She also seemed severe. Hair so tightly tied back, straitlaced suit—of course, they almost all wore them. She had fine features, but bold, striking green eyes with just a touch of gold at the center.
And she was looking at him as if he might be the Antichrist himself.
She and John had already set up a board to work with. Crime scene photos were displayed, along with what initial observations Dr. Carver had been able to give them.
Questions were written in marker on the erasable surface.
Identity?
From where?
Next of kin?
Groups/cults with which she might have been involved?
Previous murder—associated? Same killer/killing duo or group?
“Hunter, hey, thanks for getting here so quickly,” John said, rising to shake his hand again. “We’ve gotten called out on some weird-ass stuff. Hell, you know, this is Florida. When we don’t breed our own wild ones, they find us the same way the tourists do.”
Hunter walked to the board, setting the folder he carried, with facts and figures from what he considered to be the initial case in the investigation, on the table.
He studied the photographs on the board, and then turned to Amy Larson, who had yet to speak and hadn’t risen when he’d entered.
He smiled inwardly, thinking he could make up a few labels for a board regarding her.
Young. Suspicious. Ambitious? Resentful of the FBI coming in on what she might see as a Florida case?
She was silent, but watching him—waiting?
He was trying to play well with others. Her turn to lower her guard.
“May I see your sketchbook again?” he asked Amy.
She pointed. It lay on the table by a folder.
“Thank you,” he said.
She spoke at last. “What were you talking about, regarding the little horse? ‘Death rides a pale horse’? I do realize you’re talking biblical, and about the Apocalypse, but I’m not sure how you’re so convinced so quickly.”
“The slashes on the face of the victim.”
She arched a brow, waiting.
“About fourteen years ago, there was a cult leader named Thorne Logan. He started up in the northwest, then brought his family down to farm country on the border between Florida and Alabama.”
“You think he did this?” John asked.
Hunter shook his head. “Logan is dead. He fired on one of our agents, who fired back. It was one of my first field experiences. Logan was down on any of his ‘harem’ straying in the least. To be fitting sacrifices, their faces were slashed. Physical beauty needed to be blotted out because the soul needed to shine in death. And in his teaching, only death cleaned a dirty soul. His principles were...long and involved.”
“I remember the case. The media had him billed as Father Killer,” John said.
“I do remember something in the papers,” Amy said.
“You would have been about ten,” John said.
“Seventeen,” Amy said, “and I was horrified, but...sounded like they got him. And at the time, it brought up stories of so many other bad cult situations, so it became one for the books.”
“Right. It was a big case, but there were others,” Hunter agreed. “Many more that didn’t end with so much death and weren’t as well-known.”
Amy’s brows were knit. “But if this man is dead,” she said, “it can’t be him. You think it was someone who was part of his family or congregation, or whatever you call followers like that?”
Hunter nodded. “You know there are many people—and many religions—that believe in the Apocalypse, right?”
“Of course,” Amy said. “There’s all kinds of speculation about the Apocalypse, the End of Days, all that. Different religions, sects, ethnic groups. Some people thought the world was supposed to end in 2012, according to the Mayan calendar. I’ve heard it could have meant the end of one era, the beginning of another. And you get groups who believe comets are omens, or that a certain politician in power means the end is coming. People who have dosed themselves with poison to die ahead of the bloodshed and violence. That’s the kind of thing you’re talking about?”
“More or less.” He indicated the folder that lay on the table. “I was called down to Maclamara to work a murder. It’s a little township outside of Micanopy. They’re so small up there that any murder is handled by FDLE. I’ve worked with the detective there before, and when he saw his victim, he called me immediately. And then the FDLE called the FBI and asked for me specifically because I have had some experience with this type of thing. We don’t believe the victim was local—no missing person reports from anywhere near the area match up with what we know.”
“We?” she asked pleasantly. “As in you and the local authorities?”
“Yes—we—as in me and other authorities on the case.”
Amy looked at John, clearly oblivious to the fact Hunter had heard her speaking just moments ago. There was a query in her eyes. He could almost hear her question to her partner.
One murder—and a fed is called in?
He waited for her to speak.
“You said that murder was similar...or a practice for this?” Amy asked. Her fingers were moving around the paper coffee cup in front of her. She seemed to remember she had the coffee, and she took a long sip of it while she awaited his answer.
He opened the folder, pushing it toward her.
The first photo was of the Maclamara crime scene.
The victim had been stripped and her face had been slashed. But nothing protruded from her chest, though it was a bloody mess.
Amy Larson was appropriately grim and ashen, he thought, even after the day they’d endured.
There was a fine line to tread when working with violent crime. You couldn’t let it get under your skin too deeply. You’d be worthless at work from the nightmares that plagued your sleep and kept you up.
But to forget humanity was just as bad. You forgot why you were doing what you did, trying to stop the worst monsters before they did more damage. And every life was sacred, from that of a top scientist or scholar to that of a homeless person on the street.
Hunter knew it was likely that the first victim—the woman in the photograph he was showing John and Amy now—had been a prostitute. Dr. Levy—one of the state’s most experienced medical examiners up in the northern counties—had informed him she’d been a drug user and showed signs of habitual sexual abuse.
He’d believed her to have been about twenty-one years old.