her mouth?”
I leaned forward, feeling sickened all over again.
“Full of gummy bears,” I said. Then I noticed something white under the dead woman’s head. I reached over and shifted it over.
A folded piece of paper fell into the blood. I grabbed it before the blood could soak in and unfolded the sheet. On it was a laser-printed message.
You didn’t think it was going to be simple, did you, Cross?
Well, this is not simple. It won’t ever be simple. Not from a mastermind like me.
You know, if you hadn’t tried to trace me, maybe I would have set Mrs. Jenkins free. But you did try to trace me, and now I just don’t know what to think or do, and I suspect neither do you.
We’ll just have to see, you and me.
M
“What does it say?” Mahoney asked.
Before I could reply, I saw the headlights of several large vehicles bearing down on us. They slowed and stopped not twenty yards away, their high beams lighting up the car and the interior from behind.
Mahoney threw his forearm up to shield his eyes, yanked out his ID and badge, held them up, and yelled, “FBI! Turn those damn lights off!”
The lights dimmed, and I could see three television satellite trucks.
A platinum-blond woman barely five feet tall launched herself out of the nearest rig with a cameraman right behind her.
“Is it true?” she demanded. “Is there a head in there with gummy bears in the mouth? And a finger? Is it Mrs. Jenkins? And who is this mysterious M?”
CHAPTER 27
MAHONEY PULLED HIMSELF UP TO his full height and rushed right at her, saying, “Move. Now. Back up your perimeter. This is a crime scene, and I want it sealed immediately!”
The reporters retreated as the young woman said, “We have a right to answers.”
“No, you have the right to ask questions,” Mahoney said, getting right in her face. “I decide whether I’ll answer them. And I’m more likely to answer them if you give me a little slack to take care of a dangerous, fluid situation. Okay?”
Her jaw relaxed, and she nodded. “Okay. Lisa Sutton. Channel Six News. We’ll move back, but I’m assuming my questions have answers.”
Mahoney threw up his hands. “Assume all you want, Ms. Sutton. Just get away from my crime scene. Now!”
The reporters backed off a few more steps, and Mahoney got on his phone to notify the local sheriff and get a forensics team dispatched.
I went to the car and looked at the finger and at the head of the Asian woman. Who was she? Why put gummy bears in her mouth?
And what the hell was it with M and the damned gummy bears?
My thoughts raced backward twelve years to the first time I’d gotten a message from M.
I suddenly saw myself and John Sampson climbing out of an unmarked car south of tiny Rupert, West Virginia.
We’d pulled off a muddy road and parked up against a chain across an overgrown gravel drive that led into thick woods. There was a no trespassing sign hanging from the chain. A faded for sale sign dangled from a pine tree.
“What’s with the damn bugs?” Sampson grumbled, waving his hands at the clouds of blackflies and mosquitoes that swarmed around our heads.
“Cheaper than guard dogs,” I said, swatting the back of my neck.
“Doesn’t look promising, does it?”
I gazed beyond the chain and saw no tire tracks or footprints of any kind.
Sampson said, “We could have asked West Virginia State Police to take a look around before we drove for four hours to get here.”
“I don’t like other people doing my work,” I said, and I stepped over the chain.
Sampson hesitated. “We don’t have warrants.”
“Since when have you leaned Boy Scout?” I asked and then gestured at the for sale sign. “We’re thinking of buying a fishing camp to retire to in our old age.”
“I’m a little too young for retirement.”
“Don’t you watch those financial-adviser commercials?” I said. “It’s never too early to think about retirement.”
Sampson pursed his lips, shrugged, and then stepped over the chain. Cicadas buzzed from thickets on both sides of the two-track, and somewhere ahead crows were squawking.
I kept studying the mud, hoping to see some indication that a vehicle had come in here recently. But there’d been thunder-storms in the area for the past three days, and other than our own prints, the wet ground appeared undisturbed.
“Doesn’t exactly feel like a setting for romance,” Sampson said.
“Different strokes,” I said.
We were there looking for a missing thirty-seven-year-old woman named Arlene Duffy.