Before stepping forward, Mackenzie did her best to survey the scene. Of the eight men, four were local PD, easily identified by their uniforms. There were two others that were in uniforms but of a different kind – state PD, Mackenzie assumed. Beyond that, though, she took in the scene itself rather than let the bickering distract her.
The location seemed to be random. There were no points of interest, no items that might be seen as symbolic. It was just like any other section of these forests in every way Mackenzie could see. She guessed that they were about a mile or so off of the central trail. The trees were not particularly thick here, but there was a sense of isolation all around her.
With the scene thoroughly taken in, she looked to the bickering men. A few looked agitated and one or two looked angry. Two of them weren’t wearing any sort of uniform or outfit to denote their profession.
“Who are the guys not in uniform?” Mackenzie asked.
“Not sure,” Bryers said.
Clements turned to them with a scowl on his face. “Park rangers,” he said. “Joe Andrews and Charlie Holt. Shit like this happens and they think they’re the police.”
One of the rangers looked up with venom in his eyes. Mackenzie was pretty sure Clements had nodded this man’s way when he’d said Joe Andrews. “Watch yourself, Clements. This is a state park,” Andrews said. “You’ve got about as much authority out here as a gnat.”
“That might be,” Clements said. “But you know as well as I do that all I have to do is make a single call to the precinct and get some wheels moving. I can have you out of here within an hour, so just do whatever it is you need to do and get your ass out of here.”
“You self-righteous little fu – ”
“Come on,” a third man said. This was one of the state cops. The man was built like a mountain and wore sunglasses that made him look like the villain from a bad ’80s action movie. “I have the authority to throw both of you out of here. So stop acting like children and do your jobs.”
This man noticed Mackenzie and Bryers for the first time. He walked over to them and shook his head almost apologetically.
“Sorry you’re having to hear all of this nonsense,” he said as he approached. “I’m Roger Smith with the state police. Some scene we’ve got here, huh?”
“That’s what we’re here to figure out,” Bryers said.
Smith turned back to the seven others and used a booming voice when he said: “Step back and let the feds do their thing.”
“What about our thing?” the other ranger asked. Charlie Holt, Mackenzie remembered. He looked to Mackenzie and Bryers with suspicion. Mackenzie thought he even looked a little timid and afraid around them. When Mackenzie looked his way, he looked to the ground, bending over to pick up an acorn. He moved the acorn from hand to hand, then started to pick at the top of it.
“You’ve had enough time,” Smith said. “Just back up for a second, would you?”
Everyone did as asked. The rangers in particular looked unhappy about it. Doing everything she could to ease the situation, Mackenzie figured it would help if she tried involving the rangers as much as possible so tempers didn’t flare.
“What sort of information do rangers typically need to pull from something like this?” she asked the rangers as she ducked under the crime scene tape and started to look around. She saw a marker where the leg had been found, marked as such on a small clapboard marker. A good distance away she saw another marker where the remainder of the body had been found.
“We need to know how long to keep the park closed down for one thing,” Andrews said. “As selfish as it might sound, this park accounts for a pretty good chunk of tourism revenue.”
“You’re right,” Clements spoke up. “That does sound selfish.”
“Well, I think we’re allowed to be selfish from time to time,” Charlie Holt said rather defensively. He then regarded Mackenzie and Bryers with a stare of contempt.
“Why’s that?” Mackenzie asked.
“Do either of you happen to know what sort of crap we have to put up with out here?” Holt asked.
“No, actually,” Bryers asked.
“Teenagers having sex,” Holt said. “Full-blown orgies from time to time. Weird Wicca practices. I’ve even caught some drunk guy out here getting frisky with a stump – and I’m talking pants all the way down. These are the stories the Staties laugh about and the local PD just use as fodder for jokes on the weekends.” He bent down and picked up another acorn, picking at it like he did with the first one.
“Oh,” added Joe Andrews. “And then there’s catching a father in the act of molesting his eight-year-old-daughter just off of a fishing path and having to stop it. And what thanks do I get? The girl yelling at me to leave her daddy alone and then a firm warning from local and state PD to not be so rough next time. So yeah…we can be selfish about our authority from time to time.”
The forest went quiet then, broken only by one of the other local cops as they made a dismissive laughing sound and said: “Yeah. Authority. Right.”
Both rangers stared the man down with extreme hatred. Andrews took a step forward, looking as if he might explode from rage. “Fuck you,” he said simply.
