But she didn’t get up; if she did, she’d lose the grid she’d created in her mind.
“Amy, Hunter. Hunter, Amy,” John said.
“Mr. Hunter,” Amy acknowledged.
His mouth moved in something that might have been a dry smile. A severe one.
“Hunter is my first name,” he said.
“Oh, I’m sorry—”
“No, I’m sorry,” John said. “I know you both so well that I forget myself. I’ll start over. Special Agent Amy Larson, meet Special Agent Hunter Forrest.”
“Hunter...Forrest?” she murmured, immediately regretting the words that had slipped out. She quickly added, “You’re FDLE? I’m surprised we haven’t met.”
“No, no, Hunter is a G-man, a fed,” John said. “He thinks he had something like this—not as elaborate, but when the info went out...”
“I might have had a practice run for this event,” Hunter said.
“Oh?” John asked.
“A practice?” Amy heard the surprise in her own voice.
“North in the state, little town near Micanopy. I’ll be joining you at the autopsy tomorrow. Joining the investigation,” he said.
She tried to be as expressionless as he was; she wasn’t sure what this meant. The FBI had to be invited in, and she wasn’t sure how and when he could have been invited, since they’d just started with the crime scene.
And what had he been doing north in a small town near Micanopy?
Maybe he was so confident that he thought he could just make decisions on his own.
“He’d like to see us tonight, go through the cases. You didn’t have plans, did you?”
“Not after this,” she said.
“Drove here as fast as I could,” Hunter Forrest said.
Special Agent Hunter Forrest.
“And I’m sorry I missed the scene in situ,” he continued. He looked at John. “But I’m assuming—and I know your guys are good—that we’ll have plenty of photographs.”
“And sketches,” John offered. “Want to see them now?”
“Sketches? You had a photographer and a forensic artist working?” Hunter asked.
“Nope, my partner,” John said. “Amy, can he see your book?”
“Really, I’m not trained in forensic art in any way—they’re just something I do for myself,” Amy protested.
“Amy, come on,” John said.
She reached into her pocket, digging out her little pad, and handed it over.
Hunter leaned down and accepted it with a quick, “Thank you.”
He fell silent, studying her work. Amy went back to her search.
She was startled when he spoke, hunching down beside her, the book still in his hand.
“These are really good.”
“Uh, thank you.”
“Mind if I ask what you’re doing now?”
He was studying her carefully, and she had to wonder if he was thinking she was probably in way over her head, incompetent to handle such a crime and crawling around in the sawgrass just to prove she could do something.
There was nothing to do but explain—evenly and articulately.
“I thought I saw something. A tiny object, but something flew from the body or the cross. I saw it when they were taking the cross down.”
“You thought you saw something?” he asked.
She smiled through gritted teeth before speaking with assurance. “No, I did see something. I don’t know what. We may never find it, but my eyes are good, and I know I saw something.”
“Leaf. I think we’re looking through grass and leaves—for a leaf,” John said, grinning. Of course he was joking with her. He never minded when she had an idea, or when she was convinced she needed to explore in a certain direction.
But his joke didn’t sit well there and then—when she was certain she was being looked on as too young and possibly too fragile or maybe even too female to handle this kind of job.
“And that’s sawgrass,” John said. “Careful, it can cut you badly.”
Hunter Forrest grimaced. “Only if you let it,” he said lightly. “Special Agent Amy Larson has said she saw something. I believe her. We’ll search. Let’s do it.”
Grudgingly, she liked him a little better than her first impression of him.
Special Agent Forrest pulled gloves from a pocket and knelt in a cleared area by the hole in the ground, careful not to press any tiny little thing deeper into the grass or ground.
He didn’t seem to give a damn about his suit, or his own physical welfare.
John sighed and got back down.
Aidan walked over. The vans had been packed up.
“What’s up?” Aidan asked.
“Amy thought she saw something,” John explained.
“Some tiny thing that fell off the cross or the body,” she explained.
“Okay, then. I should get down there with you. Amy, can you tell me, what exactly did you see?” Aidan asked, concerned. He took his work seriously. He was never afraid to admit he might have missed something, but if he had, he wanted to get on it.
“Something tiny that, yes, that flew...no, fell, I guess, sorry...when you all moved the cross.”
“A piece of flesh? Hair...? Can you help any with a description?” Aidan asked.
“Something like this?” Hunter asked before Amy could reply.
She looked at what he was holding.
It was a small plastic figure.
A horse.
It might have gone with a child’s farm or ranch set. It wasn’t quite two inches high and the same width. The little creature had a flowing mane and tail.
It was white.
But it looked as if the eyes had been given a touch of paint. Red paint.
Blood, she thought sickly at first.
But it wasn’t blood. The paint was too precise. The tiny eyes had been specifically painted a crimson shade of red.
“Maybe it’s just some kid’s toy, dropped out a car window,” John said.
Hunter Forrest was staring at the object, shaking his head. “No, it’s not. It was part of the ritual.” He looked at Amy.
Aidan grimaced. “It must have been on the body, or attached to the cross, and... I don’t know how the hell we missed it. Amy, you’re sure it fell off when we moved the cross?”