by KJ Kalis
“Getting a little tense, if you know what I mean. I just bumped into the lead investigator for the FBI.”
“What? How did that happen?”
“There’s only one restaurant here in Tifton. I stopped to get a bite to eat. He was there picking up food. I went up behind him and pretended I was a criminal justice student and asked him some questions. Not receptive. Very by the book.”
“Why did you do that?? Did you tell him your name?”
“I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the moment, you know, get a read on him. And no, I didn’t tell him my name. He didn’t ask. I would’ve lied anyway.” For a second, it bothered Emily that she was able to spread so much untruth around her, but it was the only way for her to do her job without getting caught. Not that there was anything wrong with investigating, but there were consequences for offering the kind of justice she provided for her clients. “He just gave me the typical ‘it’s an ongoing investigation’ commentary and walked away. Definitely need some lessons in PR, if you know what I mean.”
“That was part of the reason I was calling. Flynn and I just got done digging through Strickland’s FBI files.”
“Your buddy got you access?”
“And then some. I’ve got files on the whole team, just in case. The FBI sent their heavy hitters down to Tifton. Strickland’s been on the job for eleven years. From the personnel file, it looks like they gave him this particular team to try to solve the issue in Tifton. There’s a lot of pressure on him. I don’t know if he knows that, but he’s met with the FBI’s top profilers and forensic scientists over the last three months.”
Emily heard another voice on the phone. Flynn. “Just like any organization, the FBI has different levels of experts. The ones that Strickland has been meeting with, they are top-notch, the best the agency has to offer.”
Mike continued, “Not that they’re as good as those of us on the outside if you know what I mean…”
Emily smiled. She knew Mike preferred people who were experts in their field outside of culture. Based on his bring up, she couldn’t blame him. Mike didn’t have the personality to fit in in any normal organization. She sighed, “Okay, give me an overview of what I’m dealing with when it comes to Strickland. I’d like to talk to Lexi’s parents if I can.”
Flynn’s voice interrupted, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’d stay well away from Lexi’s house. Strickland is tough. He’s closed some big cases. That’s how he got the gig to go to Tifton. Their house is going to be crawling with the FBI and law enforcement. If you want to try to get in and out of Tifton without being detected, going over there isn’t the way to do it.” There was a pause, “In fact, with how much law enforcement is hanging around, you might want to just come home...”
Emily frowned, taking another bite of the brownie. “How am I going to leave this case sitting when there is a five-year-old girl that has gone missing, not to mention the slew of bodies this person has left behind? You two are the ones that convinced me to take the case, and now you want me to just turn tail and run?”
Mike came back on the phone, “That’s not exactly what we’re suggesting, Emily. Just be careful around Strickland and his team. They want to get this guy as bad as you do, maybe even more so. Strickland’s not the kind that will stop at anything to meet his goal.”
“All right. I gotta go.” Emily hung up on them. They weren’t helping.
Emily started the truck and pulled out of the parking lot, not sure where to go next. She could go back to the bed-and-breakfast and regroup, waiting until the morning, but she wasn’t ready to quit for the night yet. She pulled the truck out into the little traffic that was trickling along the road and she turned the wheel, not knowing exactly where she wanted to go. The image of Lexi Cooper’s face was burned in her mind. Where was she? As Emily drove out of town, she started to think about Bradley and Sierra. Emily hadn’t even met the rest of the families and yet the burden of their grief was almost overwhelming.
There’d only been one other time in her career that Emily had dealt with a serial killer. It was in her second year in the cold case division. A couple of homicide detectives had shown up at the office first thing in the morning, huddled with Detective Aldo. A few minutes later, the detective waved Emily into her office. “These guys have some questions about some of the cases you’re working. Can you help them out?”
