Walk the Wire (Amos Decker #6) - David Baldacci Page 0,3
photos I saw. The crime scene was pretty clean except for the guy’s vomit.”
“Serial murderer? Is that why we got the call? Bogart didn’t really say.”
Ross Bogart was the head of their small task force. He was the one who had ordered the pair to North Dakota after the briefest of briefings.
“Maybe.”
“Did Ross sound strange when he talked to you?” asked Jamison. “He did to me.”
Decker nodded. “He couldn’t tell us something that he wanted to tell us.”
“How do you know that?”
“He’s a straight shooter who has to answer to political types.”
“I don’t like mysteries at both ends of a case,” groused Jamison.
“I don’t think this is necessarily a serial murderer.”
“Why not?”
“I could find nothing to match it in the databases. I checked before we flew out.”
“Could be a new player.”
“New players aren’t usually this sophisticated.”
“He might be trying to make a name for himself,” pointed out Jamison.
“They’re all trying to make a name for themselves,” replied Decker.
“But they don’t call the Bureau in for a local murder.”
“I think we need to look at the victim and not the killer for that reason.”
“You believe Irene Cramer was important to the Feds for some reason?”
“And it may also explain Bogart’s reticence.”
“Regardless, we’re clearly looking at a killer with forensic skills.”
“That could apply to quite a few people, including people on our side of the field.”
“An ME gone bad, maybe?” suggested Jamison.
Decker looked uncertain. “You can probably find a YouTube video of someone cutting up a mannequin. But the report said the cuts were professionally done.”
“You think this guy has had . . . what, practice?”
“I don’t think anything, at least right now.”
“Did you notice the highway here is all concrete?” said Jamison, glancing out the window.
“Asphalt apparently doesn’t hold up well in the extreme elements they have up here,” noted Decker. “Although I’m not sure how durable the concrete is, either.”
“Well, aren’t you a wealth of information.”
“I can Google stuff just like anybody else.”
“How much longer do we have to go?” asked Jamison.
Decker glanced at his phone screen. “Says forty-five minutes, nearly to the Canadian border.”
“So I guess that was the closest airport back there.”
“I think that was the only airport back there.”
“This has already been a long, exhausting day.”
“And it promises to be a longer night.”
“You’re going to start the investigation tonight?” she said, a little incredulously.
Decker gave her a stern look. “Never hurts to hit the ground running, Alex. Particularly when someone is dead who shouldn’t be.”
“WHAT ARE THOSE?” asked Jamison as they neared their destination.
She indicated fiery gold plumes that winked in the darkness like ghoulish holiday lights as they zipped past.
“Gas flares,” said Decker. “Coming off the oil wells. Natural gas is found with oil. They drill for both up here. But they sometimes vent the gas off and ignite it at the end of the oil wellhead. I guess it costs too much to do anything else with it in certain situations and they don’t necessarily have the infrastructure to pipe it out of here.”
Jamison looked stunned. “Do you know how much gas we’re talking about?”
“One stat I read said each month the gas they burn off could heat four million homes.”
“Four million homes, are you serious?”
“It’s what I read.”
“But isn’t that bad for the environment? I mean, they’re burning pure methane, right?”
“I don’t know about that. But it probably is bad.”
“All those flames are eerie. I’m conjuring images of zombies marching with torches.”
“Better get used to them. They’re everywhere, apparently.”
And as they drove along, they did indeed appear to be everywhere. The landscape was like an enormous sheet cake with hundreds of candles.
They passed by large neighborhoods of trailer homes, along with paved streets, road signs, and playgrounds. Vehicles, most of them jacked-up, mud-stained pickup trucks or stout SUVs, were parked under metal carports in front of the trailers.
They also drove past large parcels of land on which sat the flame-tipped oil and gas wells along with metal containers and equipment with imposing security fences around them. Hardhatted men in flame-resistant orange vests drove or rushed around performing myriad tasks. From a distance, they looked like giant ants on a crucial mission.
“This is a fracking town,” said Decker. “Only reason there still is a town. Thousands of workers have migrated to this part of North Dakota to suck up the shale oil and gas found in the area. ‘Bakken’ shale rock, to be more specific. I read there’s about a hundred years’ worth of fossil fuel in the ground here.”