CHAPTER SIX

Ella slouched in the airplane seat, case files scattered across the table like a macabre twist on airplane reading material. The recycled air of the cabin stuck in her throat, stale as a week-old donut. Luca sat across from her, legs folded up like a pretzel. He had the case file open on his lap, crime scene photos fanned out like some grisly deck of cards.

Then he glanced up and caught Ella an expression that was half anticipation, half intestinal distress.

‘What's up with your face?' Ella asked. ‘Peanut allergy?'

Luca glanced out of the window. There was still an airport on the other side.

‘I'm not what you'd call a frequent flyer.'

‘Don't like it?'

‘I prefer my travels at sea level. Don't we have a boat?'

‘We don't even have a stationary cupboard.' Luca was riding the wave of realization. The one where he discovered that the Bureau was less conspiracies and cover-ups and more expired coffee creamer. It was an office just like any other, just an office whose name everybody knew.

‘Touché. Well, get ready. I might be a real diva for the next hour.'

Ella would be lying if she said she wasn't a little charmed. It was such a contrast to the usual Bureau blowhards, so quick to posture and peacock. Luca had confidence where it mattered, but it was leavened with an endearing dorkiness.

‘I can live with that.' She stabbed the paperwork in front of her. ‘But more importantly, we've got a dead politician to avenge.'

‘That we do.' Luca skipped through his folder, laid a few documents out on the table between him and Ella. ‘Not a whole lot to go on right now. No toxicology report. No official cause of death.'

‘Let's start with what we know. Ricky Toledo, rising star in the glamorous world of small-pond politics. Charismatic and ambitious judging by the few stories I read about him on the way here.'

‘Eyebrows you could slice your hand on. Quintessential golden boy.'

Ella pulled up a few pre-death photos of Ricky Toledo on her cell. ‘He certainly looks the part. Suit pressed within an inch of its life, smile that belongs on a car salesman. Just the right mix of trustworthy and sleazy.'

Luca spun one of the crime scene photos around. It was a close-up of Ricky's lower half. ‘Look at the bottom of his jeans. Ripped, scuffed. What's the deal there, you think?'

‘Could be where the killer dragged him through the mud? He was found in the middle of a field. Given the lack of blood, Ricky was killed elsewhere then dumped in that field.'

Luca's gaze was far away, that keenly honed mind whirring behind his sculpted features. It was a look Ella had come to know well over the past week – the hallmark of a Hawkins brainstorm, the thrill of theory taking hold.

It did something to her, that look. Something that she struggled to place and definitely shouldn"t consider, given their professional arrangement. She banished it to the back of her brain for later examination. Or never. Definitely never.

‘Well,' Luca said slowly, drawing the word out like taffy. ‘We can probably rule out accident. I don"t care how dumb you are, you don"t just stumble into a field by accident.'

‘Or stumble into a river and forget how to swim. We still need to figure out how Ricky ended up drenched.'

Then the plane began to rumble to life. It rolled around to its take-off position while Luca death-gripped the armrest like it was the only thing between him and oblivion.

Ella snorted, something almost like amusement tugging at the corners of her mouth. ‘Get used to this part, Hawkins. Sometimes I imagine how astronauts feel when they're going vertical. Must be hell on the stomach.'

‘Don't,' Luca said.

Ella leaned around the table and kicked him. ‘What's wrong? You're about twenty times more likely to die in a car crash than a plane crash.'

‘That's called empirical probability. You don't ride a plane every day.'

‘Close enough,' Ella said.

‘That's like saying only one person has ever died from drinking and driving and juggling, so it's statistically safer than plain old drink-driving.'

"That"s why I keep juggling balls in my car." Ella leaned forward as the plane began its ascent. "Eyes up. Look at me, partner. So our killer targeted a politician, maybe driven by a personal grudge. It might even be an assassination. You know why this is bad news for us?"

They hit the air at one-eighty miles per hour. Ella didn't even feel the gut-churn anymore. Across from her, Luca sat with one eye closed, like he was at the peak of a rollercoaster drop.

‘Yeah,' he said. ‘Because this isn't a serial killer, so everything we know goes out of the window.'

‘Bingo. What drives a serial killer might not drive this unsub, so we're going to have to mix things up.'

The plane hit its cruising altitude with a final jolt. Luca exhaled through his nose, a controlled release of the breath he"d been holding hostage in his lungs. His color improved from green to merely sallow, and he peeled his grip off the armrest one finger at a time.

