The Narrows

CHAPTER 16

Midmorning on the day after Rachel Walling's arrival the agents assigned to what had been labeled the " Zzyzx Road case" gathered in person and by phone in the squad room on the third floor of the John Lawrence Bailey Building in Las Vegas. The room was windowless and poorly ventilated. A photograph of Bailey, an agent killed during a bank robbery twenty years earlier, looked upon the proceedings.

The agents in attendance sat at tables lined in rows, facing the front of the room. At the front was Randal Alpert and a two-way television that was connected by phone and camera to a squad room in Quantico, Virginia. On the screen was Agent Brasilia Doran, waiting to provide her report. Rachel was at the second row of tables, sitting off by herself. She knew her place here and outwardly tried to show it.

Alpert convened the meeting by graciously introducing those present. Rachel thought that this was a nicety allowed for her but soon realized that not everyone in attendance in person or by audiovisual hookup knew everyone else.

Alpert first identified Doran, also known as Brass, on the line from Quantico, where she was handling the collating of information and acting as liaison to the national lab. He then asked each person seated in the room to identify themselves and their specialty or position. First was Cherie Dei, who said she was the case agent. Next to her was her partner, Tom Zigo. Next was John Cates, a representative agent from the local FO and the only nonwhite person in attendance.

The next four people were from the science side and Rachel had seen and met two of them at the site the day before. They included a forensic anthropologist named Greta Coxe, who was in charge of the excavations, two medical examiners named Harvey Richards- and Douglas Sundeen, and a crime scene specialist named Mary Pond. Ed Gunning, another agent from Behavioral Sciences in Quantico, brought the introductions around to Rachel, who was last.

"Agent Rachel Walling," she said. " Rapid City field office. Formerly with Behavioral. I have some… familiarity with a case like this."

"Okay, thanks, Rachel," Alpert said quickly, as though he thought Rachel was going to mention Robert Backus by name.

This told Rachel that there were people in the room who had not been informed of the major fact of the case. She guessed that would be Cates, the token agent from the FO. She wondered if some of the science team, or all of it, was in the dark as well.

"Let's start with the science side," Alpert continued. "First of all, Brass? Anything from out there?"

"Not on science. I think your crime scene people have all of that. Hello, Rachel. Long time."

"Hello, Brass," Rachel said quietly. "Too long."

She looked at the screen and their eyes met. Rachel realized that it had probably been eight years since she had actually seen Doran. She looked weary, her mouth and eyes drawn down, her hair short in a cut that suggested she didn't spend much time with it. She was an empath, Rachel knew, and the years were taking their toll.

"You look good," Doran said. "I guess all that fresh air and open country agrees with you."

Alpert stepped in and saved Rachel from delivering a false compliment in return.

"Greta, Harvey, who wants to go first?" he asked, stepping all over the electronic reunion.

"I guess I will since everything starts with the dig," Greta Coxe said. "As of seven p.m. yesterday we have fully excavated eight bodies and they are at Neilis. This afternoon when we get back there, we will begin with number nine. What we saw with the first excavations is holding true with the latter. The plastic bags in each incidence and the-"

"Greta, we have a tape going here," Alpert interrupted. "Let's be fully descriptive. As if speaking to an uninformed audience. Don't hold back."

Except when it comes to mentioning Robert Backus, Rachel thought.

"Okay, sure," Coxe said. "Um, all eight bodies excavated and exhumed so far have been fully clothed. Decomposition is extensive. Hands and feet bound by tape. All have plastic bags over the head, which in turn have been taped around the neck. There is no variation on this methodology, even between victims one and two. Which is unusual."

Late the day before Rachel had seen the photos. She had gone back into the command RV and looked at the wall of photos. It seemed clear to her that the men had all been suffocated. The plastic bags had not been clear plastic but even in their opaqueness she could see the features of the faces and the mouths wide open and searching for air that wasn't going to come. They reminded her of photos of wartime atrocities, disinterred bodies from mass graves in Yugoslavia or Iraq.

"Why is that unusual?" Alpert asked.

