The Grave Between Us by Tal Bauer

Chapter Eighteen

Cole wokewhen the coffee cup hit the desk next to his head. He jerked awake, wincing and rubbing his lower back as he straightened in the conference room chair.

Noah glared down at him, his hand still on the coffee mug. “Good morning.”

“Shit,” Cole breathed. “I’m sorry. I must have fallen asleep. I’m sorry I didn’t come home.”

“I was waiting for your call. I fell asleep, too, but I woke up at four in a panic. I tried to call your cell and your desk. You didn’t answer. I had the WDMPD do a sweep of the office parking lot. The car was still there, and the conference room light was on, so I held back from having him break in. But only barely.”

Cole stared at his lap. He couldn’t blame Noah for being angry. “I’m sorry. I have it set to go silent after midnight. I did that months ago, when we moved in together. It wasn’t an issue until…”

“Until I needed to reach you in the middle of the night. Not coming home when there’s a serial killer on the loose? One who’s obsessed with you? Not the smartest decision.” Noah held out the coffee mug. “Not calling was worse, though. I was worried about you.”

He took the coffee and Noah’s hand. He tugged Noah close, kissing his fingers. “I’m sorry.”

“Katie missed you last night. She was upset this morning when you weren’t there.”

“Damn it.” Cole scrubbed one hand over his face. “I can pick her up from school today. Try and make it up to her.”

“She has a pep rally this morning. Text her and ask about it?”

“I will.” He rubbed his neck and looked up at Noah. “Did you miss me, too?”

“Like I’d miss my arm if it was cut off.” He reached out and brushed his fingers down Cole’s cheek. Cole turned into his touch. “You have pen on your face. Did you lie down as soon as you finished writing?”

“I might have. It got kind of fuzzy there at the end.” Cole set the coffee down and flipped through the papers he’d been lying facedown on. No drool puddles, at least. That was a bonus. “But I made lists of parks, forests, lakes, and rivers that we need to search. Do you know how many search and rescue or recovery teams we have access to locally?”

“About a dozen in the metro area. I can call in auxiliary units from the Civil Air Patrol and the Coast Guard if we need them. I might be able to get you twenty teams in twenty-four hours. There are only about ten search dogs in the area. Fewer that are able to detect human remains, though.”

“I found 108 parks within the hundred-mile range. I divided them up into zones. We’re going to have to combine Michael’s team and our local forces to search everything.”

“Director King didn’t seem interested in locals, or this office, helping out.”

“Michael wants to find Ian, and find Kerrigan. He’ll accept the help if it brings him closer to them.”

Noah nodded. He spread out Cole’s lists, running down each. “Some of these are smaller and more urban.”

“I crossed off any parks that were too exposed, but I kept the ones that had significant expanses of dense ground and tree cover. Walnut Woods I wouldn’t have included because it’s an urban park in the Des Moines metro area, but it’s got a thick, dense woodland and lots of space to hide.”

“It’s one of the more popular nature reserves in the area.”

“At this time of year, not a lot of people will be on the trails. Much less chance of being seen. Could you go over my lists? Check them out with a local’s eye? See what I’ve missed.”

“Of course. I’ll get Jacob’s opinion, too. He and Holly are outdoorsy—”

“Downing, what the hell are you doing in here?” Michael stormed into the conference room, moving like he was parting the Red Sea with the force of his presence. He shook his jacket off and dumped it over the chair at the other end of the table. “I thought I made it clear to you that the Des Moines office was not a part of this investigation.”

“I’m talking to Agent Kennedy, Director.” Noah’s voice was ice cold. “Nothing more.”

“You can speak to him in unsecured spaces. This is a classified investigation. I don’t have to remind you about the Bureau’s access compartmentalization policies, do I?”

“Michael, I asked for his help,” Cole said.

“Agent Downing is not a part of this investigation.”

“I need a local’s input on the search—”

“Not his!” Michael snapped. “Downing, get out.”

Noah’s frigid stare could put out a fire. He glared at Michael, then turned back to Cole. He leaned down and kissed Cole. “Your lists look great, hon. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Thanks, babe,” Cole called after him. They didn’t usually use sugary nicknames. But when Noah called Cole “hon,” Michael’s jaws seemed to scrape together, and Cole’s response nearly made steam come out of his ears.

