“You couldn’t be more wrong—”
“Actually, she’s right,” Dupree interrupted. “There is another case. Last February a violent storm swept across the coast near Cape May, New Jersey. The Millers, a family with an identical age and gender composition, were found dead inside their home. As in the Mason case, they were buried without autopsies. Mrs. Miller’s extended family lives outside the United States. When they heard what had happened, her mother had a heart attack. She wasn’t able to travel until last week. Meanwhile, Mrs. Miller’s body was kept frozen at the express request of her family. Mary Ward, the proprietor of a funeral service in Cape May, thawed the body and began to prep it for a possible viewing. While applying makeup to the face, she noted a lump along the jaw that turned out to be a twenty-two-caliber bullet. We haven’t yet been able to obtain exhumation orders for the other family members because of the length of time since their deaths, the opposition of the heirs, and the intervention of an extremely conservative judge. The judge told us that photos taken of the scene should be sufficient for our investigation.” Dupree opened a drawer, took out a maroon folder, and placed it on the desk in front of Amaia. Inside, a thick packet of photos showed the interior of an oceanside cottage destroyed by wind and water. The bodies of the family were grouped in the main room of the cottage. The victims’ crushed skulls contrasted with their otherwise unscathed bodies.
Amaia went through the photos carefully, almost reverently, touching them as little as possible. She was brought back to the present by Agent Dupree’s voice.
“Assistant Inspector Salazar, early this morning a twister devastated a wide area in Texas. The bodies of the Allen family, including a father, mother, and three teenagers, two boys and a girl, have all been found dead in the wreckage of their home. Since both the father and the mother grew up as orphans in foster homes, at first glance, this case doesn’t look like it fits the killer’s profile. We are headed to Texas to take a closer look at the scene and we want you to come along.”
Amaia nodded obediently.
6
ITXUSURIA
Alvord, Texas
The grassy yard in front of the Allen house showed hardly any sign that a tornado had recently passed over it. The ground-level basement windows were intact, and so were the front porch steps. Pots filled with a profusion of tiny purple flowers flanked the front door. Only when she looked up did Amaia realize the single-story house no longer had a roof. The structure had been peeled away completely. It looked like a turtle with its shell ripped off.
The driveway was jammed with vehicles, evidence of the enormous number of police, firefighters, paramedics, and funeral home employees gathering on the premises. Amaia trailed behind the FBI unit along the narrow path the local police had cleared, but they had to stop because of the crowd. Agent Emerson, directly in front of her, looked back for an instant, then elbowed his way into the living room without waiting for her.
Amaia didn’t care. She knew they couldn’t do anything until the room was cleared. Nobody seemed to be paying attention to the rest of the house, so she decided to check out the other rooms first. Her jacket was too large, but at least it bore the distinctive yellow FBI initials across its back. After searching its various concealed pockets, she found a pair of latex gloves, pulled them on, and walked down the hall toward the back of the house.
The roof was gone, but the house’s interior seemed almost untouched. The kitchen was a different story. Pictures hung askew, long jagged chunks of wood had been ripped from the structure, and piles of debris from the now-missing roof were coated with dirt and dust. Electrical cables, twisted and useless, dangled across the broken walls. Amaia saw that the windows had imploded and left glass scattered everywhere. An unfinished meal sat on the table. The kitchen chairs were overturned, evidence of a hasty flight just before the storm hit.
On her way across the front yard she’d scanned the exterior of the Allens’ tidy farmhouse for signs of a storm cellar. Dupree had said on the flight to Texas that this family wasn’t an exact match for the victimological profile of their killer, but Amaia thought the fit was too close to be mere coincidence. A husband, a wife, and three children—two boys and a girl, the same ages as the Mason and Jones children. The entire family lay dead in the main room of their home, even though the pattern of damage suggested they could have survived simply by sheltering beneath the furniture. The FBI needed to verify the orientation of the bodies and locate the father’s pistol.
If the Allens were victims of the Composer, as she suspected, they’d have ridden out the tornado in a shelter. By the kitchen door, she found another, identical door that opened onto the basement stairs. She rummaged through her jacket and came up with a small flashlight. She went down without touching the railing, careful to step on the outside edges so as to avoid compromising any possible evidence. Dust swirled in the air. Very little light filtered through the basement windows. The ground-level openings, narrow slots high in the ceiling of the basement room, were almost completely obscured. At first, she thought they were caked with dust or mud, but then she saw that brown paper had been taped across them.
Her flashlight beam revealed carefully labeled plastic bins filled with flashlights, batteries, a transistor radio, jugs of water, and canned food. There was even a little camping stove with a bottle of propane. She found a bulky old sideboard against one wall. On it stood two cans of beer, two diet sodas, half a dozen other canned soft drinks, and a couple of plastic bottles of water. A small padlock hung unsecured from the sideboard’s bottom cabinet. She pushed the doors open without touching the handles and immediately smelled the familiar odor of gun oil. The firearm wasn’t inside, but boxes of .22-caliber slugs were stacked at the back of a shelf. She saw several sleeping bags and pillows in a heap along the wall farthest from the windows. A gold-colored toiletries bag, similar to a makeup kit, lay beside them. She squatted, peered into it, and found it full of medicine.
Amaia went back upstairs and took the hall toward the living room but was literally boxed in by two Texas state troopers. A male voice with a heavy Texan accent was insisting that everyone except the FBI and the crime scene technicians clear the premises. She flattened herself against the wall to let the state troopers pass. Each wore a broad-brimmed cowboy hat. They were so burly that their shoulders spanned almost the whole width of the hall.
She finally got a look at the living room. The mess and confusion around and over the family were greater than elsewhere in the house. Technicians in their distinctive white coveralls and masks were busy collecting photographic evidence, snapping pictures of every object as they removed it. The victims’ heads were ugly, dusty gray mashes of coagulated blood. All were oriented toward the north, and in the same order as in the other cases: the wife, then the three children in chronological order of birth, and finally the husband. The FBI team waited in a silent circle as the work proceeded. A tall man with a Stetson hat, white shirt, dark tie, dark jeans, and boots stood next to Dupree.
Dupree caught sight of Amaia standing in the doorway. He swiftly crossed the room toward her, a dangerous and angry look in his eyes. He said nothing until they were face to face. He was furious. “Where the hell were you?”
She was taken aback. “I was—”