The Girl and the Secret Society (Emma Griffin FBI Mystery Book 9)

by A J Rivers

  What he doesn't see is that Xavier is hurting.

  As he continues to ramble, I go to the vending machine and get three bags of peanuts. I put two of them on the table and bring one over to him. Looking at the guard, I reach out for Xavier. The guard tenses but doesn't say anything. He lets me press the bag into Xavier's hand.

  The touch does something. Xavier's eyes snap to me and widen. He stops moving. Finally, his fingers wrap around the bag, and he walks over to the table and sits down. I wait while he eats a few handfuls of the peanuts, staring at the paper in front of him as he does it.

  "I studied them. I didn't even know it. The words just went by on the page, and I didn't even pay attention to them. My mythology professor drew him. Huge." He spirals his hand over the top of his head. "Bald. A fire in front of him." He gestures with his hands, his fingers pointed up and wiggling like the flames. "He asked the class. Why fire? Why would he create fire? What does it represent? And the people around me said, destruction, pain, disaster. But then other people said, no, it means life. Rebirth, warmth, nurturing. I couldn't answer that question until four years later. Then, I knew. Fire is all of them. Creating it is power. He created fire because then he held everything in his hands. Clay in one, flame in the other.”

  He is sliding back down now, calming down from the anxious peak.

  “Who are you talking about, Xavier?”

  He reaches for another bag of peanuts.

  "Mythology class," he repeats. "Lakyn found them, Emma. They're watching. Always watching. Now she's gone. And when you leave, you don't exist until you're back. If I ask for you, I don't know if you'll come."

  "I will."

  "They always exist. I can never forget. Even for a second."

  I draw in a breath, the emotion getting harder to breathe past.

  "Was it her turn?" I ask.

  He looks up at me from the circles he's continuing to draw.

  "Was she hidden?" he asks.

  "Yes," I nod.

  "Yes, it was her turn."

  "I'll find them, Xavier."

  When I walk out of the processing room, I find Detective White standing just outside.

  "Noah," I frown, adjusting my gun in its holster and tucking my phone away in my pocket. "What are you doing here?"

  "I thought I'd find you here, Emma. I need to talk to you."

  "Creagan already called me. He told me you asked for official help from the Bureau."

  "Yes. Without you, we'd still be at a complete dead-end. But that's not actually why I came to find you."

  He holds the door for me as we walk out of the jail.

  "Oh?" I ask. "What did you need?"

  "She called."

  I stopped and turned to him.

  "The blonde woman?"

  "There's a video call scheduled in half an hour."

  Chapter Forty-Four

  My palms feel sweaty as I wait for the call to connect. It finally does, and she’s finally there. The blonde woman I've been looking for, for more than a year, comes into focus. It looks as if she's sitting in a living room, the floral pattern of the overstuffed chair just visible behind her shoulders. She offers me a smile, but I'm not feeling as generous.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  She looks stung, taken aback by the blunt beginning of the conversation.

  “My name is Lydia Walsh,” she says.

  “I'm Agent Emma Griffin, FBI,” I tell her.

  “I know who you are,” she says.

  “And yet, I know nothing about you. Even though I've been trying to track you down for over a year.”

  She shifts uncomfortably, glancing away from the screen for a second.

  “I know. I'm sorry it took so long. You have to understand,” she starts.

  “No. I'm going to stop you right there. Because I don't have to understand anything. I will take your explanation, though. I want to know why you were with Greg Bailey the day he left that hospital, and why you showed up again with Lakyn Monroe, and why neither time you responded to public calls for you to contact the police. Because as far as I can see, that's two people who had contact with you very shortly before they were found dead,” I say.

  “I did contact the police about Greg,” she says.

  The revelation is like a kick to my stomach.

  “What?” I ask.

  “It took a while. I was really afraid at first. I barely even knew him, and that was the first time we saw each other. Then I found out he was dead, and people were looking for me. I didn't want to have anything to do with it. I didn't know what happened or who was involved, and I didn't want to get tangled up in it. It was too dangerous, and it would compromise what I do,” she explains.

  “What you do?” I ask. “What do you mean?”

  “I'm a digital criminal investigator,” she says.

  “You're a—what?” I ask.

  “A digital criminal investigator. I specialize in cold cases. I research cases and do investigations, then network with other like-minded people to try to find solutions to cases that have been overlooked or aren't moving along,” she says.

  I can't believe what I'm hearing. She is staring at me through the computer screen with an almost smug expression on her face, as if I should be impressed by what she’s saying.

  “You mean you read true crime articles and interfere with people and investigations. Actual investigations,” I say.

  “It's more than that,” she protests. “We make a real difference.”

  “Yeah, the difference you made for Greg is that he's dead now, and you didn't come forward to say what you knew. Do you realize that his case is still unsolved?”

  “Yes, I do. And I hate that. But, as I said, I did come forward. Six months after it happened. I spoke to the police detective, told him everything I knew, and he said I didn't have any information that was pertinent to the investigation,” she says.

