Fireproof

to it. Made her believe they were stranded.”
    “So where did he take her to bash her face in? He couldn’t have done all that in a vehicle. Ganza found deer hair and weeds attached to her clothing. Dr. Ling made it sound like the killer used a large, heavy weapon.”
    “If he had another vehicle or an accomplice, he could have taken her anywhere.” Tully was watching Maggie instead of studying the surroundings. “But you’re thinking it was here.”
    “Just a gut instinct. I expected it to be secluded like this, but with an open field somewhere close by.”
    “Because of Ganza’s weed?”
    She nodded and started walking. Tully followed.
    “Depending on what time of day or night they stopped here there may have been no one else.”
    “He could have easily taken her into the woods,” Tully said. “Maybe convinced her to go stretch her legs with him.”
    “I have to tell you I’ve looked over the file Racine has on Lester and he sounds squeaky clean. He doesn’t sound like a killer.”
    “How many times have we heard that? It’s always the ones nobody suspects,” Tully said. “That quiet neighbor. The helpful janitor. Remember what people said about Ted Bundy. Such a nice guy. How about the BTK killer? Wasn’t he on the church council or something?”
    “I’ve also read all the information on Gloria Dobson and she certainly doesn’t sound like the type of woman who would walk into the woods with someone suspicious. And she would have fought for her life. She has three kids. She’s a recent breast cancer survivor.”
    Maggie continued to walk all the way up to where the trucks were parked. It was high enough to see over some of the trees that surrounded the lower half of the rest area. She studied the parked trucks.
    “Ganza told me there’s a whole subculture to truck stops and rest areas. A whole world no one sees unless they know where to look. Prostitutes come knocking on the doors of the big rigs while they sleep. Drug dealers, too. Where do they go in between tricks and deals? Do they have their own vehicles? Why doesn’t anyone else see them?”
    Tully was quiet for a moment, looking around. “Maybe no one else notices them because they blend in.”
    She turned to examine the paths below and take another look at the travelers going in and out of the restrooms. That’s when the birds caught her eye.
    She hadn’t noticed them before. The angle of the setting sun transformed their circle above the trees into a halo, the tips of their black wings highlighted by brilliant yellows and oranges. Sheheard Tully’s intake of breath and she knew Tully saw them, too. And he was thinking exactly what she was.
    Without a word or a glance they started down across the parking lot, across the brown lawn, not even using the sidewalks. There were dirt paths going into the woods. They took the closest one. It narrowed immediately but Maggie kept going, ducking tree limbs and ignoring the dried brush that scraped her arms.
    Several hundred yards into the trees she could smell it. Rotting meat. Several days old. Not the pungent coppery smell of a fresh kill. Whatever had captured the birds’ attention had been dead for a few days.
    She looked up to the birds for direction. She slowed her pace so she wouldn’t lose her footing. Inside the canopy of trees the shadows of dusk threw off her depth perception. She looked for the birds, but what she saw stopped her dead in her tracks. Tully bumped into her.
    “What is it?”
    She pointed up into the branches of a huge maple that stood about seventy-five feet in front of them.
    This time she could hear Tully gasp, “Dear God.”
    Though they were dried now, Maggie could still recognize the streamers that decorated the lower branches. She wondered if she would have recognized them as easily without seeing the gutted body that lay at the base of the trunk.
    “What sick bastard have we found?”
    Immediately Maggie saw that the body didn’t include a head.
    “I think we may have found Zach Lester,” she said.

CHAPTER 67

    Mutilations always caught Tully off guard. It didn’t matter how many he saw. He stood back and tried to make his lungs inhale despite the stink that already permeated the lining of his nostrils. He knew there was an initial shock, as if his eyes had to convince his brain that, yes, indeed, there were no limits to evil.
    Maggie moved forward already examining, analyzing, shifting smoothly into gear. She swatted blowflies, swarms so