He strode over, hauled her up by the binds on her wrists, and dragged her over to the stone altar in the center of the space. From the basket there, he took out a root and, ripping the tape from her lips, pried open her mouth to shove it inside. He had to manually work her jaws to chew it.

"Swallow," he commanded. He picked up the water bottle from the basket and squirted water down her throat until she gagged, choked, then swallowed.

"It is by the spirit of God that I cast out demons, Kathleen." He shoved her back on the altar, climbed on top of her, and spread her legs. Ramming himself inside her, his hands closed around her neck as he began to thrust.

"Surrender to the spirit all the evil in your past," he panted. His hips pounded against hers, his gaze fixed on her eyes as they began to bulge. Finally she began to struggle a little as the life was slowly squeezed out of her.

And when death took her, he came with a power that could only be described as holy.

When it was over, after he'd dressed, there were the usual preparations to be made. Her body to be washed down. Her nails scrubbed. He worked swiftly in near silence, his only light coming from the flashlight he'd set nearby. The heavy chain he wrapped around her body added thirty pounds to her weight, but it was necessary.

There couldn't be another mistake.

He'd return later for her clothes and purse. They'd be disposed of far away from here. But first Kathleen would find her final resting place. A fitting burial.

At the bottom of Ashton's Pond.

Ramsey rolled to a stop before the 1960s ranch-style home and returned the wave of the man riding the lawnmower in diagonal patterns across the yard. Apparently John Kenner, ex-chief of police, was an early riser. It was barely seven-thirty.

She got out of the car, walked up to the gate, and took a good long look at the man who'd signed the police report for Dev's father's arrest. Midseventies, she estimated, as he jostled over the velvety grass, with a build more beefy than fat. He rounded a tree, saw her standing there, and cut the power on the machine. Ramsey took that as an invitation.

The wide expanse of grass was still damp with dew. But Kenner had considerately caught the grass clippings in a bag attached to the mower, so she didn't have to worry about leaving here smelling like a haymow.

"Mornin' to you."

"Mr. Kenner." Having left her sunglasses in the SUV, Ramsey shielded her eyes from the early morning glare. "I'm Ramsey Clark, special consultant working with the TBI."

"Figured who you were." Kenner made no move to dismount, but his expression was friendly enough. His skin was ruddy, the color of a naturally light-complected man who'd spent too much time in the sun. "I know most folks in this town. And of course I'd heard 'bout you joinin' the team investigatin' the murder."

"I didn't really come to see you in an official capacity," she admitted. And now that she had, she was feeling a small modicum of embarrassment. But this was important to Dev, and if she was truthful, a few questions kept nagging her about that report all those years ago. "Actually I came to talk to you about the last arrest you made for a murder here. The last time the red mist was sighted, nearly thirty years ago."

The smile had vanished from his lips. And she recognized the flash of pure cop in his eyes. "You mean Lucas Rollins."

"I do."

He scratched his jaw, not bothering to hide the speculation in his gaze. "Can't see what that has to do with the poor girl they found in the pond."

Ramsey shifted so the sun was at her back so she wouldn't have to squint at the man. "Probably nothing. But it's my job to make sure we aren't overlooking a pattern of some type."

He snorted. "You mean the legend? Shoot, that's all a bunch of bunk. Never has served more than to rile people up and set tongues to waggin'. Lucas Rollins wasn't in his right mind to do what he did. Doesn't make him part of the local superstition, just makes the whole sorry mess sadder."

"He wasn't in his right mind. Because of the alcohol he'd had to drink that night." Ramsey slipped her hands in the pocket of her suit jacket. It was the last fresh set of clothes she had with her, she recalled with a mental sigh. When she left here, she needed to hunt down the nearest Laundromat and make note of its hours.

"That's right."

"Were you used to seeing him that way? Was he a big drinker?"

"Can't say that he was." The ex-chief's manner was still polite, if not especially forthcoming.

"That's what I've heard, too. So that's what keeps me wondering. A guy with no reputation for getting shit-faced goes off and drinks so much he commits murder and doesn't recall it the next day." She paused, but the man said nothing. "There wasn't anything in the police report about where Lucas had been during the intervening time. Whom he might have been with."

Kenner's mouth twisted. "So seein' that you figured maybe we're that slow down here, just yokels who don't know how to do real police work."

