“There’s nothing else I’ve been able to find,” Amy said. “Maybe it got caught in the ties binding her up there or was even behind the body in one way or another.”
“Maybe... Let’s not jump to any conclusions,” John suggested. “We don’t know where that came from for sure, or if it has anything to do with our crime scene.”
Hunter Forrest was still staring at the small toy.
He looked up at them, shaking his head. “No,” he said firmly.
“What is it?” Amy asked him.
“Death rides a pale horse,” Hunter said quietly. “And I’m afraid this is just the beginning.”
2
Hunter heard Amy Larson speaking in hushed, indiscernible tones as he headed down the hallway of the Central Florida offices of the FDLE toward the conference room that had been assigned for their joint investigation. FDLE was still the lead on this case, and since the murder had taken place just about an hour and a half south of Orlando, they’d all decided to come here and make use of what the central office had to offer with support staff and facilities.
Tomorrow morning they’d head back south—the autopsy would take place in the county where the murder had occurred.
While Detective Mulberry would join them at the autopsy, he had been only too happy to hand over the investigation; he didn’t see many murders, much less one that had been gruesome in the extreme, possibly the work of cultists, and might relate to other crimes in the state or elsewhere.
At this moment, the investigation had yet to be taken over by the FBI.
It would be.
But Hunter didn’t really give a damn who had the lead on the investigation; he knew that something deep and dark was behind this murder, just as it had been in Maclamara. A place, he thought, where there were still lots of old houses that had been built with Dade County pine.
Others would die. How many depended on how quickly they could root out what was happening?
He’d reported in to his superior, Assistant Special Director Charles Garza, and Garza had told him that, hell yes, he was to follow through.
“You feel we need to be concerned and involved, right?” Garza had asked him.
“Beyond a doubt.”
“You’ll get all the help you need on this. Just call, ask,” Garza had told him. “FDLE has been in touch. Stay right on top.”
“John Schultz is on it for FDLE. We’re good—I’ve worked with him before.”
“Fine. Keep me in the loop.”
Mulberry had been absolutely convinced the murder had not been committed by anyone local. Such a thing could only have been done by a crazy person from a large city, probably a northern city—someone who had come down, from the areas of massive population to the boondocks, to use the complexity of his county to commit the atrocity. Therefore, the state or the federal government should take over. He’d be there ready to assist in any way. He was distancing himself from the horror.
Eventually, the FBI would take the lead. For now, Hunter had to hope his old friend John Schultz would make it a dual investigation. He could only assume John would have the final say, since he had so much more experience than his young partner. And John knew Hunter, too.
They’d work together easily.
As he neared their assigned conference room, Hunter could hear John’s new partner more clearly.
And he could hear quite clearly that she was talking about him.
“I’m so lost. He was here—I mean, in the state—because of a murder near Micanopy that had shades of a ritual, but why is he here? Micanopy is a long drive. And exactly why was he in Micanopy? He’s federal. Shouldn’t it have been the local police or the county or us, as it proved to be? We don’t know the two murders are related. They took place far enough apart.”
“He’s a specialist in ritualistic killings and extremists and the occult,” Hunter could hear John explain. “Hunter came down here because the governor asked him to. Our governor called the FBI’s main offices. You remember our governor, right? The guy who is at the top of our food chain?”
“Ha ha, yes, I remember our governor,” Amy replied. “I just... Look, we are competent here. Our department is good.”
“Good enough to know when to accept help.”
“John, we’ve barely had a chance to begin,” Amy protested.
“You just don’t like him.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’m just... Come on. Our state has problems, but we’re good at what we do, John. How does one just assume these murders are part of a major plot of some kind?”
“But if they are?”
“Okay, but—”
“You don’t like him.”
“I can’t dislike him. I don’t know him.”
He heard John’s booming laugh.
“That doesn’t mean a thing. You didn’t like me, remember?”
“No, I had nothing against you. You felt you were saddled with me.”
“Guilty as charged, but don’t go thinking everyone is an old chauvinist like me.”
“I’m just lost as to why the feds are in. He made it from the Micanopy area almost as fast as we did from Orlando.”
“Not much difference. And you know Florida, it can be thirty minutes, or two and a half hours, from place to place in certain areas—”
“Depending on traffic. Yes, I know.”
Hunter knew he was standing in the hallway eavesdropping.
He pushed open the door to the conference room.
He’d known John a long time—almost a decade, since he’d come into the bureau. They’d met under similar circumstances when the head of a land-grabbing company had created their own form of a twisted Voodoo-Santeria cult, terrifying the downtrodden into murdering their neighbors.
John was a good investigator.
About this new young partner of his...
Hunter forced a grim smile. She’d just have to live with the chain of power that was going to come down. Live with it—or leave.
Standing, she was about five-ten. He’d thought at first she might have been wearing heels; but no, sensible shoes for wherever one might find themselves walking for the day—or for crawling around in the muck on the edge of the Everglades.
Her hair was a deep glossy brown, held back in a sleek low ponytail.
She couldn’t have been more than twenty-eight or so, but he thought at least that, because agents with the state department had to have four years of other police work beneath their belts. But she had the look of a college kid—not that looks meant anything, which he damned well knew.