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“Thanks.”
She buckled in, hoping as always she didn’t disgrace herself by throwing up. Marty handed her a set of headphones with a lip mic attached.
“You’ll be able to talk to me this way,” he explained. “It gets pretty noisy up here.”
“Been there, done that.” She gave him her best smile. “I’m ready.”
“So I gather. All right, then. You know the drill. If you see anything you think is a likely spot, tell me and I’ll go in lower.”
“Okay.”
As the helo lifted off, Dana felt the familiar sensation of her stomach dropping. She swallowed hard several times, and as Marty leveled off so did her insides. Below, cars and trucks moved out to the corners of the sector and people climbed out and fell in behind the dog handlers.
First, they flew over the entire area Cole had marked out.
“I do this to fix the landscape in my mind,” Marty said over the headsets. “Now, I’ll start the pattern.”
Dana kept her eyes glued to the ground, watching for the kind of places she knew men like this liked to leave their victims. In her hands, she gripped the photo from the envelope Cole had given her. It was taken where Leanne was found, and she tried to spot something similar.
She could see the four lines of searchers converging slowly from the distant corners of the area, spreading out like an army of ants. The land was mostly pasture, but trees lined one side of Hancock Road and in several places a heavy copse of sycamore and oak broke up the landscape.
Marty was starting the second leg of his pattern when something caught Dana’s eye. Forgetting the comm system, she yelled his name.
The pilot touched his ear. “You can speak normally with the headphones, and I can hear you.”
“Oh. Sorry. Look.” She pointed to a dusty ribbon cutting in from a highway at the edge of the sector. “See how that road goes into that thick stand of live oaks? Right there? The really heavily forested one? Can you get any lower?”
“You bet.”
He swooped down, and Dana ignored her stomach and concentrated on the ground below. It was hard to see through the trees, but she was sure she spotted something that didn’t belong there.
“Can you talk to Tina?” When he nodded, she pointed again. “Tell them to move the searchers over to that area?”
“Will do.” He picked up a satellite radio and held it so Dana could hear, too. “Tina, come in. Come in, Solize leader.”
“I’m here, Marty. Got something for us?”
“I think so. Got a spot for you to check. I’ll mark it for you.” He hovered over it, giving her the coordinates.
Immediately, they saw the closest team begin to converge on the spot Dana indicated. Marty continued to hover until the searchers reached it and entered the thick stand of trees. It seemed like forever to Dana before the radio crackled again.
“Tell the lady she’s got great eyesight and better instincts,” Tina said. “We found her. And the dogs are going wild.”
“How come?”
“Wait until you see what this bastard did to kill her scent.” Even over the sat radio Tina’s voice held barely contained fury.
“I’m taking my passenger back to Cole,” Marty told her. “I’ll pick him up and bring him to the site. Better radio him and tell him to call off all the other searches.”
He clicked off the radio and turned to Dana. “Hope you don’t mind, but we need to keep the scene uncontaminated.”
“I’m not so sure I want to see it, anyway,” Dana replied, nausea clutching at her.
****
Cole hoped he wouldn’t embarrass himself by being sick. He’d seen some terrible things in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the sight of Shannon’s body was enough to turn anyone’s stomach. After the helicopter dropped him, he called Nita Sanchez, keeping his back to what was left of Shannon Fowler until the county van arrived.
“I’m going to have to transport her before I can tell you anything,” she said, her voice taut with rage. “I’ll need to clean her up to look for trace evidence and I can’t do it here. If I ever get my hands on that bastard, I’ll gut him like a wild animal.”
