She hadn’t noticed them before. The angle of the setting sun transformed their circle above the trees into a halo, the tips of their black wings highlighted by brilliant yellows and oranges. She heard Tully’s intake of breath and she knew Tully saw them, too. And he was thinking exactly what she was.
Without a word or a glance they started down across the parking lot, across the brown lawn, not even using the sidewalks. There were dirt paths going into the woods. They took the closest one. It narrowed immediately but Maggie kept going, ducking tree limbs and ignoring the dried brush that scraped her arms.
Several hundred yards into the trees she could smell it. Rotting meat. Several days old. Not the pungent coppery smell of a fresh kill. Whatever had captured the birds’ attention had been dead for a few days.
She looked up to the birds for direction. She slowed her pace so she wouldn’t lose her footing. Inside the canopy of trees the shadows of dusk threw off her depth perception. She looked for the birds, but what she saw stopped her dead in her tracks. Tully bumped into her.
“What is it?”
She pointed up into the branches of a huge maple that stood about seventy-five feet in front of them.
This time she could hear Tully gasp, “Dear God.”
Though they were dried now, Maggie could still recognize the streamers that decorated the lower branches. She wondered if she would have recognized them as easily without seeing the gutted body that lay at the base of the trunk.
“What sick bastard have we found?”
Immediately Maggie saw that the body didn’t include a head.
“I think we may have found Zach Lester,” she said.
CHAPTER 67
Mutilations always caught Tully off guard. It didn’t matter how many he saw. He stood back and tried to make his lungs inhale despite the stink that already permeated the lining of his nostrils. He knew there was an initial shock, as if his eyes had to convince his brain that, yes, indeed, there were no limits to evil.
Maggie moved forward already examining, analyzing, shifting smoothly into gear. She swatted blowflies, swarms so slow and unwilling to leave their treasure that she could knock them to the ground with a simple wave of her hand.
Tully didn’t see any of the hesitation in her, none of the fear he had witnessed the other night at the warehouse fires. He kidded her once about becoming a specialist in dismembered bodies. The parts seemed to appear on cases she was assigned, whether in take-out containers, Mason jars, or fishing coolers.
“Should we call the State Patrol guys to come back?”
She squatted down about three feet away from the corpse, careful not to touch and even more careful where she stepped. She seemed so intent he didn’t think she had heard him. He looked down at the pine needles and soggy maple leaves, some embedded in the mud. He moved closer, keeping to the same path Maggie had used.
“He crossed state lines,” she finally said. “And the interstate is federal property. Are the rest areas?”
Tully had no idea.
“Technically it’s our jurisdiction,” she said.
He closed his eyes and let out a breath. Too many times law enforcement agencies fought over jurisdiction. He never understood it. Opening his eyes and following the trail of what was once Zach Lester’s intestines, Tully found himself wishing they could hand this off to someone, anyone, else.
“The state of Virginia’s crime lab is top-notch,” he said, giving it another try.
“One of the best,” Maggie agreed.
He saw her glance at her watch as he pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket.
“Ganza should be able to get a unit out here in forty, forty-five minutes,” she said.
Ganza. Tully bit back a response, not surprised that she’d choose to hand it over to their FBI crime lab. And it was probably a smart choice, even the correct choice. But it meant they’d be out here, stranded, until almost every last piece of evidence had been collected.
Still, Tully made the phone call without question or comment.
The whole time he talked to Ganza he watched Maggie. She had started taking pictures with her smartphone. A good move, considering there would be little sunlight by the time Ganza and his team made it to the scene.
He slipped his phone back into his pocket, his fingers lingering. He wanted to call Gwen, the urge something fierce. Even though and maybe because she wasn’t expecting a call.
Maggie stopped and Tully watched her slowly turn, taking in the surroundings as if for the first time really seeing them.
“Do you think he killed Gloria Dobson here, too?”
Tully listened now that his breathing had returned to normal and his heartbeat had settled. He couldn’t hear the interstate traffic. He couldn’t hear any traffic or car doors being slammed or voices calling to each other back at the parking lots. A breeze rustled branches overhead. The birds cawed and squawked at each other. If the killer had timed it right and no one had been at the rest area, these woods would have absorbed the victims’ screams.