"Because what we most often see is that the killing plan evolves. For lack of a better way of describing it, the killing gets better. The unsub learns from victim to victim how to do it better. That is usually seen in the data we have."

Rachel noted that Coxe had used the word unsub. Short for unknown subject. It most likely meant she was out of the loop and didn't know that the subject was very much known to the FBI.

"Okay, so the methodology was set from day one," Alpert said. "Anything else, Greta?"

"Just that we will probably be finished with the excavations the day after tomorrow. Unless we get another hit with the probes."

"Are we still probing?"

"Yes, when we have the time. But we've gone sixty feet past the last hit with the probes and haven't gotten anything. We also got another flyover from Nellis last night. There was nothing new from thermal imaging. So we feel pretty comfortable at this time that we've got them all."

"And thank God for that. Harvey? What have you got for us?"

Richards cleared his throat and leaned forward so that his voice would be heard by the electronic pickups, wherever they were.

"Greta's right, we have all eight excavated so far in the morgue at Nellis. So far the veil of secrecy is holding up. I think people there think we're bringing in aliens off a crashed saucer in the desert. This is how urban legends start, people."

Only Alpert cracked a smile. Richards continued.

"We've conducted full autopsies on four so far and initial exams of the others. Similar to what Greta said, we're not finding a hell of a lot of difference from body to body. This guy is a robot. No variation on theme. It's almost like the killings themselves are of no import. Perhaps it is the hunt that juices this guy. Or perhaps the killings are just part of a larger plan we don't know about yet."

Rachel stared pointedly at Alpert. She hated that people working so closely on the case were still working in the dark. But she knew if she said anything she would quickly be on the outside looking in. She didn't want that.

"You have a question, Rachel?"

He'd caught her off guard. She hesitated.

"Why are the bodies being taken to Nellis instead of hereorL.A.?" She knew the answer before asking the question but needed to say something to escape the moment.

"It's easier to keep a lid on things this way. The military knows how to keep a secret."

His tone suggested an unspoken final line: Do you? He swung his view back to Richards.

"Doctor, go on."

Rachel picked up on the subtle difference. Alpert had called Richards Doctor, whereas he had simply addressed Greta Coxe by her first name. It was a character trait. Alpert either had trouble with women in positions of power and knowledge or he didn't respect the science of anthropology. She guessed it was the former.

"Well, we're looking at suffocation as the cause on these," Richards said. "It's pretty obvious from what we've got. There is not a lot left to work with on most of them but with what we've got we're not seeing other injuries. The unsub overpowers in some way, tapes wrists and ankles and then puts the bag in place over the head. The taping around the neck we think is significant. That is indicative of a slow death. In other words the unsub was not holding the bag in place. He took his time, pulled it over the head, taped it and then could step back to watch."

"Doctor?" Rachel asked. "Was the tape applied from the front or back?"

"The ends are at the back of the neck, indicating to me that the bag may have been pulled over from behind, possibly when the victim was in a sitting position, and then taped in place."

"So he-the, uh, unsub-may have been ashamed or afraid to face his victims when he did this."

"Quite possibly."

"How are we doing on identification?" Alpert asked.

Richards looked at Sundeen and he took over.

"Still just the five that were included in the Las Vegas investigation. We assume the sixth from their group will be one of the final two excavations. The others we have nothing on so far. We've got no useable prints. We've forwarded the clothing-what's left of it-to Quantico and perhaps Brass has an update on that. Meantime, we-"

"No, no update," Doran said from the television screen.

"Okay," Sundeen said. "We have the dental data just going into the computer today. So maybe we'll get a hit there. Other than that we're just waiting for something to happen."

He nodded at the completion of his report. Alpert took back the lead.

"I want to go to Brass last, so let's hear about the soil."

Mary Pond took it from there.

"We've sifted all of the sites and it's all come up clean except for one piece we got yesterday that is exciting. In excavation seven we found a wad of gum in a wrapper. Juicy Fruit, according to the wrapper. It was between twenty-four and thirty inches down in a three-foot grave. So we really feel it is related and could be a good break for us."

"Dental?" Alpert asked.

