Imagining the scene by moonlight, Riley gazed down the slope and across the field toward the back of the barracks.
She pictured what the killer saw from this place the distant figure of Sergeant Worthing stepping out of the back door.
Riley felt a smile form on the killers face.
She could hear him think
Right on schedule!
And just as the killer had expected, the sergeant lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall.
It was time to act and it had to be quick.
The sky was starting to brighten where the sun would soon rise.
As the killer must have done, Riley stretched out prone in the hollow place on the ground. Yes, it was the perfect place, the perfect shape for wielding a high-powered weapon.
But how did the weapon feel in the killers hands?
Riley had never actually handled an M110 sniper rifle. But some years ago she had trained a little with the weapons predecessor, the M24. Fully loaded and assembled, the M24 had weighed about sixteen pounds, and Riley had read that the M110 was scarcely any lighter.
But the night scope added to that weight, making it a little top heavy.
Riley imagined the view through the night scope. The image of Sergeant Worthing was mottled and grainy.
That wasnt a problem for true marksmanship. For a skilled sniper, the shot would be easy. Even so, Riley sensed that the killer felt vaguely unsatisfied.
What was it that bothered him?
What was he thinking?
Then his thought came to her
I wish I could see the look on his face.
Riley felt a jolt of understanding.
This killing was deeply personal an act of hatred, or at the very least contempt.
But he wasnt going to put it off on account of his dissatisfaction. He could do this just fine without seeing his preys expression.
She felt the resistance from the trigger as she pulled it, then the sharp recoil from the rifle as the bullet was fired.
The noise of the shot wasnt very loud. The sound suppressor and the flash hider had muffled the noise and the burst of flame.
Even so, did the killer worry that someone had heard it?
Only for a moment, Riley felt sure. He had shot two other men from much the same distance, and no one seemed to have heard the shots. Or if they had heard them, no one had thought them extraordinary.
But what did the killer do now that hed fired the shot?
He kept looking through the scope, Riley realized.
He followed the body in its slouch against the wall toward an awkward squat.
And again the killer thought
I wish I could see the look on his face.
As the killer must have done, Riley got to her feet. She imagined the killer taking a wide brush to the soil to smooth it over, then leaving the way hed come.
Riley breathed a sigh of satisfaction. Her attempt to link with the killers mind had revealed more than shed hoped for.
Or at least she had a hunch that it had.
She remembered something that Col. Larson had said earlier about whether the killings were acts of Islamic terrorism
These days, that simply has to be our default theory.
Rileys gut told her that that theory was probably wrong. But she wasnt ready to say so to her colleagues. Under the circumstances, she knew that Larson was right to pursue the possibility of terrorism. It was simply good procedure. Meanwhile, it was best for Riley to keep her hunch to herself at least until she could back it up with evidence.
Riley looked at her watch. She realized that she and the others were due at a funeral.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As Riley watched the six uniformed men carry Sergeant Worthings flag-draped casket to the gravesite, she admired the solemn cadence and precision of their actions.
She was also struck by an eerie contrast between this ceremony and his actual death. The murder of Sergeant Worthing had been abrupt and brutal.
His funeral was elegance itself.
The military cemetery was in a lovely place, high on a hill in a remote part of Fort Nash Mowat. Riley could see the Pacific Ocean in the distance.
Riley, Lucy, and Bill were standing off to one side of the ceremony. She could see Sergeant Worthings widow and family seated on folding chairs beside the grave. She could watch the fifty uniformed young men and women in Worthings training platoon standing stiffly at attention.
She also spotted civilians of an unwelcome sort nearby a small group of reporters and photographers crowded behind a rope barrier.
She stifled a groan of discouragement.
After three murders, there was no longer any way to keep the press away from Fort Mowat. The publicity was certainly going to add to the pressure of solving the case. Riley just hoped that the journalists wouldnt make too much of a nuisance of themselves.
Probably too much to hope for, she thought.
Once the coffin was in place over the grave, the chaplain began to speak.
We commend to the almighty God our brother, Sergeant Clifford Jay Worthing, and we commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust
Riley was surprised to feel herself choke up at the chaplains words.
What was it about this funeral that was getting to her?
Then she realized
Daddy.
As a Marine captain, her father had been eligible for a funeral with honors like this one.
Had he gotten this kind of funeral? Riley didnt even know. Not only had she refused to go to his funeral, shed taken no part in its planning. Shed left all that to her estranged sister, Wendy.
Shed never grieved over her fathers death. Nevertheless, she felt sad at the thought that he might not have been buried with full military honors. But who would have gone to the funeral, aside from Wendy? Rileys father had died with no real friends as far as she knew. And Riley and Wendy were all he had left of family.
Riley remembered something that one of her fathers former buddies recently told her.
Riley, your daddy was a good man. But he was a hard man too. He couldnt help it, Nam made him that way.
Tears welled up in Rileys eyes.
Hed been a terrible father. But hed been a good soldier. Hed given everything he had to the Marines including his humanity, his capacity to love.
As the honor guard lifted the flag and held it taut above the casket, Riley thought
He deserved this.
Riley thought she should have made sure her father had his full honors funeral, even if no one had been there to witness it except Wendy.
She was jolted out of her sad reverie by the firing of guns. A seven-person squad fired three volleys into the still air. Then the quiet was broken again by the mournful sound of a bugler playing taps.
The honor guard ceremoniously folded the flag, and an officer presented it to Sergeant Worthings widow. The officer whispered something to her doubtless some word of support of support or solace.
Then the officer gave the family a slow-motion salute, and the service was over.
*Before Sergeant Worthings platoon could leave the cemetery, Col. Dana Larson called them together. She introduced them to Riley, Bill, and Lucy and told them that they were here to investigate the three recent murders.
Riley scanned their faces, looking for some telltale sign of emotion. She detected nothing certainly not grief.
She guessed that many of the recruits had hated Sergeant Worthings guts and werent sorry that he was gone.