CHAPTER THREE

Mackenzie was rather surprised that the local office had provided Thorsson and Heideman with a Suburban. After her own clunker and the template rental cars she’d been stuck with over the past few months, she felt like she was traveling in style while sitting in the back with Ellington. When they arrived at the first scene an hour and ten minutes later, she was almost glad to be out of it, though. She wasn’t used to such nice perks with her position and it made her feel a little uncomfortable.

Thorsson parked along the edge of State Route 14, a basic two-lane back road that wound through the forests of rural Iowa. The road was bordered with trees on both sides. During the few miles they had been on this road, Mackenzie had seen a few small dirt roads that seemed to have been long forgotten, chained off by a thin cable and two posts on either side of the tracks. Other than those few breaks, there was nothing more than trees.

Thorsson and Heideman led them past a few local cops who gave perfunctory waves as they passed. Up ahead, in front of two parked police cars, was a little red Subaru. The two driver’s side tires were completely flat.

“What’s the police force like around here?” Mackenzie asked.

“Small,” Thorsson said. “The nearest town to here is a little place called Bent Creek. Population of about nine hundred. The police force consists of one sheriff—who is back there with those other guys—two deputies, and seven officers. They had a few suits from Des Moines come in but when we showed up, they stepped back. It’s the FBI’s problem now. That kind of thing.”

“So they’re glad we’re here, in other words?” Ellington asked.

“Oh, absolutely,” Thorsson said.

They approached the car and all circled it for a moment. Mackenzie took a look back at the officers. Only one of them seemed legitimately interested in what the visiting FBI agents were doing. As far as she was concerned, that was fine with her. She’d had her fair share of meddling small-town police officers making things harder than they had to be. It would be nice to work a job without having to tiptoe around the sensitivities and egos of the local PD.

“Has the car already been dusted for prints?” Mackenzie asked.

“Yeah, earlier this morning,” Heideman said. “Help yourself.”

Mackenzie opened the passenger side door. A brief look around told her that while the vehicle might have been dusted for prints, nothing had yet been removed and tagged as evidence. A cell phone still sat in the passenger seat. A pack of gum sat on top of a few scattered and folded pieces of paper in the center console.

“This is the author’s car, correct?” Mackenzie asked.

“It is,” Thorsson said. “Delores Manning.”

Mackenzie continued checking the car. She found Manning’s sunglasses, a mostly empty address book, a few copies of The Tin House scattered in the back seat, and spare change here and there. The trunk offered only a box of books. There were eighteen copies of a book called Love Blocked by Delores Manning.

“Was everything back here dusted for prints?” Mackenzie asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Heideman said. “It’s just a box of books, right?”

“Yes, but some are missing.”

“She came from a signing,” Thorsson said. “Chances are pretty good she sold some or gave some away.”

It wasn’t anything worth arguing about so she let it go. Still, Mackenzie flipped through two of the books. They had both been signed by Manning on the title page.

She put the books back into the box and then started to study the road. She walked along the edge, looking for any indentations where something might have been set up that would have flattened the tires. She looked over to Ellington and was pleased to see that he was already studying the flats. From where she stood, she could see the glittering shards of glass still sticking out of the tires.

There was more of the glass in the road ahead. The bit of sunlight that managed to break through the tree branches overhead bounced off of them in a way that was eerily pretty. She walked over to it and squatted down for a better look.

It was obvious that the glass had been placed there intentionally. It was located primarily close to the broken yellow lines in the center of the road. It was scattered here and there like sand but the main concentration had been spaced out to ensure that anyone driving along would run directly over it. A few larger shards remained in the road; the car had apparently missed these, as they had not been ground down into crumb-like bits. She picked up one of these larger pieces and studied it.

The glass was dark at first glance but as Mackenzie took a closer look, she saw that it had been painted black. To kill the glare of approaching headlights, she thought. Someone driving at night would see glass in their headlights…but not if it was painted black.

She selected a few pieces from the debris and scratched at a few larger pieces with her fingernail. The glass underneath was two different colors; most of it was clear but some of it had a very slight green tint to it. It was far too thick to be from any sort of drinking bottle or common jar. It had the thickness of something that a potter might make. Some if it looked to be easily as much as an inch and a half in width even after it had been broken and then shattered by Delores Manning’s car.

