Home > The North Face of the Heart(5)

The North Face of the Heart(5)
Author: Dolores Redondo

“Alone late at night in a furious storm, our inspector saw the killer unloading the body of his latest victim, a young woman who exactly fit Sherrington’s profile. Elated that he’d caught his murderer red handed, Sherrington tried to arrest him, but the killer was bigger and stronger than he was. They struggled and Sherrington collapsed, falling victim to a heart attack triggered by stress and an undiagnosed cardiac anomaly. Hunters chanced across Sherrington the next morning, and he was evacuated to a hospital where a risky heart operation saved his life. The killer had escaped by the time the inspector regained consciousness. Even so, Sherrington’s analysis had so precisely established the murderer’s methods that the police were quickly able to locate the bodies of nine other victims.

“Because of his severe heart condition, Inspector Sherrington was placed on permanent disability leave. To this day, the Sherrington database is a model of victimology. Sherrington’s principles are valid whether the crime is obvious or the murderer staged the scene as an accident or a suicide.”

Dupree looked around. “Agents, cadets, thank you all for your time. Colleagues from abroad, the coordinators will give you a folder with details of Inspector Sherrington’s investigations. Study them. They will be the subject of your next seminar. This concludes today’s lecture.”

Special Agent Dupree left the stage. The audience sat in silence. The auditorium lights came up and left them blinking.

Amaia got to her feet but didn’t move as she focused on the stage and the exit through which Dupree had vanished. The attention he’d focused on her had made her feel both strangely flattered and oddly threatened. She realized too late she hadn’t remembered to watch whether Dupree had picked up notes on the way out.

Gertha gave her a hearty slap on the back. “Girl, that’s what I call getting yourself noticed!”

Lost in thought, she heard Emerson exclaim, “How about that, Assistant Inspector! Looks like you really impressed the boss!”

He was jealous as hell.

She turned to look at Emerson as if awakening from a trance. Something in him had changed. He’d done his duty as her mentor and more, even though she’d had the impression he’d been less than pleased to be saddled with a female cop in a class that was almost exclusively male. Emerson was one of those alpha males who hates to lose. A couple of times, he’d tried gazing deep into her eyes and charming her with his brilliant smile, but now his mouth was a slash of displeasure. His chin jutted out and he was puffed up like a bantam fighting cock. Amaia put one hand on his shoulder and pushed him gently aside. She stepped past, leaving him disconcerted and offended, as if she’d poked him with a pistol instead of her index finger. She made her way around the chatting agents clustered along the rows and in the aisles. She exited the hall, on her way to the stage door.

Emerson called out behind her. “Salazar, you can’t leave now! The seminar starts in fifteen minutes in room 3, all the way across campus. We have just enough time to get there!”

He caught up with her as the stage door opened. Dupree came out into the corridor with another agent at his side. Men in the hallway shook Dupree’s hand and congratulated him as he made his way through the crowd.

Amaia raised a hand. “Agent Dupree!”

Dupree turned but looked straight through her. He nodded at Emerson, just behind her, and called him by name, then turned away and continued down the hall.

Amaia stood stock still and watched him go. “Arrogant son of a bitch!”

She knew Emerson had heard her. She didn’t care.

 

 

3

INTENTIONS OF THE GALE

Quantico, Virginia

They’d already dimmed the lights by the time she got to class. Agent Emerson stopped at the door, turned, and stalked back down the hall without a word. Inside the conference room, a storm was raging. A video on the huge screen showed rain pelting down and winds gusting, ripping off roofs and sending them flying through the air. Power lines were down, and huge waves battered the coast. Trying to avoid notice, Amaia found a place in the back. A second, similar television news video followed and then came a series of still photos of tornados, typhoons, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.

“Natural disasters!” a woman’s voice rang out in the back of the room.

Amaia recognized the slightly nasal voice of Agent Stella Tucker. Though Tucker was hidden in the dark, Amaia remembered her clearly as a fiftyish African American woman with a strikingly beautiful face. She wore her hair cut short like a marine, perhaps to contrast with the exuberantly fleshy body that made her appear shorter than she actually was. Tucker was one of Dupree’s colleagues. She was his chief liaison with the media, families, and victims. Dupree was the only member on the team with more seniority than Tucker.

“Disasters leave dozens of victims, and inevitably the dead have multiple injuries. Standard operating procedure for disasters requires rescuing survivors as quickly as possible and disposing of decomposing bodies to limit the danger of disease. That’s part of the reason why everyone involved in rescue work and investigation is under tremendous stress. These are scenes of pure chaos, places where rapidly developing events can easily cause an investigator to miss indications of a crime. Some bodies are crushed. Others may hang from trees, so battered that their clothes have been torn off.

“On your desks you have a folder with all the details about the next exercise. This past spring, during one of the hottest Marches on record, tornados and storms struck many parts of the country. One of those storms battered a small settlement near Killeen, Texas. Dozens of people were killed, including the Mason family: father, mother, three teenage children, and the elderly grandmother who lived with them.”

The screen lit up with a picture of a typical Texan farmhouse with a smiling family posing on the front porch. The disaster photos that followed were of poor quality, presumably taken by an inexperienced amateur. The victims’ injuries hadn’t been photographed close up. A couple of the wide views showed the bodies lying close together, indicating they’d probably huddled there before the roof collapsed. Amaia imagined them trying to reassure one another, fighting back their fears. Debris, wood fragments, and a few bulky pieces of furniture lay across the bodies.

Tucker let them take in the images before she continued.

“There was a rush to bury the dead, common after natural disasters. At first, no one saw the deaths as suspicious. The coroner issued death certificates and didn’t order autopsies.

“About a month later, freezing winds from Canada and pockets of warm air from the Gulf of Mexico collided, generating violent storms, a supercell that had the potential to produce tornados. This one exploded over Oklahoma, and a tornado took out the Jones family farm near Brooksville.”

Another farmhouse appeared on the screen, this one photographed from the air. The next photo showed everything in the same scene smashed to bits.

“The Joneses were found dead inside their ranch house. The father, his elderly mother who lived with them, his wife, and their three children, all the same ages and sexes as the Mason family.”

The death scenes were shown side by side on the screen. The similarities were astonishing. In both images, the bodies lay very close to one another under a scattering of dust, debris, and overturned furniture. Amaia didn’t know the geographic coordinates of the two farms, but she had the impression the bodies might be oriented in the same direction. She made a mental note.

Hot Books
» House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1)
» A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire
» From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash #1)
» A Million Kisses in Your Lifetime
» Deviant King (Royal Elite #1)
» Den of Vipers
» House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2)
» The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air #
» Sweet Temptation
» The Sweetest Oblivion (Made #1)
» Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels #6)
» Wreck & Ruin
» Steel Princess (Royal Elite #2)
» Twisted Hate (Twisted #3)
» The Play (Briar U Book 3)