Before he Kills (A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 1) by Blake Pierce

asked.
    Nelson reached into his coat pocket and
took out a small Maglite which he happily tossed to her. She caught it, flicked
it on, and started looking around the scene. She tuned out Nelson’s nervous
banter and let him release his steam with Porter.
    With the dead-on precision that took
over her in moments like this, the world melted away as she started scouring
the scene for any clues. There were several that stood out right away. For
instance, she knew that Nelson and the other officers had used the same beaten
path to get to the body to prevent contaminating the scene; outside of their worn-down
footpath from their cars to the body, there were several other indentations in
the tall grass, likely placed there by the killer.
    She strayed a bit outside of the
footpath and slowly arced the flashlight beam around the field surrounding the
post. She took some mental notes, looked back over to the two teens, and then
headed back to the pole. She looked the body over for any further clues and
became certain that this body, like that of Hailey Lizbrook, would show no
signs of sexual abuse.
                She wondered if setting up the pole was more than just a
theatrical device. Something about it seemed resolute, almost like a necessity
for the killer. For a brief moment she could see him, his hands falling on the
pole and going to work.
                He drags it with pride, maybe even hoisting it up
along his back. There’s labor to the task, a prerequisite to the killings.
Struggling with the pole, bringing it to the site, digging the hole and
installing it—there’s a sweat-of-the-brow satisfaction in it. He is readying
the site for the murder. He takes just as much satisfaction from this work as
he does the murder.
    “What are your thoughts, White?” Nelson
asked as he watched her circle the body.
    Mackenzie blinked, being
torn from the image of the killer in her mind. Realizing just how deep she’d
gone there for a moment, she felt a slight chill pass through her.
    “A few easy ones right off the bat are
that you can see the trail where he dragged the pole from the dirt track to
here,” she said. “That concludes that the pole was not here originally. He
brought it with him. And that denotes that he drives either a pickup truck or a
van of some kind.”
    “That’s what I figured,” Nelson said.
“Anything else?”
    “Well, it’s hard to be sure at night,”
she said, “but I’m pretty sure the killer had the victim wrapped in something
when he brought her out here.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “I don’t see any blood at all on the
grass but some of the wounds on her back—especially those around her
buttocks—are still fairly wet.”
    As Nelson digested this, Mackenzie went
to her haunches at the back of the pole and pressed the grass down with one
hand. With the other, she shone the flashlight beam along the bottom of the
pole.
    Her heart raced as saw the numbers:
N511/J202.
    He uses a knife or a chisel,
and he takes a lot of time and effort to make sure the carvings are legible.
These carvings are important to him and, more than that, he wants them to be
seen. Whether consciously or subconsciously, he wants someone to figure out why he’s doing this. He needs someone to understand his
motives.
    “Chief?” she said.
    “Yeah, White?”
    “I’ve got those numbers again.”
    “Shit,” Nelson said, coming to where she
was kneeling. He looked down and let out a heavy sigh. “Any idea what they
mean?”
    “None at all, sir.”
    “Okay,” Nelson said. His hands were on
his hips and he was looking up to the dark sky like a man defeated. “So we have
a few more answers here, but nothing that’s going to tie things up for us
anytime soon. A man driving a truck or van that has access to wooden poles
and—”
    “Wait,” Mackenzie said. “You just said
something.”
    She went back to the rear of the pole.
She leaned down to look at the place where the woman’s wrists were bound