Michael slammed the conference room door behind Noah. The windows, both those overlooking the parking lot and the ones out into the office hallway, rattled.

“What’s your problem with Noah?”

“You may love the man, but that doesn’t mean I have to like him.” Michael paced away, glaring at the map of the US marked with Ian’s possible victim pools over the past eight years. There were pushpins in every state.

“I’d think you’d be polite to him, at least.”

“I don’t have to be that, either. All I need from Downing is his cooperation as we run this investigation. Is that so much to ask?”

“You’re a miserable asshole at the best of times, but this is pushing it.” Cole leaned back, glaring at Michael. “This is personal to you, but I don’t understand why. You’ve never met Noah before. You’ve never worked in Des Moines before two weeks ago. How could Noah possibly have pissed you off when he was unconscious in his hospital bed?”

“He pissed me off way before that—”

“How?” Cole cried, throwing his hands wide. “You’ve never met the man—”

“Because he took you away! Because Noah Downing took you away from me and from the BAU. How the hell was I supposed to know that sending you here last summer was going to change everything? If I had known, I would have sent someone else. Anyone else!”

Cole’s jaw dropped.

“I was going to give you the BAU.” Michael’s voice dropped. Instead of shouting, he sounded resigned. Wistful, even. “I don’t want to do this very much longer. My time is almost up. Hell, maybe it’s already up. I’m retiring in a few years, and I wanted to give you the BAU. You were going to be Assistant Director Kennedy. I had it all planned out for you. That’s what was supposed to happen.” Michael shoved the chair he’d dropped his jacket on.

“You know Director Harper would never have allowed that,” Cole breathed. “He’d never have let you promote me or let me take over the unit.”

“Harper’s term is almost up. He was new when the Ingram case exploded, and now he’s on his way out. There’s going to be a new FBI director soon, and he wouldn’t have known the first thing about you other than that you’re the best Goddamn profiler we have and that there are over a hundred criminals behind bars now who wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for you and your work.”

Cole said nothing.

“Now, instead of preparing to take over the unit, you’re here.” Michael’s lip curled as he shook his head. “You’re a junior investigative agent in an RA where we send agents who graduated in the bottom half of their class at the academy. You don’t belong here. You’re wasting your talents.”

“I do belong here,” Cole said. “I belong with the man I love, and our family.”

Michael shook his head. “Are you really happy? What impact can you make in this flyover state?”

“I’m very happy. And I’ll be even happier when we find Ian and put him away, and you can fuck off back to Quantico and leave me and Noah the hell alone.” He threw his pen down on the table. “I’m not going back. Ever.”

Michael’s jaw clenched. He glared at the map, at the thousands of pushpins. His hand gripped the chair back, squeezing the stuffing until the leather squeaked. “Where are we on the Kerrigan investigation? How far did you get searching area parks and waterways?”

“I’ve got a list of places to start searching,” Cole said, sliding the lists down the table. “If you ask nicely, the locals can lend us some search teams. Noah might have a softer touch—”

“I’ll handle it,” Michael growled. He flipped through the pages, eyeing the headers Cole had scribbled along the top, matching them to grid coordinates on the map of Iowa taped to the wall. “Looks like we can divide the searches up geographically.”

“That was the idea.”

“Then let’s get going.”

* * *

Cole and Michaeltook the southern wedge of parks to search, dividing the northern and two western sections among the rest of Michael’s team of assistants. Michael allowed Cole to request local assistance searching the eastern section, and Noah reached out to the area sheriff’s departments. He and Cole texted for an hour as Noah drove out with Sophie to join the search efforts for a little while.

Midmorning, Cole led a convoy of search vehicles south on US Route 65, past Des Moines’ outer suburbs, past sprawling open fields, past the small towns that dotted the roadways. Rural farmland opened up, miles of empty fields stretching to a spilled-milk sky, cloud cover and fog obscuring the horizon. Bare tree branches poked up from thick brambles, choked clusters of winter-dormant trees and underbrush that, from a distance, looked like a child’s squiggly fingerpaint swirls.