"Yes, we have dental. I can't tell you what yet but it looked like three good impressions. I boxed it and sent it to Brass."

"Yes, it is here," Doran said from the television. "Came in this morning. I put it in motion but I don't have anything on it yet either. Maybe late today. I agree, though. From what I saw we'll get at least three teeth out of it. Maybe even DNA."

"Could be all we need," Alpert added excitedly.

Even though she distinctly remembered that Bob Backus had a habit of chewing Juicy Fruit gum, Rachel was not excited. The gum in the grave was too good to be true. She thought there was no way that Backus would allow himself to leave such important evidence behind. He was too good as both a killer and agent for that. She could not properly express this doubt in the meeting, however, because of her agreement with Alpert not to bring up Backus in front of other agents.

"It's got to be a plant," she said.

Alpert looked at her a moment, weighing the risk of asking her why.

"A plant. Why do you say that, Rachel?"

"Because I can't see why this guy who is burying a body in the middle of nowhere, probably in the middle of the night, would take the time to put his shovel down, take the gum out of his mouth, wrap it in its foil, which he had to take out of his pocket, and then drop it. I think if he'd been chewing gum he would have just spit it out. But I don't think he was chewing gum. I think he picked that little wad up somewhere, brought it to the grave and dropped it in so we would spin our wheels with it when he decided to lead us to the bodies with his GPS trick."

She glanced around the room. She had their eyes but she could tell she was more of a curiosity to them than a respected colleague. The silence was broken by the television.

"I think Rachel is probably right," Doran said. "We have been manipulated from day one on this. Why not with the gum? It does seem like an incredible mistake for such a well-planned action."

Rachel noticed Doran wink at her.

"One piece of gum, one mistake, in eight graves?" said Gunning, one of the agents from Quantico. "I don't think that is such a long shot. We all know nobody's ever committed the perfect crime. Yes, people get away but they all make mistakes."

"Well," Alpert said, "let's wait and see what we get with this before we jump to any conclusions one way or the other. Mary, anything else?"

"Not at this time."

"Then let's go to Agent Cates to see how the locals are doing with the IDs."

Cates opened a leather-bound folder on the table in front of him. It contained a legal pad with notes on it. That he had such a nice and expensive holder for a basic legal pad told Rachel that he was very proud of his work and what he did. Either that or the person who gave him the folder had those feelings. Either way, it made Rachel like him right away. It also made her feel like she was missing something. She no longer carried that kind of pride in the bureau or what she did.

"Okay, we started sniffing around Vegas Metro on their missing persons case. We're handicapped by the need for secrecy. So we're not going in there like gang-busters. We've just made contact and said we're interested because of the state line thing-victims from multiple states and even one other country. That gives us an in but we don't want to show our hand by blasting in there. So we're supposed to have a sitdown with them later today. Once we reach the beach, so to speak, we'll start back tracing these individuals and looking for the common denominator. Keep in mind these guys have been on this for several weeks and as far as we know don't have shit."

"Agent Cates," Alpert said. "The tape."

"Oh, excuse my language there. They don't have anything is what I meant to say."

"Very good, Agent Cates. Keep me informed."

And only silence followed. Alpert continued to smile warmly at Cates until the local agent got the message.

"Oh, um, you want me to leave?"

"I want you out there working on those victims," Alpert said. "No sense wasting time in here listening to us hash things around to no end."

"Okay, then."

Cates got up. If he had been a white man the embarrassment would have been more recognizable on his face.

"Thank you, Agent Cates," Alpert said to his back as he went through the door.

Alpert then turned his attention back to the table.

"I think Mary, Greta, Harvey and Doug can all be excused as well. We need you guys back in the trenches, I'm afraid. No pun intended."

There was that administrative smile again.

"Actually," Mary Pond said, "I'd like to stay and hear what Brass has to say. It might help me in the field."

Alpert lost his smile at the challenge.

"No," he said firmly, "that won't be necessary."

An uneasy silence engulfed the room until it was finally punctuated by the sounds of the science team's chairs being pushed back from their tables. The four of them got up and left the room without speaking. It was painful for Rachel to watch. The unchecked arrogance of command staff was endemic in the bureau. It was never going to change.

