“Tell me what you see,” Cunningham would ask her. “Tell me who did this.”
Time after time she’d been able to supply investigators things about the killer. What type of job he had, the model of car he drove, whether he lived close to the crime scene, or even how old he might be. She’d like to believe it was statistics and logic, but maybe some of it was dumb luck. It certainly wasn’t magic, but Maggie knew that’s what some of her colleagues called it behind her back. She guessed it was better they called it magic than voodoo. Whatever it was, she had garnered a reputation.
Profiling a murderer was as much a process of elimination as it was a fact finding mission. Motive, opportunity, signature – all pieces of the puzzle. Cunningham kept bringing her the cases, one test after another. As the head of the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico he had been her teacher, her mentor since she arrived as a forensic fellow.
Now as she sat across the desk from him she realized there wasn’t a reprimand. He was getting ready to present her with another test.
“It’s not just about skills,” he said. “You have something special, Agent O’Dell. Perhaps it has absolutely nothing to do with your background, your childhood or the fact that you lost your heroic father --” He waved his hand over the file folder like it didn’t matter.
Then he leaned forward, elbows rested on the desktop, fingers tented. He held her eyes again. “You have a talent for seeing things that others miss. Details that appear insignificant at first. Somehow you’re able to know things about people…about killers. While all that is, indeed, a skill, a talent – whatever you want to call it – while it all seems like a good thing…I want you to know there often times is a price to pay for climbing inside an evil man’s head.”
She stayed quiet, not breaking eye contact, trying to take in his message. Still the good student wanting to learn.
Until Maggie was twelve her father made sure she went to Catholic school and mass every Sunday. She remembered catechism lessons about evil. When her father gave her the medallion he told her it would “help protect her from evil.” It all seemed like part of the mythical realms of religion, like heaven and hell. You had to believe in heaven in order to believe in hell. Wasn’t that the same thing about evil? She didn’t wear the medallion because she actually believed it would protect her. She wore it simply because it was precious gift from her father.
And now, she was surprised to hear Cunningham use the word “evil” as if it were a term from one of the textbooks he’d co-written on criminal behavior. But before she had time to response he announced the reason she was here – why she had been summoned in the first place.
“I think you’re ready for a real crime scene.”
Chapter 3
Warren County, Virginia
“I’ve never seen so much blood,” Sheriff Geller warned them. “It’s like a slaughterhouse in there.”
Maggie knew he was referring to the double-wide trailer that sat in the middle of the acreage.
“Smells like one, too,” he added.
Hard to believe. From outside Maggie thought the property looked like picturesque rural Virginia. A forest lined one side of the long driveway. Tall pine trees grew so close it was impossible to see between them except for splashes of red and orange leaves. Less than a hundred feet away she could see a riverbank and the shimmer of rolling water.
Quiet and tranquil – the type of place people go to escape.
“Your deputies didn’t touch anything?” Cunningham asked.
Geller shook his head. “We didn’t go in. Saw enough from the doorway.”
From the look on his face he wouldn’t be joining them.
Maggie tried to take in everything. Mental notes. The yard had two well-maintained berms with mums still in bloom and several ceramic gnomes. A cobbled-stone path led to the front door. In the back she caught a glimpse of bed sheets hung from a clothesline, flapping in the breeze. From somewhere she could hear a windchime’s soft delicate tinkle. Someone had made this place a home. And now it was a crime scene with yellow tape stretched from tree to tree all the way to the poles of the clothesline.
The sheriff and his deputy – introduced only as Wilson – had parked a safe distance away as they waited for A.D. Cunningham and his three agents. Turner and Delaney were veterans. They didn’t flinch at Geller’s warning. They’d probably seen worse. Maggie had seen dozens of bloody crime scenes as well. But they had all been virtual, viewed from photographs or – if she was lucky – videotape. This crime scent – this one would be her first real one.
Of course, it didn’t take long for her to understand there were benefits to her virtual crime scenes.