They were heading for the thickest of those gnarled woods: Banner Lakes at Summerset State Park. Cole was taking the lead on one of the larger search operations, in a park that seemed to whisper to him, dragging his attention back whenever he looked away. Banner Lakes felt like Ian, even just looking at the paper map.

The closer they drove, the more the whispers grew. He could feel Ian in the air, feel him hovering in the fields and the fog as if he was watching them. Watching Cole.

It seemed overwhelming when they arrived. How were they ever going to search the entirety of the park, all the finger lakes, all the undergrowth spread among the dense woods? No wonder they hadn’t been able to find Ian’s victims, if he always buried them in areas like this. They could search for a year and never find a thing.

And he had thought he’d done well to narrow the possibilities to 108 parks. One hundred and eight, and they were looking for a needle buried in all these forests. He tried not to let despair pull him down as he parked at the north parking lot and waited for the rest of the search team to arrive.

Cole gave a quick briefing to the search commander. “It’s possible we could still find Mr. Kerrigan alive,” he said carefully. “But with the suspect we’re looking at—”

“After seventy-two hours, it’s likely we’re on a recovery and not a rescue mission,” the search team commander said with a nod. He was attached to the sheriff’s office, and he had the bulked-up, geared-out look of a former military man. Even in his midfifties, he still had a high and tight, faded now with salt in his dark hair. He wore yellow-tinted glasses to better see distinctions in the ground cover, and he had patches on his bomber jacket from search and rescue missions that spanned the globe. “At this stage, ideally we can find a fresh grave, before the soil has a chance to settle.”

The commander turned his words into a much more technical briefing to his teams, and by lunchtime, they were off. Three teams scoured the park, starting in a west-to-east direction, led by three search dogs. Cole stayed with the northernmost group, working through the thickest, densest section of the park.

It was slow going, cold and miserable. The damp air clung to his lungs and sank into his body, chilling his bones with every inhale. He trudged after the searchers, listening to the radio chatter from the teams as his eyes scanned the forest floor. He searched for the signs of a fresh-dug grave: lumps or depressions in the ground. Disturbed earth. Misplaced rocks. Underbrush that had been moved or turned over. Churned-up moss. Worm activity. Animals digging at the ground.

He heard the dogs first. Barking, then baying. The sound of excitement, working dogs finding what they were trained for. He veered off his search path and followed the sounds, right as his radio crackled, “Search teams, be advised, dogs are indicating at the following grid coordinates…”

By the time he arrived, the search commander had already cordoned off the area, looping crime scene tape around a cluster of basswood and sugar maple growing in a circle. Between the trunks, Cole could make out freshly turned earth, dark and wet, and broken twigs sticking out of a lump of soil. The dogs were sitting nearby, panting and staring at the grove with obvious interest as the search team’s grave identification specialist, a volunteer forensic anthropologist from Iowa State University, probed the loose earth.

The dogs leaped to their feet and bayed as the bloom of death flowed up out of the probe hole. “We’ve got human remains,” the anthropologist said. He spoke softly, his voice heavy. “The dogs are a double indicator. They’re cadaver dogs. They only indicate off human remains.” He held up his own soil gas indicator, which he held over the probe. “And this confirms it.”

Cole hung his head as the search commander called in the find. Michael was two teams away, searching the south end of the park, but he texted Cole as soon as the commander was finished relaying the information over the radio. I’m on my way.

When he arrived, he waited with Cole, uncharacteristically silent.

Ian’s voice echoed in Cole’s mind as the recovery teams got to work gridding out the grave and marking its outer boundaries. The loose soil was one indication of size, and the probes and ground gas readings were another. They quickly had the area staked out, string outlining the edges, overlaying what looked like shovel marks in the forest floor.

Think about the significance: the last person to touch these men was me, and the next to touch them could be you.

Forensic photographers took photos of the grave, of the shovel marks, of the turned dirt and the gas probes, as tarps were laid nearby and labeled with soil layers. Level one. Level two.

If you open up my graves, we’ll be together forever.