"Now, where were we?" Alpert said, easily morphing past what he had just done to five good people. "Brass, your turn now. I have you down here for the boat, the tape and bags, the clothes, the GPS device, and now you have the gum, which we all know will lead nowhere, thank you very much, Agent Walling."

He said the.word agent like it was synonymous with idiot. Rachel raised her hands in surrender.

"Sorry, I didn't know half the field team is in the dark on the suspect. Funny, but when I was in Behavioral we never did it that way. We pooled information and knowledge. We didn't hide it from one another."

"You mean when you were working for the man we are looking for right now?"

"Look, Agent Alpert, if you are trying to taint me with that brush, then you-"

"This is a classified case, Agent Walling. That is all I am trying to get across to you. As I told you before, it is 'need to know.'"

"Obviously."

Alpert turned away from her as if dismissing her from memory and looked at the television screen.

"Brass, can you begin please?"

Alpert made sure he stood between Rachel and the screen, to further underline her position as outsider on the case.

"Okay," Doran said, "I have something significant and… well, strange, to begin with. I told you about the boat yesterday. The initial fingerprint analysis of manageable surfaces came back negative. It had been out there in the elements for who knows how long. So we took it another step. Agent Alpert approved disassembly of the evidence and that was done in the hangar at Nellis last night. On the boat there are grip locations-handholds for moving the boat. This at one time was a navy lifeboat, built in the late thirties and probably sold off as military surplus after World War Two."

As Doran continued Dei opened a file and pulled out a photo of the boat. She held it for Rachel to see, since Rachel had never actually seen the boat. It was already at Nellis by the time she had gotten to the excavation site. She thought it was amazing and typical that the bureau could amass so much information about a boat set adrift in the desert but so little about the crime it was attached to.

"We could not get into the interior of the grip holes with our first analysis. When we disassembled the piece we were able to get in there. This is where we got lucky because this little hollow was protected from the elements for the most part."

"And?" Alpert asked impatiently. He obviously wasn't interested in the journey. He just wanted the destination.

"And we got two prints out of the port side grip on the bow. This morning we ran them through the data banks and got a hit almost right away. This is going to sound strange but the prints came from Terry McCaleb."

"How can that be?" asked Dei.

Alpert didn't say anything. His eyes stared down at the table in front of him. Rachel sat quiet as well, her mind racing to catch up with and understand this latest piece of information. "At some point he put his hand into the grip hole on the boat, that's the only way it can be," Doran said.

"But he's dead," Alpert said.

"What?" Rachel exclaimed.

Everyone in the room turned and looked at her. Dei slowry nodded.

"He died about a month ago. Heart attack. I guess the news didn't get to South Dakota."

Doran's voice came from the speaker.

"Rachel, I am so sorry. I should have gotten word to you. But I was too upset about it and went out to California right away. I'm sorry. I should have told you."

Rachel looked down at her hands. Terry McCaleb had been her friend and colleague. He was one of the em-paths. She felt a sudden and deep sense of loss, despite the fact that she had not spoken to him in years. Their shared experiences had left them bonded for life and now that life, for him, was gone.

"Okay, people, let's take a break here," Alpert said. "Fifteen minutes and then back in here. Brass, can you callback?"

"I will. I've got more to report."

"Talk to you then."

They all filed out to get coffee or use the restrooms. To leave Rachel alone.

"Are you all right, Agent Walling?" Alpert asked.

She looked up at him. The last thing she would take would be comfort from him.

"I'm fine," she said, moving her eyes back to the blank TV screen. Rachel remained in the conference room by herself. Her initial shock gave way to a wave of guilt coming up behind her like a following sea. Terry McCaleb had attempted to contact her over the years. She had gotten the messages but had never responded. She had sent him a card and a note when he was in the hospital recovering from the transplant. That had been five or six years ago. She couldn't remember. She did remember specifically deciding not to put a personal return address on the envelope. At the time she told herself it was because she wasn't going to be stuck in Minot for very long. But she knew then as she knew now that the real reason was she didn't want the connection. She didn't want the questions about the choices she had made. She didn't want that link to the past.

