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  Vaguely gesturing towards the case files on his desk he said, ‘You did well, making the match.’

  A smile came at last, although only fleetingly. ‘The magic of computer science.’

  ‘Which I don’t understand. But surely computers are only as good as the people who operate them.’ Amy Halliday was a stand-back-and-think-about girl, not someone about whom an immediate judgement could be made. The word, he supposed, was petite, although she was interestingly full busted beneath the severely practical business suit. The heavy, black-framed spectacles didn’t overwhelm the small features, contributing rather than detracting from the studious attractiveness. Behind the glasses the eyes were deeply blue, almost black, and the bobbed hair was black, too. There was no jewellery – no rings at all – apart from a silver cross on a choker chain holding it high at her throat. She looked like the intimidating sort of girl who played chess well and was good at puzzles and quizzes. He hoped she was.

  She adjusted her skirt, although without tugging at it, when she sat down and met his obvious examination with a direct stare of her own, allowing her eyes the slightest wander of returned assessment. She said, ‘Could be a bastard. No obvious pattern.’

  Powell only just avoided a frown at the sort of remark he expected from the professional profilers at Quantico rather than from a computer jockey in Research and Analysis. ‘It’ll come, maybe with the next killing.’

  ‘You going to create a task force?’

  The directness was unexpected in the watch-your-back artifice of Pennsylvania Avenue. She’d proved herself good at her job, he remembered: perhaps she regarded that as her strength. Harry Beddows was obviously impressed – as Powell himself was increasingly becoming – and Beddows wouldn’t risk his own self-preservation with anyone he considered second rate. He said, ‘That’s the way it’s done. Deciding where to establish it is going to be a problem, if he goes on striking as far apart as this.’

  ‘My section head’s made me available. With this much territory to cover you’re going to need a lot of technological back-up …’ The smile came again, as quickly as before. ‘That’s if you want me aboard, of course. You might have other people in mind.’ She’d accessed his personnel file before the meeting – pulled his photograph up on her screen – but hadn’t quite got the right impression. Crinkled hair that probably didn’t need combing a lot, square featured with a tiny cleft in the chin, brown eyed; athletic body – broad shouldered, narrow hipped – although the file didn’t mention any sport. It was the attitude the photograph hadn’t been able to catch, the eye-to-eye, what-you-see-is-what-you-get insouciance. No, not insouciance. That indicated a conceited casualness and she didn’t imagine him uncaring, despite the recent screw-ups. Properly sure of himself, she corrected. In different times and in different circumstances it might have been interesting to find out a lot more about Wesley James Powell not included in his already closely studied personnel file. But now was very definitely not that time. She’d got the professional break she’d angled so hard for and she wasn’t going to be distracted from that in any shape or form, even if that shape looked intriguing under the sports jacket and button-down Oxford.

  Powell was asking himself questions. Was the self-assurance, bordering on conceit, genuine? Or forced, to impress him? Whichever, it was succeeding. ‘I don’t have anything – or anyone – in mind at the moment.’

  ‘You’ll need premises. Computer facilities and filing and record staff back-up. My discipline.’

  Powell smiled wryly. ‘Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out.’

  ‘I have, as much as can be worked out at the moment.’

  He found her honesty unsettling and knew a lot of word manipulators at Pennsylvania Avenue would, too. ‘You’re telling me I can’t do without you?’

  ‘That’s the message,’ she said. There was a hopefulness in her attitude. ‘I really would like to be part of whatever team you put together.’

  ‘Why don’t we agree that you are?’

  Her smile was dazzling. ‘I was worried I came on too strongly.’

  ‘It worked, didn’t it?’

  ‘I won’t let you down. This is important to me.’

  ‘I already got that impression. I think it’s important to both of us.’ Was that an admission he should have made to someone he didn’t know? Amy Halliday was a disarming person, quite unlike anybody he’d ever encountered before in Research and Analysis.

  She said, ‘What do you want me to do, while you’re away?’

  ‘There’s not much you can do, on what we’ve got at the moment.’

