Fireproof

him just ahead of me. Right before you busted me. For a minute I thought you were casing the property.”
    Maggie glanced at Ben, who had already spun around and was looking out the back window.
    “I wasn’t at the back of the property,” he said as he ran a hand up over his soaked head. “And I didn’t have a ball cap on.”

CHAPTER 35

    The TV profile had finally put a name to the woman cop. Margaret “Maggie” O’Dell. Actually, he wasn’t surprised to find out she was an FBI agent. That only contributed to the intrigue.
    A couple of hours earlier he had tracked her all the way home after their encounter underground. Though brief, he got to watch her in action and it only fueled his desire to see more. So he followed her. His vehicle was one that she’d never suspect. No one did. It made him almost invisible, and he was able to drive practically to her front door.
    He had stayed for a while, parked in an area where he could continue to watch until the guy with the dog came up the front lawn. He thought he was her husband. Decided to leave. He thought he’d scout the neighborhood, maybe go pick up some fast food. That’s when he found the motel. It was just off the interstate, not far from her house, and he had an intense urge to stay close to her for the night.
    He was settled in bed, almost dozing, when he saw her face on TV. He was sorry the television didn’t have a larger screen so he could get a really good look at her. It was an old TV, not the sleek flat-screen he was used to. Everything about the motel was old, buthe learned when he was on the road that sometimes he couldn’t be choosy. Besides, the room was clean and he liked that it had a front and back door.
    The show had made him antsy. He’d never sleep now that her image had been inside this motel room. Almost without realizing it, he had dressed and was back in his vehicle, back on the road, driving through the fog and the rain. Heading back to her neighborhood.
    It was impossible to see inside her house, even from the back. He might have ventured closer if that damned dog hadn’t been crouched in the tall grass, growling like some rabid animal ready to pounce. A black creature with snarling white teeth, standing guard.
    His mother used to talk about black creatures of the night that warded off evil. That Margaret O’Dell should have one of these guarding her made her a worthy adversary indeed.
    His outing stirred him up more than ever. Driving away from Margaret O’Dell was like pulling away from a magnetic field.
    He passed by the exit for the motel and kept on driving, despite the sleet. He knew the only thing that would help calm him.



CHAPTER 36

    Maggie thought the dead body looked almost artificial, splayed out on the stainless-steel table, gray and waxy under the fluorescent lights. A brutally murdered body could sometimes bear little resemblance to anything human. This was one of those times.
    Maggie and Racine stood side by side, gowned up and waiting now for Stan. One of his dieners had already photographed, washed, and X-rayed the dead woman. Stan had been interrupted shortly after he started, called away to take an important phone call. He’d already cut and spread opened the victim’s chest. The woman’s heart lay on a tray, her lungs on another, and the stomach on a third—all in a row on the counter like some freakish display.
    Since she hadn’t been at the scene, Maggie flipped through photos that had been taken of the body back in the alley beside the Dumpster. Some of the woman’s clothes had been singed and covered with cinders, but Maggie didn’t see any burn marks on her flesh.
    “Had to be someone who knew her, right?” Racine said. “Strangers don’t usually bash in the face like that.”
    “Unless he wanted to destroy her identity. It’s possible he knew her. That she wasn’t a random victim.”
    “The cardboard box definitely wasn’t hers.”
    “She wasn’t homeless,” Maggie said. “Her legs are shaved.”
    “Doesn’t cross off prostitute,” Racine said. She pointed to the purple bruising that colored the woman’s entire left side, from arm to hip to leg. “Livor mortis—she had to be on her side for several hours after she died. Wherever she died, it wasn’t in that alley.”
    Racine was right. Livor mortis, called the bruising of death, was often a telltale sign of the victim’s last position. After the heart stops circulating blood, gravity pulls the blood down to settle