Mackenzie found herself walking into a small coffee shop with the barest flicker of hope. After she'd made the awkward call to her sister, she'd placed another phone call to someone she hadn't spoken to in quite some time. The conversation had been brief and to the point, concluding in agreeing to meet over coffee.
She looked up now and spotted the man she had called right away. He was hard to miss; in a crowd of rushed people on their way to work, mostly young and well-dressed, his white hair and flannel shirt stood out drastically.
He was turned away from her, and she approached him from behind and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.
"James," she said. "How are you?"
He turned and smiled widely at her as she sat down in front of him.
"Mackenzie, I swear you just get prettier and prettier," he said.
"And you just get smoother and smoother," she said. "It's good to see you, James."
"Likewise," he said.
James Woerner was pushing seventy but looked closer to eighty. He was tall and skinny, something that had once prompted the officers he once worked with to call him Crane, after Ichabod Crane. It was a name that he'd adapted to himself after he retired from the force and had spent eight years as a consultant for the local PD and, on two occasions, for the state police.
"So what's going on that might be so bad as to have you reach out to an old fart like me?" he asked.
There was humor in the question but Mackenzie felt herself shrinking away from him as she realized that James was the second person in less than two hours to assume that she had called because she was in a spot of trouble.
"I was wondering if you ever had a case that got under your skin," she said. "And I don't mean something that just bothers you. I'm talking about a case that affects you so badly that you get paranoid when you're at home and it feels like every failed lead is your fault."
"I assume you're talking about the poorly named Scarecrow Killer?" James asked.
"How…" she almost asked but then realized she knew the answer, even as James answered it for her.
"I saw your picture in the paper," he said before sipping his coffee. "I was happy for you. You need a case like this under your belt. I seem to remember telling you that you were destined to crack cases like this several years ago."
"You did," she said.
"Yet you're still hanging out in the trenches with the local PD?"
"I am."
"Is Nelson treating you okay?"
"As well as he can, given the crew he has working for him. He's all but put me at the front of this case. I'm hoping it's a way for him to let me prove myself so all of the macho bullshit from the others can come to an end."
"Still working with Porter?"
"I was, but he was reassigned when an FBI agent showed up."
"Working with the feds," James said with a smile. "I believe that was another prediction I made about you. But I digress."
He smiled and leaned forward.
"Tell me about why this case is affecting you so badly. And if you keep it at a surface level, I'll take my coffee and leave. I have a busy day of doing absolutely nothing ahead of me."
She smiled.
"The glamorous retired lifestyle," she said.
"You're damned right," James said. "But don't try to sidestep."
She knew better than to dance around a direct request. She'd learned that when he had taken her under his wing five years ago, teaching her the basics of profiling and how to get into the mind of a criminal. The man was stubborn as hell and always got right to the point-which, Mackenzie always thought, was why they had gotten along so well.
"I think it's because it's a man that seems to be killing only women. More than that, he's killing women that use their bodies to make a living."
"And that bothers you why?"
It stung her heart to say it, but she got it out anyway.
"It makes me think of my sister. And when I think of my sister, I think of my father. And when I go there, I feel like a failure because I haven't caught this guy yet."
"Your sister was a stripper?" James asked.
She nodded.
"For about six months. She hated it. But the money was good enough to help her get on her feet after a rough patch. It always made me sad to think of her doing that for a living. And while I don't see my sister on those wooden poles when I visit the sites, I know that the chances are good that the women this guy is killing probably had lives very similar to Steph."
"Now, Mackenzie, you do know that always going back to your father when things aren't going your way on a case is self-abuse, right? There's no need to torment yourself over that."
"I know. But I can't help it."
"Well, let's look away from that for now. I assume you called me for guidance of some sort, right?"
"Yes."
"Well, the bad news is that everything I have read in the news is dead-on to what I would say. You're looking for a man with an aversion to sex that has likely had issues with a wife, sister, or mother in his life. I'd also add, though, that this guy doesn't get out much. His inclination to display his victims in such rural areas makes me think he's a small-town boy. He probably lives in a ramshackle part of town. If not this town, then certainly nowhere outside of a one-hundred-mile radius or so. But that's just a guess."
"So we could narrow our search for someone that has cedar poles at the ready in the seedier parts of town?"
"For a start. Now, tell me, are there any details you have noticed about the scenes that might have taken the back seat to the overarching horridness of the scenes themselves?"
"Just the numbers," she said.
"Yes, I read about them, but only twice. The media is too obsessed with the profession of the women to dwell on something they don't understand right away. Like those numbers. But remember: never take a crime scene for granted. Every scene has a story to tell. Even if that story is hidden in something that is seemingly trivial at first, there's a story. It's your job to find it, read it, and figure out what it means."
She pondered that. What, she wondered, had she overlooked?
"There's something else I need to ask you," she said. "I'm about to do something I've never done before and I don't want it to make my situation worse. It could potentially get deeper under my skin."
James eyed her for a moment and gave her the same sly smile that had sometimes creeped her out when he had served as her mentor. It meant he had figured something out without being told and he now held that over her.
"You're going back to the murder scenes," he said.
"Yes."
"You're going to try to enter the mind of the killer," he said. "You're going to try to see the scenes as a man with some flaw inside of him-with a hatred of women and a deranged sort of fear towards sex."
"That's the plan," she said.
"And when are you doing this?"
"As soon as I leave here."
James seemed to consider this for a moment. He took another sip from his coffee and nodded his approval.
"I know you're fully capable of it," he said. "But are you mentally ready?"
Mackenzie shrugged and said, "I have to be."
"That can be dangerous," he warned. "If you start seeing the scenes through the eyes of the killer, it can also distort the way you've been trained to see those sorts of scenes. You need to be ready for that-to draw the line between that sort of dark inspiration and your ultimate need to find this guy and take him down."
"I know," Mackenzie said softly.
James drummed his fingers along the sides of his cup. "Would you like for me to come with you?"
"I thought about asking you," she said. "But I think this is something I'm going to have to do by myself."
"That's probably the right decision," James said. "I must warn you, though: as you try to see things from a killer's point of view, never allow yourself to jump to conclusions. Try to start fresh. Don't close your mind off with assumptions like, this guy just hates women. Let the scene talk to you before you project yourself towards the scene."
Mackenzie grinned in spite of herself. "That sounds pretty New Age," she said. "Have you turned a new leaf?"
"No. The leaves stop turning after retirement. Now, how much longer do you have before you set out on this little quest?"
"Soon," she said. "I'd like to visit the first one by noon."
"Good," he said. "That means you have some time. So, for the time being, push this Scarecrow Killer crap to the side. Go order yourself a coffee and entertain an old man for a while. What do you say?"
She gave him a look that she had tried so hard to keep from him for the year or so he'd mentored her. It was the look of a young girl looking to her father with a need to please and make him happy. While she had never psychoanalyzed herself to uncover this truth, she had known it right away, from the first week she'd spent two hours of two days with him. James Woerner had been a father figure to her during that time in her life and it was something for which she would be forever grateful.
So when he asked her to grab a cup of coffee and keep him company, she happily obliged. The cornfield, the gravel roads, and that old abandoned house had been sitting for ages, unmoving. They could wait another hour or so.