Kenzie uttered the word as if each letter cost her dearly.
Hunter smiled and graciously inclined his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard gratitude so grudgingly dispensed,” he told her.
She glanced at her arm. His hand was still wrapped around it. “You can let go of my arm now,” she informed him icily.
“Are you sure?” he asked dubiously. “It’s still pretty slippery here.”
He was up to something, Kenzie thought. She just didn’t trust this Boy Scout routine of his.
“I’m sure,” she answered. She scowled when he went on holding her arm. “You’re cutting off my circulation,” she told him.
His smile widened. “From what I hear, according to your brothers I’m not the one cutting it off.”
Kenzie shook off his hold. Striding after O’Reilly and Jupiter, she struggled to hold on to her temper. She did owe Hunter, aware that he could have very easily just let her fall. She still didn’t understand why he didn’t, but even so, that put her, at least temporarily, in his debt.
And she didn’t like it.
“Can we please just stick to business?” Kenzie requested.
“Speaking of which,” Hunter said, glancing over toward Jupiter. The dog had abruptly stopped in his tracks and was now suddenly digging eagerly. “I think we just might be in business now.”
Hunter carefully made his way over toward the German shepherd as the dog furiously burrowed through the mud, oblivious to the fact that he was growing incredibly dirty as he dug.
“Looks like Jupiter found the rest of that body you were looking for,” O’Reilly commented.
“Not quite,” Kenzie said, squatting down to get a closer look at what the dog was digging up. She turned her head as more mud went flying at all of them. “O’Reilly, get him to stop for a minute,” she requested.
“Jupiter, stay!” O’Reilly ordered gruffly.
Getting in closer again, Kenzie frowned. And then she turned her head slightly as she looked back at Hunter. He was a few inches away from her. “You don’t need to breathe down my neck, Brannigan.”
“I know. I thought that was a bonus,” he told her innocently. Then, before she could speak up, Hunter said what they were both thinking. “That torso has been in the ground too long to belong to John Kurtz.”
She frowned, hating the fact that she agreed with Brannigan’s assessment. “And I’m thinking that it’s also not decomposed enough to belong to your cold case,” Kenzie added.
“This makes three,” Hunter said quietly, as if saying the words too loudly would somehow make everything fall apart. “It’s official,” he told Kenzie and the officer. “Looks like we have ourselves a serial killer.”
Kenzie felt her heart sink. Whether it was because she agreed with him, or because he was the one who put it into words first, she didn’t know. Either way, she had her cell phone out. She hit a number on her speed dial.
“Who are you calling?” Hunter asked.
She held up her hand, silently requesting him to stop talking.
“Destiny?” she said, recognizing the voice of the person who had picked up on the other end. “Is the chief around?” she asked formally. “Thanks.”
“CSI?” Hunter guessed.
Kenzie nodded. Just then, the wind shifted. The next moment, Jupiter was off and running again. O’Reilly could barely keep up. In all probability he might have lost the dog had Jupiter not stopped in front of another mound. It was all dirt, not mud this time. Either way, the dog began digging furiously again.
Watching what Jupiter was doing, Kenzie came to attention as the phone was being picked up on the other end.
“Uncle Sean? This is Kenzie. Looks like I’ve got some unfinished business for your investigators. Detective Brannigan had the K-9 unit bring out a cadaver dog to go over the scene at Aurora Park where that head and hands were found today. The thinking was to find the rest of the body, but the dog dug up more bones. Old bones,” she emphasized. “How soon can you have someone from your team get here? Great. We’ll be here.”
Ending the call, she slid her phone back into her pocket. She looked over toward O’Reilly, who was having more trouble restraining Jupiter. The shepherd looked eager to take off again.
“The crime scene investigators will be here shortly,” she told the handler. She eyed the German shepherd. “Is he just excited, or—”
“I think it’s ‘or,’” O’Reilly replied with a heavy sigh.
Kenzie gestured toward the dog. “By all means, give him his lead,” she told O’Reilly.
Once again Jupiter was off and running, with O’Reilly not too far behind.
“Looks like that flash flood unleashed someone’s hidden graveyard,” Hunter observed. He made his way over to the third set of bones the dog had just dug up.
“Yes, but whose?” she questioned, saying it more to herself than to the detective standing near her. She surveyed the area with dismay. “This can’t just be the work of one person—can it?” she asked him.
“There’s no telling what one person is capable of,” Hunter answered. “The Green River Killer racked up one hell of a large body count before they finally caught on to him.”
Kenzie shivered. She remembered reading about the case. The man who was ultimately responsible for the killings broke all the previous rules that had, everyone believed, once been set in stone. The serial killer wasn’t a withdrawn loner. Instead, he was a member of the community. A well-respected member who taught Sunday school on occasion, ran a youth group and was a man whom everyone liked. No one would have ever suspected him of doing anything wrong, let alone killing so many women.
With the playbook rendered completely null and void, that meant anything was possible and just about anyone could be a killer.
That unfortunately left the suspect pool wide-open, she thought.
“Looks like this means we’re going to be keeping company for a little while longer, Kenzie,” Hunter told her.
Kenzie jumped. For a minute, lost in thought, she had totally forgotten that he was there. Annoyed that Brannigan had managed to make her react like a skittish teenager, she asked him almost belligerently, “What makes you say that?”
“Isn’t it obvious? My killer is your killer,” Hunter pointed out simply. “It doesn’t make any sense for us to pursue the guy separately.”
From where she stood, pursuing the killer separately made a lot of sense, Kenzie thought. Mainly because she didn’t want to work alongside Brannigan any more than she had to. In her opinion, the man was as shallow as a raindrop and she was in no mood to be subjected to his feeble attempts to impress her or to dazzle her with his so-called detective skills.
“Why