“Anyone notice that this glass has been spray-painted?” she asked.

Along the side of the road, the officers were looking to one another as if confused. Even Thorsson and Heideman gave one another a quizzical look.

“That’s a no,” Thorsson said.

“Has any of it been bagged and analyzed yet?” Mackenzie asked.

“Bagged, yes,” Thorsson said. “Analyzed, no. But there’s a team on it right now. We should have some sort of results in a few hours. I guess they would have eventually gotten back to us on the spray paint.”

“And this glass was not at any of the other scenes, is that correct?”

“That’s right.”

Mackenzie got to her feet, looking down at the glass as she started to paint a picture of the kind of suspect they might be looking for.

No glass at the previous scenes, she thought. That means the suspect was purposeful about this one woman. Why? Maybe the first two disappearances were just coincidence. Maybe the subject just happened to be in the right place at the right time. And if that was the case, he’s definitely a local—a rural killer, not an urban one. But he’s smart and calculated. He’s not just doing his tasks by the seat of his pants.

Ellington came over to her and inspected the glass for himself. Without looking up at her, he asked: “Any initial thoughts?”

“A few.”

“Such as?”

“He’s a rural guy. Likely a local, as we thought. I also think this one was planned. The flat tires…he did it on purpose. If the glass was not present at the other scenes, he set it out only this time. It makes me think he had no control over the other two. It was just luck on his part. But this one…this one he had to work for.”

“You think it’s worth speaking to family?” Ellington asked.

She could not tell if he was quizzing her in some weird way like Bryers had once done or if he was genuinely interested in her methodology and approach.

“Might be the fastest way to get any answers for right now,” she said. “Even if it nets nothing, it’s a task completed.”

“That sounds like a robot talking,” Ellington said with a smile.

Ignoring him, Mackenzie walked back over to the car where Thorsson and Heideman had been watching them.

“Do we know where Delores Manning lives?” she asked.

“Well, she lives in Buffalo, New York,” Thorsson said. “But she has family out near Sigourney.”

“That’s in Iowa, too, right?”

“It is,” Thorsson said. “Her mother lives about ten minutes outside of the town. Father is deceased. No one has informed them of her disappearance yet. From what we can tell, she’s only been missing for twenty-six hours or so. And while we can’t confirm it, we can’t help but wonder if she paid her family a visit while she was so close because of her book signing in Cedar Rapids.”

“I think they should probably be informed,” Mackenzie said.

“Same here,” Ellington said, joining them.

“Be my guest, then,” Thorsson chuckled. “Sigourney is about an hour and fifteen minutes away. We’d love to tag along,” he added sarcastically, “but that wasn’t in our orders.”

As he said this, one of the policemen joined them. The badge he wore indicated that this was the sheriff of the area.

“You need us around for anything?” he asked.

“Nope,” Ellington said. “Maybe just the name of a decent hotel around here.”

“There’s only one back in Bent Creek,” the sheriff said. “So that’s the only one I can really recommend.”

“Well then, it looks like we’ll take your recommendation. And we’ll also need one for a rental car in Bent Creek.”

“I can get you fixed up,” the sheriff said, leaving it at that.

With a slight sense of feeling displaced, Mackenzie walked back to the Suburban and took her place in the back seat. As the three other agents piled in, Mackenzie started to think about those little dirt tracks off of State Route 14. Who owned that property? Where did the roads lead?

As they headed toward Bent Creek, the country roads seemed to present more and more questions in Mackenzie’s mind…some menial but some very pressing. She collected them all as she thought about the broken glass in the road. She tried to imagine someone painting that glass with the clear intention of causing someone’s car to break down.

It spoke of more than just intent. It indicated careful planning and knowing the flow of traffic along State Route 14 at that time of night.

Our guy is smart in a dangerous sort of way, she thought. He’s also a planner and seems to be going after women only.

She started to put a profile together for such a suspect and instantly started to feel a sense of pressure…of the need to move quickly. She felt he was somewhere within this little rural hole of trees and winding roads, breaking up more glass, spraying it with spray paint.

And planning to capture another victim.