Taking

Harry looked at his wife with a pleading expression.

“I’ll just be a minute, honey,” he said.

“You won’t be just a minute, and you know it. We’re letting your friends off right here, and then we’re going straight back to get our camper and driving on to the Coronado Forest. That’s all there is to it.”

“But honey—”

“No ‘buts,’ Harry. If you go into that police station, I’m going to take this truck and drive right on without you.”

Harry sighed and forced a laugh.

He said to Crivaro and Riley, “Well, you heard the missus. Like I said, a tight leash. We’ll be going now. Good hunting, you two. And thanks again for looking into this.”

As Riley and Crivaro climbed down out of the truck, she heard Harry mutter, “I wouldn’t mind if you’d let me know how things go.”

“Don’t!” Jillian remarked sharply.

Riley and Jake stood there and watched Harry and his wife drive out of town.

It felt very strange to Riley to be here, suddenly stranded in the middle of this odd little town.

Crivaro was apparently feeling the same way. He looked at the ground and shuffled his feet and shook his head.

“This is crazy,” he said. “We’ve got no business being mixed up in this.”

Riley laughed and said, “Well, it wasn’t exactly my idea.”

Then she felt a possibility taking shape in her mind.

“Besides,” she added, “for all we really know, Harry’s right about everything.”

Crivaro glared at her and growled, “Well, he’s not right about you and me going camping. That’s just too damned ridiculous. We’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”

“I agree,” Riley said.

Crivaro turned and headed toward the building.

“Come on, let’s introduce ourselves to the chief,” he said.

They walked on into the little police station, where a receptionist sent them on into the Chief Everett Webster’s office. They found him sitting on the edge of his desk talking to another cop. The conversation seemed serious.

Riley was sure that they were talking about the recent murder.

When Riley and Crivaro produced their badges and introduced themselves, Webster’s mouth dropped open.

“Good Lord,” he said. “What the hell are you federal folks doing here?”

Crivaro said, “We understand you found a murdered woman on a hiking trail near here.”

Webster said, “Yeah, but there’s no call for the FBI to come out here about that. It’s a local thing and we can handle it.”

Then he squinted at Riley and Crivaro and said, “Wait just a minute. You’re not here on account of that nut job from Colorado, are you? The guy who called trying to convince me there was some connection between this murder and another one a year ago?”

Crivaro shrugged. “We’re just here to check things out.”

Webster shook his head, then said to the other cop, “Wally, could you give us the room for a few minutes?”

Wally nodded and left the office.

Webster began to pace in front of his desk. He struck Riley as a rather unsightly man, with a huge jutting chin and a sloping forehead that made him look like some sort of caveman. But his eyes seemed alert and fairly intelligent.

He said to Riley and Crivaro, “Look, I don’t know how that guy talked the FBI into sending you two out here, but it really is a wasted trip, and I’m sorry you got put to the trouble. My boys and I can handle this.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Crivaro said in a pleasant voice. “Still, as long as we’re here, maybe you can tell us whatever you know about the murder. We’re in the Behavioral Analysis Unit, and it sounded like this killer is kind of unusual. We just thought we might be able to help out here.”

Webster shrugged and said, “BAU? Well, it’s an odd case, I have to admit. Brett Parma was the victim’s name. I just got off the phone trying to find out more about her.”

Webster picked up some notes that were lying on his desk and peered at them through his reading glasses.

He said, “It seems she worked as a receptionist in a doctor’s office up in North Platte, Nebraska. She came down here for a three-week vacation. She’d stayed at the Wren’s Nest Campground near here for a couple of nights, then checked out of there on Saturday. That was the last anybody saw of her—at least until a hiker ran across her body yesterday evening on a hiking trail. Apparently she had a reservation at the Beavertail Campground, also pretty close by. But she never got there.”

Webster set the notes back down again and said, “The weird thing is, she wasn’t killed right there on the hiking trail. It seems she was slashed up elsewhere and bled to death. Then her body was dumped on the trail.”

Webster crossed his arms and added, “Look, I don’t mind telling you, I take it kind of personal when somebody gets murdered in my jurisdiction. It’s bad for tourism, and tourism’s pretty much Tunsboro’s whole economy—at least since the mines shut down ages ago. My boys and I sure as hell plan to crack this case soon. No offense, but I’d just as soon not have any interference from Quantico.”

Crivaro nodded. “I understand, and I respect that. But as long as we’re here, do you mind if my partner and I have a look at the crime scene? We’ll be able to tell pretty much at a glance whether we’ve got any business here or not—and we probably don’t. Then we can get right out of your hair.”

Webster visibly relaxed a little. “Sounds like a plan,” he said. “As it happens, I was just getting ready to drive back out there myself. You two can come along for the ride.”

Riley and Jake followed Webster out of the building, then got into his car with him.

As Webster drove them out of town, Riley thought about how he’d said Brett Parma had died.

“She was slashed up elsewhere and bled to death.”

Riley shivered as she remembered the last grim case she and Crivaro had worked on together—the case of the barbed wire killer. His victims, too, had bled slowly to death, and that similarity unsettled her.

She also thought about what Crivaro had said just now.

“We can get right out of your hair.”

She wondered—had he really meant it?

Riley had no idea whether Harry might be right and the two murders might be connected. But one thing was absolutely certain—a woman had recently been brutally murdered right near here.

Could they just walk away from that?

Were they really going to fly back to Quantico without even trying to solve it?