Her gaze never left his. "Or that you had a reason for not including your findings in the police report. Now that I've met you, I'm betting on the latter."

There was a flicker in his eyes, but his expression remained impassive. It was enough to solidify her opinion. This man had known how to do his job.

Which meant he'd been keeping a secret for over thirty years.

When he spoke again, his voice was pitched low enough to be barely audible over the sound of the idling mower. "I done a bit of research on you. 'Nough to know you started out with TBI. Probably used to big-city crime and a big-city pace. Not sayin' one type of experience is better than t'other, but they're different, know what I'm sayin'?"

Ramsey nodded. Found herself leaning forward a little so as not to miss a word.

"Another difference 'tween your sorta work and bein' a local law enforcement officer is the local part. Whatever happens, wherever my investigations took me, at the end of the day, I still lived here. Still ran into the same people day after day. Still lived by the same neighbors. Still churched with the same congregation. Not sayin' that changes the job, but it changes the way we do our job. That means not embarrassin' people unnecessarily. Not makin' public things that don't change the outcome of a case. Not feedin' the local grapevine with details that are no one's business. That's part of bein' a small-town cop."

"So you're saying the missing information-where Lucas was drinking and with whom-you covered that in your investigation but didn't include it in the police report for fear of embarrassing him?" It was hard to imagine what could have seemed more embarrassing at the time than being charged with murder. Unless . . .

Even as comprehension hit her, Kenner was leaning forward to rev up the mower's engine, preparing to resume his task. "The missin' details have nothin' to do with this recent murder case, I can tell you that. Other than that, they aren't your affair, so as far as I'm concerned, this conversation is over."

He turned the mower and effortlessly got back on track to begin again those regimented diagonals in the lawn. But Ramsey wasn't satisfied yet. She trotted beside the machine, uncaring for the moment that the wet grass was dampening her shoes.

She raised her voice to be heard over the motor. "And if I'm not asking for myself, Chief Kenner? If I'm not asking for this case, just whose business would those details be?"

She knew her question had struck home by the quick sideways glance he threw her. Knew he'd probably heard she and Stryker had been seen together around town.

His answer could barely be heard above the revving of the motor. "If Dev Stryker takes a notion to follow up on that line of questionin', he'd be the one to take up those answers with his mama. No one else's business. Not then. Not now."

Ramsey took her time driving back to the motel, first placing a call to Phyllis Trammel, Cassie Frost's landlady in Kordoba, before checking in with Agent Powell. From the tone in Powell's voice, she recognized her conversation with him might be as fruitless as her words with Trammel.

"We got in one interview with Sanders this morning before he lawyered up, and he didn't give us jack when it comes to new information." The older man's voice was frustrated. "Workin' out a deal now where we'll allow him supervised access to his computer files so he can still run his business, in exchange for his cooperation. 'Course what he and his high-priced attorney consider cooperation isn't likely to jibe with our interpretation."

"Rollins is going through his background to see if he can establish a link with a relative in the Buffalo Springs area."

Powell grunted on the other end of the line. "Has to be done, but it's just as likely that the killer is the source of the local link, rather than Sanders. I've got Matthews runnin' old college classmates, high school friends, and neighbors through the databases for criminal records. With Sanders alibied, it's doubtful he brought a middleman in on the plot. I don't see him wantin' to cut someone else in on the money. He'll be the link to the killer. We just have to work through his past to find it."

She brought him up to date on Jonesy's findings on the fibers. "I'll be sending one of the deputies back to Kordoba to get a sample of Trammel's hair to compare to two strands included in the initial evidence inventory." Injecting a note of humor into her words, she added, "Trammel was rather unhappy with my suggestion that she owned a wig, so the other gray strand is unaccounted for." It was hardly a rarity for them to be unable to match every fiber, stain, or particle of evidence with its source. But she thought Jonesy had done remarkably well doing what he had.

"Anythin' show up on those ViCAP matches yet?"

Briefly, she recounted the conversations she'd had so far with four of the detectives. "I'll follow up on the other two today." But she remembered how returning phone calls like hers were at the bottom of the list of things for a busy detective to do when there were eight or nine active cases being worked at any given time.

"We'll be turnin' Sanders's financials and computer over to forensic accountin' and computer techs at the TBI labs. Jeffries has assured me it'll be given top priority."

