Target: Alex Cross (Alex Cross #26) - James Patterson Page 0,92

all the way to the interstate.

We flew over a lumberyard and a farm toward a big chunk of forest. Within it, the black smoke had quickly become flames that fully engulfed the van, and now the fire was dying down.

“Get us on the pavement,” Mahoney said.

As we swung around to land, I punched in 911 and was surprised to be almost instantly connected to a dispatcher for Stafford County emergency services. After identifying myself, I reported the fire and asked that the Storck road be closed in both directions.

We touched down north of the van. The flames coming from it were all but done, leaving the smoking, scorched shell. Tendrils of fire were consuming leaves and pine needles but not spreading widely or rapidly; they were hampered by the recent wet conditions.

I went toward the burning vehicle, stopped at a safe distance, and used the pocket binoculars I always carry to study it.

“Body in the front seat,” I said.

Mahoney had already gone down the bank, and was looking at the van from behind through his own binoculars. “And a second in the back here.”

We heard the first sirens in the distance. I knew the fire trucks would want to get close, and there’d be hoses, and water, and boots.

While Mahoney called for an FBI forensics team, I lowered my binoculars and got out my cell phone. I walked past the van and started taking pictures of the scene, especially the skid marks that told a story in reverse from the tire tracks in the softer soil on the shoulder where it left the road to the beginning of the skids a good eighty yards beyond.

Right away I saw that there could be two vehicles involved, the van and another one that had come to a stop almost parallel to the wreck. Was this second set of marks from before?

If the marks had ended anywhere but in front of the van, I might have discounted them. But they did stop by the van, so I went on the assumption that they were new.

Had someone seen the accident, stopped, saw the van was on fire, and left? Who? And why hadn’t that person called it in?

I looked beyond the start of the van’s skid, no more than forty feet, and saw what seemed at first to be a piece of tire rubber. I walked to it and realized that it was actually a shard of pavement about three inches long and the shape and thickness of my pinkie.

I saw the gouge in the road where the little finger had come from, and then behind that and to the left, I saw another gouge and two pieces of asphalt. As I photographed it all, I heard the sirens closing on our position from two directions. I looked north and saw the flashing red lights of a fire truck, followed by the lights of an ambulance.

I ran toward the smoking wreckage of the van. Mahoney had come back up the bank onto the road and was talking to Susan Carstensen on the radio.

The van was no longer burning, just belching caustic smoke.

“Anything?” Mahoney called to me.

“Don’t let them spray down the van. I want a closer look at it just as it is,” I said. “And let’s keep them away from those skid marks until forensics gets here.”

Ned nodded and turned to meet the firemen. I scrambled down into the ditch and got much closer to the van.

The metal was still throwing enough heat that I had to stop a good fifteen feet away. After shooting a video and stills of the scene from that perspective, I used the binoculars again to study the corpse in the front seat.

The jaw was frozen open, not unusual for a burn victim. Though the face was charred beyond recognition, I could make out big fissures in the skin where it had split in the heat, several on what was left of his cheeks, and another that started between the eye sockets and ran up onto the forehead.

Something about that one looked strange, but I couldn’t tell why. I shifted the binoculars lower and adjusted the focus so I could peer at the ground between myself and the van.

The forest floor was a tangle of old leaves, dormant vines, and thorny stalks that were charred close to the vehicle. Behind me, up on the road, I could hear the firemen calling out to one another.

Two of them looped around me and the van with axes and shovels, heading