“But that’s—” she began.
“Life,” he finished for her. “It’s just life. Sometimes it sucks.”
She nodded once, looking out over his head, her gaze unfocused. “I get that.”
“Not sure you do,” he said. “But you will. Listen,” Joshua changed tracks, “I’m not coming in to Quantico with you right this second.”
Her attention returned to his face, her eyes questioning. “Oh?”
“I’ve got… Well, I’ve got some things I need to take care of.”
There was another long pause, in which Coop seemed to be trying to read his soul. He shifted from one foot to the other.
“Okay,” she said finally. “I trust you.” She turned to walk away, but then added one more thing. “Besides, you’ve still got that monitor on.”
True enough. Joshua watched as Bilal pulled up to the curb and his three teammates piled into the cab. He would see them soon enough.
Right now, he had an appointment with his family.
His family, and a nasty old man.
EPILOGUE
Sariah stared at the front door.
She’d been standing there for what felt like an hour, moving closer, then changing her mind and coming back to stand in the shade of the oak tree out in front of the modest home. It was one of those manufactured houses, in an area that had nothing but manufactured houses.
After months of agonizing and obsessing, Sariah had found out more than she’d ever wanted to know about Curtis Howse and his family. Part of the story that had started to come out was just why it was that he had acted so guilty.
Curtis had a secret. It was the reason he’d killed himself rather than have his family invaded. It was the reason that, even though truckers made pretty good money, his home was modest.
The trucker had spent his time and money on helping illegal immigrants escape from immigration. He would pick up families that were about to be deported, skipping or only taking small parts of lucrative hauls in order to carry those looking to stay in the US.
The house of cards had come tumbling down after he died. He’d made bribes and faked manifests, all to get around the weigh stations. But with his death had come questions, and the puzzle had started to come together for those who had been keeping an eye on him for a while. It hadn’t taken long for Sariah to get them to open up about it.
The man had done it all for the love of his Latina wife. From what Sariah could tell, it was her family that had needed his help first, and what had started him on his crusade. Thirteen years ago.
And now, here she was, trying to force herself to talk to Curtis’ widow. She couldn’t imagine that the meeting would go well, but she owed it to the woman. Curtis was dead because of her.
It was time to pay the piper.
Sariah took one last deep breath, walked toward the door and rang the doorbell before she gave herself time to rethink. She heard footsteps approach the entryway, the tread light.
The door opened, and there before her was Lupe Howse, widow of the late Curtis. Her eyes widened in recognition.
“Agent Cooper? I’m so glad you’re here. Hold on a moment.” She shuffled off down the hallway, disappearing for a moment around the corner.
Sariah had no idea what to make of this. Was Lupe going for a gun? It wasn’t that much of a stretch, and Sariah wouldn’t blame her if she did. But her attitude upon seeing the agent on her doorstep hadn’t been adversarial.
And then she was back, with a package in her hands. “This has been waiting for you,” she said, and placed the box in Sariah’s trembling hands. She then nodded and closed the door, and Sariah listened as the footsteps retreated.
She looked down at the box in her hands, a feeling of dread spreading through her body. The box had lost some of its integrity and was soft and moist in Sariah’s grip.
Grasping the edge of one of the pieces of tape used to secure the package, Sariah began to open it, somehow knowing what she would see before she got the lid open. It felt like an out-of-body experience, or like watching a car accident happen right in front of you. She wanted to look away, but could not.
With fingers shaking, Sariah lifted the edges of the lid, pushing aside the Styrofoam peanuts that had been used to keep the contents from damage. A glistening piece of plastic surfaced, and she scooped out the remainder of the packing materials, looking to catch a glimpse of what was contained underneath.
And then it was clear what she held in her hands. The blood drained out of her face, and her arms shook to the point that she almost could not keep the box in her arms.
There, staring out at her from the package, was a human head.