About to sign off, Ramsey was struck by a thought. "Oh, Ward, if you get a chance . . . Frost didn't give much of a description of the man she thought was watching her in Lisbon. Tall, thin, gray hair. I wondered if she'd said more to Sanders. He'd indicated also that someone had asked her out at a restaurant. Seems like she would have mentioned it to the police if it were the same guy, but I wondered about it."

"Like I say, Sanders has been pretty useless today. Matthews followed up on that, though, and all he said was that she'd mentioned an older distinguished-lookin' gentleman asking her out right after she'd hit town in Lisbon. Sanders seemed to think she'd mentioned it just to make him jealous, but then his type would think that."

Maybe, Ramsey mused, as they disconnected the call. And maybe she'd succeeded beyond her wildest dreams.

Cassie might have made Sanders so jealous he began to think about getting rid of her altogether.

"Are you busy? Can you talk?"

Dev was squatted among the equipment spread out around him with the open notebooks for his readings. "Never too busy to talk, Denny, you know that. Especially when I'm hopin' you have some answers for me."

From the corner of his eye, he could see the oldest of the Landish girls, Sissy, he thought it was, peering at him from around the corner of the porch. The old Kuemper place had changed hands dozens of times since Lora Kuemper had met her untimely demise in the well on this property. Fortunately for him, Stella and Eldin Landish were intrigued enough by his work to offer him free access to their property.

Their three girls were curious enough to be watching him with a pair of binoculars the entire time, a fact that would likely have their very proper mother faint of mortification if she caught them at it.

"Well, I don't know that my news is as exciting as having someone heave a brick through your window, but hopefully it's more helpful."

Dev had called Denny back after he'd cleaned up the mess last night and given him an abbreviated version of the events that had interrupted their call. "What d'ya got for me?"

"More than I should have in this time frame, luckily for you. Turns out there was a thread about your Rufus Ashton in an honor's thesis written by one of my undergrad research assistants last year. 'The Spread of Religious Methodology in Early America.' Seems your Rufus Ashton was more than the founder of the first church in Buffalo Springs. He founded the religion called Sancrosanctity, an offshoot from the Church of Elders."

Feeling a familiar thread of impatience, Dev interrupted, as pleasantly as possible, "Got anythin' good from this paper?"

"Well, at the very least, we've got another living case of how striving for religious acceptance can morph into intolerance. At the most . . . we just might have a case where religion is a guise for church-condoned serial torture, rape, and murder."

The words had Dev sinking to a sitting position, juggling his cell phone with the notebook and pen he snatched up. He was only half aware of the wrestling match going on some distance away on the Landish porch between two of the daughters struggling for possession of the binoculars.

"You've got my attention, Denny."

"Somehow I thought that would do it."

"Detective Hopwood? I'm glad I caught you. I've left a couple messages regarding a ViCAP hit linking elements of one of your cases to a current homicide I'm working."

"Yeah, I've been meaning to get back to you," was the reply on the other end of the line. Ramsey interpreted that to mean that the DC detective had placed her on the bottom of a very long list of things to do. She didn't harbor a grudge. Working for Raiker gave her the unheard-of luxury of working one case at a time, compared to juggling a dozen or more active cases as she had for the TBI. Real police work was often a simple case of luck and perseverance, because law enforcement agencies were notoriously understaffed and underfunded.

"The case I'm interested in would have been from four years ago. Victim's name was Cordell. She'd been raped and strangled and had ingested a foreign object prior to her death."

"Right, I remember. Some sort of plant or something. Can't say I spent much time figuring out exactly what it was."

For a moment, Ramsey was speechless. She'd been half convinced that she was going to strike out with Hopwood, the last detective she had to contact regarding the ViCAP hits, the same way she had all the others. "You're saying the foreign object was a plant?"

"Likely a root, our lab guy said. Hey, I'm on my way out on a call, so I'm gonna walk and talk, that okay with you?"

"It's fine."

"'Course I didn't get the lab work back for about six months, and the case had landed in the unsolved file by then." Ramsey could hear traffic on the other end of the line and assumed the detective had walked outside of the precinct house. "It wasn't an intoxicant, the tech could tell me that, so that blew my theory that it was some sort of weird drug use gone bad. Near as I recall, I figured she was raped and killed outside, and he forced her to eat whatever was available. Like a control thing."

