Cold Jade (6 page)

T
he forest was
empty and cold. Mack felt foolish for not bringing a warmer jacket, even though the FBI agents didn’t seem to be bothered by the cold. Then again, he was now a Florida boy. With thin blood that preferred eighty-five degrees and sunny.

Mack looked around the clearing. They were in a shallow, natural draw, surrounded by tall pines, some spruce, and rocky, uneven ground.

Before them was an empty hole. The bodies had been removed and the area was still surrounded with crime scene tape.

Mack stood looking at the dark earth, felt the gray clouds roll in over him. He shrugged his shoulders against the cool, moist air.

“Talk about the middle of nowhere,” one of the agents said. Mack knew they weren’t sure what to do. After all, the crime scene guys had been here and left, the area thoroughly scoured for any tracks or evidence. They had probably been told to take the former profiler out to the crime scene and stay out of his way.

Mack pictured the map in his head. The location made sense. North and south of Denver was where you would find more cities and a denser concentration of people. Directly west was another bad idea as that’s where Interstate 70 ran. So if you were looking to dispose of bodies, you would go either northwest or southwest from Denver. This area was northwest, beyond the Arapaho National Forest, north of I-70, but south of Highway 40.

The middle of nowhere.

“The autopsy will give us some answers,” Mack said. “Were they already dead when they were brought here? Had they eaten? If they were already dead how long had they been dead? Maybe then we’ll be able to answer some questions.”

The agent nodded.

Mack looked at the side of the hill that had washed away in the rain. It was really impressive how much land had given way.

He’d chased enough killers to know that no matter how good they were at planning, there was always the possibility of some unforeseen event that could derail their best-laid plans. In this case, a flash flood.

“It’s actually good news,” Mack said.

“What’s good news?” the agent asked.

“Well, that we found them, certainly. But if you look at the depth of this draw, and how much soil was washed away it tells you that whoever buried these bodies, buried them in much deeper ground than most murderers.”

“And that’s good news?” the agent said.

“Sure,” Mack replied. “Because the deeper and more permanent a killer buries his victims, the more it means his plan was that they would never be found.”

The agent nodded but didn’t say anything. Mack could tell he still didn’t get it.

“So the good news is that when killers dispose of their victims’ bodies in public areas, where they know they’ll be found, they’re much more likely to try to destroy any evidence,” Mack said. “But in cases where they think no one will ever find the body, well, a lot of times they just don’t want to take the time to destroy evidence.”

The agent nodded.

It was cold enough that Mack’s breath hung in the air above him.

“In other words, their confidence leads to them not being as careful as they should have been. Which, sometimes, means they leave evidence.”

He thought of his friend Archibald Spencer, and the words of Hopestil Fletcher rang in his ears.

There could be more.

Mack turned his attention to the things he could control and tried not to worry about the rest.

“Let’s hope they left something for us to find,” Mack said. “And that we find it, fast.”

W
hen the tailgate swung
open with an agonizing screech, Rebecca squinted against the small influx of light that made its way into the back of the truck.

She was facing away from the tailgate, and immediately saw just how dirty and disgusting the truck was. There was dirt, rust, and a few strands of what she assumed to be hay. It also smelled vaguely of farm animals.

Rebecca felt the restraints being loosened behind her back, and then she was pulled from the truck.

She came face to face with her captor for just a brief moment. Rebecca got a glimpse of a sharply drawn face, beautiful but severe, with eyes that seemed to look past her.

The woman spun Rebecca around and she felt a hand push her forward and she started walking, stumbling at first, unsure of where she was going with legs that were in dire need of circulation.

The air was cold. Rebecca tried to look but she was being marched quickly toward a small cabin. They were surrounded by trees. Rebecca thought she caught a quick glimpse of mountains beyond.

Rebecca struggled to get her bearings. She had to fight, somehow. And right now all she could use was her mind.

