HE ADDRESS IN Colorado was at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, up a long paved road that had only a single house at the end that one reached through a motorized gate. But it was a substantial home, an estate really.

The SUVs slowly made their way up. An FBI team from Denver had met them at the private airport where the jet had landed. There were eight agents plus Bogart, Jamison, and Decker. Local law enforcement was down below keeping guard over the road.

“It’s out of the way,” said Bogart as the large two-story home came into view.

“Did you expect it not to be?” said Decker.

When they pulled to a stop Bogart looked at Jamison. “You stay put.”

“Come on. Decker wouldn’t let me go in Sizemore’s place either.”

“Well, I’m pleased to be considered in the same league with Mr. Decker,” retorted Bogart. “Until we get the all clear, you stay right here.”

They climbed out of the SUVs and the team quickly surrounded the house. A large separate building that looked to be a four-car garage was set off to one side. There was a pool in the rear grounds, covered now for winter. There were no other buildings. And there were no cars visible either.

“Place looks abandoned,” said Bogart. “For such a nice residence, the grounds are pretty let go.”

“We’ll see,” replied Decker.

The air was cold and everyone’s breath was visible.

Two agents went toward the garage while the others headed for the house. Three went to the rear, and the other half covered the front. With Decker next to him, Bogart knocked on the front door, identified himself, said that he had a search warrant, and asked to be let in. All he got in answer was silence.

He gave the countdown over his phone to the team in the rear.

Both doors were blown in by hydraulic battering rams.

The agents swarmed inside, clearing the rooms one by one until they came to the stairs. They headed up, cleared six bedrooms, and then stopped at the last one.

“Holy shit,” said one of the agents, lowering his weapon.

Bogart and Decker entered the room and stared down at the two chairs situated in a sitting room off the main bedroom area.

There was a body in each chair, entirely wrapped in plastic that was compressed tightly around their figures. The faces visible through the plastic were of a man and a woman.

“Mr. and Mrs. Wyatt, do you think?” asked Bogart.

“Anything is possible,” replied Decker.

* * *

Eight hours later the forensic team and ME had finished their work. The bodies had been identified as Lane Wyatt and his wife, Ashby. Their time of death was hard to pin down because they had been embalmed.

“Damnedest thing,” said the ME. “But it’s well done. Whoever did it had some experience doing it.”

“So all the blood removed and the fluid pumped into them?” said Bogart.

The man nodded. “And then they were wrapped in the plastic, and it looks like someone used a heat source to compress and then seal the plastic. Probably used a hair dryer. That and the embalming really preserved the body. No air could get in. The bodies are in remarkable shape.”

“And they could have been here a long time or a short time?”

“I’ll try to work up a TOD window for you, but it won’t be easy.”

Bogart said, “The cars in the garage are between two and four years old and the registrations are still current. And the food in the fridge, while expired, is not that old. And the house is in reasonably good shape. I don’t think they’ve been dead for years, unless someone has been living here while they’ve been in their ‘packages.’”

He looked at the ME. “Cause of death?”

“Not particularly evident. No visible wounds on the bodies. Could have been poison, but obvious signs would be long gone. There might be some trace of it in their tissue. And I might be able to get some blood out of them. There’s usually some left even with embalming.”

“Find what you can,” urged Bogart.

The ME nodded and left.

Bogart turned his attention to Decker and Jamison, who were sitting at the kitchen table going over some papers they’d taken out of a shoebox. Bogart sat across from Decker.

“Well, at least there were no cryptic messages to you painted on the walls.”

Decker nodded absently and said, “I doubt they expected us to get to here. Which is actually a good thing.”

“Why?”

“It means they’re fallible. And it means we’re closing the gap. The tortoise and the hare? Remember?”

“But why leave the bodies like that? They must have assumed someone would find them.”

Decker looked at him. “According to what your people found out, the Wyatts were retired. They had no family other than their daughter, and no friends. They kept to themselves.”

“So folks might not have missed them,” said Bogart. “At least for a while.”

“We should check to see if they used a pool service company. The pool was probably only winterized a couple months ago. If they came up to do it, they might have seen the Wyatts.”

“Good idea.”

Decker said, “The Wyatts had money. This place is over ten thousand square feet. And there’s a Range Rover,Audi A8, and Mercedes S500 in the garage.”

“Money can’t buy you happiness,” remarked Jamison.

Bogart looked back down at the papers. “What do you have there?”

Jamison said, “Letters from Belinda to her parents when she was at the institute. Your team found them in that shoebox stuffed under some junk in a closet upstairs.”

“What do they say?”

Decker said, “To sum it up, they’re letters from a frightened young woman imploring her parents to come see her. To come take her home.”

“Marshall said they never visited her.”

“So her letters went unanswered.”

“Marshall said they were part of the ignorant folks and really didn’t care about her. I wonder why they kept the letters?”

