One of the soldiers raised the barrel of his rifle slightly, enough to get her attention, and she stopped.

  Please, help me.

  “You need to let her go. This isn’t right.”

  “She’s not going anywhere.”

  There was a filthy metal bucket on the floor beside her. Walter didn’t want to think about what that bucket was for. Several empty water bottles littered the ground.

  Two of the soldiers maneuvered the cage roof into place and began tightening the bolts—one every six inches.

  Walter’s head filled with so many thoughts, they became a jumbled mess.

  All the graves.

  The bodies.

  The dead in Detroit.

  Alvin Schalk.

  Wes Brayman.

  The sketches—her but not her.

  If you get me out, I’ll tell you everything.

  This thought screamed louder than all the others in a voice that was not his own, and he turned back to her. She was no longer looking at him but at the ground, tears streaming down her face.

  He forced himself to turn away and back to Sealey. “What makes you think this girl is part of all this?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  Chapter

  60

  Sealey led Walter around to the other side of the clearing, to a smaller tent set up near the dirt road they’d followed driving in here. Inside, the air was stifling, fueled by four pairs of large halogen floodlights mounted on portable rigs surrounding a muddy, rusty Toyota Camry. The trunk and hood were both open. So were all four doors. The car was resting on risers that held it about eighteen inches above the ground. Plywood was spread out beneath, covered in small tracks from something Walter had once been told was called a creeper.

  As he stepped closer, he realized some of the mess on the car came from fingerprint powder, but it was still in bad shape, a couple of oil changes away from the junkyard.

  Sealey gave the dented hood a tap. “She was pulled over last night for speeding in this beater, about four miles from here, heading back toward Atlanta, we think. Tire treads match samples taken here. We sent some of the mud from the wheel wells back to the lab—I’m confident we’ll prove it originated here, too. The car is registered to a man named Barney Simpers. He’s an orderly at a retirement home in Mableton, just west of Atlanta. He’s been missing for three days. Called in sick the first day, then nothing after that.”

  Stepping around the Camry, Sealey led Walter to the trunk and pointed to rust-colored stains in the carpet to the left of the bald spare. “Luminol confirmed that’s dried blood. I’m pretty sure it’s gonna match Barney.”

  “No body?”

  “We haven’t found him yet, no. But I’m confident he’s out there.” He gestured at the wall of the tent, in the general direction of the Garden. “We’re focusing our search on a marshy part toward the back right now—beyond the tree line, far from where we’ve been working. That’s her most likely dump spot. I’m guessing she spotted us and didn’t want to risk getting closer. This piece of shit wouldn’t have made it any further without getting stuck. Found a drag trail there, about the width of a grown man, that disappears off into the mud. We think she parked and hauled him the rest of the way. About two hundred meters.”

  “That girl weighs a buck nothing. No way she dragged a grown male six hundred feet.”

  Sealey gave Walter a tired look that said he knew well how hard it was to move a dead body; he’d probably moved his share over the years. “It’s also possible she walked him out there and killed him when they reached the other side, but that wouldn’t explain the drag marks.”

  “Without a body, you’ve got nothing.”

  “We got a lot of circumstantial, I’ll give you that.” He sighed. “But it’s solid circumstantial. For starters, she told us her name was Mary Clement. The name’s bogus. The real Mary Clement died in 1944 after being convicted of attempting to poison her sister’s family in Rose Hill, Illinois. Did a year in Joliet for that one. Cut her teeth by killing her parents and two other sisters when she was just a kid back in Dubuque, Iowa.”

  When Amy Archer pretended her name was Velma Barfield on their “date,” she said she was from Dubuque, Iowa.

  “On top of that, the retirement home where Barney Simpers worked reported sixteen deaths in the past five months. All men. All natural causes. The girl in the other tent, ‘Mary Clement,’ worked there, too.”

  “It’s a retirement home. People die,” Walter reasoned.