It was fall in Iowa, so she had to be at a higher elevation for it to be this cold, unless the Midwest was experiencing some kind of dramatic cold snap, which she doubted. No, Rebecca figured they had gone west from Iowa, maybe to Colorado, Wyoming or Utah. Maybe even Montana.

Rebecca knew that there were some anti-government people out in the West, although she vaguely recalled them being more in Idaho than anywhere else, but she wasn’t sure if that was the case.

So she was probably in one of the Western states where the Rockies were. No matter where it was, she thought, it was a long way from Iowa.

The hand in the back pushed her forward again, and she kept walking straight through the front door of the cabin. The woman reached around her, opened the door, and pushed Rebecca inside.

There was a nearly overwhelming smell of disinfectant that scared the hell out of her.

What had happened here?

Her eyes were just beginning to adjust to the darkness of the cabin’s interior when a sharp pain hit her upper arm and she saw that a needle had been jabbed into the meat of her arm.

She struggled, but the woman held her in place, quite easily, Rebecca realized, and everything quickly began to feel thick. Her face, her tongue, her feet.

The cabin went out of focus and she heard a strange wooshing sound in her ears.

And then she felt nothing at all.

O
n pick
-up and delivery days like this, Butterfly often thought she could smell the flames of her home as it burned and her family lay dying. Of course, she couldn’t really be sure of what she remembered. She had only been a few years old at the time. Most of what she knew about the horror had been told to her.

Yet none of that knowledge changed the smoldering scent of death that seemed to penetrate her consciousness.

Now, in the cabin, she put the new target on the bed and firmly fastened the restraints.

Butterfly felt nothing inside. Her mind moved in jagged bursts, jerking from one task to the next while her body moved with an unnatural grace. She had always been like this. After her family had died, she had been sent to a home with other children like her.

It was where she had met the only person in the world she loved. He had helped her when no one else could, or would.

For as long as she could remember, she had always been the fastest on the playground and not just among the girls. She could outrun, out jump, and later, out punch any boy she met. Because there had been fights. Violence had proven to be something that she felt comfortable with. It wasn’t long before she sought it out with increasing frequency.

They had all feared her. Everyone at the orphanage. The students. And the adults.

But that was all in the past, something she rarely thought about. Only on delivery days.

Now, she knew what she had to do. The lingering scents of death and darkness were always pushed away by his familiar words, the image of his face and the subconscious emotion that he was her only tenuous connection to life itself.

Butterfly shut and locked the cabin and crossed the small compound to the other cabin.

When she opened the door, her eyes took in the carnage before her. She had seen worse.

She bundled the body in a specially made body bag, put it on an ambulance stretcher, and wheeled it out to the truck. She went to the caretaker’s cottage, and brought in the cleaning supplies, disinfectant, and bleach.

It took her several hours to restore the cabin to its original state.

When she was finished, Butterfly put the cleaning supplies back in the caretaker’s cottage, and then she performed the most important task of the day.

She checked the cabin’s hidden cameras via the video control center just off the main room of the caretaker’s cottage.

Butterfly sped through the actual footage, not wanting to watch any of it, and when it reached the end, she saved the file to the computer’s hard drive, made a copy, and forwarded it to The Owner.

Almost immediately, her phone rang. And since only one other person possessed the required number, Butterfly knew who it was.

She answered the phone and The Owner gave Butterfly her new set of instructions.

B
ernard Evans had
no post-purchase regret.

As much as he enjoyed the shopping aspect of his secret passion, there was no doubt he would make a purchase. It was the thrill of the hunt, with the girl being the trophy, but instead of a gun he used his bank account. Besides, he thought with a smile, an overflowing bank account was much more dangerous than a loaded firearm.

Ordinarily, people who committed money to major purchases often felt a sense of guilt, or even fear, over what they had done. But Evans had no such emotion. The purchase was the climax, the shopping the foreplay.

He imagined it was like an alcoholic who claimed to love the atmosphere of his favorite smoky bar. Who raved about the camaraderie, the banter with the bartender. But he was really there for the booze, for the high it brought, and he could talk all he wanted about the social aspects of the bar, but he went there for one reason only; to get stoned.

