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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I cannot say exactly how I knew it was him, but I did.

“I see you made your way back to Texas from New Mexico,” the male voice said.

I turned, the phone still to my ear. Dr. Abrieu had moved back to the gurney and was sewing up Tignon’s body.

“For me, the west is too hot,” the man continued. “The blood coagulates too quickly and, well. You saw how messy it got between the legs of that fat old angler.”

“Who am I speaking with?” I asked.

“Think of me as a helper,” he said.

The man had an accent, but one that shifted. In one word, southwest. In the next, a twang that rang of the south.

“I’m calling to offer you a courtesy,” he continued. “’Cause I like you.”

How did the killer know to call me here? Know my name?

And: He liked me?

“Skip this case,” he said. “Let someone else take it on.”

I hesitated. “I don’t decide what cases to investigate. I serve at the pleasure of the director of the FBI.”

A frustrated exhalation, followed by a beat of silence.

“Do you know chess, Agent Camden?”

“I have played.”

“Then you’re aware of the roles of pawns,” he said. “To clog up the paddock.”

His voice sounded young, but his language was odd. Clogging the paddock ?

“Or they’re marched into the field for slaughter,” he continued. “You don’t want to be slaughtered, do you?”

“These two men,” I said. “Was it revenge you were after?”

“Revenge is for people with small brains,” he hissed. “My acts are dictated by my own conscience.”

“If I understood what’s bothering you—”

“Who said something’s bothering me?” His voice rang with annoyance now.

“I could help with—”

“I don’t need your help,” he interrupted. “If anything, you need mine.”

I paused. In New Mexico, Frank had called the killer “a game player.” Did that mean I could incite an emotional response?

“You may think you’re smart,” I said. “But you’re leaving clues. Everywhere.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” he replied. “You haven’t even found the good ones yet. I mean, you’ll find ’em. I’m counting on it. But too late to do anything. It’s a game, don’t you know that?”

“Not to me.”

He made a squeaking noise with his teeth before going silent. Then: “I was assuming, perhaps wrongly, that with all the work you’d put in on Ross Tignon, there’d be some appreciation.”

“For what?” I asked.

“Me. Officially closing your case. You know what they say about gratitude. A little goes a long way.”

There was no way I was thanking this guy for killing Ross Tignon.

“We’re not on the same side,” I said.

He didn’t speak for a long time, but I didn’t hear a dial tone.

“I had a… mentor,” he said finally. “He used to tell me that some people don’t take things seriously until they have skin in the game. Maybe that’s what you need, Agent Camden. Something personal, to get your blood pumping.”

“What kind of mentor?” I asked, moving back to the word he’d used.

He made a noise with his nose. When he spoke again, he sounded weary. “You’re not even listening, are you? But I warned you, little mouse.”

I could sense he was about to hang up.

“What should I call you?” I asked. “Presuming we speak again.”

“God,” he said. “When we talk again, you can call me God. Who gives and takes all life.”

“You’re going to be caught, God,” I said. “We always get our man. You know that, right?”

He made a huffing noise. “Tell that to the families of Ross Tignon’s victims.”

I went silent. He was right. I had failed the Tignon victims.

“Daisy Carabelle was a sweet girl. If only the dead could speak.”

A dial tone rang out, and he was gone. I felt a pulse of something unfamiliar move through me. Irritation? Anger?

I hurried over to Dr. Abrieu, who was still sewing up Tignon. “Who transferred that line here?”

“I dunno.” She shrugged. “The operator, I guess. Why?”

Without answering, I moved back to her desk and grabbed a glossy brochure for scalpels. Flipped it over and started jotting down every phrase from the phone call.

Do you know chess?

Pawns clog up the paddock.

Helper.

My acts are dictated by my own conscience.

Skin in the game… something to get your blood pumping.

Call me God. Who gives and takes all life.

If only the dead could speak.

Then I called up Lanie Bernal, who runs a tech desk at Quantico. After I told her the details, she disappeared for three minutes before coming back on.

“We have four calls around that time, Agent Camden.” Lanie’s voice bore no accent, and she pronounced her words slowly, articulating every syllable. “All under one minute. Except one. Which was two minutes and five seconds.”

Dr. Abrieu had been waiting for me in the hallway. The phone call had been longer than I’d thought.

“The two-minute one,” I said. “I need a location on that.”

I knew what would happen next. Lanie would identify the cell carrier, then reach out to her liaison at that company with a digital exigency report, so the phone could be pinged.

“Let me call you back,” she said. “Give me ten minutes.”

“On my cell,” I said.

After hanging up, I looked again at the body of Ross Tignon.

Earlier I had noticed the slightest of bruising on his neck, but assumed it was related to the fall at the house, like the cuts on his face and temple.

“This mark on his neck,” I said, approaching Dr. Abrieu. “If a victim was strangled, I’d expect petechia in his eyes, but there wasn’t any.”

“No,” she said. “It’s not strangulation. Hand marks would have appeared by now.”

“So what would cause this?” I asked.

“I don’t want to guess,” she said. “What I’m thinking—it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Call it a hypothesis.”

She flipped one of her braids off her neck. “A bruise like this happens during mastication, Agent Camden. The problem is, by definition, that stops when consciousness does.”

“It happens during eating?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s a postmortem bruise?” I confirmed.

“Right. See how it doesn’t make sense?”

I thought of the killer’s words on the call.

If only the dead could speak.

“Cut his neck open.”

“Agent Camden—”

“Now,” I said.

Dr. Abrieu grabbed a two-inch block of wood and placed it under each of Tignon’s shoulders. Then she propped up his head—any dissection of the musculocutaneous layers of the neck required elevation. Taking her blade, she made an incision upward, toward the flap of skin that hung below Tignon’s jaw.

Removing the skin from its connection to the body involved not just the surgical knife, but the help of pliers. The doctor worked fast. In minutes, she opened up a two-by-two-inch square flap.

She placed her fingers into Tignon’s neck and pulled the esophagus forward. She was hunched over his head, but I saw three lines form across her forehead.

“What is it?” I asked.

“There’s something inside.”