Putting the Damage On - Ch. 4

[whedonist]

Rating: PG-13 to R ish…

Fandom: Spinoff of Nikki & Nora

Pairing: You’ll see and hear mention of Nikki/Nora, Bobby/OC and the rest are all OC’s paired with OC’s

Disclaimer: Uh…Nikki and Nora aren’t mine they have a cameo in two parts and are briefly mentioned here and there. The rest of the whack jobs in the piece all my own doing. You can’t have them, but I don’t mind sharing. I passed kindergarten.

A/N: Nadda, Zip, Zilch...=0)

Ch. 4 – Alignment to Cry

Closing my eyes, I link my fingers together, push them over my head and stretch backwards. There’s a succession of pops that start in my cracked knuckles down to my wrists, elbows, shoulders and ends somewhere towards the middle of my spinal column. It feels fucking fantastic. It’s been a long day and an even longer evening. With the crime scene back in Stafford and the hours that we spent going over the scene, it’s late even by hooker standards. All the johns have gone away and all the pimps have collected their money. I figure that if even the pimps and hookers are asleep at this hour, I should be allowed to too.

Looking around the lab where we’ve duplicated and tacked up case information I can clearly see that that isn’t even in the ball park of happening. We came back from the house at about two this morning. So far, Travis and Bamby have gotten through the bottom linens on the bed, Lucy’s been processing samples taken from the body and hasn’t peeked out from the back three rooms for the last four hours.

We think that she’s still alive and uninjured. If she’s not, we’ll get to the smell eventually. We think. At least that’s what John says and right now, considering the hour of the night and the amount of mind numbing procedural bullshit that needs to be gone through, if she’s not okay, I’ll buy her a cookie.

“So what do you think of the neighbors?” John asks me, not looking up from the paper he has in his hand. I glance up from my computer and shrug.

“It’s the same. No one saw anything which to me is fucking stupid. I’m not home lots, but when something seems off, I notice it. When my neighbor hasn’t come or gone in a few days, I fucking notice.”

This gets my partner’s attention and a wide eyed look. I won’t comment on his smirk. “Okay, a few things, one who the hell pissed in your muddy coffee, two, it shouldn’t shock you, it’s been the same in the other cities and three, you, Ann, notice every-damn-thing. You never comment on a lot of it, but you do, so you can’t use your experience as a basis for comparison. You’re like fucking eagle eyes with a side of spooky intuition that in all honesty, creeps me out sometimes.”

I raise my eyebrow at this. “I’m not that bad.”

He stops my protest and goes back to the original question, “So interviews?”

I accept the topic change and amend my early statement, “Standard. There were a few houses where no one was home. We should go back this morning at some point and see if we can get someone.”

He nods at this and spins around to the whiteboard that’s a permanent fixture in the lab. We don’t do a lot of work down here, but this is where a lot of the case is being processed and he and I both, by unspoken agreement, want to be down here.

“Are we surprised that there was nothing pulled at the house?” His chair swivels and he spins towards me, thick arms folded across a broad chest. “I’d like to know how the fucker doesn’t transfer any evidence. I mean everyone leaves behind trace evidence, it’s damn near impossible not to.”

“Not entirely,” I argue, “We’ve had a few cases that presented like it was performed in a surgical suite with everyone vacuumed sealed except for the vic.”

“True, but they were nearly. Didn’t Edming wear a full body suit? And the other one, uh…” he finger snaps a few times before the name comes to him, “Filicovik, the fucker was bald from head to toe.”

I snort. Alcender Filicovik was the closest thing to a self-made albino if there ever was one. He never went out during the day; he shaved obsessively twice a day. Everything from the top of his head to the tops of his toes. He also liked to shave and oil his victims up while he violated them in every orifice available.

He was a peach that man.

Victor Edming wasn’t as crazy. He just likes to kill people, well he did, the state of Virginia now has him on his third appeal and hopefully he’ll be getting a needle sometime soon. I like those types. They’re not very bright, but determined. They actually make my days easier. There’s no second guessing or guess work, it’s all very linear.

“Also, while you guys were working on securing the body, I ran a sample of the letter and a digital image over to a friend at the C.I.A. I want to get an analysis as soon as possible,” he explains as I hold up the evidence bag with my letter in it. A small piece of the corner of the letter and the envelope gone.

