Washington, D.C.

There was no easy way to pick up a human head.

At least that’s what Special Agent Maggie O’Dell had decided. She watched the scene below and sympathized with the young crime lab technician. Maggie wondered if that was exactly what he was thinking as he squatted in the mud, looking at it from yet another angle. Even Detective Julia Racine remained quiet, standing over him, but unable to offer any of her regular advice. It was the quietest Maggie had ever seen the detective.

Stan Wenhoff, chief medical examiner for the District, yelled down an instruction or two, but stayed beside Maggie on top of the embankment, not making any attempt to find a way down. Actually Maggie was surprised to see Stan on a Friday afternoon, especially at the beginning of a holiday weekend. Normally he would have sent one of his deputies, except that he wouldn’t want to miss out on making headlines. And this case would certainly start making headlines now.

Maggie looked beyond the riverbank, out at the water and the city on the other side. Despite the usual terror alerts, the District was preparing for the weekend festivities, expecting sunny skies and cooler-than-average temperatures. Not that she had any big plans beyond lounging in the backyard with Harvey. She’d throw a couple of steaks on the grill, read the latest Jeffery Deaver.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear though the breeze immediately tugged another one free. Yes, it was an absolutely beautiful summer day, except for the decapitated head someone had discarded on the muddy riverbank. What level of evil did it take to slice another person’s head completely off and leave it like a piece of trash? Her friend, Gwen Patterson, accused her of having an obsession with evil. Maggie didn’t look at it so much as an obsession as an age-old quest. She had decided long ago that it was part of her job to root out evil and destroy it.

“Finish going through the surrounding surface,” Stan called down. “Then just scoop it up into a bag.”

Maggie glanced at Stan. Scoop it up? Easy for him to say from up here where his polished shoes were safe and the waft of death hadn’t yet arrived. But even from above, Maggie could see it was a daunting task. The riverbank was littered with cans and discarded take-out containers and wrappers. She knew the area—this stretch under the overpass—well enough to know there were also cigarette butts, condoms and a needle or two. The killer had taken a risk, discarding the head in such a well-trafficked area.

Ordinarily Maggie would find herself assessing that risk as the killer’s apparent disorganization. Taking risks could amount to simple panic. But since this was the third head to show up in the District in three weeks, Maggie knew this had little to do with panic and everything to do with the killer’s twisted strategy.

“You mind if I come down and take a closer look?” Maggie called down.

Racine shrugged. “Help yourself,” she said, but she came to the bottom of the embankment and offered her arm for leverage. Maggie waved her off.

She searched instead for anything—branches, rocks, roots—to hang on to. There was nothing but river mud and tall grass. She didn’t have much choice but to slip and slide. Like a skier without poles, she tried to keep her balance, managing to stay on her feet, skidding past Racine, but stopping within inches of ending up in the Potomac.

Racine shook her head, a slight smirk on her lips, but thankfully didn’t say anything. Maggie didn’t need to be reminded that perhaps she went a bit overboard when it came to Racine, not wanting to accept any favors, or worse, feel she needed to repay a debt. She and Racine had had enough challenges and obstacles in the last several years. And more importantly, they were even. That’s where Maggie wanted to leave it.

Maggie tried to clean her shoes of the clumps of mud, rubbing them against the tall grass, not wanting to bring any more foreign particles to the scene. Her leather flats would be ruined. She was careless about shoes, often forgetting her slip-on boots. Gwen constantly warned her that her treatment of shoes bordered on irreverence. It reminded Maggie of Stan’s shiny, polished ones, and she glanced back up the embankment, noticing that he had backed away from the edge. Was he worried she may have started a mud slide, or did he want to make sure no one expected him to follow her path? Either way, she knew he wouldn’t be coming down.

Julia Racine caught Maggie looking up.

“Heaven forbid he gets his shoes dirty,” Racine said under her breath as if reading Maggie’s thoughts. But her eyes and attention quickly returned to the decapitated head as she added, “It’s got to be the same killer. But we may have gotten lucky this time.”

Maggie had only recently seen pieces of the case files on the other two heads. This was her first invitation to the crime scene, now that Racine and Chief Henderson suspected they might have a serial killer on their hands.

“Why lucky?” Maggie finally asked when it became obvious that’s what Racine was waiting for. Some things never changed, like Racine demanding everyone’s attention before she announced her brilliant theories.

“Getting that tip allowed us to get here before the critters finished their snack. The other two were down to the bone. We still haven’t been able to identify them.”

Maggie swiped her shoes against the grass one last time and came closer. Then the smell hit her like a blast of hot air. The mixture of scents that accompanied death was difficult for Maggie to describe, always the same and yet always different, depending on the surroundings. There was the faint metallic smell of blood, but this time overpowered by that of rotting flesh and the muck of river mud. She hesitated, but only for a second or two, focusing instead on the grisly scene less than three feet in front of her.