It was just like eight years ago in West Virginia, when he’d tracked Ian’s unwavering gaze into the woods and found the man he’d dumped in the ground. Now he and Noah were tracking Ian himself, again to a grave hidden in the woods.

He watched and waited as the grave was opened, each layer of soil taken to a tarp and sifted through, inch by painstaking inch. The photographer took photos of every layer, photos of the sides of the grave, places where tree roots had been broken by the sharp edge of a shovel. Places where dead leaves and twigs that should have been on the surface were four inches in the ground.

And then they uncovered the hand.

Fingers came first, the skin so pale it was almost translucent. The nails were caked with dirt, the knuckles bent, as if he’d clenched his fingers in his final moments, tried to make fists like he could fight back. A few inches down, they found the restraints that bound the wrists together and behind the broad, naked expanse of a man’s back. The recovery team brushed the dirt away slowly, exposing each knot of the man’s spine, all the way up to his shoulder blades, his neck. Autolysis had already begun, and the body was starting to turn black and blue around the waist. A delicate sheen appeared on his exposed skin, up his spine and the back of his neck. The first stage of decay. The carbon dioxide trapped in Kerrigan’s tissues had turned his body acidic. Cells throughout his body had burst, the inner enzymes starting to digest and decompose his organs. He was being consumed from the inside out by death. The fascia and tissue connections beneath his skin were disintegrating, and his flesh was starting to slip.

They kept working, exposing Brett Kerrigan’s face, slack and limp in death. His lips were blue, and there were deep, vivid bruises around his throat, including five near-perfect ovals against the soft tissues beneath his jawbone and his ear.

“It’s him,” Cole said. “That’s our missing man.”

More photos, taken silently, as the team stood by, watching with a careful, pensive reverence. The search commander spoke a few whispered words over Kerrigan’s remains before they began to excavate him further.

“Check his face and hands for Drano?” Cole asked. “There’s some history of our suspect using it in the past.”

“Are you talking about a serial?” The forensic anthropologist’s eyebrows rose.

Michael jumped in, answering before Cole could. “That’s not up for discussion. And you’re not a part of this investigation.”

Cole shoved his hands in his coat pockets as the anthropologist and the search team leader shared a long, silent look. The anthropologist bent down, twisting at his waist to peer into Kerrigan’s still face. One of Kerrigan’s eyes was visible, open and milky, dirt spackled across the dull sclera. “I don’t see any caustic agents on his skin,” he said. “No burn marks from lye or sodium hypochlorite. His hand wasn’t burned, either.”

“Damn,” Michael breathed.

The anthropologist frowned. “You wanted him to be burned?”

“If he had, it would be something we could have tried to trace,” Michael snapped. “We could have searched every area hardware store, grocery store, and gas station until we found him on camera buying Drano, or lye, or bleach. If we got that, we could maybe find his car. If we found his car, we could try and track him back to wherever he’s holed up.”

Minus the attitude, that was something Noah would have said, would have done. Michael had always been one of the best FBI agents Cole had ever met. Noah, too. Cole focused too much on behavior, on why instead of how. Noah could track down the how of an investigation like the best investigators Cole had ever seen.

Why change from using Drano to not? “He’s probably not doing it anymore for exactly that reason,” Cole said softly. “No one cared that he was buying Drano before.”

Before. Before eight years ago, before he was caught, before he escaped. Ian was a very careful fugitive.

“Can you check his mouth, too?” Cole asked. “Can you see if there’s anything inside?”

“What are we looking for?”

“Just check, please.”

The anthropologist carefully worked his gloved finger into Kerrigan’s blue lips, checking his jaw muscles. “He’s cold and slack. Rigor has passed.”

“Then he died more than thirty-six hours ago. Sometime on Sunday,” Michael said.

The anthropologist worked Kerrigan’s jaw, using two fingers to gently separate his teeth. He shined a flashlight into the mouth. Frowned. “Can I get the camera down here?” He motioned for the photographer to crouch over the grave, wide of the edges, and angle his camera so he could get a shot inside Kerrigan’s mouth. Finally, the anthropologist reached two fingers in and pulled what looked like sky-blue paper from behind Kerrigan’s teeth.

