The Pawn Read Free

The signature is the same. It’s the same guy, Pat. The press is calling him the Yellow Ribbon Strangler.”
    Ralph knew that I hated when the press got involved. I’d looked at my watch: 4:02 p.m.
    “I don’t know, Ralph . . .”
    “I can have a chopper over there to pick you up in twenty minutes. You’ll be back at your hotel tonight. That’s why I could use your eyes right now. Supposed to be some more storms coming through, and I don’t want to miss anything here. What do you say?”
    And I’d said yes.
    Because I always say yes.
    “Email me the photos your men took at the other crime scenes,” I said, “and video if you have it, and I’ll look them over on my way down.”
    And now, less than two hours after giving the keynote address to 2,500 law enforcement professionals and intelligence agency personnel from around the world, I was on a chopper to meet Ralph and look at the body of another dead girl.
    I scrolled through the crime scene pictures on my laptop. Even though I try to stay detached, the images still bother me. They always have. Probably always will.
    I glanced out the window. The shadow of the helicopter skirted over a road and hovered for a moment above a parked car on a scenic overlook. A man and a woman who were standing beside the guardrail didn’t seem to notice the shadow. They just kept staring at the sprawling mountains folding back against the horizon, totally unaware that a shadow was crawling over them. Totally unaware.
    The killer hadn’t made any attempt to hide the bodies. Whoever was killing these women wanted them found. After all, there were plenty of places in the hills of western North Carolina to hide a body forever. Or a person. The serial bomber Eric Robert Rudolph had hidden here for five years during one of the biggest manhunts in history and was only caught when he wandered into town to scavenge food from a dumpster behind a grocery store. No, our guy wasn’t into hiding; he was into flaunting. And there was something else. Something that hadn’t been released to the public. Something very disturbing. Which was why Ralph had called me.
    I leaned forward and yelled to the pilot, “How much longer?”
    He didn’t answer, just pointed at a nearby mountain and tipped the LongRanger toward a clearing.
    I closed up my computer. It was time for Patrick Bowers to go to work.

2
    A bank of dark, steely clouds churned in the western sky as we pivoted on the edge of the air and the pilot lowered the chopper to the ground.
    Someone had strung up a boundary of yellow police tape along the trees surrounding the meadow. It fluttered and snapped in the wind kicked up by the chopper’s blades.
    I grabbed my computer bag and jumped down, using one hand to shield my eyes from the fine spray of sand thrown into the air by the rotors. It was like trying to ward off a fog of biting flies, but I didn’t want to wait one moment longer than I had to.
    I could see the hulking shape of Special Agent Ralph Hawkins waving a meaty hand at the helicopter like a traffic cop who’d lost his way and ended up on top of this mountain. Ralph was as thick as a bear. As an All-American wrestler in high school and former Army Ranger he could still break out of a pair of handcuffs with his bare hands. But still, even though he was over six feet tall, I had him by two inches. Bugged him to no end.
    “Pat.” He threw the word at me along with his hand. Hearing his gruff, thunderous voice made me feel right at home. We’d worked lots of cases together for the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, back before . . . well, back before everything came spinning apart.
    “Good to see you out on the turf again.”
    “Yeah,” I yelled.
    Now, the rotors were easing to a stop, and the wind swirling around us found its natural rhythm again as the blades slowed and finally hung limp and still above the dome of the helicopter.
    Half a dozen agents wearing black FBI windbreakers stalked around