  ‘You mind if I get everything that there is, in Texas and Alabama, sent up? There are templates I could start, for a proper database later.’

  She certainly seemed in one hell of a rush. But wasn’t that what they were supposed to be? ‘Go ahead.’

  The smile came again. ‘Thank you. For everything.’

  ‘Let’s hope it works.’

  ‘It will.’

  Wesley Powell left a message on Ann’s answering machine but she didn’t return the call so he telephoned again. She answered on the second ring.

  ‘I called before,’ he complained.

  ‘I’ve only just got in. I haven’t had time to get back to you.’ His former wife was a teacher at the Arlington school quite close to the Key Bridge.

  ‘Is Beth there?’

  ‘She’s gone to a movie.’

  ‘She’s thirteen years old.’

  ‘So’s Jennifer, who’s in her class. And Jennifer’s sister is seventeen, OK?’

  ‘What’s the movie?’

  There was a sigh, from the other end. ‘Disney. You got something to say to me, Wes?’

  No, he thought. Hadn’t had, for years. Not ever. He’d never have married her if she hadn’t been pregnant. Why she had become pregnant, he was sure. To get away from the three-kids-in-a-bed existence in the San Diego clapboard and the straying-hands father. Anyone would have done. It had just happened to be him. He said, ‘I’ve got to go away. I don’t know for how long. So I’ll have to cancel Beth this weekend.’

  ‘I’ll tell her.’

  ‘I wanted to tell her myself.’

  ‘She should be back by eight.’

  Which was too late for a thirteen-year-old with school the next day. ‘I’ll call.’

  ‘Jim got let go.’

  Shit! It hadn’t been a long relationship, maybe six months with his ex-wife’s new partner having to work away some of the time, but Powell had been hopeful. If Ann remarried it would save a chunk of alimony. ‘I’m sorry. I thought he was a foreman. Secure.’

  ‘There were four. He got unlucky.’

  In between the three calls it took finally to reach his daughter Powell packed a case, cancelled deliveries and warned the janitor he was going out of town. When he finally got Beth he said, ‘It’s nine o’clock. Isn’t that a bit late, honey?’

  ‘We stopped for pizza,’ said the child.

  ‘Wasn’t Mom worried?’

  ‘Why should she be?’

  There wasn’t a lot he could do, Powell accepted. It wasn’t enough to challenge the custody order and he could hardly have Beth staying with him, liable as he was to be sent to the other side of the country at a moment’s notice, like now. He wished it was different. He didn’t know anything about the man Ann was with now. Beth was always noncommittal when he asked how things were between her and Ann and he’d become increasingly worried that the silence itself meant the situation wasn’t good. ‘How’s school?’

  ‘Geography’s not so good.’

  ‘Mom told you about the weekend?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Where you going?’

  ‘Texas. Where’s Texas?’

  ‘Dad! I know where Texas is!’

  ‘Maybe we can fix something longer than a weekend when I get back.’

  ‘That would be cool.’

  ‘Be good.’

  ‘Sure.�
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  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you, too.’ Powell wasn’t sure he told his daughter that enough. Or proved it.

  It had been a first-time experiment for the man who was Harold Taylor and he’d never experienced such power in any previous life – been able to create such total, abject terror. It had been fantastic. The black bastard who’d actually killed him – the one whose retribution it had been the most important of all to realize – had virtually gone insane. So, too, had the needle-dicked trucker who hadn’t been so tough at the end, pissing himself, begging for mercy, screaming he wasn’t responsible for what his father had done. And the whore had been a good fuck, into the bargain.

  But the very end had been the best. He’d never before changed his features in front of his victims, facially transmogrifying into the person he’d been when they’d caused him harm. He did it now, in front of the mirror, sniggering in self-admiration at the transformation of Harold Taylor into Myron Nolan and then back again to Harold Taylor: back and forth, back and forth, Harold into Myron, Myron into Harold. It was horrifying. Staggeringly, numbingly horrifying.