He held it out, balancing it in his palm.

A paper crane, the same color as the one the little boy had been playing with in the barn. The same one Cole had held in his hands. The same one he’d given back to the kid as the father bellowed at Cole, as Ian watched, hidden in the corner of the bar.

“Damn it,” Michael breathed. He took the crane from the anthropologist’s hand and bagged it. “It’s his signature.”

Cole nodded.

There’s nothing quite as intimate between two people as a grave.

“I’m taking this back to the office. I want to get it sent to Quantico today. Are you coming?” Michael turned away to head back to the parking lot, already done with the grave and Brett Kerrigan. Moving on to the next item on his to-do list, the next step in his great “capture Ian” plan. But where did they go from here? What could they do next, when they were always one step behind, always playing catch-up to Ian’s graves and his victims? For once, thanks to Noah, they’d been on his trail, but even so, they were too late. Brett Kerrigan’s grave might be fresh, but it was still a grave.

“No, I’m going to stay,” Cole said. “I need to be here.”

He watched every layer of dirt come out of Kerrigan’s grave, watched his body be exhumed from the earth. He texted Noah, despondent, despairing about where to go from there. Noah tried to talk him through it, reminding him they had an active crime scene now. A fresh body dump, which meant there were forensic possibilities. Tire treads, shoe imprints, DNA. They had Ian tied to a place, which meant they had another location to search from. They’d find him, Noah promised.

And then Cole’s cell phone rang. The number was restricted. Noah, he thought, calling to try to cheer him up. The office number always came up restricted. He swiped and answered, turning away from the grave. “Hello?”

“Hello, Cole.”

Every muscle in Cole’s body froze. Even his heart stopped and his lungs stilled, his mind stalling for an endless moment as his vision went blurry. The horizon, a fuzzy squiggle of forest and fog and farm, turned neon-intense as the world went white. Every cell in his body seemed to detonate at once, a burn that seared through him like a nuclear blast. “Ian,” he breathed.

“It was incredibly easy to get your number. Your receptionist should be fired. All I had to do was pretend to be calling from Quantico, pretend I’d had my call dropped a few times trying to connect to you. She gave me your direct line before I even asked.”

Kathy was one of the nicest women Cole knew, always looking out for the much-younger agents in the office. She kept photos of Katie and Brianna at her desk and never missed any of the agents’ birthdays. “Where are you, Ian?”

“Are you having fun at the grave I left you? Are you thinking of me? I thought of you as I was burying him.”

Cole spun in a circle, searching the woods. He tried to peer through the trees. There was a small hill in front of him, and he ran up it, boots crunching over the dead leaves and wet earth. He’s in the park! He’s watching! He slipped and nearly fell to his knees on the thick ground cover.

“It’s wonderful to see you again, Cole. I’m not as close as I was all those years ago, but I’m still close enough to see your face. Catch a whiff of you as I passed by. You don’t look like you’ve aged a day. You’re as breathtaking as ever. I can still draw you perfectly. I have. I’ll show you sometime. I’ve kept you so close to me.”

Cole stumbled down the hill, racing back to the grave site. He waved his hands, trying to signal to the commander. Everyone was staring at him, frowning. He covered the mic, hissed, “It’s him! He’s here in the park! He’s watching us!”

It was like he’d kicked an anthill. The search commander grabbed his radio and called for all units to sweep the park, for a cordon to be set up on the highways, for all cooperating units from adjoining state and municipal agencies to descend on the park. He used the emergency band on the police radio, broadcasting in the clear, as far and wide as he could transmit.

“Where are you, Ian?” Cole asked again. His voice was shaking. “I want to see you. Tell me where you are.”

Ian laughed. “I’m not calling to talk about me. We spent a long, long time talking about me. Now I want to talk about you. You once told me you had no interest in killing, but that isn’t true, is it? No, you’re quite the killer when you want to be.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Last summer, Cole. You shot and killed a man in cold blood. I read all about it. How you put a bullet through his skull before he even raised his weapon at you.”