Helping them with a few case files turned into weeks of work, connecting the dots between victims that seemed to not be related at all. Three months later and with two more dead bodies in the ground, Emily and a couple of other detectives arrested a small man that ran a dry-cleaning shop. Over the time he’d owned his store, he managed to kill twenty-five people, dissolving their bodies in dry cleaning solvent and dumping what was left in a field outside the city after they complained about his service.
Driving through Tifton, what Emily remembered most about that case was the press conference after. All of Chicago PD’s brass had shown up in their dress uniforms, a wooden podium set up in the lobby. The police chief, the mayor, and a couple of other senior staff members, including Detective Aldo were lined up behind him, the bright lights and the chatter of camera lenses taking thousands of pictures making it difficult to concentrate. Emily remembered standing in the back with her partner, Lou Gonzales. They were both tired. Neither of them had slept much in the few weeks before. Emily remembered scanning the crowd, seeing the faces of people she and Lou had interviewed, sitting in their houses, drinking cup after cup of lukewarm, weak coffee, watching the pallid sadness on each of their faces. Their grief was a weight she couldn’t shed.
After the press conference, Detective Aldo had called Emily and Lou to her office. She gave them each a week off, paid, without using their vacation time. “Lord knows you’ve spent enough time working on this case over the last few months. I tried to get you two weeks, but the chief would only approve a week.” Emily remembered objecting, telling Detective Aldo that she was fine to go right back to work. Detective Aldo shook her head. “Nope. This is not a discussion. Both of you need to go home, spend time with your loved ones, eat some good food, sleep and watch a bunch of trashy movies. I don’t want to see you or hear from you for a week. That’s an order. Now go.”
Emily still remembered the restless feeling she had all that week, as though there was unfinished business when there wasn’t. What was unfinished was the fact that yes, they had solved the case, but they weren’t able to resolve the grief the families lived with every day. Sure, there were no more questions, but that didn’t mean it was the end. The families would have to face the killer again in court, for what could be weeks and months, and even years of trials and appeals.
It would be the same for the families in Tifton, no matter what she was able to do.
As Emily turned into the bed-and-breakfast, she felt the same restlessness as when she worked the serial killer case in Chicago. She sat in the truck for a minute, taking a sip from a water bottle she’d had from earlier that morning. She couldn’t just go up to her room, watch television and go to sleep. Somewhere out there was Lexi Cooper, and the person that had her was likely the same person that killed Sean Parker and Joe Day and Corey Hawkins, not to mention all the other names in the file.
Emily put the car in reverse and drove back out of the parking lot. Sleep could wait. As she drove back out of the center of town, Emily’s mind drifted to her dad. They’d never been close. He was a quiet man and hardly ever said a word. People like that were hard to get to know. As Emily passed the drugstore where Sierra Day worked, the lights just flickering on with the sunset drooping over the horizon, Emily wondered if Sierra felt a strain around her dad the same way she did around her own. Emily wasn’t sure if she and her dad could ever repair their relationship. She swallowed, pressing the accelerator a little harder, a knot forming in her stomach. So many of the things that life promised — a husband, a family, a good job, friends — all those had been stripped away from her.
What did she have? Her dog, a guy that taught her boxing, and a few acquaintances here and there. Even Angelica, her sister, was hard to connect with since she lived overseas. At that moment, Emily thought that maybe she would just pack everything up, figure out a way to get Miner on a plane, and move to Europe to be near Angelica.
But, for the moment, she was still in Tifton, chasing a serial killer.
A few minutes later, Emily came to the turnoff for Bradley Barker’s street. Without thinking, she turned her truck onto the street and then up his driveway. There were a few lights on in the house and a couple more on in the garage. She threw the truck into park, getting out. The heat hadn’t abated at all. Emily started to sweat before she ever got to the garage, not bothering to go to the house. As she pushed the door open, she saw Bradley, leaning on his cane in front of the whiteboard, a roll of tape in his hand. He was staring at something. “You’re back? Didn’t expect to see you again today.”
