’t unusual for arsonists to hide their murders among the ashes. But if that was the case, this guy had really screwed up. How could he choreograph two fires in two different buildings and fail to burn his murder victim?
Right now that was the least of Tully’s concerns. Especially when he got a good look at the damage under the tangled hair. It was difficult to guess the woman’s age. Her face had been beaten so badly the left eye socket and nose were practically gone. Her mouth gaped open, a black hole where her jaw and teeth had been successfully shattered. Hair color was impossible to determine, since the hair was caked with blood and tissue. Her clothes were dirty and stained but not torn or ripped.
Did she have a chance to fight back? Tully wondered.
“First body,” Racine said. “Last week the buildings were unoccupied. Think he’s accelerating? Or just reckless?”
“Maybe he didn’t know about this one.”
Racine raised an eyebrow. “You think someone else did this? Not the arsonist?”
“Just keeping an open mind.” Gut instinct, but he wouldn’t say that to anyone except maybe Maggie. Whoever did this was much more brutal than a nuisance fire starter.
“So what? The killer catches a big break that the building he dumps his victim next to goes up in flames? Too much of a coincidence.”
Tully shrugged. That’s exactly what Maggie would say right about now. He still couldn’t believe she hadn’t argued with him about going to the ER to get checked. He was pleased but concerned. In the years he had known Maggie O’Dell there was only one other time he remembered seeing such uncertainty in her eyes. Uncertainty that bordered on fear. And that one other time Maggie hadn’t admitted her vulnerability to him or anyone else. So how bad was this if she was willing to go to a hospital?
He wished he could convince himself that she had agreed just to appease him. But he knew better. The fact that she admitted she might not be okay was unsettling.
They hadn’t worked together for more than a year. Not since their director, Kyle Cunningham, had died. The case that led to his death had been their last one. And actually, Maggie wasn’t supposed to be on that case after both she and Cunningham were exposed to the Ebola virus. Maggie had ended up in the Slammer, an isolation ward at USAMRIID (U. S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) at Fort Detrick. Ebola Zaire—the virus she and Cunningham had been exposed to—was nicknamed “the slate cleaner.” About 90 percent of those exposed died, with only a slightly better chance for those given an unregulated, unapproved vaccine.
That Maggie had survived amazed her doctors and the experts at the army research facility. Since then Cunningham’s replacement, Raymond Kunze, had been sending both Maggie and Tully on wild-goose chases, either impossible or simply ridiculous cases, brazenly telling them that they needed to prove their worthiness to him.
It was ridiculous. Both of them were veteran FBI agents. Both had gained hard-earned reputations as expert profilers. It was Kunze’s way of interjecting his authority over a department that held their previous director in high regard. Maybe Kunze felt he couldn’t possibly function in Cunningham’s shadow, so his solution was to tear the agents down and rebuild them in his image, to his standards.
Tully had little respect for the man. He viewed him as a bully more concerned with power and politics than with solving crimes or deflecting criminals. Kunze slid down even further on Tully’s scale when the last wild-goose chase the man sent Maggie on ended up getting her Tasered, left in a forest, and shot in the head. All because the man wanted to repay a political favor.
Which made Tully wonder—what was it about this case that had Kunze sending in two of his top profilers? Who did he owe or want to please? Had he already suspected last week that the case would take a violent turn?
“Hey, Tully, Racine,” Ivan called out, interrupting Tully’s thoughts as he waved at them from the opening of the alley. “We just found another one for you inside.”
CHAPTER 13
Maggie already regretted her decision.
A nurse had poked and cleaned and prepped her wounds, murmuring a few “uh-huhs” with the appropriate inflections for the bloodier ones. She left Maggie with a sterile towel to hold against the back of her head.