As they came closer, the cop spotted them making their way over. He said something quickly to the other man—presumably the site supervisor—and then excused himself. He made his way around the trucks, cutting them off before they could have a chance to speak with the supervisor.

  Rachel recognized the skeptical look he was giving them as he approached, so she went ahead and took out her badge and ID. “Agents Gift and Rivers, FBI.”

  “Oh,” the cop said, relief instantly showing on his face. “Oh, well that’s a relief.” And then, lowering his voice, he said, “I told them that keeping this thing under wraps would probably slow the process down.”

  “I take it you’ve been in charge to this point?” Rachel asked.

  “I suppose you could say that, but I don’t really feel in charge of anything to tell you the truth. I’ve currently got two talking heads from the governor’s office at the precinct, keeping watch over everything we say and do.”

  “And what about the governor?” Rachel said. “Is he interfering?”

  “No. He’s kept his distance…staying at a house somewhere in the city. He’s in a damned fine rush to get his daughter’s body out of the city, though.”

  “What were you and the foreman just now talking about?” Jack asked.

  “Well, he’s one of the very few people that knows the identity of the victim. Once government spooks showed up, he got curious, and someone told him. I’ve been assigned to make sure he doesn’t let it slip. He was pretty furious that the governor had asked him to keep the worksite shut down until the killer was found.”

  “I see,” Rachel said. “Well, to that end, what do you know? What’s the investigation looking like so far?”

  “A bunch of nothing. There were no prints found on the body. We’ve still got forensics trying to find any traces of anything on the wood, but there’s been nothing so far. No leads, no clues…yeah, so I’m really glad to see the two of you.”

  Rachel reached into the inner pocket of her coat and pulled out a business card. “Would you please have someone email us digital copies of the current records on the case? For right now, it seems like we should probably get over to see the body before the governor gets his way and has it moved.”

  “Good call,” the cop said, taking the card. “And you know, I’ll give her a call and let her know you’re coming. She’s been sort of on guard, too, with the governor and his people snooping around.”

  “Thanks for the help,” Rachel said.

  And then, less than five minutes after arriving at the site, she and Jack headed back to their car. They hadn’t received much new information regarding the case, but the brief visit did set the tone for the rest of the investigation: it was going to be fast-paced and undergone with precision. It was almost enough to make Rachel forget about the underlying narrative of hope that it would bring Lynch back to her again.

  Almost…

  ***

  The coroner was a middle-aged woman that seemed like she’d been burning her candle at both ends. She looked tired and maybe even slightly paranoid. When her assistant escorted Rachel and Jack back to the examination room where the body of Madeline Young was being stored, she eyed them both as if they might be out to get her—or, at the very least, minions of the governor. Her tightened, slightly pale face seemed to relax a bit when Rachel displayed her badge.

  “We hear you’ve been under a bit of pressure,” Rachel said.

  “Oh, I don’t know if pressure is the right word or not,” she said. “It’s just a little daunting to do this job accurately when you’re trying to keep secrets and having people from the State office breathing down your neck.” She extended her hand and when she did, Rachel was reminded of a joke people told back in Quantico about shaking hands with a nervous coroner, though she couldn’t remember the context of it. “Susan Neeley,” she said. “Thanks so much for coming by.”

  Jack took a tentative step towards the room’s single examination table. It was currently empty and had the look of just having been cleaned.

  “So where’s the body now?”

  “In a locker, ready to be moved. The governor is sending someone in two hours. It’s not an unreasonable request, really. I just hate that they’ve all been so domineering.”

  “Do you think it would be necessary for us to see the body?” Rachel asked.

  “You’re welcome to if you like, but the body itself offered up nothing. No gunshots, no stab wounds, nothing.”

  “What did you figure was the cause of death?” Rachel asked.

  As she answered, Susan walked over to the counter along the far wall and brought a laptop to life. “I found trace amounts of Rohypnol in her intestines. Because she’d been deceased for at least five days, it was hard to get a read on just how much she ingested. But her lungs also showed telltale signs of suffocation. So it’s a pretty easy equation, really: Madeline Young was drugged and then suffocated. There are no bruises around her neck, no distress to her trachea. She wasn’t strangled. I believe she died gasping for breath in this box, underground. There were splinters in her palms that back this theory up. There’s no way to know for sure, but being that the few splinters are the only signs that there was a struggle of any kind against the wood casing, I doubt she was very alert at all when she died.”

  Rachel let this sink in. Even though it would appear that Madeline Young experienced very little pain in her final moments, the concept itself was brutal. Knocking someone out, and then burying them underground so they would suffocate. It told her a good deal about the killer—that he was patient, ambitious, and a truly sick individual.

  “Does the governor know all of these details?” Rachel asked.

  “As I understand it, yes, he does. I’ve not spoken directly to him, but I do think he’s been given up-to-the-minute details.” Susan paused here, finding the file she’d been looking for on the laptop. She printed out a copy, bringing a small printer at the back of the room to life. As she walked across the room to retrieve it, she said, “This printout is everything I found during the autopsy. It echoes everything I just told you, but still…this thing is being kept under such a veil of secrecy that I figure it can’t hurt for you to have it.”