“Because of this,” said Decker.

He and Jamison laid the reverse side of all the letters out on the table side by side. Each page had a single capital letter written on the back. When read together and combined into words they spelled out something.

“‘I WILL KILL THEM ALL,’” read Bogart. “So she will kill them all. Meaning her attackers?”

“Or people who dissed her,” said Decker, glancing up at Jamison. “Or people associated with the one who dissed her.”

“And you still don’t know why Wyatt would think you did that to her?”

“No. But my wife and Special Agent Lafferty were both violated. Not raped, but sexually mutilated.”

“But Belinda was raped. And Mrs. Wyatt wasn’t mutilated.”

“She wouldn’t be. This didn’t start with her. And she’s not connected to me.”

“Comes back to you again. Always you.”

Jamison looked at Bogart. “Decker said you used to be an analyst at Quantico?”

“That’s right.”

“I have a friend at ViCAP.”

“She has lots of friends,” commented Decker dryly.

Bogart said, “Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. I was assigned there for two years.”

Jamison said, “Then you must have seen things like this before.”

Bogart nodded. “I’ve pretty much seen it all.”

“Okay, so walk us through it. What would the mutilation symbolize?”

Bogart clasped his hands in front of him. “Actually, mutilation of the female genitalia can have a lot of reasons behind it. It’s like a cornucopia of psychoses. Freud would have had a field day with it. I’ve seen a number of cases, all serial killers, where it was employed.”

“Then give us some examples of reasons,” said Decker.

Bogart leaned in, and while his voice grew softer, it also grew firmer. “It can be symbolic of a hatred of women and what they represent—being mothers, giving birth. The female genitalia are the gates to the birth canal, to be a little crude about it. I’ve seen killers do that to women because their mothers abandoned them. Or let them be abused by others. Mothers are supposed to protect their children, always be there for them. When a mother doesn’t do that it can lead to some really messed-up minds. The mutilation is a way of closing those gates, shutting off the birth canal permanently—not that murder didn’t already do that. But in their minds they’re actually doing something positive.”

Decker said, “Meaning another child can’t be born to that woman? And won’t be abandoned or abused?”

“Exactly.”

Jamison interjected, “Well, Belinda’s parents abandoned her to her fate at the institute. They never visited her there. They ignored her pleas to come and get her. And could she have seen the rape and beating she endured as her mother’s not protecting her?”

“Possibly,” replied Bogart. “In fact, probably. Particularly if she wasn’t supportive afterwards.”

Decker said, “But then why was the message directed at me? Why target my family, people I know? Where do I fit in all this? I don’t remember even speaking to her.”

“We’re talking about a sick mind, Decker. There’s no way we can understand or make sense out of what went on in her head. This actually didn’t start with you. This started with her being raped and nearly killed. And then her parents abandoning her afterward. And it started even before that, with her condition, and people’s reaction to it. Her life was never going to be normal.”

“And then there’s Leopold,” said Jamison. “Let’s not forget about him!”

“And then there’s Leopold,” repeated Bogart. “Decker, you’re still convinced he’s Belinda’s partner in all this? I mean, you haven’t seen him since he left that bar. I know you told me about the waitress—supposedly Belinda—and her borrowing the barman’s car, but you have no hard evidence that she actually picked up Leopold in it. She could have just used it to run an errand.”

Decker shook his head. “She left the bar for good after she brought the car back. And the temp agency hadn’t sent her. She was there to ferret Leopold away. He was the one who picked the bar. So I have no doubt that he’s involved. He confessed to a crime he couldn’t have committed. And he knew that he couldn’t have committed. He played the role of a mentally unbalanced person well, but sitting in that bar he had moments of lucidity, not random, but intentional. He overplayed his hand. He knew exactly what he was doing.”

“But why confess in the first place?”

“It was their opening salvo. After murdering my family. The confession got my attention. They knew I’d find out about it, investigate it. They lured me in. They wanted me to participate in their game.”

“Some game,” Bogart said disgustedly. “But they waited a long time in between killing your family and attacking the school.”

“It all took time to plan out. They had to find the details of the passageway, among other things.”

Jamison said, “But who’s the leader of the pack? Wyatt or Leopold? Plus, how did they meet? Where does he come from? How did they hatch this whole thing?”

“All good questions,” noted Decker. “For which we unfortunately have no answers.”

Bogart said, “We’ve had no hit on the criminal databases. The guy has no record that we can find.”

Decker jerked his head. “Criminal databases?”

“Yeah, that’s where we typically look for criminals. We ran Leopold’s prints through IAFIS, it’s the largest criminal database in the world. I should know because the FBI runs it.”

“But Belinda Wyatt wasn’t a criminal. She was a victim. Maybe Sebastian Leopold was too. Maybe that’s how they hooked up.”

Jamison gazed at Bogart. “So maybe you’ve been looking in the wrong databases.”