CHAPTER TWENTY
Kari stood at the edge of the wash, watching the first light of dawn paint the canyon walls in shades of rose and gold, and tried not to think about how beautiful it was. Beautiful places could be deadly. The Sonoran Desert had taught her that lesson a hundred times over.
The search teams had found Silas Hartman twenty minutes ago, just as the sun cleared the eastern ridgeline.
A hiker training for his own ultramarathon had spotted the body from a high vantage point and called it in.
Now Kari stood with Maria Santos and a cluster of search and rescue personnel, waiting for the medical examiner to finish his preliminary assessment before they could properly process the scene.
From this distance, Hartman looked peaceful.
That's what struck her most forcefully—the same careful positioning she'd seen with Jessica Ramirez, with the photos from Jennifer Hayes and Jordan Rodriguez.
Lying on his side as if he'd simply chosen to rest, one arm tucked beneath his head like a pillow.
If you didn't know better, you might think he was sleeping.
But Kari did know better. She could see the way his lips had cracked and bled from dehydration. The gray pallor of his skin. The unnatural stillness that separated sleep from death.
"How long has he been here?" Maria asked the ME, a brisk woman in her fifties who'd behaved as if she'd seen more death in her lifetime than anyone should have to.
"Hard to say precisely in this heat. But based on lividity and rigor, I'd estimate he died sometime yesterday afternoon.
Maybe between two and four PM." The ME stood, stripping off her gloves.
"Preliminary cause appears consistent with your other victims. Severe dehydration, heat exhaustion, probable cardiac arrest. I'll know more after the autopsy. "
Yesterday afternoon. While Kari and Maria had been searching the canyons, calling his name, Hartman had already been dead. The thought sat heavy in Kari's chest, though she knew better than to indulge in guilt over things beyond her control.
They'd done everything possible. Sometimes everything possible wasn't enough.
"His GPS watch?" she asked.
Maria held up an evidence bag containing the device. "Still on his wrist, like we figured. I'll get the data downloaded as soon as we're back at the station, but you can see some of it on the display."
She angled the watch so Kari could see the screen. "Same pattern as the others. Zigzagging all over hell and back, heading steadily away from established trails into rough country."
Kari studied the small screen, watching the digital trail of Hartman's final hours.
The pattern was even more extreme than Jessica Ramirez's had been—wild swings northeast then south then west, covering miles of brutal terrain in what must have been a desperate attempt to escape his pursuer.
The elevation data showed he'd climbed and descended steep slopes multiple times, burning through energy at an unsustainable rate while the afternoon heat drained every drop of moisture from his body.
"He ran for his life," she said quietly. "For hours. Until he couldn't run anymore."
"And then the killer positioned him like this." Maria gestured at Hartman's carefully arranged body. "Why? What's the point of the staging?"
Kari had been asking herself the same question since finding Jessica. The positioning was too deliberate to be random, too consistent across victims to be coincidence. It meant something to the killer—but what? Some kind of ritual? A message?
Or just a twisted sense of mercy, making the dead look peaceful when their final hours had been anything but?
She crouched near Hartman's body, careful not to disturb anything the ME and forensics team might need to document.
From this angle, she could see the torn fabric of his running shirt, the abrasions on his arms and legs from falls or scrapes against rocks and brush.
His feet were bare—his shoes had been removed and placed neatly beside him.
"The shoes," she said, pointing. "They're positioned just like Jessica's were. And Jennifer Hayes's, according to the Phoenix PD report."
Maria photographed them. "Killer must remove them post-mortem."
Kari stood, scanning the area around the body. "We need to process a wider perimeter. Whoever did this had to approach on foot, had to spend time positioning everything. There might be evidence."
The forensics team was already setting up, marking a grid around the body and beginning their methodical documentation of every stone and scuff mark. Kari moved outward, giving them space to work while she searched for signs of their killer.
The wash was rocky and uneven, not ideal for preserving footprints. But twenty yards from Hartman's body, where the wash widened and soft sand had accumulated in the lee of a boulder, Kari found what she was looking for.
"Maria. Over here."
The footprint was clear and fresh—no wind-blown sand filling it yet, the ridges of the tread pattern sharply defined. A running shoe, maybe a men's ten or eleven. But what caught Kari's attention was the impression itself, the way the weight distribution created an uneven pattern in the sand.