“I said stop this nonsense,” Officer Smith said. “One more time and every single one of you are out of here. You got it?”
Apparently, they did. The forest fell into silence again. Bryers stepped behind the tape with Mackenzie and when everyone else busied themselves behind them, he leaned over to her. She felt Charlie Holt’s eyes on her and it made her want to punch him.
“This could get ugly,” Bryers said quietly. “Let’s do our best to get out of here post-haste, what do you say?”
She went to work then, combing the area and taking mental notes. Bryers had stepped out of the crime scene and was resting against a tree as he coughed into his arm. She did her best not to let this distract her, though. She kept her eyes to the ground, studying the foliage, the ground, and the trees. The one thing that made little sense to her was how a body in such bad shape had been discovered here. It was hard to tell how long ago the murder had occurred or the body had been dumped; the ground itself showed no signs of the brutal act being carried out.
She noted the location of the placards that marked where the different parts of the body had been found. It was too far apart to have been an accident. If someone dumped a mutilated body and placed the parts so far apart, that spoke on intentionality.
“Officer Smith, do you know if there were any signs of bite marks from possible wildlife on the body?” she asked.
“If there were, they were so minuscule that a basic exam didn’t reveal any. Of course, when the autopsy comes in we’ll know more.”
“And no one on your crew or with local PD moved the body or the severed limbs?”
“Nope.”
“Same here,” Clements said. “Rangers, how about you guys?”
“No,” said Holt with an evil sneer in his voice. He now seemed to be taking offense to just about everything.
“Can I ask why that might matter in terms of finding out who did it?” Smith asked her.
“Well, if the killer did his business here, there would be blood everywhere,” Mackenzie explained. “Even if it happened a long while ago, there would be at least trace amounts scattered around. And I don’t see any. So the other possibility is that he maybe dumped the body here. But if that’s the case, why would a severed leg be so far away from the rest of the body?”
“I don’t follow,” Smith said. Behind him, she saw that Clements was also listening attentively but trying not to show it.
“It makes me think the killer did dump the body out here but he separated the parts so far apart on purpose.”
“Why?” Clements asked, no longer able to pretend he wasn’t listening.
“It could be several reasons,” she said. “It could have been something as morbid as just having fun with the body, scattering it around like it was nothing but toys he was playing with. Wanting to get our attention. Or there could be some sort of calculated reasons for it – for the distance, for the fact that it was a leg, and so on.”
“I see,” Smith said. “Well, some of my men already wrote up a report that has the distance between the body and the leg. Just about every measurement you could ask for.”
Mackenzie took a look around again – at the gathered group of men and the seemingly peaceful forest – and paused. There was no clear reason for this location. That made her think that the location was random. Still, to be so far off of the beaten path spoke of something else. It indicated that the killer knew these woods – maybe even the park itself – fairly well.
She started walking around the scene, looking closer for trace amounts of dried blood. But there was nothing. With every moment that passed, she became more and more certain of her theory.
“Rangers,” she said. “Is there any way to get the names of people that frequent the park? I’m thinking about people that come here a lot and know the area well.”
“Not really,” Joe Andrews said. “The best we can do is provide a list of financial donors.”
“That’s not necessary,” she said.
“You have a theory to test?” Smith asked.
“The actual murder was done elsewhere and the body was dumped here,” she said, half to herself. “But why here? We’re almost a mile away from the central path and there appears to be nothing significant about this location. So that makes me think that whoever is behind this knows the park grounds fairly well.”
She got a few nods as she explained things but got the overall feeling that they either doubted her or just didn’t really care.
Mackenzie turned to Bryers.
“You good here?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Thanks, gentlemen.”
Everyone looked at her in silence. Clements seemed to be sizing her up.
“Well, come on then,” Clements said, finally. “I’ll give you a ride back to your car.”
“No, that’s okay,” Mackenzie said a bit rudely. “I think I’d rather walk.”
Mackenzie and Bryers took their exit, heading back through the woods and toward the walking trail Clements had brought them down.
As they sank back into the forest, the stares of the state police, Clements and his men, and the park rangers at their backs, Mackenzie couldn’t help but appreciate the grand scale of the forest. It was eerie to think about how endless the possibilities were out here. She thought about what the ranger had said, about the countless crimes that took place in these forests, and something about that sent an icy chill through her.