Emily stared at the spot where Bradley was standing. There was now a picture of Lexi Cooper attached to the wall, a blank spot below her. “Can’t manage to stay away. Had a run-in with the FBI agent that’s in charge.”
“Strickland?”
Emily nodded. For a second, she thought it was strange that everyone knew exactly who he was but given the fact the FBI seemed to show up every six months, maybe it wasn’t. “Yes. Not exactly friendly.”
“He’s not. I’ve talked to him or tried to. What did you tell him?”
“I more or less tried to ask him a couple of questions. He blew me off.” Emily nodded toward the whiteboard. “What’s going on here?”
Bradley sat down in the chair and motioned for Emily to join him, “Just added Lexi Cooper to the board. I hope I can take her down in a day or two, but I’m not thinking it’s gonna work out that way. Looks like she might be victim fourteen.”
For a minute, Emily thought it was strange the way the words came out, as if he knew something. “How can you be so sure she’s not just lost in the woods or something?”
Bradley tilted his head to the side, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a gut feeling, but something tells me the killer has her now.”
Emily glanced around the garage as Bradley spoke, noticing the number of tools hanging on the walls. She stood up and walked over to them, looking at his workbench. Saws, drills, sets of screwdrivers and wrenches — they were all clean and well-maintained. “What’s all this for?” she said, a tingle running up her spine.
Bradley shifted in his seat, “Oh, you know. I have a project here and there that I have to take care of. Tractors don’t run forever on their own.”
Emily squinted, looking back at Bradley and the murder boards and then at the tools. His yard wasn’t big enough to need a tractor. Something didn’t seem quite right. “Okay. I think I’m gonna head back and do more research. I’ll let you know if I find anything,” she said, walking for the door, a sick feeling lingering in her stomach.
17
The day spent at the Cooper’s house had largely been a waste, Cash realized, sitting in the SUV, finishing the sandwich he got from the restaurant up the road. It didn’t take long for Jeremy to process the window, both on the inside and the outside. There was nothing there. Not a hair, not a fiber, not a fingerprint. “That’s not all the bad news I have,” Jeremy had said, stripping off his gloves just a couple of hours earlier. “I checked in the yard to see if I could find any footprints, you know, places where the grass had been crushed. When the parents ran outside in the middle of the night looking for Lexi, they made a mess of the yard. I’ve got no way of telling if that was the entry and exit point or not.”
“What does your gut say?”
Jeremy raised his eyebrows and tilted his head, “I can’t find any other way she could have gotten out of the house. The fact that the window was only slightly open doesn’t give us much, but it’s better than nothing. If I had to guess, someone got the window open, stepped inside of her room, and pulled her out of the house. That’s the risk with a first-floor bedroom.”
Sitting in the SUV, Cash replayed the conversation they’d had in his head. Jeremy was probably right, he thought. Cash had gone over the house with a fine-toothed comb. The only thing that seemed out of place at all was the fact that Lexi’s bedroom window was cracked open. He sent agents to talk to all the neighbors. No one had seen anything, no strange vehicles or anything else. It was a small town, so there wasn’t much traffic. If anyone had parked on the street, someone would’ve noticed something.
Cash slipped the last potato chip from the bag in his mouth before crumpling up the trash and pushing it back inside one of the white plastic bags the food had come in. He wiped his hands on his pants and got out of the SUV, slamming the door. Randy and Keira said the agents were welcome to sit inside to cool off in the air conditioning, but Cash couldn’t eat while they were looking at him, their watery eyes begging him for answers he just didn’t have.
Walking into the backyard, Cash fought off a wave of frustration. There had to be something they were missing in Lexi’s room. He and Jeremy had done a walkthrough of every inch of the her bedroom but found nothing. How was that possible? Criminals never got in and out without leaving something behind, even a trace. That’s all they needed. Just one, small mistake. Rounding the back corner of the yard, Cash stared out, a wave of green grass in front of him, dense woods in the distance.
