SEVEN

“Yes, I’m serious. Two bodies.” Portia paced on the hillside, barely able to contain her anger and all but spitting her words into the phone. “He knew. That little fucking bastard knew there were two.”

“Both children?” John asked.

“Yes. The one on the bottom looks to be considerably smaller than the one on top—the one we think is the Williams boy because there’s what’s left of a leather belt with a large C on the buckle. Neither of the skulls appear to be completely fused, which you’d expect to see in young children, but the shape of both indicates male.”

“Cause of death?”

“Tough to tell. The one on the bottom hasn’t been examined because they’re still removing the top one. I can tell you that in the first one—the one I think might be Christopher—the hyoid bones are in three pieces, but the ME said he’d expect that if we’re looking at kids, that it starts out in pieces. The bones don’t fuse together into one until sometime later.”

“Woods maintained that he’d strangled all his victims, and the ones we recovered—his ‘Baker’s Dozen’—had all been strangled. I wouldn’t expect to see any deviation.”

“Yes, and these victims might have been as well. We just don’t know by looking at the hyoid, as you could with an adult.” Portia paused. “The reports I read in the file indicated that Woods had used different methods of strangulation for different victims.”

“Make sure the ME knows to look for other signs. Fractured vertebrae, maybe.”

“Will do.” Portia noticed a black van heading up the dirt road. “Looks like the ME’s people are here. They’re going to try to separate the remains. Could take a while, they’re so close in the grave.”

“Are the remains intact?”

“Mostly, but some of the smaller bones are commingled, and a few of them are missing. Probably small animals took off with them. The techs will continue to dig around after the bodies are removed, see if they can find the digits.” Portia set her bag down on the hood of her rental car and removed a bottle of water. She twisted off the cap, then took a quick drink. “We’re going to need Christopher’s dental records for a positive ID.”

“I’ll call Lisa Williams immediately,” John said.

“Let’s have them sent directly to Tom Patton, the ME. I realize that time is working against us here, so if this is Christopher, I know everyone wants to see him returned to his family as quickly as possible. I’ll let the ME know to expect them, then I’m out of here,” Portia said. “Sheldon Woods and I are going to have a little chat.”

“No.” Sheldon Woods sat back in his chair in the little interview room and stared blankly at Portia.

“Don’t fuck with me, Woods, I am seriously not in the mood.”

“Your moods are irrelevant, Agent Cahill. You wanted Christopher Williams, and I gave him to you. I’m not obligated to give you anything or anyone else.”

“What will it take, Woods?” She sighed deeply. “What do you want this time?”

“Nothing. I’m not giving you this one,” he snapped. “This one is mine.”

“Odd choice of words, Woods.” Her eyebrows knit in thought. “Very odd.”

“Do feel free to run it past your behavior people, your profiler, whatever you’re calling your mindbenders these days.” He waved a hand breezily. “It won’t be the first time the FBI has tried to analyze me.”

“This boy’s family has been waiting years to find out what happened to their son.”

“Then surely by now they’ve accepted the fact that he isn’t coming back,” Woods said calmly. “And don’t try to play on my sympathies, I haven’t any. It only serves to annoy me.”

“Annoy you?” She laughed hoarsely. “Trust me, Woods, before I’m through with you, you’re going to be more than annoyed.”

“CO DeLuca?” Woods said over his shoulder. “I’d like to go back now. Agent Cahill is being a pain in the ass today.”

The guard glanced at Portia with empathy. She watched Woods shuffle out, envisioning herself wrapping both hands around his neck and holding him off the floor, his short legs kicking wildly, until he gave her the name of the boy who’d shared a grave with Christopher Williams for the past decade. She’d never been one to act out against a prisoner, but if there was ever a man who had earned her wrath and disgust, it was Sheldon Woods.

Okay, you little bastard. Don’t want to tell me his name? Fine. I’ll find out on my own, and then I’ll prosecute you for his murder. Think you’re going to play games with me? Think again, pal. This is one you will not win.

Portia sat at her sister’s kitchen table and toyed with a spear of asparagus. Given everyone’s work schedule, it was the first time since she’d arrived in town that she, Miranda, and Will had been able to have dinner together.

“I hear Woods is a first-class asshole,” Miranda said after Portia brought her up to date on the case. “I know he got to John big-time. Genna told me once he still has nightmares about that case.”

“Woods could definitely have that kind of effect. He is in his own class of creepiness.” Portia pushed aside her plate and rested her forearms on the table. “There’s an aura about him, a malevolence that I’ve never encountered before, and I’ve dealt with some really sinister characters over the years. But this man has no soul. He reeks of depravity.” She looked at her sister and said, “I don’t know how else to say it.”