“McKenna gonna get it back to us today?” I ask.

John shrugs. “Considering I woke her up, she may have it back to me by lunch time.”

“You didn’t?” I ask incredulously. I swear his one track mind on things is astounding. It doesn’t matter who he annoys to get it done, if he wants it done, then everything else pretty much gets shoved aside until that thing, whatever that thing maybe, is complete. It’s a fault and an advantage for him. I’m pretty sure that if not for that one determined streak he has, he would be dead. My partner’s way too stubborn to die.

“It’s her job right? Well, she now has work to do. What good is her job, if she doesn’t have work,” he tries to reason.

“Dude, we got back here and you disappeared at three this morning. I’d rip your face off if you woke me up for a hand writing analysis which will yield dick in the way of useful information. I also think that the paper’s going to come back a dead end. It felt like standard stock.”

“Can’t hurt to double check,” he grins at me and I roll my eyes.
Him and his stupid smile. That thing’s probably saved his life once or twice too. It’s really not that fair.

“Hey, kiddo,” John calls out to his daughter across the room. Bamby looks up and blinks at us, her bright blues, magnified by the glasses she’s wearing. Looking more like an owl than a girl, she frowns and pushes the magnifiers onto her forehead.

“Yeah?” she asks blandly.

“You gonna be done with that body or ready to cut her open anytime soon?” John asks.
Bamby shakes her head. “I really want everything cataloged. Better than me missing something. Slow and steady, dad, slow and steady.” She grins her own version of his smile back him.

I watch him weaken under the look.

“All right, kid, just let me know,” he replies.

She nods and slips the glasses back down to rest on her nose. “Don’t I always,” she chides lightly and turns back to her task over the body.

“You do know that she’s got you wrapped around her finger,” I whisper over to the proud father.

He shrugs and says, “She and that thing she calls a sister had me wrapped around their finger when I saw them the first time at a month old. I’m used to it by now.”

“Alright, so we’ve got a few hours yet before normal people are still awake and functioning. You want to start sifting through the vacuum bags? I think that we picked up only the two,” I think out loud. The interviews with the neighbors were completed a few minutes ago as I uploaded the transcripts to our database.

Yawning, he nods. “Maybe we can find something useful there. We’re not getting anywhere with anything else right now.”

Moving to stand I stop as I hear, “Just so you know, you both look like hell.”

I swivel on my stool and smile as Jill comes walking towards us, the swinging doors to the lab moving behind her. She’s got that annoyed swagger she has adapted from me. I glance at my watch, it’s a little past six in the morning and she’s carrying a tray of Starbucks in one hand a bag from the same coffee pushers in the other.

Honestly my wife’s a site for sore eyes. In her jeans and rumpled t-shirt, no make-up and glasses, I really just want to kiss the hell out of her right now. When she’s like this, she’s the best. There’s a large portion of the populace that’s seen her coiffed and polished, in high gloss ads or in magazines for interviews. They all think she’s perfect that way, but she’s not. She’s an airbrushed, semi-plastic looking clothes rack in those photos. They don’t know that she actually has hips, that she’s got a small chest, which is good for me, I’m not that much of a breast girl, and that she has an ass, I am an ass girl.

I’m not a fan of her in make-up and I like it when she wears her hair in a ponytail.
Right now, at six-plus minutes in the morning when I haven’t seen a bed since the previous morning, she’s gorgeous and now she’s looking at me funny. “What?” I ask, unconsciously swiping the corner of my mouth. I’ve been known to drool on occasion.

She just smirks as she blindly hands out the cups of coffee to the magically materialized Lucy and Travis. Bamby comes bounding over, tossing her gloves in the biohazard container. Lucy and Travis both groan as they sip their coffee.

Bamby gushes, “Oh, my, God, you are like my most favorite person right now! I seriously want to have your baby.”

Jill giggles and lets her down easy, “No babies for me thank you. Talk to my wife.”

My eyes grow large and I shake my head furiously.

“Seriously, Jill, if we weren’t married to different people, I would rock your world for this,” John slips in.

