no amount of boyish charm can disguise if you know what to look for. He looked at me looking at him through the window as if he were a snake in a zoo, as curious about me as I about him. Then his mouth made a little self-effacing grimace and his head bobbed at me before he looked away. I was tempted to tap on the glass but sensed the two men in the front seat getting a little edgy at my nearness so I refrained.
At that point I knew he had killed seven women altogether, including the one found in his truck. He had tortured and raped them and gazed into their eyes, letting them hope for life while he strangled them slowly, and now he was going to show us the last crime scene. Because of that small act, his taking us to the body dump site, there would be no fair retribution for all the pain he had caused the victims and those who loved them. Jessica Robertson was going to be used as his ticket out of the death penalty. The life she lost, this scumbag gained in trade; she would have hated that, and so did I.
I wanted Floyd Lynch dead six times, and slow, and painful, but this trip was going to ensure the son of a bitch got a life sentence instead, and you could see he thought that was a fine deal. I imagined myself putting my pistol up to the window and watching the glass embed itself into his face with the bullet. I imagine things a lot. The fantasy temporarily eased my impotent rage at the injustice of our legal system.
Max stuck his head out of the driver’s side of the jeep, gestured at the open back door. “Come on, Brigid, the AC is getting out.”
I got in and there in the backseat beside me was Sigmund (aka Dr. David Weiss). We looked at each other. I don’t know what he saw, but over the last five years since I’d left the Washington Bureau the man had gotten a little old. Beard shot with gray, and his ears could have used a trim. His chest had become his belly and he needed to give in to a larger shirt size. He represented the best and worst of my time in the Bureau, all my nightmares, and the closest thing to a friend.
Emotions in a jumble over what we would see this day, I wanted to hug him till the juice ran. But the circumstances and present company didn’t call for it, so instead I buckled my seat belt while I said, cool and soft, “So nice to see you again, Sig.”
His eyes twinkled from a million light-years away, in that way that always made me think he was an extraterrestrial who found us all damn charming. I could tell he understood what I was feeling, but he was careful to express no sympathy or affection, knowing it was the only thing I couldn’t take.
“Hello, Stinger,” he said, and the mere use of our nicknames for each other made me look away and then lean toward the front seat.
“No Three-Piece?” I asked Max.
“No cameras,” Max replied.
The Tucson Bureau Special Agent in Charge Roger Morrison was named Three-Piece after his persistence in wearing a vest with his suits well into the nineties, not having gotten the memo that they went out with shoulder pads. Max’s “no cameras” comment referred to the man’s well-known ability to smell celluloid and only show up whenever the news crew did.
I was sitting behind Coleman, so I couldn’t see if she reacted to the jibes tossed back and forth about her boss. Max put the car in gear and our macabre little caravan headed toward the Samaniego Ridge of the Catalina Mountains.
Four
From where we live, it’s an hour-and-a-half drive up to the summit of Mount Lemmon if you go the nice paved route on the south side. Our destination on the old back road approaching from the north, with bumps connected by ruts, takes longer. As we headed up Route 79 to get around the Samaniego Ridge on the way there, Coleman was quiet. I didn’t get sullen vibes, just tense and brittle. Sigmund was quiet, too, but more comfortably so, looking out the window at the harsh beauty of the high desert. I named what I could, mesquite and prickly pear, barrel cactus crowned with hot-pink flowers as big as your fist, green-leafed ocotillo sporting red