tell he pursed his lips to say “wise” but changed his mind, “… better if you didn’t speak to him.”
It wasn’t Hughes’s words but the thought of Sigmund’s touch that grounded me again and I focused instead on keeping my head from trembling after the sudden adrenaline burst. Jessica deserved better than pissed-off grandstanding.
Even Lynch had quailed at my reaction, and he was under armed guard who now looked ready to turn his weapon on me. “I’m just saying,” Lynch said, then shut himself off again and concentrated on gnawing a small wart on the back of his left hand.
“I think you should stay quiet now, Floyd,” Coleman said.
He nodded.
I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, but in retrospect I remembered that was the moment when something felt wrong. Then the moment moved on.
Coleman took me a few steps away as if to speak privately, though I knew it was partly to remove me farther from Lynch’s vicinity. “He does that a lot, quoting from movies and books,” she said. “The books in his truck had things underlined that he used in his interrogation.” Then, “Can you tell it’s her?” She asked me again.
I studied the face again. “Enough to testify,” I said. “But the ME has the dental records already, I assume?”
“You assume correctly, Agent Quinn. Do you want to be there for the autopsy?” she asked.
“I should, preliminary tests should be ready, what, tomorrow afternoon?”
Coleman nodded, her voice level to a fault, professional. “I’ll make sure they work on it tonight. Let’s say three unless I call you.”
“Okay, I’ll be there. I know it’s not protocol but I think it’s best if I notify NOK.”
Coleman nodded again. NOK, next of kin. My relationships with some of them were known in the Bureau because most agents avoided them, passing them off instead to professional victim’s advocates, passing out cards of therapists. When a case wasn’t closed, I remained the advocate for the victim.
Benny and Ray put plastic bags on all four hands. Lynch asked why they did that. The techs didn’t respond.
“In case there’s any tissue or blood under the nails,” Hughes told him.
“Ouch,” Lynch said, but it wasn’t at the memory of Jessica having scratched him. He lifted the hand with the wart. There was blood on it. Careful not to make contact, Hughes handed him a Kleenex as if he was used to this happening.
The techs first lifted the body from the front seat, inadvertently detaching the head in the process and leaving behind a layer of skin that had stuck to the upholstery. Some of the trash adhered to the body.
“It’s been there a long time,” Coleman explained, glancing away. “Floyd told me thirteen years. She was twenty-three and he was twenty-five when he killed her.”
“Is that in his journals?”
“No, he told me. He only started keeping a record with the next victim, the one we think of as the first Route 66 kill.”
I dipped my head at the body being placed in a black bag. “Does he at least know this victim’s name?”
“He says no.”
I turned and looked out across the arroyos that became a canyon leading into the heart of the mountain. I looked away not because I couldn’t take watching Benny and Ray delicately sorting the pieces and loading them into separate body bags and hoisting them up the side of the hill. I was wondering what was going to be worse, this or calling Jessica’s father.
Five
The rest of the group started up the hill in pretty much the same order they’d come down it, but Sigmund gave me a look and bent over to pick up a piece of trash the techs had left behind. “Sloppy,” he said. He straightened and handed it to me like a memento of the occasion, then tucked my hand in his arm, pretending to help me over the uneven ground and up the steep slope of the hill. “Ah Stinger, a sad triumph it is,” he said, as we slowly started after the others. The sound of his voice comforted me, but I didn’t feel a need to respond.
Then, “That Agent Coleman is one smart cookie,” he said, when we were lagging far enough behind so no one could hear our conversation.
We had worked so long together, him in profiling and me in undercover, that in the past it had always been the Sig and Stinger show. I felt a twinge of jealousy. Silly.
“How can you tell?” I asked.
“She was trying to interview me all