“Well, we can discuss a divorce and you and I can talk later, but hold on,” Jill pauses the flirting and pulls out two of those travel carafes. “Now,“ she says, turning to me and running a red lacquered manicured nail down my jaw line, “You know what this means. I will be collecting for this from you later.”

I swallow and nod. She got up before the sun rose, drove an hour up here, went to the local Starbucks and dropped it off for us. I may as well have Jill’s Bitch tattooed somewhere across my forehead.

“Besides,” she addresses my co-workers, “I thought you could use it.” They all go a little mushy.

I know. My wife is the best. She knows I know this. She exploits my weakness for her to the limits. It works. I can’t seem to muster up the gumption to care all that much.
Her brow furrows as she looks past me, cocking her head to the side. “Are you guys taking classes in philosophy?”

We all look at her. She looks down at me, asking, “That quote, Nietzsche, it’s from his work, Beyond Good and Evil.” She pauses and then furthers the explanation from the blank stares she’s getting, “His book, the rest of it’s called Prelude to Philosophy of the Future.” Her lips purse and she shakes her head. “But, it’s misquoted. It is more often than not, but the actual quote is,

“It seems that in order to inscribe themselves upon the heart of humanity with everlasting claims, all great things have first to wander about the earth as enormous and awe- inspiring caricatures: dogmatic philosophy has been a caricature of this kind—for instance, the Vedanta doctrine in Asia, and Platonism in Europe.”

The misquote is common though,” she finishes with a halfhearted shrug.

I quip, “Smart chicks are sooo hot.”

John goes, “When did you get all knowledgeable?”

Jill scoffs at all of us and says, “Just because I look pretty doesn’t mean I can’t be smart. I gots that college degree just like the rest of you.”

“OH! Thank God!” Bamby says, thumping the side of her head. “I knew I heard that somewhere.”

“My genius daughter ladies and gentleman.” He waves a hand his daughter’s way before asking, “Why didn’t you get this?”

The brunette just rolls her eyes and scoffs, “I have several specialties and sub-specialty certifications in the field of Forensics and hold two doctorates. I play a guitar so well it has driven grown men to weep. Fuck Nietzsche, he was a prick anyhow.”

And that’s John daughter all right.

---

The morning drug on. Painfully in some regards. Jill’s help with the quote didn’t yield much. I mean in terms of a profile, it will assist when I finally have one together that I like, but until then…

I sigh and toss the pen that’s by my right hand.

It’s just another puzzle piece that I don’t know what to do with.

I rub my eyes and resist the urge to flop my head down on the lab bench I’ve been working on since this morning. John went to get us some food. More than likely he’ll come back with double cheeseburgers from McDonalds, Cokes, fries and apple pies. How we manage to stay in shape is beyond me.

I rub my forehead and go back to the analytics on the labs. Nothing that jumped out. All of it, consistent with sucking up the dust in the carpet on any home in America. I don’t even need to look at the rest of the results to know that they aren’t going to help us. A little more than annoyed, I shut my laptop closed and spin around to the board.

“Hey,” John calls out. He strides through the lab doors with a very large bag in his hands and another bag from 7-Eleven. “Let’s grub and then, Bamby!” he stops his thoughts and calls his daughter and the other two, “Luce, Travis. Soups on!”

Three heads poke out of three different doors down the one hallway that we have. I chuckle. How could I not. All three exit their respective rooms at the same time and all of them look just as annoyed as I feel.

Crowding around the lab bench, we all shut up and tuck into our food. The only sounds that can be heard are the quick swallows and slurps of mastication from five people who’ve done nothing but look at a corpse and process dirt the entire night and morning.

“Ya know,” Bamby says around a mouthful of food, “I think we could make a case for calling McDonald’s the world’s biggest serial killer.”

All of us top chewing and look over at John’s daughter.

“Think about it. I mean smoking okay, but this…” she hefts her burger, “it’s nothing more than assisted suicide and all of us are willing participants. I think there’s a case here.”

“Sweetheart, shut up and eat your food. You have a body to cut up when you’re done,” John chides.

Travis shakes his head and laughs. “I think there’s something to consider about this father/daughter relationship.”

“Meh,” Bamby grunts, “I’m done anyhow.” She punctuates her declaration by balling up her wrapper and shooting it into the trash bin a few yards away. It hits the rim and falls in. “Score!” she shouts.

