What element would this be?Helium, maybe?The gas used to fill weather balloons.Or maybe it was about atmospheric gases in general.He didn't know enough about chemistry to make an educated guess.
The hiker had moved back to his truck and was sitting in the shade of the open tailgate, drinking from a water bottle.Martinez walked over to him.
"I need you to stick around a bit longer.The FBI is going to want to talk to you."
"FBI?"The hiker's eyebrows rose."Why would the FBI care about a hiking accident?"
Martinez didn’t want to reveal too much so he simply said, “Just…stick around, would you?”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
Martinez pulled out his phone and started typing up his initial report while the details were fresh.Female victim, early thirties based on appearance.Athletic build.Harness with weather balloon fragments.Impact site consistent with terminal velocity fall from extreme altitude.He stopped for a moment and looked up at the sky, clear and blue now that the sun had fully risen.The victim had fallen through that sky sometime in the night.Had she been conscious?Had she known what was happening?
Had it hurt when she hit or was it an instantaneous sort of thing?
Martinez shook his head and went back to his report.Those weren't questions he needed to answer.That was for the FBI and whoever they sent out here to take over the investigation.
All he had to do was secure the scene and wait.
CHAPTER SIX
Miles stared at his laptop screen, scrolling through the latest batch of news articles that Sarah Kim's system had flagged.The algorithm she'd built was sophisticated, pulling from police blotters, local news sites, and coroner reports across the entire country.It searched for keywords like "unusual," "unexplained," "bizarre," and "suspicious circumstances."The result was a daily digest of America's strangest deaths.Sadly, Miles had started to see most of the hits as plain or mundane.
Most were exactly what you'd expect.Drug overdoses with weird substances.Accidents involving farm equipment or industrial machinery.The occasional murder that stood out because of its brutality or location.Miles had learned to skim quickly, looking for patterns that might indicate an Elementalist disciple at work.
Today's batch included a man in Idaho who'd been found dead in his basement with eight different types of fertilizer spread around his body.The local police had thought it was some sort of accidental poisoning from mixing chemicals he shouldn't have.In Tennessee, a woman had died after being stung by hundreds of wasps that had somehow gotten into her sealed bedroom.In Oregon, someone had drowned in their own hot tub despite the water being less than four feet deep.
Strange deaths, certainly.But none of them screamed "disciple" to Miles.The Elementalist murders had a precision to them, a deliberate quality that separated them from random accidents or crimes of passion.Kane's followers planned meticulously and selected their victims according to specific criteria.These deaths felt chaotic by comparison.In fact, most of them did.But for now, this was the most thorough and all-encompassing approach.
Miles made notes on a few that seemed worth following up on, then moved to close the laptop when a knock sounded at his office door.
"Come in."
Vic Stone entered, closing the door behind her.She was wearing dark slacks and a blazer, her hair pulled back in a practical style that suggested she'd come straight from another meeting.Her expression was serious in a way that immediately put Miles on alert.They’d started working together so often that her manner and expressions were usually fairly relaxed and almost happy.But not right now.
"We need to go to California," she said without preamble.
Miles leaned back in his chair, trying to figure out if she was being serious.Again, though, her expression suggested there was no room for joking right now."When?"
"Today.Hayes wants us on a flight this afternoon."
"What's in California?"
"Two bodies.Both dropped from extreme altitude.Local sheriffs are thinking it might be connected to the Elementalist cases."
Miles felt skepticism rise automatically.He hadn’t read about them in his daily deluge of odd deaths.Of course, stories like the one Vic was presenting usually took a day or two to hit the normal media airwaves."Might be?”he said.“Vic, California is three thousand miles away.You're telling me Hayes wants us to fly across the country on a 'might be'?That seems like a waste of time and resources."
"It's more than that."Vic pulled out her phone and scrolled through some notes."One of the bodies was found in the Mojave Desert just this morning.Female, early thirties, wearing a harness with weather balloon fragments tangled in the straps.Impact site consistent with a fall from at least thirty thousand feet."
"And the second?"
"That's the interesting part.Last night, an amateur astronomer named Clyde Newsome spotted something in the sky off the California coast.He thought it was a weather balloon at first, but when he looked closer, he saw a person attached to it.He called a friend at the FAA, who confirmed with the National Weather Service that there were no official balloon launches scheduled."
Miles sat forward."They watched it happen?"
"Yes.Newsome tracked the object through his telescope while his friend coordinated with emergency services.They watched multiple balloons burst in sequence and the victim fall.The body was recovered this morning in the Santa Monica Mountains."
"Weather balloons."Miles stood up and walked to the window.His office overlooked the parking lot, nothing scenic, but he needed to move while he processed this."That's helium.An inert gas.It fits the elemental pattern."