  “It’s been triple their norm since she started there.”

  “You can’t charge her for someone dying of natural causes in her presence. None of this means anything.”

  Sealey frowned. “Whose side are you on exactly?”

  “I’m just playing devil’s advocate. You know none of this will stick if you run it by a judge. You won’t even get an indictment.”

  “It sticks if the blood in the car comes back as Barney Simpers’s, or if we find his body out there somewhere.” Sealey ticked off several more points on his fingers. “Her prints aren’t in the system. She’s got a fake driver’s license. The retirement home has a fake résumé on file. Her nursing license is bullshit. It’s all quality paper, can’t fault them for buying it, but none of it is real. We have no idea who or what she is, but this is all clearly tied together. She knows how all those bodies got out there, and she can tell us what happened in Detroit.”

  “So you’re gonna keep her chained to a chair in a cage until you can figure it out?”

  Sealey didn’t reply to that, but the look on his face told Walter that was exactly what he planned to do.

  There was a lot more to this. The man was clearly holding back.

  “Let me talk to her.”

  Chapter

  61

  “I’d like all of you to step outside,” Walter told the guards as he reentered her tent.

  The hood was back on. Beneath it, the girl’s head bobbed up at the sound of his voice. She shuffled slightly in the chair and sat upright.

  The soldiers had rotated—the Black kid and the one with red hair were now inside the tent. The other two had taken their positions outside. Work on the cage was nearly complete—one soldier was working a screwdriver on the final wall; another was testing the locking mechanism on the heavy door.

  “We’re under orders to keep eyes on her at all times, sir,” the soldier with the red hair told Walter. When he spoke, his grip tightened on his AR-15. His finger played over the trigger guard.

  “Sealey okayed this. Ask him if you want.”

  Redhead nodded. “Give me a moment.”

  As the soldier pressed the Transmit button on a radio fixed to his shoulder and spoke softly into the microphone, Walter pulled the girl’s hood off and dropped it to the ground beside her chair.

  She blinked several times, adjusted to the light, then studied Walter and the others in the room.

  One of the straps from her tank top had fallen from her shoulder, and Walter slipped it back into place. He expected her to shy away from him, but instead she pressed against his palm and nuzzled closer for a brief second before Walter pulled away, conscious of the Black soldier watching.

  The redheaded soldier released his radio and made a circle gesture in the air with his finger. “Everyone outside, we’re taking five.”

  “I gotta hit the head anyway,” the soldier with the screwdriver said, pocketing the tool and starting for the door, the other soldier on his heels.

  The Black soldier didn’t move, still looking down at the girl, lost in a reverie.

  “Thompson, quit daydreaming. Out.”

  When he still didn’t move, the redhead punched him lightly in the shoulder. “Now, Romeo.”

  The kid’s eyes blinked back to life. He frowned for a moment, as if unsure of where he was, then turned slowly on his heels and shuffled out.

  The redhead stepped up to Walter. “She stays in that chair. Cuffs on. Understand?”

  Walter nodded. When they were alone, he knelt down beside her, peeled the tape from her mouth, and removed the gag.

  She looked directly at him, pleading. “They’re gonna kill me!”

  “Nobody is going to hurt you. I won’t let them.” Walter tried to assure her, but he knew it was an empty promise. “Tell me about Barney Simpers.”

  “I don’t know who that is.” She tugged at her chains. The handcuffs, dripping in that oily substance, clanked against the chair. “Do you have a key for these?”

  “They found you driving his car.”

  This seemed to confuse her. “What car? I was hitchhiking on 75, working my way to Chattanooga to see my cousin. This white van stopped—I thought they were gonna give me a ride—and when I tried to get inside, the back door opened and three guys jumped out and grabbed me. They threw me in the back, tied me up, and brought me here. You need to help me, call the police, find help, real help,” she begged. “These guys are gonna kill me. That man you were talking to…Seaton…Sarley…”

  “Sealey.”

