The Narrows - Michael Connelly [52]
She looked at the screen and their eyes met. Rachel realized that it had probably been eight years since she had actually seen Doran. She looked weary, her mouth and eyes drawn down, her hair short in a cut that suggested she didn’t spend much time with it. She was an empath, Rachel knew, and the years were taking their toll.
“You look good,” Doran said. “I guess all that fresh air and open country agrees with you.”
Alpert stepped in and saved Rachel from delivering a false compliment in return.
“Greta, Harvey, who wants to go first?” he asked, stepping all over the electronic reunion.
“I guess I will since everything starts with the dig,” Greta Coxe said. “As of seven p.m. yesterday we have fully excavated eight bodies and they are at Nellis. This afternoon when we get back there, we will begin with number nine. What we saw with the first excavations is holding true with the latter. The plastic bags in each incidence and the —”
“Greta, we have a tape going here,” Alpert interrupted. “Let’s be fully descriptive. As if speaking to an uninformed audience. Don’t hold back.”
Except when it comes to mentioning Robert Backus, Rachel thought.
“Okay, sure,” Coxe said. “Um, all eight bodies excavated and exhumed so far have been fully clothed. Decomposition is extensive. Hands and feet bound by tape. All have plastic bags over the head, which in turn have been taped around the neck. There is no variation on this methodology, even between victims one and two. Which is unusual.”
Late the day before Rachel had seen the photos. She had gone back into the command RV and looked at the wall of photos. It seemed clear to her that the men had all been suffocated. The plastic bags had not been clear plastic but even in their opaqueness she could see the features of the faces and the mouths wide open and searching for air that wasn’t going to come. They reminded her of photos of wartime atrocities, disinterred bodies from mass graves in Yugoslavia or Iraq.
“Why is that unusual?” Alpert asked.
“Because what we most often see is that the killing plan evolves. For lack of a better way of describing it, the killing gets better. The unsub learns from victim to victim how to do it better. That is usually seen in the data we have.”
Rachel noted that Coxe had used the word unsub. Short for unknown subject. It most likely meant she was out of the loop and didn’t know that the subject was very much known to the FBI.
“Okay, so the methodology was set from day one,” Alpert said. “Anything else, Greta?”
“Just that we will probably be finished with the excavations the day after tomorrow. Unless we get another hit with the probes.”
“Are we still probing?”
“Yes, when we have the time. But we’ve gone sixty feet past the last hit with the probes and haven’t gotten anything. We also got another flyover from Nellis last night. There was nothing new from thermal imaging. So we feel pretty comfortable at this time that we’ve got them all.”
“And thank God for that. Harvey? What have you got for us?”
Richards cleared his throat and leaned forward so that his voice would be heard by the electronic pickups, wherever they were.
“Greta’s right, we have all eight excavated so far in the morgue at Nellis. So far the veil of secrecy is holding up. I think people there think we’re bringing in aliens off a crashed saucer in the desert. This is how urban legends start, people.”
Only Alpert cracked a smile. Richards continued.
“We’ve conducted full autopsies on four so far and initial exams of the others. Similar to what Greta said, we’re not finding a hell of a lot of difference from body to body. This guy is a robot. No variation on theme. It’s almost like the killings themselves are of no import. Perhaps it is the hunt that juices this guy. Or perhaps the killings are just part of a larger plan we don’t know about yet.”
Rachel stared pointedly at Alpert. She hated that people working so closely on the case were still working in the dark. But she knew if she said anything she would quickly be on the outside looking in. She didn’t want that.
“You have