Killing Hour - Lisa Gardner [49]
“I mean there’s another girl out there, right now. She was traveling with this girl, maybe her sister or roommate or best friend. But she was with the first victim when they were both ambushed, and now she’s been taken somewhere. He picked out the place ahead of time. It’s somewhere geographically unique, but also very, very treacherous. In our state he chose a granite gorge, a vast farming county, then the banks of the Savannah River, and finally marshlands around the coast. He likes places exposed, with natural predators such as rattlesnakes and bears and bobcats. He likes places isolated, so even if the girls roam for days they still won’t run into anyone who can offer them help. He likes places that are environmentally important, but no one thinks about anymore.
“Then he turns these girls loose, drugged, dazed, and confused, and waits to see what will happen next. In this kind of heat, some of them probably don’t make it more than hours. But some of them—the smart ones, the tough ones—they might make it days. Maybe even a week. Long, tortured days, without food, without water, waiting for someone to come and save them.”
Rainie was looking at him in rapt fascination. “How many times did he do this before?”
“Four. Eight girls kidnapped. Seven dead.”
“So you got one back alive.”
“Nora Ray Watts. The last girl. We found her in time.”
“How?” Quincy spoke up.
Mac took a deep breath. His muscles were bunching again. He grimly fought his impatience down. “The man leaves clues on the first body. Evidence that, if you interpret correctly, will narrow down the location of the second girl.”
“What kind of clues?”
“Flora and fauna, soil, sediment, rocks, insects, snails, hell, whatever he can dream up. We didn’t understand the significance in the beginning. We bagged and tagged according to SOP, merrily trotted evidence off to the labs, and found only dead bodies after that. But hey, even we can be taught. By the fourth pair of kidnappings, we had a team of experienced specialists in place. Botanists, biologists, forensic geologists, you name it. Nora Ray had been traveling with her sister. Mary Lynn’s body was found with a substance on her shirt, samples of vegetation on her shoes and a foreign object down her throat.”
“Down her throat?” Kaplan spoke up sharply. Mac nodded his head. For the first time, the NCIS agent seemed to have gained real interest.
“The sediment on her shirt proved to be salt. The vegetation on her shoes was identified as Spartina alterniflora. Cord grass. And the biologist identified the foreign object as a marsh periwinkle shell. All three elements were consistent with what you would find in a salt marsh. We focused the search-and-rescue teams on the coast, and fifty-six hours later, a Coast Guard chopper spotted Nora Ray, frantically waving her bright red shirt.”
“She couldn’t help you identify the killer?” Rainie asked.
Mac shook his head. “Her last memory is of her tire going flat. The next she knew, she woke up ravenously thirsty in the middle of a damn marsh.”
“Was she drugged?” Watson interjected.
“Bruise still fading on her left thigh.”
“He ambushes them?”
“Our best guess—he scopes out bars. He looks for what he wants—young girls, no specific coloring required, traveling in pairs. I think he follows them to their car. While they get in, he drops a tack or two behind their back tire. Then he simply has to follow. Sooner or later the tire goes flat, he pulls over as if offering to help, and boom, he has them.”
“Sneaks up on them with a needle?” Watson asked skeptically.
“No. He nails them with a dart gun. Like the kind a big game hunter might use.”
In the quiet room came the unmistakable sound of sharply indrawn breaths. Mac regarded them all stonily. “You think we haven’t done our homework? For five years, we’ve been hunting this man. I can tell you his profile. I can tell you how he hunts his victims. I can tell you he doesn’t always get his way—after the fact, we learned about two different pairs of girls who got flat tires