  Rachel took it and looked it over. It was only two pages, showing the readouts for the tox screen as the point-by-point breakdown of the autopsy results—which, other than the presence of the Rohypnol, didn’t amount to much.

  “Let me ask you, Ms. Neeley…would you happen to know where the governor is staying? We know he’s in town, but not sure where.”

  “No clue. That’s way beyond my paygrade.”

  It was clear that they’d get nothing else of use from Susan Neeley—that the killer had been careful. The presence of Rohypnol did give them something of a glimpse of where to go, but she felt they needed to speak with the governor first. If he truly wanted all of this kept quiet, he’d want it wrapped up as soon as possible. Based on that, she didn’t see why he wouldn’t give them an accurate picture of what Madeline’s life looked like.

  “Thanks for this,” Rachel said, indicating the print-out. Her mind was already pointed toward the governor, wondering how much honesty they’d get out of him.

  “Of course. Good luck on figuring this out.”

  On their way out of the coroner’s building, Jack was reaching for his cellphone. “I’ll call the PD, see if I can get the chief on the line. I’m sure someone will know where the governor’s staying.”

  Rachel nodded, again having an almost conflicted feeling with what to expect when speaking to the governor and his family. She’d only worked cases closely with government officials on two occasions and both of them had left her feeling nearly ignorant. Even in situations like this, there was a veil of secrecy and privacy over the lives of certain individuals that they all believed trumped whatever the case may be.

  But while Jack worked on finding out the location of the governor, Rachel got into the passenger seat and started to think things through. While they hadn’t gotten much from the coroner’s report or from the worksite where the body had been found, the fact that Madeline Young was something of a public figure already gave them a murky picture of the woman.

  She was in her late forties—maybe as much as fifty. Her father, Graham Young, was the governor of Virginia, currently running for his second term. She didn’t spend much time in the spotlight at all. If Rachel remembered correctly, Madeline was involved in some sort of animal rescue charity that she was sometimes in the news to promote. She’d been through a divorce a few years back, but news reports hadn’t been very detailed about it. Still, it all offered up a promising snapshot of their victim.

  Jack finally got into the car as well, quickly starting the engine. “I spoke to the chief, who just happens to be the same fellow we talked with at the worksite. He gave me the address to where the governor is staying—an expensive condo about three miles away from here. Funny enough, the chief says Governor Young has been bitching about the lack of a bureau presence to this point—said he chose not to go straight to the D.C. branches out of fear of the story leaking.”

  “That makes sense, I suppose. But he seems so scared of the story getting out…it makes me wonder if he’s hiding something.”

  Jack shrugged as he pulled out of the lot and said, “Well, he is a politician.”

  And with that said, Jack headed to the address he’d been given, taking them to their third destination in the past hour—pushing along a case that already felt like it was moving at the speed of light.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Rachel wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. What sort of isolated place did a governor retreat to when his daughter’s body had been mysteriously discovered in a buried wooden box? Apparently, it was in a very upscale condo; he’d rented out the entire second floor for himself, his immediate family, and close staff. A guard showing a holstered sidearm stood at the elevators in the lobby. When Jack showed his ID and badge, the guard gave only a cursory nod before stepping aside to allow them to press the UP button.

  “This is feeling more and more cloak-and-dagger the deeper we get into it, don’t you think?” Jack asked as the elevator doors slid closed in front of them.

  “Maybe. But I also am trying to keep in mind that this is a father that just lost his daughter. Being in the public eye has to make things like this so much harder.”

  Jack nodded and went quiet. She wondered if he was thinking about the concept of grief, of dealing with loss…in the same way Paige had lost her father, and how Rachel had almost lost hers. And maybe, she hated to think, how he may one day have to deal with losing her, depending on what this tumor decided to do.

  The elevator opened up directly into what looked like a large foyer. A single step led up to the main floor and it was there that they found Governor Graham Young and a few others. All heads turned their way. One man in a suit came walking briskly forward, his hand falling instantly to his side.

  “We’re FBI,” Jack said quickly, reaching for his badge and ID.

  “Well, it’s about time,” a woman within the small crowd said.

  The room was still with remorse, so it was easy enough for Rachel to quickly get a glimpse of what they were dealing with. Governor Young was sitting on a large, plush sofa to the right. A familiar-looking woman sat beside him—presumably his wife. She was the one who’d made the about time comment.

  Another man was standing at a small bar area, currently drinking something amber from a small cocktail glass. On the other side of the room, two people—one younger-looking man and a middle-aged woman—were sitting at an ornate table behind laptops. They both looked up at Rachel and Jack, giving them only a moment’s notice before returning their eyes to the screens. These, Rachel assumed, were employees of the governor’s or maybe interns of some kind.

  Rachel didn’t see the point in waiting for an invitation. Once the suited man stood down, his posture softer and his hand no longer going for whatever weapon was hiding on his hip, she made her way up into the large living space where everyone was seated. It was elegant and very chic, like something out of a modern interior design display brochure.

