“Yeah.” Johnson smiled. “Actually, we never really let her out of our sight. We weren’t surprised to see her hit the ground running. She’s the youngest assistant inspector in the country, and she really should have been promoted again already. Her career is taking off, but—”
“But they don’t know what to do with her,” Agent Tucker said sharply. She tossed the file onto the desk. “No good deed goes unpunished. Especially when a woman’s involved.”
Johnson raised an eyebrow, but that was his only reaction. Tucker never passed up an opportunity to call out anything that smacked of sexism. Johnson assumed, as everyone did, that Tucker had received her share of insults and abuse, but he knew she was ambitious and had her sights on becoming Dupree’s successor. She hadn’t discriminated on her way to the top: she’d trampled on everyone, regardless of race or gender. For the last two years, she’d supervised a unit of three criminal investigators, one man and two women. She tolerated Emerson because she’d identified him as a consummate ass-kisser with a flair for recognizing talent.
Emerson shrugged. “In any case, the crime rate in that region is pathetically low; I doubt she’s seen any bodies there except suicides and murdered wives. She’s probably gotten rusty.”
Dupree looked up as if surprised to find Emerson there. His reaction made it clear that Emerson was off track.
Tucker told him why. “You’re wrong. She hunted down a predator, one of the nastiest and most elusive types of killers, all on her own. She freed his most recent victim and proved he’d kidnapped and murdered two other women before that.”
Emerson’s jaw tightened.
Verdon put into words the obvious question. “Why would someone with her education and training want to go back? What was she looking for in Spain?”
“She was waiting,” Dupree replied.
“Waiting, but for what?”
Dupree said nothing. He smiled to himself and kept his eyes on the young woman on the monitor.
Johnson took over. “When we send out invitations to European police forces, we usually ask the top brass to nominate their candidates. But we were specific with the Spaniards: we wanted Assistant Inspector Salazar.” He smiled.
“We’re lucky she doesn’t know it,” Dupree added.
Wilson had listened without comment. He went to the door that opened directly into the adjacent office, grasped the knob, and turned to look at Dupree. “You know my opinion. She turned us down once; brilliance is no excuse for insolence.” He jabbed his bloodless finger toward the desk and a document covered with colorful sticky notes. “If she can justify this—and you can explain to me why it’s genius and not arrogance—you’ll have my full support for whatever decision you make.”
“Thanks, Jim,” Dupree replied. “I appreciate that.”
“Thank me after she explains herself. I’ll monitor the interview from my office.”
Dupree nodded and waited for Wilson to close the door behind him. “Johnson, bring her in.”
They seated her in a chair facing Agent Dupree. In her peripheral vision, she saw Johnson and Tucker on her left and Emerson on her right. Out of her field of view, seated directly behind her at the door, was a man they hadn’t introduced. Dupree didn’t offer to shake hands; he didn’t greet her at all. He sat leafing through the report before him. She recognized it immediately from the various colored notes she’d applied to the pages.
She flinched a bit when Dupree launched into his comments with no preliminaries. “Yesterday Agent Tucker gave you the dossier for an exercise analyzing an active case. Your job was to prepare three profiles: behavioral, geographic, and victimological.” He jabbed a thumb at the clock on the wall behind him, where the hands pointed to nine forty-five. “The instructor gave you until noon today, but you turned in your work only three hours later.” He raised the document to show it to her. “That would be a record, except for the fact that you gave us back the same dossier decorated with about half a dozen Post-it notes and the same number of short comments.”
Amaia sought to respond. “Sir—”
Dupree held up a hand to stop her. “Your first note reads, ‘Details about the third case not provided.’” He gave her an inquiring look. “Tell me, Assistant Inspector Salazar, what makes you think there’s a third case?”
She swallowed hard before answering. “Sir, it was a comment made by Agent Tucker during her briefing.”
Dupree lifted an eyebrow, inviting further explanation. Amaia saw Agent Tucker sit up straighter when she heard her own name mentioned.
“At one point in her briefing, Agent Tucker said, and I quote, ‘Given the vast area across which the killer moves.’ Sir, maybe a Greek or an Italian might think that the four-hour drive between Texas and Oklahoma is a long way, but no one in the United States would. Agent Tucker’s statement led me to think there was probably another case that hadn’t been described.”
“Your instructor told you she’d given you all the available information,” Dupree insisted.
“Would the FBI really disclose all the details of an open case simply for a student exercise?”
Agent Tucker leaned forward so Amaia could see her face clearly. “The premise is that there are no more details; those we gave you were enough to complete the exercise.”
Dupree saw the momentary twitch of skepticism in Amaia’s face. He prompted her. “It appears you didn’t accept that premise.”
“I believe that everything points to the existence of at least one additional case. That was the basis for my comment.”
Dupree leaned back in his desk chair and studied Salazar for several seconds. Something had changed in the tone of his voice when he next spoke. “On March fifteenth, all members of the Mason family were found dead inside their farmhouse near Killeen, Texas, after a violent storm ravaged the area. The local police followed standard procedure after a disaster and the victims were buried within twenty-four hours. There were no autopsies.
“On April twenty-sixth, a tornado destroyed the Jones farmstead near Brooksville, Oklahoma. The bodies of Mr. Jones, his wife, their three teenage children, and Mr. Jones’s mother were found in the wreckage. In this case, we had a witness, a boy trapped in a collapsed chicken house. He heard gunshots and screams and then saw a man waving his arms like someone directing an orchestra. The witness named him the Composer.
“The Oklahoma Department of Public Safety called us in, and we managed to get there before the scene had been disturbed. All the bodies were covered by debris, even though the witness claimed—and evidence later substantiated—that the family had taken refuge in the cellar when the storm hit. The witness stated he heard them come out. He knew them well, and he recognized their voices. All the bodies were supine with their heads oriented toward the north. They’d been killed by shots from a small-caliber firearm confirmed to belong to the father. Each individual had ligature marks that suggested they’d been tied hand and foot. The victims evidently weren’t bound for long, and the killer removed the cords and took them with him. He sought to disguise the gunshot wounds by battering the bodies.
“We then obtained an exhumation order for the victims in Killeen. You may not be familiar with the effects of embalming. Draining blood and replacing it with embalming fluid can obscure certain marks on the skin, but a month after the deaths, the bruising was evident under ultraviolet light. All the bodies had been bound hand and foot. The police in Killeen had thought the deaths were accidental and therefore had had no reason to investigate further.”