"Where'd you discover her?"

"Almost didn't find the body. It'd been weighted down with rocks and ropes and tossed in the Potomac. A fisherman hooked something and waded out to see what his line had caught on."

"So, no physical evidence." A feeling of frustration swept over Ramsey. A watery dump site was another similarity in the two cases, but it was difficult to get too excited in lieu of physical evidence that was going to help solve the case. Either of them.

"Well the rope was clothesline that could be bought at any discount store. There were a couple gray hairs twined in the knots but difficult to tell if it could have come from the killer or a worker on the assembly line packaging it."

The words had a spark of interest flaring. "Gray hair?"

"I know what you're thinking." The detective's voice was heavy with irony. "Forget DNA. It was human hair, but came from a wig. Useless any way you look at it. Look, I'm en route to a crime scene. I'm not sure there's much else I can tell you, so if you don't have other questions . . ."

"Just one. Is the evidence still intact if we wanted to send someone over to collect that hair to compare to a couple we found on my case?"

"Should be, but I'd have to find out. Stuff disappears sometimes."

After eliciting his promise to check on the evidence in the morning, Ramsey disconnected the call. But her mind was still racing. She went to the evidence board that she'd had Jonesy move from the mobile lab to the cabin. Stared at the individual gray hairs bagged and tagged neatly on the board. Those with the decidedly blue tint would no doubt match the sample the deputy was bringing back from Phyllis Trammel.

That left those from a wig, the mere mention of which had caused Ms. Trammel to take all sorts of offense. If the woman could be believed, she didn't own one.

Don't need no false hair, thank you very much! I got plenty of my own, and I don't 'preciate you sayin' any different!

She stared at the board blindly, tapping her closed cell phone on her palm. And then there was the distinguished-looking gentleman who'd asked Cassie Frost out at the Lisbon restaurant.

Ramsey couldn't help wondering if distinguished looking was another phrase for gray-haired.

She heard the crunch of wheels on gravel and went to the window. Felt a ribbon of pleasure unfurl when she saw Dev behind the wheel of the car. And although her customary guard was present, it didn't raise as swiftly as usual. Inner alarms didn't shrill when she threw open the door and stepped outside. She watched him stop in his tracks when he saw her, his smile slow and wide and devastating. And the female heart inside her cop's skin gave a stutter.

"So are you just going to stand there with that sappy grin on your face, or should we go next door?" Her voice sounded just a little too breathless for comfort.

"I'm partial to goin' next door." He didn't walk so much as stalk toward her as she pulled the office door shut and unlocked the door to her cabin. And she could feel an answering smile on her face even as she swung the door shut behind him. Felt it grow wider as he caught her around the waist and twirled her into his arms.

His eyes, when they looked down into hers, were wicked. "You look good enough to eat."

"You must be partial to navy drab."

"I'm partial to you."

There was no response to be made to that because his mouth, that clever intoxicating mouth, was on hers. Inviting a response. Demanding one. And for once in her life, Ramsey gave it freely, without thought of guard or defenses.

His taste ricocheted through her system, pinballs of pleasure racketing off nerve endings along the way. There was urgency here, urgency she shared despite having had him less than forty-eight hours earlier. But it was layered beneath the soft lazy seduction of stroking tongues, clinging lips. He framed her face in both of his hands, kissing her with a single-minded intensity that was all the more powerful for being focused solely on her. And when the nerve-snapping chemistry sparked to life as easily as a match to a gasoline-soaked fuse, that, too, was familiar. She was beginning to accept this was the way it would be between them. At least during the time they could be together.

"I missed you," he murmured against her lips.

She cupped his hands with her palms for a moment. Savored the warmth of flesh against flesh. "You just saw me."

"You're a dangerous woman, Ramsey Clark." His lips were curved, but his eyes were alight with intensity. "You've got a way of working under a man's skin."

"Sounds painful," she managed lightly.

"I had a feeling you might describe this that way, but I certainly wouldn't."

She didn't trust that expression on his face. Smug and supremely male. "And how would you describe this?"

"In spite of your better judgment, you and I are having us a romance." Her expression must have looked as stupefied as she felt, because his blasted grin was back. He dropped a kiss on her forehead. "Like it or not, you'll have a hard time denyin' it. But I look forward to you trying to, just the same."