And for Bernard Evans, getting stoned was murder.

So he had bought the girl.

It was the most he’d ever spent at The Murder Store, by far. But he knew she would be worth it. He’d been buying what he considered “bargains” up to that point. Women who were drifters, or runaways, some even former prostitutes or escort service types. Strippers down on their luck.

But in the back of his mind, he knew he was getting ready for bigger and better things. He was like the gambler who started at the smaller pot tables, graduating to the big time.

And this girl was the big time.

Wholesome, all-American, from the Midwest. Clean, pure, no tattoos or piercings. She was like the girl next door.

But he, Evans, had never had a girl next door. He’d fucking lived in a trailer park, the only “girls next door” were fifty-year-old waitresses who chain smoked and smelled like dirty locker rooms.

He’d known a few girls in school from time to time, but he’d always been moving, always going to new schools, the perennial new kid who either got beat up or made fun of. He would finally begin to make a place for himself, and then the family would move again.

It was what happened when the authorities were always curious about you.

But he’d never forgotten those women and men at the trailer park smoking cigarettes and drinking, even in the morning.

In fact, sometimes, sitting at the head of a conference table, overseeing a software company takeover, or an IPO that was netting him hundreds of millions of dollars, he swore he could smell the cigarette smoke and spilled Night Train wine on the trailer park’s gravel walkways.

No, he was going to have this girl. That was a certainty.

Thanks to The Murder Store.

He figured there were only a few customers. Oh, there were probably plenty who shared in his dark, murderous fantasies. But how many had the money to make it happen?

So he’d put his best efforts to uncover the trail of The Murder Store, for his own security, and he’d never been able to crack the encryption, the switchbacks, the identity screens. And that made him happy.

Because he knew that if he couldn’t crack The Murder Store, no one else could, either.

T
he bodies were
on the gurneys, centered, with sheets covering them. The sheets and the steel surfaces were much too big for the tiny objects they held.

Their footsteps rang hollow on the tile floor as Mack and the FBI agent assigned to be his escort approached the bodies.

The coroner reached for the sheet covering the first body and Mack held his breath. The coroner’s assistant, a young man with a thick beard, stood nearby.

The sheet was pulled away and the first thing Mack saw was the face of a young boy whose eyes were wide open, his skin and features badly decomposed.

But still, Mack could tell the boy was very young and no matter how much death he had seen, Mack felt darkness cross his soul.

The coroner began speaking, but Mack had trouble following what the man was saying. He felt sick to his stomach and had a moment of lightheadedness.

“Are you all right, sir?” the coroner asked. He was a short, rotund man with a bald head and thick black glasses.

“Yes, please go on,” Mack said, his voice unsteady.

The coroner continued his report but Mack could barely hear him.

The phrase “massive trauma” and “torture” were the only things that cut through. The coroner estimated the time of death to be between six to nine months earlier.

He moved on to the other two bodies and Mack blocked everything from his mind.

He realized why he had left the Bureau. He no longer had the courage to face what one human being could do to another. Mack tried to focus on the coroner’s face but he felt sweat break out along his forehead and his stomach was queasy. It reminded him of the first autopsy he ever attended, decades ago. Mack actually thought he had been stronger back then.

Not like now.

The mind was like a callus. The more pressure and abrasion, the tougher it became. Too long without it, and the callus grew soft.

Mack was soft now, he knew that.

“Do you have a written report?” Mack asked, interrupting the coroner. The man nodded to his assistant who gave Mack a thick folder.

“Is there contact information for me to call you if I have any questions?” Mack asked.

“It’s all in there,” the coroner said. Mack sensed irritation in the man’s voice.

Mack followed the agent out the parking lot where they parted ways. He got into his rental car and headed for the general direction of his hotel.

The fresh air had done him some good.

And now, the feeling of sick helplessness was gone.

It had been replaced with anger.