“I think you said it quite well.” Miranda stood and took her plate and Portia’s to the counter and set them down. “We’ve all had those cases where the suspect is so vile, so immoral, that they have a sort of malignant air about them. But from all I’ve heard about Sheldon Woods, he pretty much wins the malignancy trophy.”

“Are you thinking it might not have been Christopher Williams in that grave?” Will said as he got up from the table and started to make coffee.

“I have a feeling it is,” Portia told him. “They recovered a belt buckle with a C on it, which of course is not conclusive, but I think it’s him. We should know for certain tomorrow, though. The ME will have the dental records and that should make a positive ID easy. There will be a match, or there won’t be.” She looked up at her sister. “It’s the other boy that I keep thinking about. Woods would not—would not—discuss him. Said that one was his, whatever that meant. When I questioned him, he all but dared me to talk it over with a profiler.”

“Did you?” Miranda removed the remaining vestiges of their dinner.

“I have a call in to Annie. I’m curious to see what she has to say about him.” Portia got up, took mugs down from the cabinet, and placed them on the table.

“Surely someone has gone over his case before?” Will asked.

“There are several reports in the file from different psychiatrists. They all concurred that he’s a sociopath.” Portia sat back at the table and watched Will fill the coffeepot with water and pour it into the coffeemaker. “I still want Annie’s take on him, though. I mean, with all his kills, why would he be so protective of this one?”

“Maybe he’s just playing with you. Trying to piss you off, just because he can,” Will suggested.

“That’s a possibility, I suppose, but if you could have seen his face…” Portia shook her head. “I don’t know, Will. I can’t help but think there’s something more there.”

“What are you doing to identify the second boy from the grave?” Miranda asked.

“Well, that’s where I was hoping Will could give me a hand,” she said. “I was hoping I could sweet-talk you into running a list of all the missing male children that were reported to NCIC from nineteen ninety-five through ’ninety-nine from the states where Woods was active. Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania…”

“I know the territory,” Will grimaced. “I remember reading about the case while I was at the academy.”

“I don’t have a lot of identifiers for you to input,” Portia told him, “but I have enough to start out with. Once the ME is finished with his examination I can probably add to it.”

“You know the time frame, that’s good.” Will nodded. “And you know the sex.”

“We’ll go with the characteristics of the rest of Woods’s victims. All white males between the ages of seven and thirteen.” She paused and thought for a moment. “This boy did appear to be pretty small even for a seven-year-old, so maybe we should lower the range and start with missing five-year-olds. Of course, this one could be the exception. Or he could be really small for his age.”

“We’ll do five through fourteen. That should give us a lot of hits. You can narrow it down later if you have to,” Will said. “The ME probably isn’t going to be able to fill in some of the other blanks, like eye color and hair.” He paused. “Unless there was hair attached to the skull…”

“It was really hard to tell,” Portia told him. “The remains of the unknown boy were under those of the body we believe to be Christopher Williams, plus the bones were all brown from being in the soil for so long. If there was hair attached to either skull, it wasn’t readily apparent while I was there. They were still trying to extract them when I left.”

“I’ll bet John has a list of probable victims,” Miranda said, “though some of those could have been resolved by now. Of course, the NCIC report would show if the reporting agency removed the record.”

“Meaning that the person has been found, one way or another,” Will added.

“Good idea. John mentioned that he suspected Woods had killed a lot more kids than he gave up. Mrs. Williams probably was not the only parent of a missing boy who showed up at the courthouse.” Portia toyed with the spoon her sister had placed on the table next to her mug. “And I can ask the lawyer, Cannon, if he has names of any possible victims.”

“Would he be able to hand them over, even if he did?” Miranda asked.

“I guess it would depend on how he got the list. If Woods gave him the names while Cannon was representing him, I’d think Cannon would be violating attorney-client privilege if he gave them to me,” Portia said thoughtfully. “But maybe he has some thoughts on the case. It doesn’t hurt to ask.”

“What’s he like?” Miranda asked. “The lawyer? I saw pictures of him in Baltimore magazine. He looks hot.”

Portia shrugged as if she hadn’t noticed, though in fact she had.

“He’s a criminal defense attorney. Bottom-feeder. His job is to keep his clients out of jail, guilty or innocent. He’s obviously successful at it, so I’d guess there could be a ‘six degrees of separation’ thing at work here between him and us.”

Miranda turned and gave Portia a blank look.

“There’s a good chance that he could have defended someone we busted our humps to bring in,” Portia explained.

