Before He Covets. Blake Pierce

his state PD team on their drive between Strasburg and Quantico. She’d memorized the details within ten minutes and, as such, was able to recite them to the team with confidence.

      “The first body was that of Marjorie Leinhart. Her head was almost completely severed from her body. The killer cut off all of her fingers and her right leg from the knee down. None of the severed parts were ever discovered. At the time of her death, she was twenty-seven years old. Her mother was the only surviving relative as Marjorie was an only child and her father died while stationed in Afghanistan in 2006. But Mrs. Leinhart committed suicide a week after her daughter’s body was discovered. Vigorous searches revealed only one other relative – an estranged uncle living in London – that knows nothing about the family. There were no boyfriends and the few close friends that were questioned all checked out. So there is literally no one to question there.”

      “Thank you, Agent White. So there you have it. That’s all we have for right now. So I’m going to want some of you on family detail, one or two of you to help with forensics, and someone else to do some digging about any violent crimes in or around Little Hill State Park over the last twenty-five years or so. Does anyone else have anything to add?”

      “This could be ritualistic,” one of the older agents offered. “Dismemberment in such a capacity is telltale of ritualistic murders. I’d be interested to see if there have been any reports of Satanism or cultlike gatherings in or around Strasburg.”

      “Good point,” Bryers said, making a quick note on one of his papers.

      Mackenzie raised her hand. A few of the agents within the room – all seasoned and well-decorated – rolled their eyes. Of course you have something to add, they all seemed to think.

      “Yes, Agent White?” Bryers asked. He gave her a knowing little smile as the rest of the room looked her way.

      “Looking through some old case files that the state PD sent over, I found a documented case of a child abduction right around the Little Hill area nineteen years ago. A boy named Will Albrecht. He was taken right from under his parents’ noses. When the parents were questioned, they stated that their son loved to ride his bike around the trails in Little Hill State Park. The connection is tenuous at best but, I think, worth looking into.”

      “Absolutely,” Bryers said. “Can you make sure everyone on the team gets that file?”

      “I’m on it,” she said, already pulling the e-mail up on her phone.

      “And why would that be relevant?” another agent asked.

      Never one to back down from a challenge, Mackenzie answered right away. “I’m working on the theory that whoever did this knew the area well. To randomly dump a body in such a non-selective place speaks of a knowledge of the forest. Throw in Marjorie Leinhart from two years ago and that only backs it up further.”

      “I still don’t see how that stacks up with a kidnapping,” yet another agent said.

      “To take a kid while his parents were very close by and get away with it…you’d have to know the lay of the land. They never even came close to finding the abductor.”

      That apparently gave them enough to dangle on. She got a few appreciative nods but most everyone else in the room simply looked to their phones or the table in front of them.

      “Anything else?” Bryers asked. As he waited for a response, he let out a hearty cough into his elbow.

      “That’s it then,” Bryers said after three seconds of silence. “Let’s get to work and land ourselves a killer.”

      The team started to murmur and mumble excitedly as they filed out. Mackenzie stayed behind, curious to see if Bryers needed anything else before they called it a day.

      “You know,” Bryers said. “I’m going to task someone with looking into that abduction you mentioned. If it turns out to be nothing, you’re going to have an enemy or two.”

      “So, business as usual?”

      “I guess so,” he said with a grin. “But you know…maybe you and I handle that detail. We’ll drive back up to Strasburg tomorrow and kill two birds with one stone. We’ll also talk to the family of Jon Torrence. You up for another drive out into the country?”

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      They arrived in Strasburg shortly after nine o’clock the following morning and as they drove into the town, Mackenzie thought she could understand the charm of a place like this. To be rooted so deeply in history had, to her, seemed a little silly at first. But there was also something rustic and respectable about it as well. American flags hung nearly everywhere (along with Confederate flags here and there, a staple of small-town Virginia, she assumed) and a lot of the local businesses had been named after Civil War troops.

      Mackenzie knew that it was a foolish trap to think that the most deranged killers came from these sorts of unsuspecting towns. Statistics showed that a crazed killer was just as likely to step out of New York or LA as they were a small backwoods town in Virginia. Still, there was something quiet and just a bit morose about a town like this – a town where everything seemed perfect while passing through, making it easy to forget that there were dark secrets possibly hiding behind every charming little front door.