“I’m good,” I say, mimicking her actions with my own wrapper. “You gonna be ready for the post soon?”

“Yeah, I’m going to go finish the test I’m running and then we’re good,” she chirps and saunters off.

We all finish the rest of our food in short order. Disposing of the trash and washing our hands, Lucy and Travis go back to the rooms where they were working as Bamby comes out, gear on for the autopsy she’s scheduled this afternoon.

She grins at me and her father before slipping on her mask. “We ready kids?” she asks, stepping over to the body and picking up the chart sitting on top of the victims torso. John and I look at each other and raise our arms in a ‘what are you going to do gesture’.
Grabbing a gown for each of us, I hand his off and slip mine on over the two day old clothes. We stand off to the right, giving her enough space to work around the body and watch. There are very few things Bamby is meticulous with; most of the time, she’s this ball of energy that bounces around doing three different things at once. She’s a masterful multi-tasker and she’ll make your head spin during a conversation. The girl will change topics so quickly she’ll be two subjects past what you were talking about.

But.

This is major.

She’s meticulous collecting evidence and while she’s performing a post. Never have I seen her so focused as she attends to a body post-mortem. I’d feel comfortable saying she’s the best in the business. I’m also thankful that she’s on our side and working for our team. I was really surprised when John brought her on board. I didn’t think he’d want his daughters around what we do…I know that if I had kids, I wouldn’t want them around any of this.
I’d want them as far away as possible.

But there’s that saying about apples and trees and the apples falling. It holds true respective to John’s children. Spencer and Bamby are very much like their father each showing different facets of my partner’s character. Spencer is a tad more reserved, Becca is too though. Spencer and Becca also take a minute or two to warm to or rather they a take minute or two to warm up to you, but once you’ve been accepted in, as part of their group, they’re about as friendly as you can get.

John gently shoulder checks me as Bamby begins talking, “As I was working on Denbow, there were some things, inconsistencies that needed to be looked into.” She glances up from the body to make sure that we’re listening. Satisfied that she has our attention, she continues, “We all know, or at least should know, that the skin is the largest organ on the body. It’s connected to virtually every part of our structure. Denbow, Sheridan and Talbert all had similar wound patterns, at least with what was presented to me, but still there are questions that need to be asked.”

She stops talking and lifts the scalpel in her hand to appraise her handy work, the incisions on the corpse good enough for her inspection; she sets the instrument down and reaches for the Stryker saw. It’s akin to the sound of a high powered dental drill as she cuts into the cranium of the body. Working the circumference of the head, the top part of the skull is removed to a membrane covered brain.

The saw goes off, gets put down and she grabs the scalpel to cut away the membrane, severe the brain from its stem and place it in a jar of formalin. I swallow as she goes back to the body, peeling back the skin, fat and muscle of our latest victim. She picks up a set of, well, for all intents, they can be called shears and snips the ribs free first to remove them. Then she attacks the pericardial sac and abdominal muscles, removing them to expose the organs underneath.

She looks up at us, while digging into the cavity to remove the intestines. Paying no attention to the removal of them, she gathers them in her arms and dumps them in the sink for a closer look later. “First, from a purely scientific standpoint, I wanted to know how he removed the facial skin that was determined to have come off in strips. I’ve matched the patterns on the outlaying flesh to be consistent with a surgical grade scalpel.” She picks her own scalpel back up and reaches into the body cavity. She removes the heart first. Travis materializes out of nowhere and takes over once she passes him the organ to be measured and analyzed.

I swear Travis is a fucking ninja in his off time.

“Now, what we have to think about, well, what I have-slash-had to think about was transport. I think we’re all in agreement that our killer did not perform these acts in the house where the bodies were found. There’s nothing to suggest otherwise. But then we have to figure out how the bodies were transported. I mean really? If it were me, this whole operation of removing their faces and then dumping them is way too much.” She hands the stomach over to Travis’ waiting hands. The scalpel in her hand gets waved about and she rolls her eyes. “So I need to figure out how and moreover how he stopped these women from bleeding out. I know enough from the tox reports that combinations of drugs were used to keep them awake while lucid enough to feel not only what was being done, but probably heightened the senses as well.”

