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As if on cue, Valerie saw something moving on the side of one of the hills. It looked like the shadow of a man. But as she stared directly at it, the shadow faded into the undergrowth.
Another ghost in my mind, she thought. She had to keep the hallucinations at bay.
“This pathologist …” Valerie started.
“Larry Birkin? Yeah … he might not be what you’re used to. Like I said before, Kerry County kind of floats along at its own pace, and Larry is an example of that.”
“We don’t have time to float along,” Valerie said, looking at her watch. They had about a day and half left before Heinlein shut them down.
“I’ve been meaning to ask. Why would the FBI only give you two days to solve this thing?” Carter asked. “I mean, I’m no expert, but don’t serial killer cases sometimes take years?”
“They can,” Valerie said, knowing she could give a hundred examples. “But we are brought in at the beginning of the murders. It’s a new approach to see if we can use profiling to catch a killer early on in their escalatory behavior.”
“In English?” Carter joked.
“Most serial killers start off killing, then take breaks. Slowly over time, each kill doesn’t give them the same satisfaction. So, they kill more and more. Their breaks get shorter and shorter until the killing is relentless. We call this escalation. Criminal profiling has been used for years in catching killers, but it’s our approach to build experimental, even speculative profiles with minimum information. The hope is that our unit can catch killers before they go on a huge killing spree or become dormant for a while. Basically, we try to anticipate their behaviors and catch them early on.”
“And does it work? This approach?”
“We’ve been at it a year, and we’ve taken down several extremely dangerous killers. But …”
“There’s always a but … Let me guess,” he said. “Politics.”
Valerie was surprised. Beneath his wholesome apple pie exterior, Sheriff Carter was more perceptive than she had first thought. His demeanor was constantly disarming.
“Something like that, yes,” she said. “A man named Heinlein has it in for our unit. He’s suspended our boss trying to find anything untoward that he can use as an excuse to shut us down. We only have forty-eight hours to make a breakthrough on the Kerry County killings before he has the power to deem us ‘inefficient’ and replace us with other agents.”
“Then let’s move,” Carter said, pressing down hard on the gas as they finally left the hills behind, and a large town loomed ahead.
The bodies have been kept here, Valerie thought.We have to find a lead, or we’re dead in the water.
CHAPTER NINE
Will was beginning to think that the cold air had pierced his bones. It had certainly felt that way as he and Charlie walked up a steep incline to the ridge above.
Looking back over his shoulder, Will was surprised by how far they had come. The Gleeson farmhouse and the horse stables in front of it were so small down in the valley that they looked like toys from a kid’s play set.
“Hold on, Charlie,” Will said trying to slow his breathing.
Charlie stopped. “We’re nearly at the trough,” Charlie said. “Look.”
He pointed up ahead. The hill was finally plateauing, and on top of the ridge was a grass field and some trees clumped around an old, stone fence. Beneath the trees sat a large, metal trough no doubt filled with either grain or water.
The look of it, its cold metal on a barren hillside, put Will on edge. He could see how people would feel superstitious about such a place. How stories, whispers even, could move from farmstead to farmstead; stories about strange figures in the wilderness; stories about a malevolence stalking the farmland.
But such tales were always just ghost stories to Will, until finally a real horror came into the world—a serial killer willing to rob the community of life itself.
“That must be the trough Harry told us about,” Charlie continued. “Where he last saw Lance Nielsen.”
Will nodded. He didn’t want to go on. He wanted to rest. His legs ached, but his thoughts turned to the ticking clock in his mind. They didn’t have time for his body to give out. The people in that community, and the very existence of the unit, begged him to go on. The wind howled now, increasing in its ferocity and bite.
Taking a deep breath in the icy wind, he kept moving as best as he could. Intermittently, Charlie would move off at a distance before Will caught up. Finally, the ground leveled off onto a plateau of wild grass. They were standing in front of the trough beneath the trees.
Charlie was looking around.
“Do you see anything?” Will asked. He knew it was a long shot that they’d find Lance Nielsen there. But he was currently the only suspect they had, and any lead left stale could easily fade away making it difficult to catch the killer. There was always the chance that they would get lucky.
“Charlie?” Will asked again. The hill was starting affect him. He felt as though he was being watched, and not for the first time, he feared they had been too foolhardy going up into the hills without any backup.