  I feel as if I could snap the top off the table I'm sitting in front of and crack it in half.

  “And when we continued to put out notices looking for you and asking for your identity, you didn't think to contact the people looking for information?” I ask, barely keeping myself level.

  “I had already given them everything I knew. I figured their continuing to ask was part of the strategy.”

  “It wasn't,” I snap. “I've been trying to find you for over a year. How did you know Greg? What were you doing with him?”

  “He got in touch with me just a couple of weeks before he died. He reached out to me online and said he needed to speak with me about a case I was looking into. We started talking, and he warned me the cold case I had started investigating was dangerous, and I needed to be careful. He wouldn't get any further into it. He said I didn't need to know all the details," Lydia says.

  "What case?" I ask.

  “I'd really prefer not to talk about that when I don't know who may be listening,” she says. “But I'll be happy to send you the notes I took.”

  I give her my contact information and wait while she writes it down.

  "If this was just about a cold case he didn't want you getting involved in, why did you go see him at the hospital? And why did he seem so happy to see you?" I ask.

  An uncomfortable mix of sadness and embarrassment flickers over her face, and she glances down at her hands before looking back at me.

  "We didn't know each other well. That's true. But we had gotten pretty friendly in the conversations we had. I wanted to meet him in person, and he agreed. We were going to talk about cases and spend some time together. I went to pick him up, and he said there was something he needed to do, but that he would call me later. He never did. Three days later, I found out he was dead."

  "And you don't know what he was going to do? He didn't mention anyone's name or anything?"

  "No," she tells me. "He just said it was something important he needed to do, but that he would see me when he was done."

  "What about Lakyn Monroe?" I ask.

 
; "Lakyn doesn't have anything to do with Greg. They were completely separate investigations," she says.

  "Lakyn was interested in helping people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes, and you investigate cold cases. What do they have to do with each other?" I ask.

  "Again, I prefer not to discuss my investigations when I don't know who might be listening, but considering the police you're working with already used my database entry, I might as well tell you."

  "Wait… your database entry? What do you mean?"

  "The missing persons database. I run that, along with a true-crime website with other investigators. It was my post that was used to reveal that Mason Goldman was missing," she says.

  "I don't understand. What did any of this have to do with Mason Goldman?"

  "It wasn't his disappearance I was investigating. He has a pretty checkered past. And last year, a man sitting in jail for murder and embezzlement gave information that implicated Mason. That's why I spoke with Lakyn about it. I had no idea he was missing. I thought she might have an interest in looking into that man's case and having it reopened, as she had with some of the other people she's helped. She said she would consider it, but that wasn't long before she disappeared. I kept looking into everything and just recently heard that Mason hadn't been seen or heard from, so I included him in the database."

  "So, that's three people," I note.

  "What do you mean, three people?" she asks.

  "How did you know?"

  "How did I know what?" Her face scrunches up in a confused expression.

  "You just suddenly decided you were going to post Mason as missing, then two days later, he's found burned into oblivion. How did you know?"

  Lydia shakes her head. "I didn't know. Trust me, it wasn't a pleasant thing for me to find out. And I didn't want to get involved. I had already come forward about Greg and was told the information I had wasn't important. I never spoke to Mason Goldman or had anything to do with him. I just researched him. But then you found Lakyn, and I knew I had to say something."

  "When was the last time you spoke with Lakyn?" I ask.

  "About a month before she disappeared. But the day she was last seen, I got a voicemail from her. She said she needed to talk to me, and it was important. Of course, I never heard from her again."

  "And you have no idea what she wanted to talk to you about?"

  Lydia shakes her head again. "No. The only thing I can think is that she was planning to look into my case."

  I've had all I can take.

  "Well, thank you for finally getting in touch with us. I appreciate your sending those notes."

  "You're welcome. Again, I'm sorry it took so long. I wish it was under different circumstances. I've always admired you as a fellow investigator. And Greg spoke so fondly about you," she says.

  "He didn't speak about you at all."

  I end the chat and stare at the blank screen for a few seconds, trying to settle the pounding of my heart.

  "Do you trust her?" asks Dean, from his seat just out of sight of the webcam.

  I look over at him. "No."

  Chapter Forty-Five

  “Prometheus?” Sam frowns. “I don't understand.”

  “Neither do I. Not yet, anyway. But it means something. I know it does. He wouldn't just be babbling about mythology class for no reason,” I say.

  “He might, though,” Sam shrugs. “Even you admit he gets distracted when he's talking.”

  “Yes, but I don't think that's what this is. He was very deliberate when he was talking about it. It didn't feel as if he was just babbling. Some of the other things, sure. But this. He meant every single word he was saying. This was completely different from our first meeting. He wasn’t using metaphors or radically changing the subjects; he was keeping an entire through-line during the conversation, even if it was about…mythology class.”

  “Then why didn't he just say what he was talking about?” he asks.

  “He believes people are listening to him. They're watching him. Maybe he wanted me to figure it out so that nobody heard him talking about it,” I say.