Cole stilled, and the world narrowed to a pinprick. He stared at the ground, at a single leaf rustling across the dirt, blowing in the frigid February air.

“I used to wonder, at night in my cell, what it would take for you to kill a man. You seemed so righteous back then, so certain. You’d never take a life, you said. Now we know that’s not true, don’t we?”

“I’m not a murderer. I’m nothing like you.”

“You killed a man. I killed a man. We’re exactly the same.”

“I didn’t enjoy it—”

“Oh, I think you did,” Ian purred. “I think you loved killing that man. You loved putting him down. Didn’t you?”

Cole inhaled, held his breath.

“Eight years ago, you tried to open me up and look inside me. You tried to peel back my skin and look into my mind, tried to understand what neurons fired in which ways that made me behave the way I did. You tried to understand me. But you never realized that I was doing the same thing. And you know what I learned?”

Rage tunneled through him, boiling the blood in his veins. The world was narrowing, the edges getting fuzzy. The woods were wavering lines, the horizon coming at him too fast.

“We became the same, after all that time we spent together. We’re echoes of each other now. You looked into the abyss inside me, and the abyss looked back into you. The abyss opened inside you, and you kept looking into it every time you touched something that belonged to me. My graves. My men. I told you we’d be together forever, and I was right.”

“We’re not the same,” Cole hissed. “And you don’t know anything about me.”

“I know everything about you. I know you’re low on milk. I know Katie doesn’t ever pick up her shoes. I know you’re low on soda and someone—Noah, right?—likes his toast well done. I know you have indigo towels in your guys’ bathroom, but Katie has seafoam green ones in hers. I know Noah leaves his wet towels on the end of the bed and that you haven’t done your laundry in a few weeks.”

He’s in my house. Oh my fucking God, he’s in my house.

Cole took off at an all-out run, tearing back to the parking lot. The woods seemed to elongate, stretch like a rubber band, an endless forest he could never escape. His feet were stuck in molasses, every step seeming slower and slower as he gasped for oxygen that wasn’t there.

“I’m so close to you,” Ian breathed. “So close I’m almost inside you. God, I love the smell of you in these bedsheets.”

He stumbled, fell. Rolled in the dirt, came up on his hands and knees, and puked over a decaying log. He shouted back to the search team, to the sheriff’s deputies who were approaching him like he was a spooked horse. “He’s in my house! He’s in my fucking house!”

He still had the phone in his hand, and he heard Ian’s laughter floating up from his fist.

“I knew you liked your men older,” Ian said as Cole scrambled to his feet and pushed the phone back against his ear. “Didn’t I? Back then? I’ve always known so much about you. Noah looks like a decent guy. He photographs well, I’ll give him that. You got the photos that I sent you of him, right?” There was the sound of glass breaking, a picture frame shattering. “I’ve taken more photos for you. I wonder what he tastes like. Of course, I already know what he sounds like when he screams.”

“You stay the fuck away from him!” Cole shrieked. He was an animal on the edge, his heart racing, palms sweating. He’d never felt this much adrenaline in his life. “You stay away from Noah and Katie!”

“I have no interest in her. But him…”

There. There was his car. Get to the car, get home. Stop Ian. Keep Noah safe. He was thinking in primary colors, big blocks of bold letters. No higher thought, nothing deeper than Noah and Safety and Kill Ian stop Ian kill him!

“I can’t wait to see you again,” Ian said. “I can’t wait for us to be together forever.”

“You motherfucker!” Cole spat. “I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll kill you the next time I see you! Do you fucking hear me?”

Ian chuckled, and the line went dead.

* * *

He didn’t rememberthe drive back to their house. He didn’t remember going over 110 on the highway, or the lights and sirens flashing. He didn’t remember screaming as he floored the accelerator, or beating his palms on the steering wheel, or punching the dash with his bare fist. He didn’t remember the radio calls or the alerts of a 10-62 at his home address.

He arrived before the West Des Moines police or the Dallas County sheriff’s deputies did, and he jumped the curb and drove his Bureau sedan all the way onto the front lawn before diving out and racing up the porch. It was just like that night eight months before, but back then it was Noah’s house he was storming, and this time it was theirs. The alarm was blaring, a high-pitched scream that stabbed his eardrums.

