by J. L. Brown
“We were aware of each other,” Kaylee said.
“Aware.”
“She was playing hard to get,” Grace said.
“Shut up!” Kaylee said, lightly tapping Grace on the arm. Her smile belied her words.
“Tell me more about your relationship with Zach,” Jade asked.
“We didn’t have a relationship. He played sports. I cheered. We had a lot in common.”
“Like what?”
Kaylee seemed puzzled by the question. “Like I said, he played sports and I cheered.”
Jade nodded. “Got it. How are you coping since he died?”
Kaylee hesitated. “I miss him of course.”
“What about Nicholas?”
“What about him?”
“Were you close?”
“Not very. He was cute. A little too short for my taste. But he had nice muscles.”
“I thought he was hot,” Grace said.
Jade rejoiced she wasn’t still in high school. “Is there anything more you can tell me about him that isn’t physical?”
Kaylee thought for a moment. “Not really. We all hung out together. The athletes and the cheer squad. I’d see him at parties and stuff.”
To Grace: “You?”
“Same.”
“Are you both on Facebook?”
“Facebook’s lame,” Kaylee said. “It’s for old people.”
“People your age,” Grace added, helpfully.
Jade let that slide. “What about Twitter?”
They nodded.
“Would you know anything about the ‘TylerThompsonFan’ account?”
The two girls shared a look.
“Heard about it,” Grace said.
Kaylee could not quite meet Jade’s eyes. “What about it?”
“Pretty horrible stuff, wouldn’t you say?” Jade said. “If someone wrote those things about you?”
“I guess,” Kaylee said.
“Did either of you ever exchange texts with Tyler?”
“Never!” Grace said.
“No,” Kaylee said.
“Are you sure?”
“Why would we text him?” Grace asked.
Jade focused on Kaylee. “And you never texted Tyler? Not once?”
Kaylee shook her head.
Jade held her gaze for a moment, then let it go. “Last question. Is there a lot of bullying in your school?”
“No,” Grace said.
Kaylee shrugged. “Is that why you think Tyler committed suicide?”
It was Jade’s turn to shrug.
She didn’t bother to correct Kaylee about Tyler’s manner of death. She would find out soon enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Washington, DC
Back at the Bureau, they exited the elevator on the fourth floor. As they walked down the hall, Dante strode toward them, his expression a warning as he passed by. “Ethan wants to see you. Both of you.”
Jade and Christian glanced at each other, but said nothing.
Dropping off her briefcase in her office, she joined him in front of her boss’s door. She knocked.
From inside: “Come in.”
They entered and sat in the chairs across the desk from Supervisory Special Agent Ethan Lawson. He continued to scribble something on a legal pad. A display of the FBI’s motto “Fidelity - Bravery - Integrity.” hung behind him. White shirt, starched and pressed, his slacks held up by black suspenders, Ethan was a dapper throwback to a bygone era.
Setting down his pen, he turned his attention to them. “What’ve you two been up to?”
Jade looked at Christian—who stared at the floor—and back at Ethan.
“Research,” she said.
“Hmmm . . . On what?”
“A case we’re working on.”
Ethan gave her a familiar look. “And which case is that, pray tell?”
“Three boys died—were murdered—at Randolph Secondary School in Fairfax in the last three weeks.”
Ethan rifled through a stack of files on his desk. “I can’t find that file.” He threw up his hands. “Oh, wait. Now I remember. It’s not our case.”
“Yet.”
“These were tragic murders, yes . . . ” He glanced at Christian. “And I understand your personal interest, but we have our own cases to solve. Let the local police handle it.”
Christian looked up at Ethan. “Hell no.”
Ethan blinked. “Excuse me?”
She understood why Ethan was surprised. Christian never contradicted him. Or cursed.
“Tyler is family,” Christian said.
“All the more reason why you shouldn’t be involved,” said Ethan.
Jade, her sleeves rolled up, leaned forward and rested her forearms on her thighs, as if about to enter a basketball game. “We’re not letting it go, Ethan. Besides, I have a feeling about this.”
“You and your feelings.” He sighed, tearing his eyes away from Christian. “Okay. What do you have?”
“Tyler Thompson died as the result of blunt force trauma to the head. He had been bullied. Zach Rawlins was murdered with a blunt instrument a couple of weeks later. The following week, Nicholas Campbell was murdered in the same manner. Zach’s and Nicholas’s genitals had been mutilated. All three boys went to the same high school and played on the baseball team. All had scratches and bruising on their faces and bodies that predated their deaths. As if they fought a lot.”
Ethan spun his wedding ring once. Twice. Three times.
Jade continued. “There are more deaths to come. Something’s going on here. We have a serial killer on our hands. I know it.”
He stopped spinning his ring. “Three murders don’t equate to a serial killer. But, I’ll give you two a little rope on this.” He sat up, his eyes back to the work on his desk. “Don’t hang yourselves.”
*
In her office, she focused on some of her cases. Her assigned cases. Her attention, though, kept drifting back to the interviews that morning.