Cash took a deep breath and thought he could hear the sound of bullfrogs somewhere in the woods. Must be water or at least a few puddles nearby, he realized. The wind was moving in the trees, a few of the branches near the house rubbing together. The breeze did nothing for the humidity.
He walked over to the window of Lexi’s room and looked at it again from the outside, wondering what they missed. Figuring out these cases was like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces and no picture of what the end result was supposed to be. It was hard work — mentally and physically -- in a way most people couldn’t understand.
Cash sucked in a deep breath of the humid air, praying it would cool down, even just a couple of degrees. Staring at the windowsill, he didn’t see anything, not even a chip of paint. How the perpetrator had been able to wedge Lexi’s window open without chipping the molding, he wasn’t sure. Cash shook his head, turning and staring out in the yard. He felt tension in his jaw that was threatening a major headache. They needed a break and needed one badly. Maybe Lexi got out of the house another way? To his left, a couple of agents were standing at the back corner of the driveway, talking to each other and playing on their phones. Janet was one of them, nodding and smiling. Cash turned back and looked out across the backyard, his mind searching. If he was going to kidnap a little girl out of the house like this, how would he do it? The thought rattled in his head for a moment as he glanced back at the window. He looked down at the ground thinking about the entry points of the house. The front door had too many locks on it. If what Randy said was true, Lexi wouldn’t have been able to reach the top one to get the door open. Could she have gone out through the garage? It was possible, but it was likely one of the parents would’ve heard the rattle of the garage door opening in the middle of the night. Her bedroom window was the best entry and exit point, but how?
Cash walked back over to the window putting his fingers on the sill, staring at it. In the lower right-hand corner, there was a slight dent, almost imperceptible. No paint had chipped off. By looking at it, it was hard to determine if it was a manufacturing defect or the spot where something small, like maybe a screwdriver, had been pushed in to wedge the window open. “Janet?” Cash called.
Within a couple of seconds, Janet was by his side. Cash pointed, “See that dent there? What does that look like to you?”
Janet bent over and stared at it, then frowned, “I dunno. What are you thinking?”
Cash raised his eyebrows, “Well, either it was a goof during manufacturing or that’s how somebody wedged a tool in and got this window open. Get Jerem
y over here to look at this. I want to know which one it is.”
Over his shoulder, Cash saw Janet walk purposefully around the back of the house, disappearing around the corner. Cash walked out into the middle of the backyard, about halfway between the house and the edge of the woods. If the perpetrator had taken Lexi out through the window, then what? Cash looked left and right. To his right, there were more woods, to his left, there was another backyard a way’s off. Weighing the options in his mind, Cash realized if someone had grabbed Lexi, they would’ve had to park a vehicle on the street to move her, or maybe the person disappeared another way.
By the time Cash turned around, Janet and Jeremy were staring at the windowsill. Jeremy had on optics over his glasses that looked like the same kind surgeons used during delicate procedures in the operating room. Cash shook his head. Every time they went on a case, Jeremy had some new gadget he was testing out. “Janet?”
“Yeah?” she said, walking over.
“Do we know what’s behind the stand of woods over here?”
She nodded, “The local guys said there’s something like a park on the other side. I’m not sure, though.”
“Well, let’s find out.”
18
By the time Emily got back to the hotel, it was nearly dark, the sun sinking low over the horizon, casting an orange and pink glow over Tifton. It was the kind of sunset that photographers loved to take pictures of, but even with its beauty, Emily couldn’t shake the fact that there was some sort of pall hanging over Tifton.
Using the back entrance to the bed-and-breakfast, Emily went straight to her room, not wanting to risk bumping into any of the FBI agents that were staying there, not that they’d be back yet. Emily suspected the team would stay at the Cooper’s house for most of the night — or at least the majority of the team would, agents cycling in and out to make sure there was a presence at Lexi’s house at all hours of the day and night until the case was resolved on the off chance there was a ransom demand or some other contact from the kidnapper. Emily’s gut told her no contact was coming.