  “Talking about a mythological being,” Sam says.

  “That's what I was able to piece together. A couple of times now, he's talked about making people, sculpting out of clay. And then he talked about his mythology class and his professor drawing this being with fire in front of him. He said clay in one hand, flames in the other." I pull up an article on my phone and hold it out to Sam. "Look,” I say. “Prometheus. The god of fire, said to have created all of humanity by sculpting it out of clay. Gave fire to humans, angering the other gods. It's the only thing he could have been talking about.”

  “God figures envisioning themselves creating society,” Sam notes. “That sounds familiar.”

  I let out a slightly shuddering breath. “I know. But this isn't Jonah. This isn't Leviathan. Remember, he was focused on chaos. He wanted huge, showy events, things that devastated and damaged as many people as possible. That's not what's happening here.”

  “All right,” he says. “What else do you have?”

  The massive piece of white paper smoothed across the conference room table has notes from the messages written on it along with what I found. I point to the list of names.

  “Raymond James, Anderson Whitley, Brad Coleman, Ashley Teiger, Van Carlton, Presley Hanson,” Sam reads. “Who are they?”

  “These are the names that are specifically mentioned in the messages from Lakyn to Xavier. When I mentioned to them to him the last time we spoke, he said he didn't know. But that's why she was saying their names. That he didn't know.”

  “He doesn't know who they are?” Sam asks.

  “I think it's more that he doesn't know what happened to them. You see, these three are dead. And these other three are either in prison or have been executed for murdering them,” I say.

  “Maybe he was researching his own case,” Sam says. “Trying to find ways to prove he didn't kill Andrew Eagan.”

  “I thought that, too. But I've looked into these murders. None of them has anything to do with Xavier's case. None of them involves best friends who killed each other; none of them involves carbon monoxide poisoning in a garage, or anywhere else, for that matter. None of them has any question of the validity of the case, even. That one, Brad Coleman, was stabbed to death. This one was found drowned at the bottom of the lake with a cement block on his ankle and extremely high doses of prescription medication in his system. And this one was run over,” I explain. “They don't have any connection to Xavier's case. The only connection at all is that this murder, Raymond James, had the same presiding judge as Xavier's case. But they are years apart, and I would venture to say it's not all that unusual for a judge to hear more than one murder trial.”

  “So, what's all this?” he asks, pointing to all the notes that I've made under their names.

  “I can't figure out how they're connected to Xavier's case, so I have to find something else. It's not obvious, but there has to be a reason Lakyn was mentioning them. So, I'm researching each person and the cases. I've talked to a couple of people involved in the investigations and the trials. There are some I still have to get in touch with. Of course, the only connection I've been able to find is that judge, and he won't find the time to talk with me. Maybe I'll find something. As for right now, it's all a mystery,” I explain.

  “Then you can add this to it,” Dean says, coming in right as I say that.

  “Add what?” I ask. He tosses a folder onto the table and gestures for me to open it.

  I do and immediately look back up at him. “Are you serious?”

  “What is it?” Sam asks.

  I slide the folder over to him and rub my temples, squeezing my eyes closed.

  “The body they found burned isn't Mason Goldman,” I sigh. “They finally did the full autopsy and were able to find a dental implant engraved with an identification number registered to William Mulroney.”

  “Who is William Mulr
oney?” Sam asks.

  I throw my hands up in the air. “Who the hell knows?”

  “So, what does this mean?” Dean asks.

  “It means somebody else was murdered, and the police made a mistake identifying him,” Sam says.

  I shake my head. “No, this wasn't just a mistake. Mason's wallet was found right there near the body. Who would have his wallet?”

  “More important than that,” Dean says. “If that body wasn't Mason Goldman, where is he?”

  My hands planted on my hip, I let out a breath, then nod.

  “Sam, I need you to find Noah and tell him we need to talk to him. He has to keep the information about the identification of the body under wraps for a couple more days,” I say. “Dean, have you gotten anything from Lydia Walsh?"

  I purposely gave Lydia an email address I only use for investigations, and the number to a burner phone Dean carries. It ensures she can get in touch but doesn't get too close. I'm wary of her, especially after her comments about being a fellow investigator. Something about her doesn't sit right with me, and I want to keep her at arms' length until I figure out what it is.

  "No," he says. "I check a few times a day, but nothing has come in."

  "Perfect." I let out a breath. It's been more than a week since my conversation with her, and she still hasn't sent the notes she promised me.

  "Maybe you should have been a little more careful about the way you talked to her," Dean says.

  "No," I say. "I just should have waited to say them until after she sent the notes. Alright. Well, I guess that's not that important right now. She only said she was going to send notes about the case Greg contacted her about, so it wouldn't help right now anyway. What I need you to do is do that voodoo that you do so well and find out what Mason is being accused of. Lydia mentioned a murder and embezzlement. She didn't give any names but see if you can dig around and find out what happened with that situation."

  “What are you going to do?” Sam asks.