Now she didn't have to worry, the link was forever gone.

The door opened and Cherie Dei looked in.

"Rachel, do you want a bottle of water?"

"Sure, that would be nice. Thank you."

"Tissues?"

"No, that's all right, I'm not crying."

"Be right back."

Dei closed the door.

"I don't cry," Rachel said to no one.

She put her elbows on the table and held her hands over her face. In the darkness she saw a memory. She and Terry on a case. They weren't partners but Backus had put them together on this one. It was a crime scene analysis. A bad one. A mother and daughter tied up and thrown into the water, the girl squeezing so hard on a crucifix it left its full impression on her hand. The mark was still there when the bodies were found. Terry was working with the photos and Rachel went to the cafeteria to get coffee. When she came back she could tell he had been crying. That was when she knew he was an empath, that he was her kind.

Dei came back into the room and put a bottle of spring water and a plastic cup down in front her.

"You okay?"

"Yes, fine. Thanks for the water."

"It was quite a shock. I didn't really know him and it bowled me over when the word spread."

Rachel just nodded. She didn't want to talk about it. The speakerphone rang and Rachel reached for it ahead of Dei. She picked up the handset rather than push the teleconference button. This way she could speak privately at first to Doran-at least, Doran's side of it would not be overheard.

"Brass?"

"Rachel, hi, I am so sorry I didn't-" "It's all right. It isn't your job to keep me informed of everything."

"I know but this I should have told you about."

"It was probably in one of the bulletins and I just missed it. It's just strange finding out about it this way."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"So you went to the funeral?"

"The service, yes. It was out on the island where he lived. Catalina. It was really beautiful there and really sad."

"Were there many agents?"

"No, not too many. It was kind of hard to get to. You have to take a ferry. But there were a few and there were some cops and family and friends. Clint Eastwood was there. I think he took his own helicopter out."

The door opened and Alpert came in. He seemed renewed, as if he had been sucking on pure oxygen during the break. The other two agents, Zigo and Gunning, followed him in and sat down.

"We're ready to start," Rachel said to Doran. "I've got to put you on the screen now."

"Okay, Rachel. We'll talk later."

Rachel handed the phone to Alpert, who set up the teleconference. Doran appeared on the screen, looking more tired than before.

"Okay," Alpert said. "We ready to continue?"

After no one said a word he continued.

"All right then, what do these prints on the boat mean?"

"It means we've got to find out when and why McCaleb was out in the desert before he died," Dei said.

"And it means we've got to go over to L.A. and take a look at his death," Gunning said. "Just to be sure a heart attack was a heart attack."

"I agree with that but there is a problem," Doran said. "He was cremated."

"That sucks," said Gunning.

"Was there an autopsy?" Alpert asked. "Blood and tissue taken?"

"I don't know about that," Doran said. "All I know is that he was cremated. I flew out for the service. The family let his ashes go over the side of his boat."

Alpert looked at the faces around the room and stopped at Gunning's.

"Ed, you're on it. Go over there and see what you can come up with. Do it quick. I'll call the FO over there and tell them to give you the people you need. And for God's sake keep it out of the press. McCaleb was a minor celebrity because of the movie thing. If the press gets a whiff of this they'll be on us like the jacket on a book."

"Got it."

"Other ideas? Suggestions?"

Nobody said anything at first. Then Rachel cleared her throat and spoke quietly.

"You know, Backus was Terry's mentor, too."

There was a pause of silence and then Doran said, "That's right."

"When they started the mentoring program Terry was the first one Backus picked. I was next after that."

"And what is the significance of that to us now?" Alpert asked.

Rachel shrugged. "Who knows? But Backus called me out with the GPS. Maybe he called Terry out before me."

Everybody paused for a moment to think about that.

"I mean, why am I here? Why did he send the package to me when he knows I'm not in Behavioral anymore? There's a reason. Backus has some kind of plan. Maybe Terry was the first part of it."