Turning to Will, she said, “I know you have other cases that you’ve been working on. Your mad computer skills have made you a very popular guy within the Bureau. But if you could fit this in sometime soon, I’d really appreciate it.”

“Tonight soon enough?”

“Tonight would be awesome.”

“Ask and ye shall receive. Besides, it only takes a few minutes.” He started to fill Portia’s cup, then hesitated. “Would you rather have tea?”

“Coffee’s fine, thank you.”

He poured Miranda’s, then his own. Taking his mug, he told Miranda, “I think I’ll just go tinker in my office for a while.”

Knowing he’d be working on her request, Portia told him, “No, no, sit. Drink your coffee. I didn’t mean for you to—”

He waved away her protests. “Some people like an after-dinner mint, or a drink. Me, there’s nothing I like better with my coffee than a good puzzle.”

He leaned over to kiss the top of Miranda’s head. “If you need me, you know where to find me.”

She smiled and turned to watch him leave the room. “One thing about that man.” Miranda turned back to her sister. “He does have a good rear view.”

“That he does,” Portia agreed. “The front view isn’t bad, either.”

“If you like that slightly bookish type, which I do.” Miranda got up and locked the back door. “All this creepy-guys-I-have-known talk has me a bit antsy. Did I mention that I leave for Maine in the morning?”

“I heard about the case on the news. That’s yours?”

Miranda nodded. “Seven women in four months. John said when the call for an assist came in, the local sheriff told him they thought they might have a serial killer.” She shook her head. “Ya think?”

“You know the locals don’t like to panic too soon…”

“It’s never too soon to panic, not when the bodies are piling up like that,” Miranda noted.

“…And they don’t like to call us unless they have to.”

“That’s always been true. But now, with so many agents in counterterrorism, there aren’t as many agents available to be sent out. A lot more of the local agencies are having to deal with this stuff on their own,” Miranda reminded her. “Which makes our unit even more valuable than it had been. John set up this unit by handpicking his people, and he’s only taken the best from the field since then. Not too many of us have left, so we haven’t had too many new agents. There have been some over the past couple of years, of course…”

“Oh, right. The Shields thing.” Portia had heard about one rogue agent going bad and killing an other, who happened to be his own cousin. Since several members of the family were in John’s unit and had taken some time off to recover from the tragedy, they’d been shorthanded for a while. “I heard Andrew and Connor are back in the fold now.”

“Yeah, they’re both back, but Mia left. She’s a cop in some small town on the Chesapeake now.

Got herself a great guy, I hear, and is happy as a clam.”

“I wonder if John is going to assign some new cases to me now that it looks as if we have Christopher’s remains.” Portia stirred her coffee.

“You’re going to have to discuss that with him.”

“He hasn’t said anything to you?”

“He wouldn’t.” Miranda shook her head and looked away. “Not about his plans for you, any way.”

Portia put her mug down. “What is it that you’re not saying?”

Miranda stared into her mug as if searching for an answer. Finally she said, “Word is that you don’t want to be here.”

“That’s no secret. I didn’t want to come home. You know that.” Portia sipped her coffee. “It’s my own fault that I’m here, as John pointed out to me on Monday, but I’m not happy about it.”

Portia took another sip, then asked, “Who’d you get the word from, anyway, and what are they saying?”

“I just heard it around the office. Someone overheard you and John the day you came back. Said he chewed you a new one for letting yourself get outed by the tabloids and basically that he laid you out in lavender for your attitude.”

“Well, that’s certainly an accurate recollection. Someone must have been damned close to the door to have heard all that.” Portia frowned. “So everyone thinks I’m…what?”

“Just that you’d rather be back where you were.”

Portia sighed. “Crap. Nothing like making a name for yourself your first day back.”

“It doesn’t matter. Everyone who’s ever worked with you knows how good you are. I wouldn’t worry about it.” Miranda went to the coffeemaker and lifted the pot, waving it at Portia.

“No, thanks, I still have some.”

“Are you upset? Annoyed? Pissed off?”

“No.” Portia shook her head. “I probably deserve whatever dirt is out there. I wasn’t as gracious as I should have been to John. I shouldn’t have been so blunt about not being happy at being reassigned. He could have just left me out there, to be sent to any shit-hole office that needed an experienced agent.”

“You were part of his team before you left for counterterrorism. He wanted to give you the opportunity to come back here.”

“Where the elite meet and greet.”

“More or less, yes.” Miranda drained her cup. “This much I do know: He called the director immediately when he found out, asked for you to be sent here.”

“He told you that?”

“Not exactly. Oh, he did say something to me about you coming back, thinking I already knew. Which I did, but only because I happened to be in Kit’s office when John got the call about you being given the boot,” Miranda admitted.

