by Blake Pierce
He believed them all, in fact. Which meant that they weren't going to get any more leads here.
It was beginning to look more and more like Veronica had been chosen at random. And while it wasn't exactly a surprise for an FBI agent to be brought in on a difficult case, he found himself wishing that, just for one time, they would have had something a bit more straightforward to deal with.
Random victims were always the hardest to trace. There was no way of knowing where the killer would strike next, or why he had chosen the victims he had, until they worked out some kind of psychological profile. That could take a long time. More to the point, it could end up taking another death.
Laura looked over at him, and Nate found that he was strangely comforted to see her giving him that same look she always did when she felt that an interview was over and wanted to check that he felt the same. Over the last three years and more they had slipped into an easy pattern, a working relationship that flowed. The last case, the one where they hadn't been speaking, had been awkward and abrupt and off kilter. Coming back to normal now, it was so much better. Even if he was still worried about how he was going to help her with the delusions she was suffering from, at least they were talking now.
“Thank you very much for your time,” Nate said, nodding at all of them in turn. “We'll leave a few of our cards here so that you can give us a direct call if you think of anything relevant. Please, don't hesitate to call if you think of anything. Even if it seems small, even if you're not sure. Any little thing could help. As for us, will be in touch as soon as we have any updates to pass on to you.”
“You're going to catch him, right?” Stephen snapped, locking eyes fiercely with Nate. Nate wondered if he could kind of sense the big brother energy that Nate carried, that thing they had in common.
“That's what we're here for,” Nate said, stopping shy of making an actual promise.
He and Laura left the room, nodding their goodbyes as they filed through the hallway and then out of the house. It was only when they had reached the car again that Laura sighed, speaking to him quietly before he got into the passenger seat.
“Dead end,” she said, a statement of fact rather than a question.
“There's still one more opportunity, though,” Nate said. “We've still got to talk to the husband of Stephanie Marchall.”
“I hate to say it, but I really hope we're dealing with a homicidal, abusive asshole to make this easy for us,” Laura said.
Nate didn't even need to smile to lighten the message as he replied. “You and me both,” he said. “I'm still hoping I can get you back to your little girl in time for the weekend.” And he was gratified to see the look on her face, the gratitude, the relief.
Sometimes, knowing that someone else had your back could make all the difference. And he hoped against hope that knowing he was there for her would allow Laura to get past the delusions she was suffering from - and that they could use her newfound focus to get this case solved as quickly as possible.
CHAPTER NINE
Laura stood behind Nate as he knocked on the door to the small but neat property, set in a suburban development some way from the city center. It was a quiet street, and she found herself glancing up and down, thinking about the kind of people who lived in a neighborhood like this. Quiet people. The kind who kept themselves to themselves. They couldn’t have imagined something like this would come to their doorstep.
The door opened silently, without a word; the man behind it just stared at them for a moment. His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed, set into a pale face. For a terrible moment, Laura thought he was just going to shut the door again. He didn’t look quite in his right mind.
She couldn’t exactly blame him for that.
“Ross Marchall?” Nate asked, his voice soft. There was hardly any need to ask. It was clear that this man was the grieving husband of Stephanie. His demeanor, the sadness and shock that seemed written throughout every line of him. The gold wedding band on his finger that was ringed with red skin, as though he had been twisting it constantly in his distress. “We’re from the FBI. We want to talk to you, if we can. Ask a few questions about Stephanie.”
“I spoke to…” Ross said, seeming to have some trouble getting through the sentence. He was in his late thirties, perhaps his early forties. A black beard and thick black hair, albeit with a slightly receding hairline, seemed somehow out of place on him just now. Normally taken as a sign of masculinity, strength – the look didn’t fit this grieving, broken-looking man. “I spoke to them. You. The police.”
“We’re not the local police,” Laura said, hoping her own gentle voice could lend some calm to the situation. It was cold out, the breeze whipping itself up into a wind, stinging at her exposed cheeks already. “We’re following up to see if we can shed any more light on what happened. It’s very important for the investigation.”
Ross Marchall opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before stepping back, letting them in. As she passed him still holding the door, Laura noticed he was wearing a pair of furry slippers. Pajama bottoms, too, matched with a more formal-looking shirt. He wasn’t together at all.
That was one of the hardest parts of dealing with victim families: their emotional state. Not only because it was difficult to witness, but because it made them difficult interview subjects. They could be distracted, angry, too sad or shocked to listen. To remember important details. It was why Laura always left a card, asked them to call later. Sometimes, a little time passing would help them to recall something that was very important indeed.
There was almost a crime scene in the living room. It was neatly decorated, clearly well-kept, but also a scene of some devastation over the past few days. There were a couple of empty casserole dishes still with spoons poking out of them, which she guessed was how Ross had been sustaining himself since his wife died. Tissues, screwed up into used balls, littered the whole of the floor. There were some clothes discarded on the floor, blankets on the sofa all mussed up as though Ross hadn’t left there for a while, and several framed photographs lying on the coffee table.
