“Your theory can’t be any crazier than whatever the truth will turn out to be, so let’s have it.”
“So far, in the way of victims, we’ve got a bride, a groom, and now a young kid.”
“I know that, Eddie,” she said sharply, and then caught herself. “Wait a minute, are you saying…?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Exactly.”
“Just to be clear, are you talking about this guy building a…family? Of corpses?”
“Building or rebuilding.”
“Jesus.”
“What did they call them in school?”
“The nuclear family,” said Pine. “A particular social unit, as opposed to a family with only one parent.”
“But there’s one difference with our case, at least from what I was taught about it.”
She nodded. “With a nuclear family there’re two parents, like I just implied.”
“And at least from what I remember there are usually two kids in a traditional nuclear family.”
Pine leaned back against the wall. “Meaning we may have at least one more victim to come?”
“So maybe next time it’ll be another kid.”
“Then we have to make sure there isn’t a next time,” Pine replied firmly.
“Easier said than done. We really have no line on this guy.”
“Is there any pattern at Quantico that fits this?” she asked.
“Not anything that I’ve seen. And I checked before I left. But with this new revelation I’ll go back through it again. But I don’t think I’m going to find similarities.”
“So maybe this guy is a new player on the block.”
Laredo shrugged. “Or he’s an old player but he’s changed his MO. But what’s his motivation?”
“If he’s compiling a family, maybe he lost his somehow.”
“Wife and kids, you mean?”
Pine said, “Yeah. Or wait, it could be all four; this guy could be looking from the outside at the loss of another family maybe close to him.”
“Shit, how do we begin to track that down?”
“This is a small town—if the killer is from here it shouldn’t be that difficult. There just aren’t that many people.”
“But if he’s not it might well be impossible. You lived here for a while, Atlee.”
“I left here when I was a little kid.”
“Okay, since you’ve been back has anyone mentioned a whole family getting wiped out?”
As she thought about this, Pine’s features took on a hollow look.
“What?” he said, noting her reaction.
“I guess it depends on your definition of wiped out. If you define it one way I do know of that happening to a family of four people from here.”
“Who were they?”
She looked up at him, dread in her features. “My family.”
Chapter 49
PINE DROVE while Laredo was in the back seat and Carol Blum was riding shotgun.
They pulled up in front of Pine’s old house.
Old Roscoe was on the porch and struggled up on his weakened hind legs to greet them with a friendly bark and his tail wagging. Cy Tanner’s old, rusted pickup was parked in front of the house.
“This is where you lived?” asked Laredo as they climbed out of the vehicle.
“A different universe from Queens,” replied Pine.
“No, really, I like the dirt.”
Smoke was pouring out of the trash barrel, and they could all hear noises coming from the rear of the house. Pine walked over to Roscoe and scratched the dog’s flappy ears. “How you doing, old man? You doing okay?”
Roscoe answered with several licks to her hand.
“Cy?” called out Blum. “You around?”
They got no answer and walked around to the back of the house, following the noise coming from there. There was an old wooden building standing back there. The door was open, and they could hear the noise emanating from inside.
It sounded like a power saw.
They reached the door and Pine rapped on it once and then a second time, louder.
The sounds of the power saw stopped, and Tanner appeared in the doorway, lifting off a pair of safety goggles. He was dressed in a white T-shirt that showed off the corded muscles in his arms, and corduroy pants with his Budweiser belt holding them up over his slim hips.
“Hey, folks,” he said, eyeing them all curiously.
Then, to their amazement, a little girl appeared behind him. She, too, had on a pair of safety goggles, which were too big for her. She looked up at them with blinking eyes behind the plastic.
“Who is this?” inquired Blum, looking brightly at the child.
Grinning, Tanner bent down to the little girl. “This here is Jenny, my youngest daughter’s girl. She just turned seven a month ago. She’s come for a visit, ain’t that right, Jenny?”
Jenny, all blond curls and enormous blue eyes, looked shyly at the