Maria crouched beside her, studying it. "That's an odd gait."
"Very odd." Kari pulled out her phone and photographed it from multiple angles. "See how the lateral edge is more deeply impressed than the medial? And the toe-off is asymmetric. Whoever made this print doesn't run with a normal stride pattern."
"Injury? Or just unusual biomechanics?"
"Could be either. Or both." Kari stood, following the line of prints back toward where Hartman's body lay.
There were more—not a continuous trail, but enough to establish that someone with this distinctive gait had been present at the scene.
"But it's consistent. Every print shows the same irregular pattern. "
They photographed and documented each print they found, calling the forensics team over to make casts of the clearest impressions.
As they worked, Kari felt her excitement growing.
If these prints were from the killer—and it was difficult to imagine that an innocent hiker would not have called in the body—then they finally had a solid detail to add to their profile, something that could significantly narrow the list of potential suspects.
"We need to compare this to any footprint evidence from the other crime scenes," Kari said. "If it's the same pattern, we can use it to identify our suspect once we narrow down the pool."
"Phoenix PD might have casts from the Rodriguez and Hayes scenes. I'll reach out." Maria pulled out her phone to make notes. "This is good, Kari. This is something concrete we can work with."
It was concrete. But it also felt desperately inadequate standing here looking at Silas Hartman's body, knowing he'd died terrified and alone while being hunted through the desert like prey.
Four victims now. Four families destroyed. And somewhere out there, their killer was still free.
The ME's team loaded Hartman onto a stretcher for transport. Kari watched them navigate the rocky terrain.
"You think this is the same person who used Dalton's vehicle to stake out the trailheads?" Maria asked.
"Has to be. The pattern's too consistent. Someone with access to the Sonoran 100 organization, someone with enough knowledge of the ultra-marathon community to identify victims and predict their training routes."
"The irregular gait might help narrow it down. Not many people can run ultra-marathon distances with a significant biomechanical impairment."
Kari thought about that as they hiked back toward the trailhead where their vehicles waited.
The desert heat was building already, the temperature climbing toward another brutal afternoon.
Four hours from now, this wash would be an oven.
Hartman had died in heat like this, his body failing as dehydration and exhaustion overwhelmed him, despite his considerable athletic conditioning.
Whoever had chased him to death was both exceptionally fit and exceptionally determined.
At the trailhead, a cluster of media vans had assembled, cameras pointed at the wash where search and rescue vehicles were loading equipment.
News of a fourth victim would spread quickly through the ultra-marathon community.
People were already canceling their Sonoran 100 registrations, talking about boycotting desert races entirely until the killer was caught.
Cedric Dalton's worst nightmare was coming true. His race, his organization, and his entire life's work were being destroyed by someone using his resources to commit murder.
Kari's phone buzzed with a text. She pulled it out, expecting an update from the forensics team.
Instead, it was from Paul Daniels: Jim and I made a major breakthrough on Anna's case. Need to brief you ASAP—face-to-face. When can you talk?
Kari stared at the message, torn between immediate urgency and practical necessity.
She wanted to know what they'd found—wanted it desperately.
But she was standing at a crime scene with a fresh victim and concrete evidence that might finally lead them to a serial killer.
She couldn't drop everything and drive to Flagstaff, not now.
She texted back: Dealing with 4th victim in ultra-marathon case. Can it wait until tonight?
The response came quickly: Tonight works. This is big, Kari. Really big.
Kari stared at those last three words, her exhaustion momentarily forgotten.
Really big. What had they found in Anna's notes?
For years, her mother's investigation had seemed like a collection of suspicions and circumstantial connections—enough to suggest conspiracy, but not enough to prove it.
If Paul and her father had found something concrete, though, something that finally explained why Anna had died…
"Kari."
She looked up to find Maria approaching across the parking area.
"Dalton finally came through," Maria said, typing on her phone. "The volunteer list. Forty-two names. He emailed it to me an hour ago with about six paragraphs of excuses for why it took so long."
"Why didn't I get it?"
"Looks like he misspelled your address. I'm sending it to you now."
Kari checked her phone, located the list, and started scanning the names. "Better late than never," she murmured. "Let's just hope our killer is in here somewhere."