From above on the embankment she had thought there was a tangle of algae and muddy grass holding the head in place. Now she could see it was actually the victim’s long hair, twisted and wrapped around the back of the head, allowing the face to stare up at the clear blue sky. A little closer still, and Maggie could see that stare was not the correct word. The eyelids seemed to flutter as dozens of milky-white maggots pushed and shoved their way into the eye sockets. Even the victim’s lips appeared to be moving as if allowing one last whisper, but it was rather the slow-moving masses of maggots. They were pouring from the woman’s nostrils too, unrelenting, determined and focused on their task of devouring their prize from the inside out.

Maggie waved at the lingering blowflies and squatted opposite the crime lab tech to get an almost eye-level view. Beyond the buzzing flies, this close she could hear the squishing sound as the maggots pushed and shoved at each other to squeeze inside the various orifices. There was a sort of sucking sound, too.

God, she hated maggots.

During her early days as an FBI newbie when she had no fear and much to prove, at the request—or rather the dare—of a medical examiner, she had put her hand into a corpse’s maggot-filled mouth to retrieve the victim’s driver’s license. It had been the killer’s trademark and not an unusual one, allowing his victims their identities even though he stuffed them down their throats. Ever since then it was still difficult for her, whenever she saw maggots up close and personal, to not feel that sticky trail of slime they had left all over her hands and up her arms as they quickly grasped at self-preservation and began sucking at her own flesh.

But now, sitting back on muddy heels, she knew what Racine meant about getting lucky this time. Despite all the movement, Maggie could see clumps of yellow-white eggs stuffed in the victim’s ears and at the corners of her lips and eyes. Not all of the maggots had hatched yet and those that had were in their first stage, which meant the head couldn’t have been here more than a day or two.

In the July heat, Maggie knew the process moved quickly. As disgusted by them as she was, she had learned to also have a healthy respect. She knew adult blowflies could sense blood from up to three miles away. They would have arrived in a matter of hours of death. As disgusting as flies on a corpse look, the flies eat very little. They’re more interested in laying their eggs in the dark, moist areas of the corpse, reducing what was once a warm, living, breathing human being to a warm, moist host.

The eggs hatch within a day or two and immediately the baby maggots start to devour everything down to the bone. While working a case in Connecticut, Professor Adam Bonzado had told her that three flies could lay enough eggs and produce enough maggots to devour a body as quickly as a full-grown lion. Amazing, Maggie thought, how efficient and organized the creatures of nature were.

Yes, Racine was right. This time they had lucked out. There would be enough tissue left for DNA samples. But more importantly, there might be telltale signs embedded or bruised or hidden in the flesh, the last remains of this poor woman to tell them what had happened to her in her final hours.

Unfortunately, though, for the crime scene tech, his greatest challenge would be to contain the head and maggots. It’d be so much easier to brush them off, rinse, spray, fumigate the head and be rid of the pesky things, but cleaning away the maggots could mean washing away evidence.

Maggie looked around for footprints, tracks of any kind.

“How do you think she got here?” she asked, remembering to personalize the victim instead of falling into Stan’s habit of using “it,” something that could simply be “scooped up.” But she knew it wasn’t irreverence as much as it was a coping mechanism.

The crime scene tech followed Stan’s lead. “It wasn’t tossed—not from the overpass, not from the ledge of the embankment. I can’t see any impact marks or skids in the mud. It looks like he simply placed it here.”

“So, the killer brought her down here himself?” She glanced back at the steep embankment, but saw only her own skid marks.

“From what I can tell.” The tech stood, stretched his legs and looked grateful for the distraction. “There are some footprints. I’ll make a plaster cast.”

“Oh, yeah, the footprints,” Racine said. “You’ve got to see this.” She stepped carefully, pointing out the remnants of the impressions in the mud.

Maggie stood up and looked to where Racine pointed, except it was almost fifteen feet from the victim’s head.

“How can you be sure they’re the killer’s?”

“We haven’t found any others,” the tech replied, shrugging. “It rained pretty hard two nights ago. He had to have been out here after that.”

“The prints come out of nowhere,” Racine said. “And get this—they seem to lead right into the river.”

“Maybe a boat?” Maggie suggested.

“Out here? And not be noticed? I don’t think so.”

“You said you had a tip?” Maggie examined the oversize prints. The tread marks were pronounced, but there was no recognizable logo.

“Yup,” Racine said, crossing her arms as if finally feeling more in control. “An anonymous call. A woman actually. Called 911. I have no idea how the hell she found out. Maybe the killer told her. Maybe he got tired of us being so slow in finding the other two.”

“Or maybe he wanted us to know the identity of this one,” Maggie said.

Racine nodded, instead of coming up with a competing theory.

“So what do you suppose he does with the rest of the body?” the tech asked both women.

“I don’t know.” Racine shrugged and began to walk away. “Maybe our anonymous woman caller can tell us. They should have her number tracked down by the time we get back.”