‘See, Hawkins. Nothing to worry about. And I've always got my juggling balls in case things go south.'

Luca shot her a baleful glare, the effect somewhat ruined by the sweat still beading his upper lip. ‘Funny. You should take that show on the road.'

‘That's plan B.'

He grumbled something uncomplimentary under his breath but his shoulders notched down a few degrees from around his ears. He even managed to pry his gaze away from the window and back to the grim spectacle spread across the table.

Progress. Small steps.

Ella decided to throw him a bone, steer the conversation back to safer waters. Namely, the bloated corpse of Ricky Toledo and the sick twist who"d left him in that field like so much rubbish.

‘Okay, so we"ve got a high-profile victim, a showy dump site, and an unsub with a hard-on for flare. Not exactly a shrinking violet.'

Luca nodded, latching onto the case details like a drowning man to a rope. ‘The dump site is pretty interesting. Why the middle of a field? If he wanted to hide him, he could have picked a more secluded location. What's Liberty Grove like for rivers, mountains, woods?'

‘Several of all of them. No shortage of places to dump a body that you didn't want found.'

‘So our killer wanted him seen,' Luca said.

‘Agreed. It just begs the question why. The killer had to know dropping a body in a place like that would bring the heat down fast.'

‘Maybe that"s the point.' Luca shuffled through the photos, considered each with that keen, hawkish gaze of his. ‘Maybe he wants the attention. The notoriety. But the real rush comes after. When he takes his trophy out into the world and displays it for all to see.'

‘Catch me if you can,' Ella muttered. She'd seen it before, the hubris of the truly deranged. The ones who thought they were invincible right up until the cuffs snapped closed.

She studied the pic of Ricky sprawled in the dirt, clothes ruined, skin marbled blue. ‘Still doesn't explain the waterlogged wardrobe. If you"re gonna pose a body, why not keep him clean? Make a real pretty picture for the 6 o"clock news?'

‘Unless that"s part of the message,' Luca said. ‘If he's trying to trash Toledo's political party, he probably wants him to look like trash too. Imagine the hit their image would take.'

Ella turned Luca"s theory over in her mind like a rock in a tumbler. The kid had a point. A golden boy like Ricky, left to rot in a field like a dead rat? It was a statement and a half. The kind of thing that could torpedo a whole political party in a heartbeat.

‘Okay, so we"ve got an unsub with a taste for the theatrical and a hard-on for humiliation.' She ticked off the points on her fingers, the picture coalescing in her mind"s eye. ‘He"s organized, meticulous. To pull off an abduction like this, he had to have a plan. A location. He"s not some crackpot swiping at random.'

Luca nodded. ‘Ricky was a big guy, in good shape. Our unsub had to have a way to subdue him quietly, get him under control without a fight.'

‘Could be drugs. Could be a gun.'

‘Which means he"s confident. Comfortable getting up close and personal. Maybe even charming.' Luca"s mouth twisted. ‘The kind of guy who could blend in at a fundraiser or a campaign stop. Work a crowd.'

Ella felt her own lip curl in distaste. The idea of this creep pressing flesh and glad-handing his way into Ricky"s orbit made her skin crawl. But it fit. Like a key sliding home in a lock.

‘So we might be looking for a wolf in sheep"s clothing. Fan-frigging-tastic.'

Ella could see the questions pinging around her partner's skull like pinballs. The whys and hows and what-the-everloving-hells. She knew the feeling. Every answered query just spawned a dozen more. The hydra"s heads of a burgeoning investigation.

But that was the job. Peel back the layers of the rotten onion until you reached the weeping, putrid core. And try not to breathe too deeply in the process.

‘When we hit the ground, I want to get eyes on the dump site ASAP,' she told him said. ‘The scene techs have probably trampled all over it by now, but we might get lucky. Catch something they missed.'

‘Like what?' Luca asked, wincing as a particularly rough patch of air nearly launched him out of his seat.

‘Footprints. Tire treads. Hell, a monogrammed handkerchief if the universe is feeling generous.' Ella shrugged, cracking her neck with a satisfying pop. ‘At this point, I"ll take anything that narrows down the suspect pool. Because let's be honest, who in this country doesn't want to kill one politician or another?'

Luca bit his lip and asked, ‘Do they?'

‘Don't you watch the news?'

‘Never.'

‘Well, get ready for a slab of rural America. Hope you packed your waders.'

Liberty Grove. A stone's throw away from her old haunts. She had a feeling it was going to be one hell of a homecoming.