The Narrows by Michael Connelly Page B

more."
    "Maybe. But why'd he need the boat if he had the GPS?"
    Rachel nodded and felt a little buzz of adrenaline start to tick in her blood. The brainstorming had always been the best part of the job.
    "The GPS came later. Recently. That was just for us."
    "Us?"
    "You. The bureau. Me."
    Rachel moved to the edge and looked down into the hole. It had not been deep, especially for two bodies. She stopped breathing through her mouth and took the fetid air in through her nose. She wanted to remember this.
    "IDs yet?"
    "Nothing official. No contact with kin yet. But we know who some of them were. Five of them at least. The first one was three years ago. The second seven months after that."
    "Have you built a cycle?"
    "Yes, we have it. About an eight percent reduction. We think the last two will bring us up to November."
    Meaning that the intervals between the killings were decreasing by eight percent from the initial seven-month period between killings one and two. Again, it was familiar. The decreasing interval was common in case history, a symptom of the killer's diminishing control of his urges at the same time his belief in his invincibility grows. You get away with the first one and the second comes easier and sooner. And so on.
    "I guess that makes him overdue," Rachel said.
    "Supposedly."
    "Supposedly?"
    "Come on, Rachel, it's Backus. He knows what we know. He's just playing with us. It's like Amsterdam. He's gone before we even recognize it is him. Same here. He's moved on. I mean, why send us the GPS if he hasn't? He's split already. He's not overdue and he's not coming back here. He's somewhere laughing at us, watching us follow our models and routines, knowing that we won't get any closer to him than we did the last time."
    Rachel nodded. She knew Dei was right but decided to be optimistic.
    "He's got to make a mistake somewhere. What about the GPS? Anything on that?"
    "We're working it, obviously. Brass is on that."
    "What else is there?"
    "There is you, Rachel."
    Rachel didn't say anything. Again Cherie Dei was right. Backus had something in play. His obscure but direct message to Rachel seemed to make this obvious. He wanted her here, wanted her to be part of the play. But what was it? What did the Poet want?
    Like Rachel had mentored Dei, Backus had mentored Rachel. He was a good teacher. In retrospect, better than she or anyone could have imagined. She was mentored by both agent and killer, hunter and prey, a unique combination in the annals of crime and punishment. Rachel always remembered a throwaway line Backus had spoken one night when they were walking up the stairs from the basement at Quantico, leaving the unit behind for the day.
    "In the long run I think it is all bullshit. We can't predict how these people act. We can only react. And at the end of the day, that means we're largely useless. We make good headlines and Hollywood makes good movies about us, but that's about it."
    Rachel was a rookie in the unit at the time. She was full of ideals and plans and faith. She spent the next thirty minutes trying to talk Backus out of such a belief. Now she was embarrassed by the memory of the effort and the things she had said to a man she would later realize was a killer.
    "Can I go into the other tents now?" Rachel asked.
    "Sure," Dei said. "Whatever you want."

CHAPTER 12
    IT was late and the batteries on the boat were beginning to run low. The lights in the forward berth were steadily dimming. Or at least it seemed so to me. Maybe it was my eyes that were dimming. I had spent seven hours reading through files pulled out of the boxes on the top bunk. I had filled my notebook to the last page and then flipped it over and started back to front.
    The afternoon interview had been uneventful if not unhelpful. Terry McCaleb's last charter was a man named Otto Woodall who lived in a luxury condo behind the fabled Avalon Casino building. I talked to him for an hour, getting much the same story I had already gotten from