  “Sealey. He said when they were done with me I’d end up out there in the mud with all the others. He said nobody’s looking for me—he made a point of telling me that—then he…he grabbed me…my…he told me how much fun we were all gonna have. You gotta get me out of here!”

  “These are federal agents. FBI. Nobody is going to hurt you.”

  She smirked. “These people aren’t FBI. They kidnapped me, and they’re lying to you. Why would the FBI be working with people dressed up like soldiers? Why are they building a fucking cage? You need to get me out of here. Have you even seen a badge? Do you seriously think they’re FBI just because they’ve got a couple windbreakers and T-shirts that say so? If you don’t believe me, call someone, check them out.” Her voice dropped lower, and her gray eyes filled with tears. “Who are you, exactly? How did they get you here? Do you have a car? What did they tell you? I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s not what it looks like. For all we know, they’re responsible for all those bodies out there.”

  “Do you work at a retirement home with Barry Simpers?”

  She frowned. “A what? No. I’m a student at the University of Florida down in Gainesville. My last job was in a coffee shop near campus. Like I said, I was just hitching my way north to see my cousin when these psychopaths grabbed me.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Who is Amy Archer to you?”

  “Who?”

  “Amy Archer. Jane Toppan. Amelia Dyer. Velma Barfield. What do those names mean to you? I know you know what I’m talking about, so cut the bullshit.”

  “I’m telling you the truth!” She tugged her arms up, pulled the handcuff chains tight. “Get these off of me.”

  Walter studied her eyes, facial expressions, body language, looking for any sign of deception, and found none. He wanted to believe her even as a twinge in his gut told him not to.

  “What’s your name?”

  She opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t hold it together anymore. She began to sob. “I don’t want to die here! Not like this! Please, not like this!”

  She seemed to fold up in the chair, shrink into a small ball.

  Behind him, a throat cleared.

  Walter looked back and found Sealey at the mouth of the tent. Sealey bobbed his head toward the outside. The soldiers filed back into the tent in silence, none of them willing to look at the hysterical girl chained to a chair.

  No one but the young Black kid. She was all he could look at.

  Chapter

  62

  Following Sealey through the tent flap, Walter realized he had completely lost track of time. Although the air was still hot and muggy, the sun was gone. Halogen lamps on large towers buzzed around the outer edge of the clearing, casting a yellow glow over everything. Insects swarmed each of them like dark clouds.

  The guards eyed Walter but said nothing.

  Sealey slowly paced off to the side, a portable phone held loosely in his hand. When he glanced up, a large mosquito buzzed by his face. He swatted at it, frowned, and faced Walter. “She’s good, I’ll give her that, but don’t let her bullshit you.”

  Walter gestured at the phone. “Can I use that?”

  “Sure.” Sealey handed it to him. “Have you seen one before? It’s a satellite phone. Can make a call from anywhere as long as you’ve got a clear shot to the sky. Damnedest thing. Just dial and press that button marked Send. It’ll take a minute to connect.”

  The phone was heavier than Walter expected, bulky. He keyed in the number for the FBI Academy’s main switchboard from memory, pressed Send, and lifted the phone to his ear, his eyes never leaving Sealey. When about thirty seconds went by with nothing, he looked at the display—the red numbers had vanished. “It’s not working.”

  Sealey took the phone and studied the blank digital screen for a moment. “Shit, battery’s dead again. I only get a few hours of talk time between charges. Feels like I’m always plugging the thing in. I’ve got another in the Suburban—you can use that one.”

  He expected Sealey to ask him whom he wanted to call, but the man didn’t pry. Part of Walter hoped he would. That would have made this next part a little easier. “You haven’t shown me a badge. Nothing since we left Quantico.”

  “A badge? Seriously? I picked you up from a secure facility—from your supervisor’s office—brought you here on federal transport. You’re surrounded by federal agents, and you want to see my badge?”

