I finally spotted Sampson talking to the truck's driver as we got out of the car. Behind the two of them and a ribbon of Crime scene tape, I could see yellow sheets covering the six bodies where they had been Found

Two parents and four more kids here. That made four adults and seven children in just the past few days.

Sampson walked over to brief us. “Garbage truck started on the empty streets this morning and made stops all over midtown. Forty-one Dumpsters at eighteen locations, some of them as close as a few blocks from the mosque. That's a shitload of follow-up work for us.”

“Any other good news?” I asked him.

“So far, only the bodies have been found. No word on the heads.” We hadn't released that so far to the press: All six of the victims had been decapitated.

“I love my job, I love my job,” Bree said quietly. “I can't wait to get to work in the morning.”

I asked Sampson where the father's body was, and we started there. When I pulled back the sheet, the sight was horrific, but I didn't need an ME to tell me that the cutting was much cleaner this time. There were no extraneous wounds: no bullet holes, no slashes, no punctures. Plus, the lower body had been burned badly.

Senseless murders, but probably not random, I was thinking.

But what did the Ahmed killings have to do with Ellie and her family?

“We've got some similarities and some real differences here,” Sampson told us. “Two families taken out suddenly. Multiple perps. But one behind closed doors, the other outside a mosque. Heavy cutting in both cases.”

“But different cutting,” Bree said. “And if the heads don't turn up-”

“Something tells me they won't,” I said. “Then, maybe we're talking about trophies, keepsakes.” “Or proof of purchase,” I said.

They both looked at me. “Maybe this one was business, and the other was personal. Also, CNBC just broke a story that Ghedi Ahmed was the brother of Erasto Ahmed, who's Al Qaeda, operating out of Somalia.”

“Al Qaeda?” Bree whispered and looked momentarily stumped. “Al Qaeda, Alex?”

We stood there, silent for a moment, trying to comprehend something as horrible as these murders. I thought of Ellie again. I couldn't stop thinking of her the past few days. Did her trip to Africa have something to do with her murder?

“So, what are we looking at?” Sampson finally spoke again. “Two sides of a war?”

“Could be,” I said. “Or maybe two teams.”

Or maybe one very smart killer, trying to keep us guessing.

Chapter 13

THERE WAS NO question there was federal interest in these cases. The cases were inflammatory and international in scope, and the CIA probably knew something. Two of their people had shown up at Ellie's house the night of the murders. The question was, How much could I get them to tell me, if anything at all?