“Ah, a little eavesdropping of your own, eh?”

“I couldn’t help it. He had a bad connection and he was talking very loud.”

“Oh, swell,” Portia lamented. “So the whole office heard…”

“No, it was close to nine at night. He and I and Kit were the last people there. Kit was in the ladies’ room, so no one else heard that part.” Miranda stood and took her empty mug to the sink and rinsed it. “At least, not then, and not from John. I think bits and pieces were patched together over a few days. Everyone knows why you were sent back but no one’s been talking about that in front of me, because apparently everyone knows how I feel about Jack.”

“How would they know that?” Portia frowned.

“You know how it is in a small office, sis. One person tells one person, that person tells two…”

“And so on and so on. Yeah, I know how it is. I hope it hasn’t made things uncomfortable for you.”

“Nah. It’s chatter, but it’s not mean-spirited chatter.”

Portia stood and stretched. “Thanks for such a great dinner. I didn’t realize you’d become such a terrific cook.”

“I have my moments.” Miranda grinned. “Maybe only once or twice a week, but I do have them.”

“Well, it was delicious and I’m happy that I was here on one of your nights. And thank you again for letting me stay in your spare room. I promise I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I can find a place of my own.”

“No hurry. Will and I like the company.”

“I’ll be looking at a few apartments tomorrow, actually.” Portia opened her bag and waved a piece of paper at Miranda. “I went online today and made a list of all the places that looked decent. I have my first appointment at ten in the morning.”

“Please don’t feel that you have to do that. Seriously. We love having you here.”

“Of course you do. Nothing like having a third wheel crash into the love nest.”

Miranda laughed. “It’s all right. We hardly know you’re here.” She thought about that for a moment, then added, “Of course, we haven’t all been here at the same time except to sleep since you got here. And I’ll be away for a few days.” She thought for a moment, then added, “Actually, Will is leaving tomorrow for a few days—he’s going to Texas through at least midweek, maybe longer—so you’ll actually be doing us a favor by staying around for a little while.”

“How so?”

“You could…” Miranda looked around the kitchen. “You could watch the house. Water the plants.”

“I thought you only had fakes because you always forget to take care of them and they die.”

“Will brought a few real ones when he moved in. He tossed out the fakes.”

“Well, isn’t he optimistic?”

“Yes, he is,” Will said from the doorway. “And with good reason.”

He tossed several sheets of paper onto the table and pointed to the clock on the wall. “Let it be noted that it didn’t take me past eight o’clock.”

“You’re finished already?” Portia frowned. “Damn. I heard you were good…”

“It’s all true.” Will pulled out a chair.

“Your modesty is overwhelming.”

“Hey, some got it, some wish they had it.” He grinned and turned the sheets of paper to face Portia. “Actually, you could have done this yourself on your laptop if you had the right codes and passwords. These are the names and all the identifiers of all the boys within the age range who disappeared during the time frame we discussed, from the states we’re interested in. Reporting law enforcement agency is here.” He pointed.

Portia pulled the pages closer to take a better look. “I guess the reporting agencies would know if their missing kid has returned alive or if his remains have been located.”

“In that case, they should have removed them from the list, though I suppose sometimes they forget that detail.”

Portia studied the list. “So many kids, Will…”

“Yeah, I know.” He stood and smacked the back of the chair he’d been sitting in. “No one said it was a pretty job.”

“Thanks, Will. I really appreciate this.”

“Not a problem.” He shrugged. “I hope it helps you to identify your boy.”

Portia headed for her room, eager to start an Internet search for anything she could find on the missing boys. She turned on her computer and shot off an e-mail to John Mancini, asking him to send her his list of suspected victims of Sheldon Woods to match against the list Will had prepared for her. Then she used a search engine to look up the boys whose names had shown up on Will’s search. From there, knowing their hometowns, she went on to read about the cases in the victims’ local newspapers.

So many of their stories were the same. Young boy, snatched from the street, on his way home from an innocent childhood activity—soccer, baseball, Peewee football. The library. A friend’s house. All missing from their own neighborhoods—mostly from within a few blocks of their own homes, where they should have been safest. Gone without a trace. Almost every one of them, in broad daylight.

No one saw…no one heard.

It was after three when she turned off the light and stumbled off to bed, the names of the missing and their sad stories echoing in her head. Tomorrow, she would start the search for the name of the boy in the grave. It might take a while, but sooner or later, she would discover who he was, and why Sheldon Woods wanted to keep his identity a secret.

Then she’d hand over her file to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. She would be there, right in the front row of the courtroom, when Sheldon Woods went on trial for his life.