Darling said, “You’re probably looking at a runaway.”

“If we are, it isn’t anyone from around here.”

Zeke’s radio suddenly crackled into life. The blast of static was followed by Aggie’s tinny voice requesting his location. Doc jumped and glared at him. Zeke looked guilty and stepped out of the room, but he was back a moment later, gesturing to Rob. “Gotta roll. We’ve got a 12-16 on I-70 eastbound.”

Hell. A traffic accident. And nobody else available to deal with it, if they were getting the call rather than the state police. That was liable to keep them busy the rest of the afternoon and into the night. He threw a regretful look at Agent Darling who was frowning down at the skeleton, completely oblivious to Rob’s presence anyway. So much for that imaginary awareness or connection or whatever Rob had nearly convinced himself of.

With an inward sigh, he followed Zeke from the Preparation Room and up the stairs to the main floor of the Mortuary.

“You think he’s banging her?” Zeke asked in an undervoice they could probably hear in the Preparation Room refrigerator.

It was tempting to play dumb, but Rob answered honestly, “No.”

“You sound pretty sure.”

He probably had sounded a little too confident on that score. Rob shrugged. When Zeke glanced back at him, he shrugged again. “They probably have a non-fraternization policy at the FBI.”

“No, they don’t,” Zeke said surprisingly. At Rob’s look, he said, “I wasn’t bullshitting. I really did think about trying out for the FBI. I just didn’t feel like working with a bunch of tight-asses like Special Agent Fuckface.”

“You’ve got a real way with words, Lang.”

“I should have remembered there’d be babes like Barbie too.”

Dream on, Rob thought. The shortage of eligible bachelors in Nearby had given Zeke an overinflated idea of his masculine charms.

“Anyway, what a waste of time,” Zeke said, pushing open the double glass doors that led outside. The rain-laced air smelled sweet and alive after the chemical-scented chill of downstairs.

And Rob, thinking of Agent Darling staring grimly down at the skeleton on the morgue table, was inclined to agree.

Chapter Two

“That was a waste of time,” Jonnie said, following Adam into his cabin.

The rain had started again. It drummed soothingly on the roof, but the room was cold and damp. Was there a thermostat in the place, or were they supposed to rely on fireplaces and wood bellied stoves for warmth?

“It usually is.” Adam pulled his tie off and draped it over the back of a chair facing the small desk beneath the painting of the snowcapped Cascades. He unbuttoned his collar.

Jonnie sat on the foot of his bed and slipped her heels off. “You never know though. It could have panned out. Grant’s Pass was definitely one of ours.” She flexed her stockinged feet, pointed her toes, flexed again. She had long, narrow feet. Like Audrey Hepburn, she’d informed him. He smiled faintly at the memory.

“Grant’s Pass is right on the I-5. Our guy likes to stick to the I-5 Corridor.”

She groaned. “What a fiasco. From start to finish. I can’t believe they just hauled those remains out of the ground and carted them over to Mortuary Madness or whatever that place was called. It’s obvious it never even occurred to them to call in a forensic anthropologist. They annihilated the crime scene.”

“I know.” She was on a roll, and the best thing was to let her get it off her chest. Anyway, he agreed one hundred percent.

“One.” Jonnie held up her index finger. “One chance to process the crime scene without contaminants. One single, solitary chance to retrieve all of the physical evidence. To photograph the grave site, map whatever evidence there was in relation to the remains and the terrain, collect all the necessary data—and they blew it.”

“I know.”

“Did they think it was Search and Rescue? Did they think there was some rush retrieving the remains? Don’t they have any training? They’re real sheriffs, right? This isn’t some local militia thing? They’ve got the uniforms. I thought I was going to have a stroke when Doc Adams told me how they ‘processed’ that crime scene.”

Adam grinned reluctantly at the “Doc Adams” crack.

“Minus any soft tissue we can’t know for sure whether John Doe was mutilated in the same way as the Ripper’s other victims.”

The Ripper carved symbols into the chests of his victims. Flesh and blood proving a messy artistic medium, no one was sure what the symbols represented. The current widely held theory was that the ragged lines represented an incomplete cross and flower.

“No, we can’t,” Adam said. “Which is exactly what I was afraid of. But if the skeletal remains are as old as the ME seems to think, it’s not likely that this is the work of our unsub. This doesn’t affect our case. They just made their own job harder.”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” she said gloomily.

“No. If that was the work of our guy, what was the Ripper doing for those twenty years between this logging road John Doe and Jackie Ramos winding up with his heart carved out in Redding?”

“Good question.” She studied his face. “But you’ve got doubts. I could see it when we were in that creepy underground morgue.”

“I’ve got doubts, but not about that. That kind of gap doesn’t make sense.”

Not that serial killers didn’t go on hiatus. The BTK Killer was proof of that. Illness, incarceration, change of venue…and sometimes they just aged out of the game. Or died. But a twenty-year pause between kills was highly unlikely. And there were too many other anomalies.

So the Roadside Ripper’s score remained twenty-one. FBI zero. Adam sighed.

“I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when they started talking about DNA.” But Jonnie was starting to wind down. She sounded more weary than worked up.

“It’s a rural patrol. At best a substation. I’m amazed they even bothered to call us.”

She didn’t answer. For a second or two they listened to the rain on the roof.

“Is that an actual painting?” Jonnie rose from the bed and moved over to the desk to inspect the wood-framed painting. She gave a disbelieving laugh. “Those are brushstrokes. When was the last time you stayed anywhere with actual art on the walls?”

“I think art might be an exaggeration.”

“Point. But I mean, an actual original painting.”

Adam shook his head. He studied the interior of the rental cabin. Knotty pine, woven rugs and blue plaid curtains, a potbellied stove and vintage red Formica countertops. “When do you think they built this place?”

“The fifties maybe?”

“I think you’re right. I hope they’ve changed the mattresses since then.”

“I hope they’ve changed the sheets.” Jonnie walked back to the bed and slipped her heels on. “I can’t believe there’s no motel here. It’s going to take forever to heat up these cabins.”

“I can walk over with you and light the fire in your fireplace.”

“Please. You’re talking to a former Girl Scout.”

Not for the first time, he was grateful that she wasn’t one of those women who tried to find innuendo in the most innocent comments. He grinned. “I had no idea. Well, in that case, do you want to grab some dinner?”

She pulled a rolled-up magazine from the deep pocket of her trench coat, and held up a copy of Bride’s.

Adam scowled at the airbrushed bride chortling on the cover. “Yeah, I still don’t follow why getting married means you can’t eat dinner anymore.”

“Making sure I can fit into that Vera Wang size-four wedding gown is why I don’t eat dinner anymore. I can’t wait till I can have dinner again.”

“Chris said he booked Outback Steakhouse for your honeymoon.”

Jonnie laughed. “I’m all in favor of that. So long as it’s on the way to Maui. Speaking of airports, when’s our flight out?”