to the sheriff’s office by now, I think, if she was going there.”
I nodded.
“So if she isn’t at the hotel…”
“You’re thinking something,” I said. “What is it?”
She looked at me. Looked like she was thinking, and then thinking better of it, whatever it was. Finally, she opened her mouth. “She fits the victim profile.”
“The…? Oh.” The serial killer’s victim profile. “Not really.”
“Sure she does. She’s the right age and size. She has long, dark hair and medium skin…”
“She’s Asian,” I said.
“Part Asian. And he’s killed blacks, whites, and Hispanics so far. No reason to think he’d turn his nose up at an Asian woman if one fell in his lap.”
Maybe so. “How would she fall in his lap, though? She was miles from the truck stop…”
It was my turn to trail off.
“On Art Mullinax’s property,” Grimaldi said.
“He was over by the house, though. Talking to Rafe and Bob.”
She shook her head. “Not by then. By then they’d left. He called you, remember, to let you know they were done and leaving? Mullinax could have been anywhere by the time Yung came out of the trees.”
Maybe so. “Where would he take her? Not to the farm.”
“Depends on whether he suspected they were coming back with a search warrant or not.” She pushed to her feet. “You ready?”
“One more minute.” I burped Carrie and stuffed her back into the baby sling. “You’d better call Bob and let him know we’ll be going to the house instead of the woods.”
Or at least that’s what I assumed we’d be doing.
“I’ll call from the car,” Grimaldi said and strode out, leaving me to scurry along behind.
Rafe was there, with a crew of crime scene techs, by the time we made it back to Daffodil Hill Farm. Grimaldi had phoned Bob again to tell him her concerns, and he had agreed that she could go hunt down Art Mullinax just as soon as she’d met him and his retrieval crew, and told them where to go. So we sat on the side of the road and waited for Bob to show up.
Or more accurately, I sat on the side of the road and waited. Grimaldi had walked back to where she thought Yung might have come out of the woods, and had examined the ground for any signs of accident, struggle, or anything else.
“I’m pretty sure I found where she came across the ditch,” she told me when she’d made her way back to me. “Something pushed through the branches recently, and slid into the ditch and climbed back out. I saw what looked like a heel mark in the bottom of the ditch, where it’s just wet enough for the ground to hold an impression. I couldn’t testify to it being her, not without a plaster cast of her shoe for comparison, but I’m pretty sure it’s the imprint of a high heel.”
“Well, then I’m sure it was Yung,” I said. “Who else would have been out here in the last day or two in high heels?”
“I imagine not a lot of people.” Grimaldi shaded her eyes with her hand as she gazed down the road in the direction of town. “At least we don’t have to worry about searching the woods for her. She’s not hurt and helpless in there somewhere.”
No. But she might be hurt and helpless somewhere else. And I’m sure it was that same thought that caused Grimaldi’s next outburst. “What’s taking them so long? I could have jogged to Sweetwater by now!”
“Not really. And I’m sure they’re coming as quickly as they can. But it’s not like he—” I nodded in the direction of the woods and the skeleton they contained, “needs help in a hurry.”
Grimaldi nodded reluctantly, and started to pace back and forth in front of the car instead.
I put up with it for about two minutes, and was just about to tell her to knock it off when I heard the sound of a car engine coming closer. “That must be them.”
I scooted off the hood of the SUV and peered down the road. “Yes. There they are. Blue lights and everything.”
But no sirens. It wasn’t that kind of hurry.
Bob pulled his sheriff’s SUV up on the shoulder across the road from us, and got out. The crime scene van made a U-turn and parked behind Grimaldi’s car. Bob came toward us. “This the place?”
Grimaldi nodded. “That’s the cairn of stones. That’s my T-shirt. The body is a five or ten minute hike straight back.”
“One of Carrie’s