“This means,” she breathes and hands over both lungs to Travis, “they bled. A lot. So I did some research. There is a couple on the market things that could work. A lot of them are used for Military purposes, like in the field, during combat type things. The choice is going to be something that promotes hemostasis, namely an antihemmoragic.”

I watch as she stops talking and finishes up handing the organs over to Travis. They take their time as we watch him dissect the organs and take pieces for analysis. It doesn’t take much longer until Bamby is satisfied that things are as done as done can be and she begins to sew up Mrs. Seevers.

As she’s stitching, she starts up again, “I took some samples of the muscle tissue on our victim here. There were some bovine thrombin, think coagulant, that came up which helped me determine what exactly was used. The unsub used something called D-Stat Dry. I talked to a rep this morning and if we want to pursue this lead we’ll need warrants and something more substantial to go on then the little bit of circumstantial evidence I have. Well maybe, I can request one to do a test on the thrombin, see if I can match it back to a specific batch that went out for shipment,” at this point I think she’s thinking out loud more than talking to us.

John and I look on amused as she mutters to herself for a few more minutes before turning her attention back to us. “Okay, so I’ll follow up the D-Stat lead, what I need you two to figure out is what was done with the women from the time of capture to the time they are flayed.”

“Uhm,” I start and stop pressing my lips together. “Uh, well, I mean wouldn’t they be being flayed?”

Bamby shakes her head. “They weren’t though. I needed some time to get the experiment together, but over the past few months when I’ve had time on the weekends and such, I’ve been trying to figure out the healing pattern that I observed on the faces of the bodies. It was a very short time frame and they had little time to heal.”

“Pumpkin,” John says, “spit it out already.”

“They weren’t flayed straight away. If the timing on all the vics are the same, our unsub keeps them for approximately two and a half days and then flays them. I want to know what he does in those two and a half days.”

My hands go to my hips as I chew on my lower lip.

I’d like to know too.

---

I watch my boss, partner and friend pace the length of our office. We moved back up here a few hours ago to digest the information that the death of Barbara Seevers provided. John’s agitated and I can’t seem to figure out why. None of the information that we were given is completely earth shattering revelations. To say that we’re dealing with a sick fuck would be par for the course. We know the score. We know that when we accept a case.

He just seems to be taking this a bit harder than the other times we deal with something like this. Of course there’s the argument that it’s never really taken me this long to come up with a full profile on a subject. Someone from the B.A.U. may have some better insight, but I doubt it. It’s actually how I was brought in to the F.B.I. I pulled a position for the Behavior Analysis Unit. Their job is actually very similar to what I’m doing right now, but they have a wider breath of case work.

The unit is busted into four primary sections, a counter terrorism group, crimes against adults, then against children and lastly the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which John used to run; it is how we met and called ViCAP for short. As I started with the B.A.U. I was assigned to ViCAP and began working there shortly before meeting the acting director, John Malone.

John and I built instant report and he had just been given the green light to run his own specialized unit inside the F.B.I., the Special Investigations Unit. He kept the title as open as possible due to the nature of our work. While we take on cases that would and still could go to the B.A.U. we are a fully functional team that can work a case from front to back. The B.A.U.’s not specifically built that way. They’re responsible for assistance. It’s rare that they take on full cases. Their jobs are support and intelligence.

Ours isn’t. We run operations with every other government organization from Military such as the Navy Seals or Army Rangers to the National Security Agency and the C.I.A. For the most part the S.I.U. was developed so that John could have something to do since his retirement from the U.S. Army. My boss put up his Two Gold Star General’s Jacket and became an agent with the F.B.I. He’s been running around doing his own thing for about eleven years. We’ve been together since the inception of this unit. I was the first agent he signed on. There have been a few others that have come and gone, but Lucy and Travis both have stuck around the longest.

We run the investigations, we process the scenes, we run the labs and we even have a dedicated assistant U.S. attorney for when we go to trial.

To say John and I are pros at this is an understatement. This shouldn’t be pissing him off this much, but his pacing, what I’m observing now, tells me otherwise. He’s upset and by the crease in his forehead, I know he’s worried.

“John,” I say gently, hoping that my voice will pull him from his thoughts.
His head snaps to me.