  Walter nodded. “I want to know who exactly you are and who you’re working for. If you can’t provide that, I’m taking that girl out of here until I can get a better handle on all this.”

  Sealey whistled. “Damn, she is good. A couple of minutes, and she’s got you wound around her cute little finger like a lap dog. Don’t feel bad, she seems to have that effect on everyone. That’s why we keep rotating the guards.”

  “This doesn’t feel right.”

  “Well, I think we can agree on that much,” he agreed. “Don’t let her cloud your head. We need to focus on why you’re here. Is that her? Is that the girl you’ve been chasing on your downtime?”

  “Why do you keep asking me that? I told you it wasn’t. She’s too young. Sister, maybe. She said she was going to visit her cousin, so maybe that’s it—some cousin of Amy Archer—a relative of some kind, like you said. Or she just looks a hell of a lot like her, and you’ve got the wrong girl.”

  Even as Walter said this, he wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince Sealey or himself.

  “Well, that’s a narrative I know you’ve been accused of once or twice. Were you wrong all those times?”

  Walter opened his mouth to speak but said nothing.

  Sealey kicked at the dirt. “Look, I brought you here to ID her. But I think we both know that IDing her is only about half of why you’re really here. This is a very…unique and delicate…situation. If we’re dealing with some family cult working together, she can tell us who they all are, where they’re operating out of—why we’ve got a field of bodies out here planted in the mud. She’s a door, a way in.”

  “Or you’ve got the wrong person chained to a chair.”

  “Given the circumstances under which we picked her up, I’ve got zero doubt about what landed her here.”

  “You’ve got her pissing in a bucket. When she gets an attorney, they’ll have a field day with all this.”

  “This is all temporary. We’re transporting her back to Atlanta in the morning.”

  That’s bullshit. If it’s true, why the cage?

  “Why not tonight? Why hold her here instead of the state police barracks or the local sheriff’s office? There’s got to be something better nearby.”

  “They’re not equipped. I’ve got an armored transport coming in the morning.”

  “For her?”

  “For her,” Sealey said flatly.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Sealey fell silent for a long moment. When he finally spoke, he kept his voice low so no one else could hear. “Her operating as part of a group. One of many makes sense. It explains everything. I know it clears things up for you, too. Years of questions bouncing around in that head of yours. Ties things up with a neat little bow. But it doesn’t feel right.” He went quiet for another beat, then added, “I brought you here for a very specific reason. One that scares the shit out of me.”

  “What exactly is that?”

  “To determine if you’ve been right. Confirm what you thought all along,” Sealey said flatly. “What if all of this is…her. Only her. All these years, somehow, the same woman.”

  A sharp gunshot cracked from inside the tent.

  Two more after that.

  Weapons raised, the two guards rushed back through the flap, followed by Sealey and Walter. Sealey produced a small .380 from an ankle holster. Walter’s 9mm was out and in his hand in a single fluid motion that came to him as instinctively as breathing. He ducked through the opening, low, ready to roll, and quickly took in what was happening.

  The redheaded soldier was on the ground—a bullet hole above his vacant right eye, two more in his chest. The young Black soldier was standing over him, smoke still trailing from the barrel of his AR-15.

  The two soldiers who had entered first had their rifles trained on the shooter.

  Sealey tightened his stance and shouted, “Drop it!”

  In the chair, the girl watched all of this, frozen.

  The Black kid’s mouth fell open, his gaze bouncing from the body at his feet to his fellow soldiers to the girl to Sealey. “It just went off,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean to—”

  One of the other guards fired at nearly point-blank range. The bullet entered the kid’s neck above his Adam’s apple and burst out the base of his head in a fan of red.

  He went down.

  The soldier who had fired the shot looked down at the rifle in his hands, released the gun, let it dangle from the shoulder strap, and stared at his hands in confusion. “That wasn’t…I wouldn’t—”