CHAPTER 1

2005 DAY ONE Tuesday

The tang of warming eucalyptus intensified with the breeze and Jayne took her eyes off the California Highway Patrol officer to locate the shimmering trees half a block away where they flanked the 101 Freeway. She looked back at the officer. He was listening to the static-bound information emanating from his radio while his eyes traveled over the Jeep's roll bar, dipped into the back on to the twin toolboxes, then returned to Steelie's slim frame in the driver's seat, her hand resting casually on the gear stick but her expression hidden by the peak of a faded pink baseball cap.

'You're the scientists?' The CHP officer put the question even as he beckoned their escort.

A motorcycle rumbled to life a few feet away and its driver pulled in front of them, keeping a foot on the ground as he looked back, lower face serious under a helmet and sunglasses. Steelie gave a loose salute and the motorcycle moved forward.

They followed the bike's zigzag around the Highway Patrol sedans that had made a maze of the Sunkist building's parking lot. Near the northwest corner, the CHP bike peeled off, leaving them facing a wall of dark blue Chevrolet Suburbans. Steelie halted the Jeep. The Suburbans were stationary but their engines were humming and their headlights were on. Both women waited, expecting to see some movement from behind the heavily tinted windows. Nothing happened.

Steelie kept her own engine running. 'If this was Buenos Aires circa nineteen seventy-eight, we'd be running for our lives right about now.'

Jayne murmured agreement. After a moment, she pushed her sunglasses into her hair to constrain waves that had been whipped into something unruly when the open-topped Jeep had been bucking over surface joins on the freeway, then she leaned down to put double knots in her bootlaces.

Steelie abruptly turned off the engine. 'I see your man.'

Jayne paused on her second lace but refrained from sitting up. 'He's not my man.'

'Well, he's on his way over and ... looks to me like he's still sporting dark blond hair over a furrowed brow over green eyes over a smirk atop five feet eleven inches of I-don't-know-what's-under-that-suit-but-I'll-take-it.'

Amused, Jayne straightened up, assuming Steelie was exaggerating. She wasn't. At a distance, Special Agent Scott Houston appeared unchanged from when they'd last seen him at Quantico five years earlier. Jayne glanced at Steelie, who was taking off her cap; her short, choppy haircut exposed how the silver amongst the blonde was no longer relegated to the wisps above her ears that had generated the nickname when she was much younger. For her part, Jayne felt sixty-five, not thirty-five and figured she had some of the outward changes to go with it. Suddenly self-conscious, she alighted from the Jeep just as Scott reached its front bumper; close enough for her to catch his quick assessment of her from head to toe. They didn't speak as they shook hands slowly.

'Not bad,' he finally said.

Surprised, she smiled. 'You're not looking so bad yourself.'

His mouth almost twitched into a grin. 'I meant how fast you made it here. Speeding, were you, Steelie?'

He finally released Jayne's hand and turned to Steelie, who was coming around the car.

'You want our help or not, Houston?' She clasped his hand briefly.

He smiled. 'Follow me. I'll introduce you to the team.'

Jayne and Steelie walked behind him with their toolboxes over to the far side of the Suburbans where a huddle of four men broke up, lowering clipboards and clearing throats. Three of them were dressed like commandos and Scott introduced them as the 'Critters' from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Critical Stabilization and Recovery Unit, there to maintain chain of custody for any evidence collected that day. Scott then addressed his team, inclining his head toward the women.

'Jayne Hall and Steelie Lander. They run Agency Thirty-two One, an outfit that does forensic profiles of missing persons, matching them up with unidentified bodies or living Does. I called them in because they're forensic anthropologists and they do dental as well. Steelie here's a triple threat 'cause she's also a lawyer, so watch your P's and Q's. These are the people who're going to tell us if what we've got is human, so we defer to them at the scene. OK?'

There were polite nods all round, then Scott said he would take a minute to brief the newcomers. The Critters cleared the area but the one man Scott hadn't yet introduced kept his stance, feet spread, one hand held over the other in front of his body, causing the fabric of his suit to pull slightly over muscular arms. Jayne noticed his skin was almost as brown as her own, but his hair was dark and straight, and his eyes – she averted her own. He had been looking at her looking at him.

Scott said: 'My partner, Special Agent Ramos.'

Jayne started. 'You're Eric? Eric Ramos?'

He stepped forward to shake her hand. 'Uh-oh, what's he been saying about me?'

'No, I mean ... it's a pleasure to meet you.'

'In that case, Scott,' Eric glanced at him as he turned to greet Steelie. 'I'll get you your money later.'

'All right, let's get started,' Scott said. 'We're dealing with a single vehicle accident around five this a.m. on the One-oh-one right here behind us. A guy's car takes out part of the side railing. Guy tries to get out of a DUI charge by telling Highway Patrol he rear-ended a van, then had to swerve to avoid a body.'

'A body lying on the freeway?' Jayne asked.

'No, that's the thing. Guy says the body came out of the van he hit. Happened to have noticed the van earlier because it had a peach on the license plate and this guy just had a bellyful of peach schnapps.'

'Peach plate,' Steelie mused. 'Georgia?'

'Got it in one. So, there was no sign of a body but CHP reports that the side railing scraped off part of the front of this guy's car. Anything could have dropped down under the freeway because it's one of the sections with a berm sloping off it on the north side. Lots of vegetation, creating a basic ravine situation. They secured the area as soon as their flashlights picked up what they thought were BP's.'

Jayne glanced toward the ravine. 'How many body parts are we talking about?'

Eric answered her. 'We don't know yet.'

'OK,' said Steelie slowly. 'I don't want to seem uninterested but why were you so insistent on calling us in? Why not Rudin or Sweetzer? This is their beat.'

'Coroner's office can't spare Rudin because of the crematorium investigation and they said Sweetzer's on her honeymoon. But ... there's another reason.' Scott crossed his arms and took a deep breath, only to look up at the sky.

Jayne looked to Eric. He was focused on a tarmac fissure at her feet.

Scott exhaled his story like a confession. 'Eric and I have some open cases from Georgia involving body parts. All female, none yet identified. We believe they're related to the disappearance of a number of prostitutes in and around Atlanta. We figured it for one serial killer, not a bunch of Johns who just didn't want to pay the sex workers.'

Jayne scanned Scott's face. 'You never told me about this case.'

He looked away.

Eric took up the slack. 'Look, our boss wasn't convinced by our reading of the facts so he scaled back our investigation. Finding this perp became the Holy Grail for us. Then we got transferred to LA and that killer's still out...