“Talk, partner, what are you thinking?” I ask, gently.

His lips press together and the crease in his forehead deepens. “I think we’re in trouble.”

“How so?” I ask, motioning him to take a seat next to me. He shakes his head, so I stand and lean against our combined desks. I fold my arms across my chest and urge him to continue, “Well, I really wish you’d share. So tell me, why are we in trouble?”

“Did I ever tell you about the solo job I pulled in Sung Phu, Vietnam?” he asks me before his lower lip gets curled inward causing his chin to jut out.

See this is one of those things with John. There’s a lot that’s been pieced together over the years about his past. It’s checkered to say the least. Since nineteen-eighty-six through nineteen-ninety-three, he was a two star general for the U.S. Army. He ran and still consults for a small contingency of soldiers inside of Special Forces. From what I can deduce, John has more pull then the Vice President and he’s not the only one. There are few people that I’ve seen over the years that, like John, are given a near cart blanche to government resources. He picks up a phone call, tells them what he wants and it’s done.
He also very rarely tells me about his assignments. I know a lot of them were black ops. I’m good with that. He’s a good man; moreover he’s a good father, husband and friend. Rebecca was also assigned with him. I think it’s only slightly amusing that the military has issues with women serving in combat, but from what I know of Rebecca and her past, she was one hell of a black ops soldier. His wife’s history is just as colorful as her husbands.
I’m going to take the opportunity and hear another story as I shake my head.

He gives a mirthless laugh and says, “Just so you know, me telling you this story is going to cause me a shit storm of paperwork to up your security clearance.” He winks at me. “Pretty soon, you’ll have access to my personal file. Then you can start to blackmail me.”

“John, I got enough dirt on you now,” I say grinning.

“Very true, but anyway back to the moral of the story. Rebecca and I were asked to go to Sung Phu to neutralize a threat to the government of Vietnam. A fringe faction of the Khmer Rouge. What we weren’t told was that it was actually a ruse. Becca and I were used as a trade. The fringe got to keep and torture us while the government got intelligence. There was one captain in charge of us. He was…he used to try different torture methods. It wasn’t that they were any more painful, just different. These killings just, there’s symmetry there and I can’t make it speak to me, but I think we’re in trouble.”

“How’d you get out?” I ask, not wanting to think about what his story implies for not only his past and Becca’s but for our case now.

“Killed the fuckers to a man, stole a vehicle and blew the place up. Becca’s a fucking genius with exit strategy. She’s saved my ass more than once,” he says proudly.

I nod. “So, now what?”

He scratches his forehead, right above his left eye where a thin scar runs the length of his temple to a line across to his eyebrow. It’s barely noticeable if you’re not familiar with his face, but I’ve studied that scar a few times.

“I think we need to start asking questions,” he moves to a clean whiteboard and writes, ‘Why Nietzsche?’

I stand and move next to him. The two of us shoulder to shoulder, each with a marker in hand begin writing. I draw a line down the middle of the board. He moves around me and in the right hand column writes ‘crazy?’ I start writing more questions:

Why mess up the quote?

Where is he doing his work?

How is he keeping them alive?

John nods, but says nothing as we switch positions and he writes:

Why so nomadic?

Why the sequence in vic hair color?

Why the face?

What happens to face after removed?

Simultaneously we step back and look at the left hand side of the board. Too many questions and not enough answers. I tap the end of the marker against my chin. I review the mental list of what we know and what we don’t know of our unsub. Primarily it’s what the bodies and the scenes tell us.

It’s really not a lot, but it’s more than what we had two days ago. My vision blurs slightly from the lack of sleep and they burn. I ignore it.

I step up to the right side of the board and press the tip of my marker to the board to draw a line through the word ‘crazy’. Our unsub isn’t crazy in the classical sense.
Instead, I move lower and begin to piece together the fragments that we have. A picture begins to form in my mind and I start to write:

Subject is male, middle aged, high probability that he’s Caucasian…nomadic, narcissistic, sadistic…

And that’s when it this me. “Sometimes John, I’m fucking retarded. It’s not about the face. Not really. The face is a trophy. A means to an end if you will. Take a look at our victims. All of them are pretty in their own right. Pretty enough to be vain about what they look like. Our guy keeps them alive no more, no less than three days. What the hell do you do with someone for that time frame? The killings aren’t sexual in nature. We know this. This isn’t about power either. It’s clear that he feels powerful, confident. Who wouldn’t doing what he’s done. This is about misery. These women are means for him to inflict and witness human misery at its peak.”