Photographs of Stephanie and Ross, in happy times. Their wedding day. Another formal event that had required them to dress up. On vacation.
Ross had been sitting down here, Laura thought, probably unable to face going back to the marital bed. Looking at photographs of his wife, crying, and doing little else.
“Ross,” Laura said, keeping her voice gentle still as he sat down on the sofa, leaving them no room to join him. There wasn’t need to stand on ceremony, not in that way, not here. The grief-stricken could shut other people out in so many ways. Most of them were not intentional. They just needed to get on with the interview, even if it meant another stretch of uncomfortable time standing in front of a victim’s family. “We need you to tell us as much as you can about Stephanie, and what might have happened to her.”
“Her phone,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. He cleared his throat slightly, shaking his head. “That’s what I keep thinking about.”
“Her cell phone?” Nate prompted. He chose to squat down behind the coffee table, facing Ross. He placed one hand on top of it to steady himself, putting himself under Ross’s level. In his line of sight, given that Ross didn’t seem willing or able to lift his head.
“Why did he leave it on?” Ross said. “He must know. Everyone knows. You can trace a cell phone.”
Nate twisted his head slightly, catching Laura’s eye. He had a slight look of alarm. A look of, is this guy making sense to you?
“Maybe it didn’t occur to him,” Laura said. She figured that Ross could only be talking about one thing. About Stephanie. How they’d found her body. “That the police would be able to use it to track her down.”
“He must have known,” Ross said, squinting his eyes. He looked up at Laura like he was looking into the sun, and it was blinding him. It didn’t give her the feeling that she was a bright object. More like he was just too far down
in the dark. “Did he want us to find her?”
The words sent something of a chill down Laura’s spine. It was fairly common for people to speculate on what had happened to their loved ones. To spend hours, days, weeks, even years trying to put it together in their heads. It was only natural. Wanting to know the answers.
But something about the way he said it… it wasn’t only the utter grief that was weighing him down. It was the horror of it. Of a sadistic killer, deliberately setting things up so that someone would find the awful game he had set up. A woman left to hang in an abandoned gas station. A clock around her neck. A timer stopped for midnight.
Twelve.
Like there was some horrible meaning behind it all, some riddle. It was the kind of thing that Hollywood scriptwriters dreamed up, not real people. Not the kind of thing that really happened.
“Did Stephanie talk about anything weird happening in the last week or so?” Nate asked, breaking Laura’s thoughts. “Did she seem worried, or tense? Any different than usual?”
“No,” Ross said, his voice croaking and cracking. “Everything was fine. She was happy. Nothing ever happened to us. Not like this.”
“She didn’t have any feuds at work or in the neighborhood?” Nate pressed. “No ex-boyfriends, anything like that?”
“She was friends with her exes,” Ross said. A ghost of a smile passed over his face, and only left it cracked wider open in its wake, a raw wound. “It used to drive me mad. And she got on with everyone. She had this hippy-dippy thing. I always thought she let people take advantage of her. Just so she could be nice.”
The man was obviously in a great deal of pain, but at least he was talking now. Making sense. Laura moved a step closer to the coffee table, looking at the photographs spread out there, thinking of her next question.
She saw one that made her reach out, almost without thinking. She would never normally pick up something belonging to the victim’s family, not without permission, but…
She grabbed it, and was rewarded with a flash of pain through her temple. A headache. She’d been right to go for it. The framed photograph was of three people – Ross and Stephanie Marchall, and another man, a man standing with his back to the camera and pointing over his shoulder at the number on his baseball uniform –
Laura was looking at a clock. It was an old analog clock, the kind that used to hang on kitchen walls. Old-fashioned. Probably didn’t work unless you wound it. You’d have to wind it often.
He was winding it now.
He was setting it to twelve noon. Twelve, again. Laura watched those fingers move the clock face. She strained for any detail, any that would help her make sense of it. The clock was slightly different than the one she had seen before. There was a mark, a mark on the clock face itself, like a stain or maybe even a burn mark. As if someone had pressed a cigarette against it.
It was a different clock.
Two clocks, two timers.
Today? Tomorrow?
Both?
He was going to kill again. Laura felt her panic rising, even inside the vision, felt the fear of it. He was going to kill twice more. At least. One of them could be standing on a platform now, struggling to get free. And if they didn’t save her, another would be next, would be right on her heels. If they didn’t find enough information to stop him…
Laura blinked and she was still holding it, her hand lingering on the glass of the frame. Lingering over the number on the baseball uniform.
The number twelve.
It couldn’t be a coincidence. She touched a picture of this man, and there the vision was. And the number. Twelve.
It had to mean it was him.
“Who is this?” she blurted abruptly, too shocked by the discovery to temper her words into something more gentle and respectful.