  He reverted at last to his new face, gazing down at the list on the table in front of him. Still a lot to go, waiting, unsuspecting. He’d do the facial trick every time now, make them remember who he was before he slowly punished them, for what they’d done.

  He was having a hell of a time. He sniggered again, at the word: having a hell of a time showing them what hell was like.

  Chapter Three

  Budd Maddox, the local San Antonio FBI agent, had been a contender for the American Olympic boxing team and still looked fit enough to qualify. He was waiting for Powell at the end of the disembarkation pier, a towering black so tall that Powell had physically to look upwards at the man. The crushing handshake came with the boondock resentment towards a higher-grade takeover by a headquarters honcho. Powell had known it – and probably shown it – himself when his rising-through-the-ranks territory had been invaded. He was prepared for it: headquarters thinking, don’t offend the local guy. Still on the concourse Powell said, ‘You were right. It is serial. There’s been another. Birmingham, Alabama. So I’m co-ordinating.’

  The huge man smiled down at him, the reserve perceptibly lessening. ‘A national case, then?’

  Powell smiled back at the other man’s professional awareness of Washington knowing that he’d got a case right from the very beginning. And when they solved it, there’d be the public recognition from the major media exposure. If it turned out to be the first killing, Texas would have the right of trial and execution. ‘And you rang the bell.’

  ‘He wasn’t killed in the city,’ said Maddox. ‘It’s county, not metro. Sheriffs name is Lindropp, Burt Lindropp.’

  Caught by the tone of the other FBI man’s voice Powell said, ‘We got a problem?’

  ‘Lindropp’s enjoyed being on television and getting his name in the papers. I’m to tell you to call for an appointment. And Dr Jamieson, the medical examiner, says he’ll make time.’

  ‘Why’s it always got to be like this between us and local agencies?’ wondered Powell, irritably.

  Instead of answering, Maddox said, ‘I had someone named Amy Halliday on. Said she had your authority to have the complete files sent up?’

  ‘That’s right,’ frowned Powell, curious at the other man’s response.

  ‘That’s the problem,’ admitted Maddox. ‘I already sent virtually all that I’ve got.’

  ‘Positive local obstruction?’

  ‘That about sums it up,’ said Maddox.

  ‘Then we’d better see what we can do for ourselves.’

  ‘They won’t like it, we don’t go to them first.’

  ‘They don’t get a choice.’

  Outside the terminal the heat was like a heavy hand pressing down upon them. Some men were actually wearing cowboy hats and tooled boots. Powell took off his jacket and loosened his tie, the way he preferred to work anyway. In Texas a hip-holstered .44 Smith and Wesson wouldn’t attract any attention except, perhaps, for its smallness compared to what everyone else owned. As they moved off Powell said, ‘Talk me through it.’

  ‘A real crazy,’ said Maddox. ‘Dead guy’s named Gene Stanley Johnson. He and his sister worked the family trucking business set up by his father, about thirty years ago. He was twenty-six. Single. Girl’s name was Billie Jean Kesby. That’s her real name, which was lucky. Charged under it three times in El Paso, for prostitution. When they were found both had been decapitated, each head arranged upright beside the body. His dick, also cut off, was in her mouth. Both her breasts had been amputated. Their eyes had been gouged out and a religious cross cut into their foreheads.’

  ‘Jesus!’ said Powell.

  ‘He sure wasn’t looking after his flock this day,’ said Maddox. ‘The Johnson business has five rigs, bigger than hell. Liquid gas. Barbara – that’s the unmarried sister – ran the business side, Gene looked after the rigs and organized the truckers. Was one himself …’ As he joined Highway 10 Maddox said: ‘This was his route, on the 15th. Same every Wednesday, regular delivery to LA. He pulled into a truck stop, about three miles past the 290 junction, just short of Segovia … That’s where Billie Jean was waiting—’

  ‘Waiting?’ broke in Powell.

  ‘That’s the way it looks.’ He jerked his head towards the rear seat. ‘Place is called Jilly Joe’s. Got the owner’s statement in the case there, you want to read it.’

  ‘How much further past the stop were the bodies found?’