His eyes brighten and he adds, “We’ve been comin’ at this from the wrong side. The end goal for most serials are the killing, the act, the power, the control and manipulations. This guy doesn’t want that. He wants to view, inflict and revel in pain and suffering.”
I nod and say, “As for where he’s doing his work, I’ve been thinking about this. Duluth was the only body that we know of that’s got him not placing the vic at home.”

“You want to go have a look see?” he asks me already knowing my answer.

I nod.

I don’t think it could hurt in the slightest.

---

Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to open up my big fucking mouth. I mean what the hell was I thinking. I haven’t seen a bed since Thursday night. It’s eleven p.m. Saturday night and I’m traipsing through the fucking woods looking for a shack in the middle of Minnesota because I have an over inflated hero complex.

Maybe Jill was right and we should have done this in the morning.

But John had already had the jet prepped and we were ready for it. So instead of being smart about it. The two of us decide to grab the jet and high tail it to Minnesota to find the hunting shack Margaret Talbot was found in.

I get it. I’m not too bright. Although in my defense neither is my partner because if he were, he’d have said let’s get some sleep first and head out first thing in the a.m.

Did he?

No.

Which is why, after a three hour flight, one car ride and a small drive on an ATV, we’re picking our way through woods so dark I can’t see my hand two inches in front of my face.

Thank God for L.E.D. flashlights.

God. Send.

“What the fuck were we thinking?” John groans from my left.

“I was just thinking the same damn thing,” I grumble and stumble over an upturned tree root. “Mother fuc…ya know I hate the fucking woods. I hate camping and I hate nature and I hate…”

“Life?” he chortles next to me, stopping to look at the map in his hand again.

“Blow me, Malone,” I snip and check the compass to make sure that we’re headed in the right direction.

“Hmm, Annie, if you had the parts, you may just be the one guy I’d get on my knees for,” he deadpans.

Oh. Eww. Just fucking eww.

“Enough, okay I get it, I’m hot. I don’t need you to go gay to tell me that. It’ll throw off our mojo.” I point my flashlight up ahead and he nods.

“Tell me about it,” he agrees and we both start off in the direction I just pointed.

“I’m thinking once we’re done here and we get back to Virginia, we sleep most of the morning and afternoon. Let’s let Lucy and Travis dig some and see what else they can come up with. Start fresh Tuesday morning. Monday night though,” he says and swings his flashlight wide and to the right of us.

A shack about fifty yards ahead materializes in the beam of the light.

“Thank God!” I say and start our journey with a little more pep and ask, “But Monday night what?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m thinking you, me, Becca and Jill go to D.C. for a night on the town. Some drinks, some food, maybe a bit of dancing.” He turns to me and points the flashlight under his chin. Wiggling his eyebrows, he starts to sway his hips. I watch on as his feet begin to move. I think it’s a muted version of the Cha-Cha.

He grabs me by the hips and presses us together. “You know how much I love to dance, partner.”

I fall into step with him easy enough, moving to the tune he obviously has playing in his head. “I think maybe you’ve been up for too long.”

He shrugs and spins us around so that he’s walking backwards, leading us to our destination. “Perhaps, maybe it’s just the need to blow off some steam. A little frivolity goes a long way.”

I rest my hands on his biceps and shrug my agreement. “I know, those damn cop shows depict all of us as morose, broody fuckers who can’t have a good time. I mean do you know any one like that?”

Our mouths screw to the side for an instant and we both say, “Petrovich!”

“That cat,” John says as we dance in place at the entrance of the shack, “Needs laid. I am half tempted to get him a hooker if it’d help. I mean come on, I made a career out of black ops and I still manage to find the joy in life. What the fuck’s his excuse? Nicked his stupid pointy head shaving it bald?”

I shake my head and gently push away from him. “I was thinking that, or he’s seriously in the closet. Maybe I should hook him up with one of Jill’s buddies. She knows some eligible gay men in the area.”