If someone had it in them to slaughter people like the person who had been discovered within this taped-off triangle and they had a fairly decent knowledge of these forests, there were virtually no limits to the amount of menace they could cause.
And she felt sure that he would strike again.
CHAPTER SIX
Mackenzie settled down in her office just after six in the evening, exhausted from the long day and tidying up her notes to prepare for the debrief she had requested on their way back from Strasburg.
A knock came on her door and she looked up to find Bryers, looking as tired as she felt, holding a folder and a cup of coffee. He looked like he was trying his best to hide his exhaustion and it then occurred to her that he had been hands-off back in the state park, allowing her to take the lead with Clements, Smith, Holt, and the other egotistical men out in the forest. That, plus his coughing, made her wonder if he was coming down with something.
“The debrief is ready to roll,” he said.
Mackenzie got up and followed him to the conference room at the end of the hall. When she entered, she glanced around at the several agents and experts that made up the team on the Little Hill State Park case. There were seven people in all and while she personally thought that was too much manpower for a case this early on, it was not her place to say such a thing. This was Bryers’s and she was simply happy to be along for the ride. It was much better than reading up on immigration laws and swimming in paperwork.
“We have a busy day today,” Bryers said. “So let’s start things off with a quick recap.”
If he had been tired when he came in, he had shrugged it off. Mackenzie watched and listened with rapt attention as Bryers filled in the seven people in the room with what he and Mackenzie had discovered in the woods of Little Hill State Park that day. The others in the room took notes, some scribbling on pads, others typing it into tablets or smartphones.
“One thing to add,” one of the other agents said. “I got a ping about fifteen minutes ago. The case has officially hit the local news. They’ve already started calling this guy the Campground Killer.”
A moment of silence filled the room, and inwardly, Mackenzie sighed. This would make life much harder for them all.
“Man, that was fast,” Bryers said. “Damned media. How in the hell did they get their hands on it so fast?”
No one answered, but Mackenzie thought she knew. A small town like Strasburg was filled with people who loved to hear their town’s name on the news – even if it was for bad news. She could think of a few park rangers or local police that might fit into that category.
“Anyway,” Bryers went on, undeterred, “the last piece of information we got came from the state PD. They handed off details of the crime scene to forensics. We now know that the severed leg and the body to which it was formerly attached were exactly three and a half feet apart. We obviously have no idea if that is significant, but we’ll be looking into it. Also – ”
A knock at the door interrupted him. Another agent dashed into the room and handed a folder to Bryers. He whispered something quickly to Bryers and then made his exit.
“The coroner’s report from the newest body,” Bryers said, opening up the folder and looking inside. He scanned it quickly and then started to pass the three sheets around to the team. “As you’ll see, there were no marks from hungry predators on the body, though there were slight bruises along the back and shoulders. It’s believed the leg and right hand were severed with a rather dull knife or some other large blade. The bones looked to have been more broken than sawed through. This differs from the case from two years ago but, of course, that could just be because the killer doesn’t take care of his tools or weapons.”
Bryers gave them all a moment to look at the report. Mackenzie barely looked it over, perfectly fine with relying on Bryers’s rundown. She had already grown to trust him and while she knew the value of files and reports, there was nothing better than a straight verbal report as far as she was concerned.
“We also now know the name of the deceased: Jon Torrence, twenty-two years of age. He went missing about four weeks ago and was last seen at a bar in Strasburg. Some of you will have the not-so-fortunate task of speaking to his family members today. We’ve also dug up some information on the victim from two years ago. Agent White, would you like to fill the team in on that victim?”
Mackenzie had read the details in a document sent over from Officer Smith and his state PD team on their drive between Strasburg and Quantico. She’d memorized the details within ten minutes and, as such, was able to recite them to the team with confidence.
“The first body was that of Marjorie Leinhart. Her head was almost completely severed from her body. The killer cut off all of her fingers and her right leg from the knee down. None of the severed parts were ever discovered. At the time of her death, she was twenty-seven years old. Her mother was the only surviving relative as Marjorie was an only child and her father died while stationed in Afghanistan in 2006. But Mrs. Leinhart committed suicide a week after her daughter’s body was discovered. Vigorous searches revealed only one other relative – an estranged uncle living in London – that knows nothing about the family. There were no boyfriends and the few close friends that were questioned all checked out. So there is literally no one to question there.”