He kicked open the front door and rushed inside, bellowing at the top of his lungs. “FBI! Ian! Come out here, now!”

Nothing, save for the wail of the alarm.

The glass door to the back porch was broken, shattered all over the kitchen floor, and the door to the garage was open, lock picks still stuck into the doorknob. Kitchen cupboards were open, dishes thrown on the ground. The fridge was open, food smashed, milk poured out.

Siting on the kitchen counter was a police scanner, tuned to the emergency channel. It wasn’t something Cole owned, and he knew Noah didn’t have one, either. They didn’t need a police scanner.Cole could hear reports fly back and forth, units responding to his address, responding to the alarm company’s report of a break-in. Buried beneath the noise, he could make out the stern voice of the search team commander. Ian. He’s been listening the whole time. To everything.

Cole swept the corners of each downstairs room, flicking on light switches with the back of his hand.

Every picture they’d had on the wall, all the photos they’d put up of the three of them, or of Noah and Cole, or Noah and Katie, had been thrown down and smashed. The photos of Noah had Noah’s face punched out, like Ian had taken a pencil and run it through Noah’s face. Cole’s stomach churned.

Upstairs, Katie’s room had been trashed, the mattress torn from her bed, her posters ripped down, her desk toppled over. Her makeup was smashed and her vanity destroyed. Eye shadows and blushes were ground into the cream carpet, a rainbow smeared across the floor. Her lipsticks had been shattered under the heel of a boot.

In his and Noah’s bedroom, the dresser had been torn through, Cole and Noah’s clothes thrown in every corner. The bedroom and bathroom mirrors were smashed, and Noah’s toothbrush and comb and razor were in the toilet.

Either he or Noah made their bed each morning. Even if they flung towels around or left piles of dirty shirts on the closet floor, the bed was made, every day.

Ian had stripped off the comforter, and it looked like he’d rolled in their bed, wrapping the sheet around himself as he did. Cole crept closer, peering at the rumpled linens.

Fresh semen stained the fabric, still glistening.

Cole’s pillowcase was gone.

And an orange paper crane sat atop Noah’s pillow.

Cole’s phone rang. The alarm was less intense upstairs, muted through the floor. He roared as he dug it out of his pocket, and he answered without looking at the screen. “What?”

“Agent Kennedy?” The solid, weighty tone of the search team commander’s voice came over the line. “We’ve just removed Mr. Kerrigan’s remains from the grave. There’s something you need to see. Your suspect put something beneath Mr. Kerrigan before he buried him. I’m switching to video.”

Cole fumbled with his phone, accepting the change from voice to video call. Suddenly he was back in the woods, walking with the commander through the fallen leaves and wet dirt. The commander said, “Okay, I’m at the grave now,” and then he squatted down, held the phone out. Gloved hands—the forensic anthropologist’s—were there, moving through what looked like postcards in the bottom of the grave…

Not postcards. Photos. Polaroids.

A hundred Polaroid photos of Noah.

Noah and him, at Oak Haven Meadows. Getting out of the car, walking to the barn. Noah in the front passenger seat of the car, Cole driving him around Des Moines. Noah and him drinking smoothies after Noah’s physical therapy appointment. Noah and him eating dinner at Noah’s favorite restaurant, the night of Katie’s dance. Noah and him walking across the FBI’s parking lot. Him walking across their driveway with his coffee cup, getting into the SUV. Noah at home, taken through the windows: in the kitchen, drying dishes as he smiled toward the kitchen table, where Katie and Cole were sitting together. Sitting on the couch, reading on his iPad. Upstairs in their bedroom, in profile, unbuttoning his shirt, his head turned to the side, grinning—

“Is this the killer’s next target?” the forensic anthropologist asked. His voice was distant, far from the microphone, and his hands kept sifting through the photos. How many days and hours had Ian been there, so close he was inside their lives? Inside their home?

A hundred photos of Noah at the bottom of a grave.

A paper crane on Noah’s pillow.

Cole dropped his phone and screamed.