This case tugged at Jade. A psych major in college, it wasn’t too difficult to figure out why. Bullied as a teenager herself, one day she decided she’d had enough. She promised herself from that day forward she would never be bullied again. And now bullying in any form, especially of women and children, compelled her to act.
Her cell phone rang. Area code 703. Virginia. She didn’t recognize the number.
“Agent, uh, Harrington. This is William. From the interview today. At the school.”
That didn’t take long. “I remember.”
“Listen . . . there’s something we didn’t . . . I didn’t . . . say. That I should have.”
“I’m listening.”
“Z . . . ”
“What about Zach?”
“It was Z.”
She let the silence linger.
He continued. “Zach bullied T—Tyler. Well, he wasn’t the only one, but he was the leader. Z was always the leader.”
“Go on.”
“Like I told you today. T was easy to pick on. A dweeb, kind of nerdy. Read books in public. In places where people could see him. Told people he liked math. Watched the news. Sh—stuff like that. Z liked to mess with him in the locker room. He would steal his clothes, so he had nothing to wear after he took a shower. He made fun of T’s . . . uh . . . ”
Jade let him hang for a moment. “Private parts?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know that someone took naked pictures of Tyler and posted them on the Internet?”
Silence. After a few beats, he said, “I knew. Everyone knew. It sucked. I’m not really proud of my classmates.”
“Who killed Zach, Nicholas, and Tyler?”
“One time, T fell asleep in class, and Z taped his head to the desk. T almost started crying, asking for help. Everyone in class just sat there and laughed. The teacher finally cut him out. Z did stupid stuff like that. I guess you would call Z a bully. I didn’t think of it as bullying at the time. It was funny.”
“Nic would do anything Z said. Zach would goad him into stuff.”
“Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
The boy hesitated. “Sometimes it’s easier not to get involved. So, I say nothing.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“What question was that?”
“Do you know who killed Zach or Nicholas or Tyler?”
“I have no idea.”
She thanked him and hung up.
Jade was not surprised by what William had told her about Zach. She thought back to the interview with his parents. Although Zach’s father lamented that his son wasn’t like him, Zach had followed in his father’s footsteps.
He was a bully. Just like his father.
She wondered why William had called her. To manipulate the investigation? To manipulate her?
And, if so, to what end?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The White House, Washington, DC
Sasha sat across from Whitney in the Oval Office and handed her a briefing book. “My proposal to address income inequality.”
Whitney accepted it and opened it to the first page.
“It’s based on the same three Rs as the New Deal: relief, recovery, and reform,” Sasha said. “Relief for the unemployed poor, recovery of the economic system, and the reform of the financial system. My proposal is the same, but with a twist. This New New Deal will be based on relief for the unemployed and underemployed poor and middle class, the recovery of the American Dream, and reform of the financial system and the national infrastructure.”
Whitney nodded, pleased so far. “Go on.”
“The relief program will consist of training the unemployed, expanding the earned-income and child tax credits, and raising the federal minimum wage to twelve dollars an hour.” She smiled. “I’m also proposing a thirty-five-hour work week, which will increase the demand for workers and improve work-life balance for everyone.”
“That should be popular,” Whitney said. “Does it apply to presidents as well?”
“Presidents are exempt.”
“Pity.”
To the media pundits, Sasha Scott, the black congresswoman from Texas, had been a surprising selection for chief of staff. Whitney had not known her well when they both served in Congress, but when they did work together, the woman’s intelligence, strength, fortitude, devotion to her cultural roots, and passion for diversity and inclusion had impressed Whitney. Sasha was respected on both sides of the aisle, even when her direct—some would say “blunt”—communication style left some hurt feelings along the way. Strategic use of her Southern charm, however, always seemed to assuage those feelings after the fact.
Whitney’s choice had been the right one. Gatekeeper, personnel manager, CEO, and fixer, the chief of staff’s responsibility was to keep Whitney focused on the principal event of the day and to remove all distractions. Sasha turned out to be perfect for the job.
They didn’t agree on every issue. Sasha, a devout Catholic, supported a woman’s right to choose politically, but Whitney believed she struggled with the issue on a personal level.
Sasha turned the page. “The premise for the recovery program is the importance of education to social mobility. It consists of universal preschool, a cap on college tuition, and allowing students to repay student loans based on a percentage of post-graduate income.”
“What about universal college education?”
“We couldn’t get that through this Congress. Now, to reform. Instead of resurrecting the WPA, the Department of Commerce will oversee the building and repairing of highways, bridges, low-income housing, and parks.”
“Twenty percent of our bridges are impaired and half of our highways—”
“—are not fit to drive on.”
“How will we fund this?”
“Small- and mid-sized businesses will be given incentives to bid on these projects. The DOC will administer them.”
“Ooh . . . I like that, too.” Whitney thought a moment. “Although I’m in favor of universal pre-K, I need something that will impact the economy now. Like high-speed and inner-city rail. Or water systems.”
