Fireproof

slow and unwilling to leave their treasure that she could knock them to the ground with a simple wave of her hand.
    Tully didn’t see any of the hesitation in her, none of the fear he had witnessed the other night at the warehouse fires. He kidded her once about becoming a specialist in dismembered bodies. The parts seemed to appear on cases she was assigned, whether in take-out containers, Mason jars, or fishing coolers.
    “Should we call the State Patrol guys to come back?”
    She squatted down about three feet away from the corpse, careful not to touch and even more careful where she stepped. She seemed so intent he didn’t think she had heard him. He looked down at the pine needles and soggy maple leaves, some embeddedin the mud. He moved closer, keeping to the same path Maggie had used.
    “He crossed state lines,” she finally said. “And the interstate is federal property. Are the rest areas?”
    Tully had no idea.
    “Technically it’s our jurisdiction,” she said.
    He closed his eyes and let out a breath. Too many times law enforcement agencies fought over jurisdiction. He never understood it. Opening his eyes and following the trail of what was once Zach Lester’s intestines, Tully found himself wishing they could hand this off to someone, anyone, else.
    “The state of Virginia’s crime lab is top-notch,” he said, giving it another try.
    “One of the best,” Maggie agreed.
    He saw her glance at her watch as he pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket.
    “Ganza should be able to get a unit out here in forty, forty-five minutes,” she said.
    Ganza . Tully bit back a response, not surprised that she’d choose to hand it over to their FBI crime lab. And it was probably a smart choice, even the correct choice. But it meant they’d be out here, stranded, until almost every last piece of evidence had been collected.
    Still, Tully made the phone call without question or comment.
    The whole time he talked to Ganza he watched Maggie. She had started taking pictures with her smartphone. A good move, considering there would be little sunlight by the time Ganza and his team made it to the scene.
    He slipped his phone back into his pocket, his fingers lingering.He wanted to call Gwen, the urge something fierce. Even though and maybe because she wasn’t expecting a call.
    Maggie stopped and Tully watched her slowly turn, taking in the surroundings as if for the first time really seeing them.
    “Do you think he killed Gloria Dobson here, too?”
    Tully listened now that his breathing had returned to normal and his heartbeat had settled. He couldn’t hear the interstate traffic. He couldn’t hear any traffic or car doors being slammed or voices calling to each other back at the parking lots. A breeze rustled branches overhead. The birds cawed and squawked at each other. If the killer had timed it right and no one had been at the rest area, these woods would have absorbed the victims’ screams.
    “Ganza should be able to figure that out,” Tully said.
    But as he looked around he wondered how difficult a job it would be. Outdoor crime scenes were always challenging and this one was days old, contaminated by the birds and other predators. Pools of blood that seeped into the ground would need to be dug up. Leaves and debris would have matted on top. The wind may have blown away fabric and hair.
    Tully remembered Gloria Dobson’s face—or rather what was left of it—in that dark alley. If pieces of her had been splattered and left here on the tree bark or stuck to blades of grass, Keith Ganza and his technicians would find it.
    “I don’t think he killed her here,” Maggie said. “It’d be too far to drag her body back. He had to take her someplace where he could bring a vehicle close.”
    “Maybe she didn’t make it this far into the woods.”
    He tried to imagine a pursuit and found himself looking for broken branches, skid marks in the mud, a drag line. He rememberedit had rained the other night, not hard but enough to disrupt evidence. Did it rain here, too?
    He glanced at Maggie and saw she was thinking along the same lines. She was scanning the path they had taken.
    “Why would he take on two? And how was he able to do it? Did he plan it or was it an impulse that got terribly out of hand?”
    “Either way, we’re dealing with one sick bastard.”
    Maggie stared up at the streamers of intestines. Ripped and ravished by the birds, they still looked to Tully too much like human guts.