Ross looked up at her, startled. Something in her own speed and abruptness seemed to flip a switch in him, as though it had woken him up. Or maybe startled him into reacting, before he could think instead. “That’s Brad,” he said. “Brad Milford.”
“He’s a friend of yours?” Laura asked, placing the photograph back on the table now she’d had a good look at it. Ross’s eyes followed it, like he needed the prompt.
“Kind of,” Ross said. He swallowed. “Stephy’s friend. He… they dated. He was one of those exes. But they stayed friends.”
“He’s a baseball player?” Laura asked. It wasn’t that obvious of a question. There could be any reason for a man to be dressed like that, and for it to have nothing to do with baseball. It could have been a dress-up party, like Halloween or something. He might have been wearing it for a dare. For a special event. Maybe a one-off game that he never played again.
“Local minor league,” Ross said. He frowned up at Laura like he was seeing her for the first time and starting to wonder why she was there. “Why?”
Laura bit her tongue. Now wasn’t the time. You didn’t go around spouting suspicions to the families of victims. Not if you didn’t want them to go off the handle and attempt some sort of vigilante justice before you had the chance to stop them and get the real answers. Nate was giving her an odd, questioning look, but she ignored that, too.
“I’m just curious,” she said. “Were they in contact often? Spending a lot of time together?”
“Not a lot,” Ross shrugged. “Mostly we’d hang out as part of a larger group. Over the years, I guess we started having less time for that kind of thing.”
“Did you ever get the impression there were lingering feelings on Brad’s side?”
Ross blinked slowly at her. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t… why are you asking this?”
Laura took him in, how he was pale and swaying slightly, like it was a struggle just to keep his head up. He wasn’t suspicious. He was confused. He was finding all this hard to take, and she couldn’t blame him for that. She changed tack, trying to squeeze a little more out of him before he shut down completely. “Let’s move on from that. So, there’s nothing you can think of that might tell us why Stephanie was targeted in this way?”
Ross closed his eyes, shook his head slowly from side to side. Like it was all too much to bear.
Laura glanced at Nate again, concern starting to override her need for answers. Ross was clearly broken. There should have been a local officer here to support him, but perhaps he’d turned it down. He was a long way down a dark path, and they weren’t helping him by asking him these questions. If it had seemed like he wasn’t hearing them, or wasn’t thinking hard enough, Laura would have wavered. But as it was, it seemed as though he just couldn’t think of anything that would make this happen to his wife.
And he looked like he’d spent the past couple of days trying to.
“Thank you, Mr. Marchall,” Laura said, as Nate got to his feet again beside her. It was almost unnerving, going from being the tallest person in the room to having him tower over her again. “We’ll be in touch if we have any news for you. In the meantime, please call us if anything comes to mind.”
Ross nodded numbly, and Laura wondered if her words had made their way inside his head at all, this time.
Laura exchanged a glance with Nate one last time, a hesitant look that showed her they were on the same page. It felt bad, leaving him here alone. But they had to. Their job was to catch the killer, not to look after the families of the victims. As much as he needed someone, it couldn’t be them. A call to the precinct could maybe get someone out here, someone who was better placed to help him out.
They left, with a reluctant slowness, just in case he would call them back at the last minute.
Outside, Laura sighed, rolling her shoulders back. The overcast sky seemed to match the mood, as did the cold air. Still, it was bright winter daylight, which seemed not to fit. It should have been the dead of night, judging how it felt inside that house.
“We should call someone to come down here,” Nate said, echoing her own thoughts. Trust him to show that he, too, could empathize deeply with t
hese people. Could spot the worrying signs and actually care that they were dealt with.
“Yeah,” Laura said, digging out her cell. “You drive. I’ll call Blackford from the car.”
They sank into their respective seats, though Nate did not start the engine right away. He rested with his hands on the wheel, his back braced, and for a moment Laura thought he was going to say something.
Given their most recent conversation – the one at his home – Laura had a sudden and strong feeling that she didn’t want to hear what it was. She dialed the number quickly, pressing the phone to her ear so that Nate couldn’t interrupt.
“Yeah?”
That was Blackford, surly and short. At least he’d answered.
“Couple of things,” Laura said. “We’re going to need someone with trauma training over here at the Marchall house, keep an eye on the husband. Second, I need you to look up a name for me.”
“What is it?” Blackford grunted, with a considerable air that suggested she could have asked a more junior member of the team than the Captain.
“Brad Milford,” Laura said. “I wondered if you have any information on him in the system.”
“Oh, you’re looking up the boyfriend?” Blackford said. “We already checked him out.”
“Ex-boyfriend,” Laura corrected, her heart sinking all the same. That was one viable lead gone.
“Where’d that intel come from?” Blackford asked. “We have him down as current from all the family members. Even him.”
Something began to dawn on Laura. Something she maybe should have seen right away but hadn’t. “Whose boyfriend?” she said.