Alpert slowly nodded his head.

"I think it is an angle we need to be aware of."

"He could be watching Rachel," Doran said.

"Well, let's not jump ahead of ourselves here," Alpert said. "Let's stay with the facts. Agent Walling, I want you to exercise all caution of course. But let's check out the McCaleb situation and see what we've got before we start jumping. Meantime, Brass, what else have you got?"

They waited as Doran looked down and off camera at some paperwork and apparently shifted gears from McCaleb back to the rest of the evidence.

"We've got something that might tie in with McCaleb. But let me go down my list and get this other stuff out of the way first. Uh, first, we're just starting now with the tape and the bags recovered with the bodies. Give us another day on that and I'll have a report. Let's see, on the clothes, they're probably going to be in the drying room another week before they're ready for analysis. So nothing there. The gum we already talked about. We'll put the dental profile into the bite mark database by the end of the day. Which leaves the GPS."

Rachel noticed that everyone in the room was staring intently at the television screen. It was as if Doran was in the room with them.

"We're making some good progress here. We traced the serial number to a Big Five Sporting Goods store in Long Beach, California. Agents from the Los Angeles FO went to the store yesterday and obtained a store sales record showing the purchase of this Gulliver one hundred model by a man named Aubrey Snow. Turns out Mr. Snow is a fishing guide and was out on the water yesterday. Last night, when he finally returned to dock he was questioned at length about his Gulliver. He told us that he lost the device about eleven months ago in a poker game with several other guides. It was valuable because at the time it had several waypoints corresponding to his favorite or most productive fishing spots along the coast of Southern California and Mexico."

"Did he give us the guy who won it?" Alpert asked quickly.

"Unfortunately, no. It was an impromptu game. There was bad weather at the time and business was slow. A lot of guides were stuck in dock and they were getting together to play poker almost every night. Different nights, different players. A lot of drinking. Mr. Snow could not remember a name or much else about the man who won the GPS. He didn't think he was from the marina where Mr. Snow keeps his boat because he hasn't seen the man since. The FO was supposed to get together with Snow and an artist today so they can try to come up with a picture of this guy. But even if they get a good drawing, that area has marinas and fishing charters all over the place. I was already told that the FO has only two agents to spare on this."

"I'll make a call and change that," Alpert said. "When I call to get Ed set up on the McCaleb thing, I'll get more bodies on this. I'll go right to Rusty Havershaw."

Rachel knew the name. Havershaw was the special agent in charge of the Los Angeles field office.

"That'll be a help," Doran said.

"You said this connects to McCaleb. How so?"

"Well, did you see the movie?"

"Actually, no, I didn't get around to it."

"Well, McCaleb was running a fishing charter out of Catalina. I don't know how plugged in he was to that community but there is a possibility that he knew some of the guides in those poker games."

"I see. It's a stretch but it is there. Ed, keep that in mind."

"Got it."

There was a knock on the door but Alpert ignored it. Cherie Dei got up and answered it. Rachel could see it was Agent Cates. He whispered something to Dei.

"Anything else, Brass?" Alpert asked.

"Not at the moment. I think we need to shift emphasis toL.A. and find-"

"Excuse me," Dei said, bringing Cates back into the room. "Listen to this."

Cates flicked his hands up like he was signaling that this was no big deal.

"Uh, I just got a call from the checkpoint out at the site. They're holding a man there who just drove up. He's a private detective from L.A. His name is Huhromibus Bosch. He-"

"You mean Hieronymus Bosch?" Rachel asked. "Like the painter?"

"Yeah, that's it. I don't know about any painter but that is how my guy said it. Anyway, this is the deal. They put him in one of the RVs and took a look in his car without him knowing. He had a file on the front seat. There are notes and stuff but there also are photos. One of the photos is of the boat."

"You mean the boat from out there?" Alpert asked.

"Yeah, the one that marked the first grave. There also was a news article on the six missing men."

Alpert looked at the others in the room for a moment before speaking.

"Cherie and Tom, call Nellis and have them get ready with a chopper," he finally said. "Get out there and get going. And take Agent Walling with you."