years ago—on another planet, it seemed—and all at once he felt ashamed when he realized he could no longer remember the name of the student who made it for him.
As always, his first order of business was to hang the plaque above his bedroom door. There had been some women over the years who’d asked him about it; others who’d not even noticed it. He knew there’d be more of each variety here, but he also knew he wouldn’t reveal the plaque’s true meaning any sooner than he would reveal anything meaningful about himself.
When the plaque was straight and secure, he zipped up his hooded sweatshirt and began stretching his hamstrings. It was going to be a bit chilly, he could tell. That was good. He would shoot for six miles today—would follow the road out of the complex and up to the park just as the real estate lady had shown him on Monday.
Markham had just finished knotting his house key into the drawstring of his track pants, when suddenly a knock on his front door startled him. He glanced at his watch.
7:20? Who the hell could that be?
Peering through the peephole, he recognized the man in the gray overcoat immediately: Alan Gates, chief of Behavioral Analysis Unit 2 at Quantico.
His boss.
Markham opened the door.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“They found another body in Raleigh,” Gates said. “Male, spiked like the others, but forensics came across something interesting. It’s ours now.”
Markham was silent for a moment, then nodded and let him inside.
“How much do you know about the Rodriguez and Guer-rera murders?” Gates asked. The unit chief sat across from Markham at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of instant coffee and gazing out at the ducks.
“Not much,” Markham said. “Only what came across the Tampa wire back in February for the Gang Unit. MS-13, they seemed to think it was. The brutality of it, the victims being from the gang’s territory. Only reason they brought it to my attention was because of how they were killed. Morbid curiosity more than official business.”
“Mara Salvatrucha,” Gates said. “Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans mostly. Raleigh’s been having trouble with them these last couple of years, but the local homicide and gang units want to keep the media out of it. Don’t want to give them any more recognition than they’re already getting. That’s one of the reasons why the details of the lawyer’s murder were kept out of the papers—why the media has yet to make the connection to Rodriguez and Guerrera.”
“And Homicide has been able to keep the details of the Hispanics’ murders quiet, too?”
“For the most part. They were lucky a policeman found Rodriguez and Guerrera. Drove by the cemetery on an anonymous tip and discovered them in the adjoining field. Cemetery is in Clayton, country town about fifteen minutes south of Raleigh. Papers said the victims were found together, shot and stabbed and, I quote, ‘put on display.’ Guer-rera also had some tattoos common among the pandilleros.”
“Sounds similar to what’s being going on in South America,” Markham said. “The drug cartels cutting off people’s heads and skewering them on pikes, bodies propped up on stakes with warning signs around their necks.”
“Still, not a real public interest piece,” Gates said. “Low-income, Hispanic immigrants from the projects. Story received barely a byline and quickly died down. Wasn’t so easy with the lawyer. He was found by a groundskeeper who needed a little convincing to keep his mouth shut. But he’ll talk eventually. They always do.”
“And you’re saying this lawyer—I’m sorry, what’s his name again?”
“Donovan. Randall Donovan.
“Donovan. They found him displayed exactly like Rodriguez and Guerrera?”
“For the most part, yes. Impaled with a wooden stake through the rectum, exit wound here at the base of the neck, just under the collarbone. Only difference, the Hispanics’ heads were tied to their stakes across their faces. Donovan’s head was tied to his stake at his neck. He was found in a baseball field; Rodriguez and Guerrera outside the cemetery walls. Willow Brook is the cemetery’s name.”
“May I see Donovan’s file?”
Gates slid the file across the table and Markham opened it. The first page was an eight-by-ten photograph of the crime scene: Randall Donovan’s naked, lifeless body skewered about a foot off the ground. His eyes were open, his neck lashed to the stake with a thin black cord—but his neck appeared to be broken, his head arched unnaturally backwards, giving him the appearance that he was screaming up at the sky. Donovan’s killer had also left on the lawyer’s glasses. Markham made a mental note of it, quickly studied the series of close-ups, and then turned to the victim profile.
“Criminal defense attorney,” Markham said, reading, flipping. “Forty-five years old, married, father of two. Runs with some loveable characters, I see. This was the guy who got that mobster off last year? Raymond Galotti, Junior, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“He also represented Ernesto Morales on the trafficking and obstruction-of-justice rap. I read about that in the papers. The Bureau’s evidence was overwhelming, but Donovan got him a nice plea deal. Will do only a few years.”
“Donovan saved the Colombian’s family from being deported, too.”
“I didn’t know the Colombians were using MS-13 on the interstate level. Didn’t think the gang was organized or dependable enough for that kind of thing.”
“They’re not. An operation like Morales’s, the distribution from Miami all the way to DC, would be too high-maintenance for MS-13. Still a lot of territorial infighting, and the Colombians don’t trust them. Keep all the big-money stuff close to the vest.”
“But a hit like Donovan is right up their alley, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” said Gates. “But the Colombian connection to MS-13 in Raleigh is all but nonexistent. They’re actually in competition with them, at least on the lower-level stuff. Rise of the new Honduran drug lords and that kind of thing.”
“But what does this have to do with BAU? This isn’t our fight.”
Gates turned from the window and loosened his tie. Q&A is over, Markham thought. Yes, any second now his boss would adjust his glasses, would push the silver wire up on his nose and then gently straighten the arms. It was Alan Gates’s “tell,” Markham discovered many years ago—his signal that he was getting down to business. He used to do the same thing in his lectures at the Academy. Back then, the naïve trainee secretly wished to play the unit chief in poker; wanted to see if the old man would tip his hand as he so often did in class. However, over the years, Markham began to suspect that Gates was fully aware of his tell, and would probably sucker the shirt off his back.
And sure enough, when his boss began fiddling with his specs, Markham suddenly felt anxious. As if Gates had just put him in for all his chips.
“Rodriguez