  “Governor Young, we’ve been assigned to this case and understand your desire to keep everything out of the headlines,” Rachel said. “I’m Agent Rachel Gift, and this is my partner, Agent Jack Rivers. We’d like to ask you some questions, if that’s okay.”

  He nodded and she could tell that he was trying to decide if he should lay into them because he felt the bureau had taken too long to respond or if he needed to rely heavily on them to get to the bottom of this. As he wrestled with this, Rachel realized that she did recognize the woman sitting beside him as his wife. Rachel was quite sure it was his second wife and not Madeline’s mother.

  “Yes, of course, that’s fine,” Governor Young said. He was a tall man by nature, but sitting on the couch with his face worn out and slightly puffy from days of crying, he looked frail. He almost looked like a frightened child to Rachel and Jack.

  “Are we good to speak here openly?” Jack asked. “Or would you like to move elsewhere?”

  His wife looked nearly appalled at the idea, but the governor was giving it some thought. After a few seconds, he shrugged without much effort and said, “Here is fine. I trust everyone in this room.”

  Rachel took a seat in one of two available wingback chairs. Jack remained standing, just a few steps behind her. “Governor Young,” Jack said, “you understand that we’ll have to ask some difficult, blunt questions, right?”

  “Yes. I know.”

  Rachel took the lead. She knew Jack did have a softer and more sympathetic side, but she also knew its appearance was rare. “We know that you filed a missing person’s report just a few weeks ago,” she said. “Can you tell us the details about that?”

  “Yes. She’d gone on a vacation to Jamaica. She came back when she was supposed to. Even called me to check in. But then after that, she went missing. No calls, she wasn’t returning texts, and her boyfriend was even calling my offices to ask if I had seen her.” He was speaking almost robotically, as if each word took a bit of processing and effort to get out.

  “When she checked in after her vacation, did she mention anything odd about the trip?”

  “No, nothing at all. In fact, she said it was just what she needed. That she felt nice and relaxed and wished she’d done it sooner.”

  “You mentioned a boyfriend,” Jack said. “How long had they been dating?”

  “Three years, off and on. he’d actually asked her to marry him last year, but she didn’t want to.”

  “How well do you know him?”

  “Very well. And—”

  “And the police have already asked us all of these questions,” his wife interrupted.

  “It wasn’t him,” Governor Young said. “I can guarantee you that. But I’ll have one of my assistants give you his contact information all the same.” He nodded to the two people sitting at the table with laptops as he said this.

  “Can you think of anyone that may have wanted her dead?” Rachel asked. “Anyone that may have held a grudge against her?”

  “No,” Young said. “And I’ve spent the last two days trying to figure out who would want to do this to her. She’s had some run-ins with people that disagree with our politics, even right down to that animal charity she loves so much. But it was all just online squabbles, nothing serious. I just…I can’t help but wonder if it’s someone that has something against me…someone that is going after my family to hurt me.”

  This jolted Rachel a bit. It was far too similar to what she felt Alex Lynch was doing to her. She managed to keep her composure, though, and asked, “Can you think of any one, single individual that would do something like this?”

  “No. But I have lots of opponents, lot of people with vastly different views. I’ve had three death threats during my several years in office. Right now, they,” he said, again nodding to the two people at the table, “are scouring all of our social media histories to see if there were any indications…anyone that hinted at doing something so severe.”

  The man standing by the bar with a glass in his hand cleared his throat. Governor Young looked at him and then nodded briefly, as if giving permission. “I keep telling him that someone is trying to get something out of him…that this was a message of some kind.”

  “This,” Governor Young said, “is my son, Teddy. He chose to—”

  “I chose to not be a public figure when my father decided to run for governor,” Teddy Young finished. He seemed irritated more than anything else, as if being here with his grieving father was a pain in his backside.

  “Well, based on what we know,” Rachel said, “I would be very surprised if this was someone looking to threaten or frame you, Governor.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Before she answered, she tried to choose her words carefully, doing her best to remain sensitive. “The way she was found…there’s no way anyone would know when she’d be found…or if she’d ever be found, for that matter. If someone wanted to send you a message and make an impact, they would have done this in a way that would have hit you right away. They would have done it in a more public and simple way. They’d want this in the headlines if they were trying to send you some sort of a message.”

  “Yeah, but we’re talking about the daughter of a governor,” Teddy said. “Are you trying to tell me it was random? That someone decided to kill her in this messed up way without knowing who she was?”

  “That could very well be the case,” Jack said.

  Teddy didn’t look convinced and, truth be told, Rachel didn’t blame him. It did sort of feel like a stretch, like something more than a coincidence. The trick, of course, would be finding out if this was the case. Because if Madeline Young had been chosen on purpose, it made the case entirely different. But so far, they couldn’t prove that. And as she sat there in front of the governor, Rachel thought she knew where they needed to look next. They needed to go back to where they started, back to square one.