  ‘No more than two miles.’

  ‘We’ll stop by on the way back, after looking at the scene. Who found them?’

  ‘Another trucker who’d seen them both at Jilly Joe’s. Name of Cummings, Sam Cummings.’ Maddox slowed and said, ‘Here’s the stop.’

  Heat was shimmering off the black top and the scrub and desert of the Edwards Plateau stretched away to the end of the world, edged at the very extreme by purple hazed mountains. The truck stop was all by itself on the desert’s edge, a rambling, single-storey clapboard surmounted by a sign that proclaimed JILLY JOE’S, and was encircled by red and gold lights that permanently chased themselves around the lettering. There didn’t appear to be any outside perimeter and there were six enormous trucks and five cars that Powell could see, strewn haphazardly where drivers had simply braked to a halt. It seemed much closer than two miles when Maddox said, ‘And here’s where the bodies and the rig were found.’

  It was the only spot in what seemed hundreds of miles in which there was an abrupt upthrust of rock that appeared to have pulled the ground up with it. There was an engulfing eruption of dust and sand as Maddox pulled off the metalled road. Maddox parked on the far side of the outcrop. The murder area was still marked out by stakes and yellow scene-of-crime tape, although several of the markers had fallen over and the tape flapped in the wind, as if trying to summon help. There was a wide, dark brown – almost black – patch baked into the lighter desert sand. Maddox said, ‘Blood. That’s where they were found.’

  Closer, Powell could still see part of where the body positions had been taped out, side by side.

  ‘The heads were there—’ said the man, pointing to the left of the outlines. ‘Gene’s dick in her mouth … there weren’t any eyes …’

  ‘You mean they’d been taken out? Or pushed into their heads?’

  ‘Dr Jamieson found the left ones way back in the heads. But not the right.’

  ‘You find them anywhere here?’

  ‘The bodies had been removed before I arrived. All the examinations completed.’

  ‘What!’ demanded Powell, outraged.

  ‘That’s the way it happened: all done before I could intervene.’

  ‘What about the sheriff’s people?’

  ‘They haven’t made their evidence available yet.’

  It was worse than he’d imagined, decided Powell. ‘Were the buzzards here, before the bodies were found? Desert animals?’
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  ‘No-one said.’

  He hadn’t asked, Powell decided. ‘The eyes could have been taken as a souvenir. Serial killers collect mementoes. What else?’

  ‘The crosses, like in a church, cut into both their foreheads. Right between their eyes.’

  ‘What about clothes?’

  ‘Naked. And with their arms and legs splayed out, like in a star shape. All their clothes were folded up, real neat.’

  ‘On their backs or on their fronts?’

  ‘On their backs. With their heads propped up beside.’

  Powell gestured further along the just visible track that disappeared over the rise. ‘Where’s that lead to?’

  ‘A broken-down shack, abandoned years ago. Just three walls standing now. Roof’s fallen in.’

  ‘Who owns it?’

  Maddox brightened. ‘According to the land registry the last owner was a desert bum, looking for gold where there isn’t any. Ownership died with him.’

  Powell walked a little way up the track towards the rise, then came back. ‘You weren’t able to carry out any proper scene-of-crime examination, right?’

  ‘Whatever forensic there was had already been done. People gone.’

  ‘Sheriff call you?’

  ‘Highway Patrol.’

  How the hell much longer was it going to take for local forces to accept the Bureau as an expert, specialized addition, not an enemy intruding into every investigation? ‘What made Sam Cummings stop?’

  ‘Johnson’s truck was all silver. It wasn’t quite hidden by these rocks, not like our car. Flashing in the sun like a beacon, apparently. He recognized it and decided to take a look. Says he guessed what they were doing and decided to have a piece himself.’

  ‘He say anything about another vehicle?’

  Maddox gave an embarrassed shrug. ‘I haven’t seen his full statement. Just a preliminary.’

  Powell sighed, guessing the answer before asking the question. ‘He followed Johnson along the track in his own rig?’

  ‘Right.’