“That’s not a bad idea. We’ll talk about it over dinner tomorrow night,” he decides for us.

We both turn to look at the doorless shack and shine a light on the inside.

“Why’d we decide to do this again?” John asks from beside me.

“Uh, we’re morons,” I supply.

Our mood grows a little more somber at the task facing us.

“Good enough,” he accepts. “Ladies first,” he says motioning me with the flash light,

I roll my eyes, even though he can’t see it and mumble, “Just like a man.”

I swing my light in first, arching it up and around the shack’s aluminum ceiling. Nothing special, graffiti, cobwebs, no visible critters, there’s some trash on the floor.

I step over the raised threshold and pull a pair of latex gloves from the pocket of my messenger bag. I hear John put his on and pull a camping lamp out of his bag. He sets it on the table in the shack and turns it on.

It lights up the tiny space and allows us to pocket our flashlights. Replacing the flashlight in my hand with a spray bottle full of Luminol, I begin with the table, spraying the visible surface down, then move towards the back of the shack and spray the wall to the right of the table, moving up the wall to the roof and down the other wall to the crude, dirt floor.

John does the same from his position at the other end of the table. We finish at the same time. I nod and he flips the camping light switch. The bright L.E.D. bulb that was visible, winks out and on comes its mate, a black light that will help the Luminol fluoresce.

The black light winks on and I grumble, “Well fuck me.”

“Ain’t that interesting?” John asks.

The spray area of the Luminol caused the chemical reagent to glow like Christmas Fucking Night.

“Well, what do you want to do about this?” I ask, looking at an arc on the wall that may very well be an atrial spray pattern.

“We bag and tag, Ann. Let’s get started,” he answers.

Sometimes I hate his answers. They usually mean lots more work for me. “Ya know we could call some techs out here in the A.M.”

“Nah, we’re here and I’d rather leave Duluth as soon as possible. Minnesotans don’t like me too much,” he answers.

“No one likes you too much. You either want to blow something up or kill someone when you go anywhere,” I tease.

He can’t argue so instead he pulls his own kit from his back pack. I follow suit and we take the time necessary to collect sample after sample. The hours bleed together as John and I work in a pattern that segments the room into a grid. He sticks to his half and I stick to mine. The pain in my lower back from being stooped over quits being felt somewhere along the way.

John and I end up in this zone when we do things like this. Time becomes an afterthought and we move together so well that I can’t tell he’s even in the room. I bag and tag bits of the floor, wood, chunks of debris and anything else that I can find.

I’m not sure how much we’ll learn from this, but it can’t hurt. Finally, I reach the end of my grid and slip the last evidence bag into my sack.

Light leaks into the corners of the room. I groan. “Fuck me,” I plead. “Tell me it’s not morning.”

“It’s not morning,” John parrots back from his own corner.

“Bullshit. There’s light outside,” I bark.

“Hey you asked me to tell you it’s not morning. You didn’t specify that you wanted the statement to be valid,” he groans as he rights himself. “Jesus H. Christ. I’m going to be sore tonight.”

“So that mean no dancing?” I ask a little put out. I like dancing. I like dancing with Jill.

“Nah, I’ll have Becca put some Ben-Gay on it before I crash this afternoon.” He shuts off the lamp and gathers his things. “Let’s go. With any luck we can have this stuff dumped off to Luce and Travis by nine and in bed by ten. We’ll meet for dinner around seven and then cut a rug after.”

I can’t disagree with the plan at all so I follow him outside, squinting against the rising sun and back to the ATV’s that will take us back to the truck that we have and then the truck can take us back to the plane John flew us in.

I so want a goddamn shower. I want a shower and a clean bed and some food at some point. Those thoughts persist through our travel. I help John in the cockpit and he flies us home. I’m not too sure who the jet belongs to.

Craning my neck, I look back and squint. There’s some seal on the far end of the cabin. I’m not even sure why I care. So instead, I focus on the sky in front of me and before I know it, I see the ground rushing up to meet us. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world.
I’m so damn tired my hair hurts. Taxing in, I see a small cluster of people in front of the hangar that we’re moving towards. The people get clearer and I see our team plus Becca and Jill standing there waiting on us.

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