Sasha shook her head. “According to the ASCE”— American Society of Civil Engineers—“it will cost three-point-six trillion dollars to fix this country’s water and sewer systems.”
“Trillion.”
“Trillion,” Sasha repeated. “Look at how much it cost to repair Flint.”
“It was worth every penny.”
“We don’t have the revenue to approach it nationally in a significant way this time around.”
Whitney crossed her legs. “Now, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: How will we pay for this proposal?”
“Increased tax rates, a limit on CEO pay, limits on tax deductions and loopholes. And eliminating pork.”
She flipped through the proposal on her lap as Sasha spoke. After she fell silent, Whitney kept reading. After several minutes, she said, “This is good work. Thank you. Treasury won’t be happy with all the changes to the tax code. But too bad. Leave it with me. I’ll mark it up tonight, and give it back to you tomorrow. I’ll want you to float it by Hampton and Bell.”
Sasha scrunched up her face. “The ‘Young Guns’ on the Hill?”
“Who, by the way, are not so young anymore.”
“I heard that one time Hampton spoke for ten hours on the Senate floor.”
“He did,” Whitney said. “I was there.”
Sasha shook her head. “How could you stand it? It’s hard for me to listen to that whiny voice for ten minutes.” Sasha closed her briefing book. “It must be nice to be Senator Eric Hampton. I wish I had the privilege of always being so . . . ”
“Certain?”
Sasha nodded. “They’ll kill this before it has a chance to be debated.”
Whitney smiled. “Then you may want to persuade them with sugar instead of your usual hot sauce. We need their buy-in, Sasha. It won’t get through otherwise.”
“But do you trust them?”
Whitney had battled Hampton before on previous bills. Last year, they came to an agreement on a major piece of legislation. Just before it went to vote, he added an amendment that was anathema to Whitney’s principles and one she could never support.
But she needed him this time. She had no choice. As senate majority leader, he was her best chance of selling the proposal to others in his party.
Whitney laid the briefing book on her desk. “No. No, I don’t.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Fairfax, Virginia
She stared through the one-way mirror at Matt Thompson. Hands clasped on the table, he listened to instructions from his attorney sitting next to him. From his suit, the attorney didn’t look like a high-priced one to Jade, but he wasn’t a public defender either.
Thompson looked much better than the last time she had seen him. The reality, if not the acceptance, of his son’s death had sunk in. Christian stood next to her, the anguish of seeing his brother-in-law in that room plain on his face.
Detective Chutimant had decided to bring Thompson in for questioning. She had invited Jade and Christian to observe.
She had also sent Jade the results of Tyler’s autopsy report. The coroner ruled out the use of a blunt instrument. He didn’t find any fingerprints on the body. This didn’t surprise Jade. If Tyler was sweaty from baseball practice or struggled during the altercation, any fingerprints would have been damaged or lost. He could have unintentionally rubbed them off.
The coroner did find grass, glass, rocks, dirt, and fragments from fast-food wrappers on Tyler’s skin. But no hair fibers.
Not much to go on.
The detective glanced at her now and nodded before opening the door to the interrogation room, followed by another detective from the county. The door clicked closed behind them, the sound loud in the observation room. By his slight head movement, Thompson acknowledged the
detectives’ entrance but didn’t look at them.
Chutimant went through the interview preliminaries and then asked Thompson about his whereabouts the night Zach Rawlins was murdered.
He glanced at his attorney. The attorney nodded. Thompson cleared his throat and looked at Chutimant. “I was home. I left the dealership around eight p.m. and went straight there. My wife and I watched television until we went to bed.”
“Was your wife with you the entire time?”
“Yes. Even before Tyler . . . ” He looked away from Chutimant. “With two young children, we don’t go out much.”
“What about the night Nicholas died?”
“What night was that?”
“April twenty-seventh of this year.”
Thompson cleared his throat again. “That would’ve been a Thursday. Same thing. Work and then home. We’re basic. We lead a boring life.”
The detective, her tone sharp and accusatory: “Did you kill Zach Rawlins and Nicholas Campbell?”
“No, I did not,” he said.
After an hour of questioning, Christian said to her, “They don’t have any evidence against him.”
“Except motive.” Jade stared at Thompson. “Or other suspects. Let’s go talk to his wife.”
*
“This is a bad idea.”
“It’ll take some time to release him,” Jade said.
The bicycle now lay in the grass.
Christian knocked. “House is quiet. Maybe she’s not here.”
“Let’s wait,” she said.
After a couple of minutes, they turned to leave.
The door opened. Jenny, her bathrobe cinched at her chest, said, “Sorry, I was in the shower. Come on in.”
They headed without invitation to the living room. Jenny stopped at the stairs, her hand on the railing. She looked down the front of her robe and over to them. “I’m going to change. Be right back.”
She trudged upstairs.
Jade said to Christian, “Her hair’s not wet.”
He nodded, distracted. “I don’t think she’s washed that robe in a while.”
She glanced around the living room. It appeared as it had the first time she was here. Immaculate.