Page 87 of Rage

Glock cuts me a sharp look. “Holy shit.”

I take an involuntary step back. “We need to clear out. Get the road blocked. A grid search set up for the entire area.” I glance behind me. Through the trees I see another set of flashing lights, telling me Rasmussen and Tomasetti have arrived on scene.

Using the same path that brought us here, Glock and I back out of the scene.

An hour later, I’m leaning against the door of my rental car, trying in vain to make sense of the death of yet another Amish young person on my watch. To protect the scene, all LEO vehicles have been moved out of the designated perimeter, which is quite large. Permitted personnel include the coroner and his technician, Tomasetti, and a second BCI agent who specializes in crime scene investigation.

“Kate.”

I look toward the yellow tape that’s strung along the perimeter of the scene to see Tomasetti duck beneath it and approach. “Anything?” I ask.

“Not much,” he growls. “The whole area’s a damn jungle.”

The image of the dead woman lying facedown in the weeds has been branded into my brain with such power that I can’t get it out of my head. “It looks like she was shot in the back,” I say.

“Looks like a gunshot wound at her temple, too,” he says.

“Did you see any indication that someone else was there?” I ask.

“We marked a few areas. There are a couple of broken branches. What might be a shoe impression.”

“She’s not wearing shoes,” I say quickly. “She ran into those woods barefoot. If there’s a footwear impression, it wasn’t hers.”

The muscles in his jaws flex and he looks away. “Okay.” I can tell by his demeanor he’s feeling the same thing I am. That we failed her.

“Tomasetti, we had her,” I whisper. “We fucking had her.”

“I know.”

“Now we have three dead young people. They were…” I don’t know how to finish the sentence; I’m too emotional and keenly aware that it’s not a good look. “Maybe we should have—”

He cuts me off. “Should have what, Kate?” He asks the question sharply, his eyes fixing on mine. “What could we have done differently?”

“Had we taken a harder line, she might still be alive, damn it.”

“This wasn’t your fault,” he snaps. “And it wasn’t mine. We did what we could. We knew she was holding out on us.”

The logical side of my brain knows he’s right. The emotional side of my brain rages against the odious reality of what happened to her.

“What about the lawyer?” I ask. “At what point last night did he part ways with her?”

“I’m on my way to see him as soon as I leave here,” he tells me.

I want to go with him; I want to look into that smug son of a bitch’s eyes and ask him when he last saw her. Where she was going. Who she was with. I want to know who’s paying him and why. Of course, I can’t because we’re stretched thin and as soon as I finish up here, I’m going to speak with Carter Brooks.

“I think the bigger question,” Tomasetti says, thinking aloud, “is what did she know that got her killed?”

“She’d been a topless dancer,” I say. “She rubbed shoulders with a lot of the wrong kind of people. She lived a high-risk lifestyle.”

“Could be drug related.” He shrugs. “Maybe the wrong person found out she’d been picked up by law enforcement. They were afraid she might turn over on them. And they eliminated her.”

The issue of drugs has come up a dozen times in the course of the investigation, and yet we’ve not found evidence indicating any are being sold. “Could be an illicit-relationship kind of thing,” I say. “Maybe she got into a relationship with a client. Maybe he was married or a high-profile individual who didn’t want his reputation sullied. Or his marriage ruined.”

“Or you could take that angle a step farther,” he says. “What if she engaged in some illicit affair or relationship and tried to cash in?”

“Blackmail?”

He shrugs. “Any of those situations are powerful motives to do away with someone.”