Page 14 of Fallen Creed

“Mrs. Spencer may be able to identify this,” Lucy said, raising and tilting the foot toward Maggie to catch the fading sunlight. “Or not.”

A small heart-shaped tattoo stood out, blood-red against the white skin. It was behind the anklebone, an inch below the dismemberment cut.

“Dark red,” Maggie said. “That’s not a quick, simple tattoo, even though it’s small. Usually, they have to layer it with black ink first, then add different shades of red ink.”

Lucy raised one eyebrow at her.

Maggie shrugged and said, “Sometimes all the useless trivia in my head pays off.”

Voices above them were getting closer. Spencer’s wife was growing impatient.

“I’ll head them off,” Maggie told Lucy as she helped her with the bag.

She had placed the other collection containers carefully on the grass and added Lucy’s case to weigh them down. The breeze continued to grow stronger as clouds roiled in. There was a chill in the air that hadn’t been there the last few days.

Before Maggie climbed up the ditch, she said to Lucy, “I just realized that the foot and hand might not belong to the same person.”

“Only a serial killer profiler would jump to that conclusion.”

“Are you sure?”

Lucy hesitated as she considered it. From where they stood, Maggie knew the other plastic trash bag was close by and to their right. But she only knew this because she had seen it from the road above. It was impossible to see it in the tall grass from this angle.

“Ask her about the tattoo,” Lucy suggested. “I’ll go check if there’s any identifying characteristics on the other piece.”

Lucy picked her way through the grass as Maggie climbed up to the road.

They were inside the perimeter Spencer’s deputies had created with their vehicles. He was still arguing with his wife. Poor Pakula looked like he was trying to play referee. More deputies had arrived. When Mrs. Spencer saw Maggie, she pushed past her husband and rushed toward Maggie.

“Did you find the rest of the body?” the woman wanted to know.

Maggie put up her hands to stop the woman and stood in front of her so she wouldn’t approach the edge of the road overlooking the ditch. “The rest of the body” implied that she knew they had initially found only a piece. She wondered how much the locals already knew.

“Let’s go talk over here,” Maggie told her and gestured toward Creed’s Jeep, the closest vehicle.

She glanced around until she saw Ryder and Grace almost at the intersection. They walked down the middle of the road. Grace wasn’t scampering or plowing through the ditches. In fact, the two of them looked like they were simply on a walk.

“They’re looking for more pieces,” Mrs. Spencer said, watching them now, too.

“Mrs. Spencer, I understand—”

“Call me Nora,” she interrupted. “I’m a trauma nurse. You don’t need to sugar-coat anything for me.”

“Nora, I’m Maggie O’Dell.”

“Yes, I know. The FBI agent from Quantico.” Even as Nora said this, her eyes were trying to see over Maggie’s shoulder.

“What’s the name of the young woman staying with you and your husband?”

“Libby. Libby Holmes.”

“Does she have any tattoos?”

Her eyes swung back to Maggie’s, and her entire face seemed to fall as she said, “Yes. Oh, my God. Yes, she does.”

“Can you tell me about them?”

“She has the word, ‘breathe.’ It’s written in script across the back of her hand.” Nora brought up her own and pointed to the area.