OLD WOMAN IN A SHOE - Bridge story to All Fall Down
CHAPTER 1
It was five o’clock in the morning, and Joshua Wright was the only one of the team present that was truly awake. Even Bella, his Boxer-Labrador mix puppy, was subdued, lolling at his feet instead of her typical gamboling around. They were just waiting on Officer Hadderly at this point. Had was normally punctual but seemed to be running late today.
Joshua was far too familiar with early mornings. For years he hadn’t been able to sleep past four o’clock, regardless of how tired he was. That had only changed within the last few weeks. The alcohol that had fueled his death spiral had denied him sleep even while giving a momentary salve to his hurt.
Now the hurt was the raw wound it was supposed to be. Nothing chemical braced him against its jagged, splintered pain. In a way, Joshua liked it a whole lot better. The pain reminded him of his guilt.
He scratched at the ankle monitor at his ankle. The one he had taken from Agent Cooper and placed on his own leg after he drank his last drop. It would beep incessantly if he consumed so much as a mouthful of alcohol. So, no Nyquil for him.
Not that sleeping was an option right at the moment.
Agent Sariah Cooper rubbed her hands together. It was the middle of August, so the move wasn’t out of a desire to stay warm. It was part and parcel to the new and not-so-improved Coop that had shown up at the end of their last case.
She was gaunt, her clothes hanging off her body in a way that might make a fashion designer happy, but did nothing but make Joshua depressed. The dark circles under her eyes weren’t one hundred percent covered by her mocha complexion.
Didn’t look like Coop was doing so great.
“Okay, we should talk this through.” she said, talking to both Joshua and Officer Regina Black. Reggie looked like she was asleep on her feet, but somehow still managed to be stunning in spite of it. Coop’s voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. “Going onto the Navajo reservation to question a Navajo woman about the death of her Navajo foster child… this isn’t going to be pretty.”
“That’s an understatement,” Reggie muttered. She had an odd look on her face, like she had more to say. After glancing up and seeing Joshua staring at her, she gave him a half-hearted grin and looked away.
“So how did we get this assignment? Humpty to Hopi seems like a bit of a stretch.” Joshua had been called in to work the Humpty Dumpty killer case. This seemed like a bizarre left turn.
“Navajo, not Hopi. Same area, different tribe,” Reggie corrected him.
Joshua was about to respond when Had arrived. They heard him before they saw him. Mostly because of the jangling sound that was coming from his… spurs? Had was dressed from head to foot as a full on cowboy. Ten gallon hat, plaid shirt with pearl snaps, bolo tie, belt buckle the size of Manhattan, boots, and…
Yes. Spurs.
“Hey, guys, sorry I’m a little late. Couldn’t decide if the bandana was too much.” He held out a red bandana that matched the red in his shirt.
“No, no,” Joshua assured him. “Not too much at all. If you’re Ben Cartwright.”
Everyone stared at him.
“Cartwright? Gunsmoke?” More stares. “Whatever. You people are pathetic.”
“I think you look great,” Reggie said to Had, whose face lit up. “I lo
ve your spurs.”
“Yeah, I got them from a real cowboy. It thought they might help me blend in.”
Joshua groaned and tugged the leash for Bella to follow him toward the cab. And the man behind the wheel? Bilal, the Pakistani driver who Had befriended when he got here to DC.
This trip was going to be a joy.
* * *
Special Agent Sariah Cooper stared out at the bleak landscape they were passing through, trying to block out Had’s non-stop chatter as he drove. The surroundings felt like a reflection of her internal reality, scarred and broken, with only the most tenacious of life forms fighting for survival in a hostile environment. Emotional sage and scrub oak, thrusting through the cracked soil of her pain. Psychological snakes and lizards, baking in the harsh sunlight of her judgmental attitude.
Nothing was right. Every sight her eyes took in was colored with the darkest of tainted glass. Where before all had been straightforward and clear, now all was fractured, disjointed. The terrain surrounding her here in New Mexico was a manifestation of all that was wrong in her life.
It had begun with their last case.
She’d done everything she was supposed to do. The case had been clear-cut. A suspect had fit every criterion for the killings. It had been obvious that he was the one.
Except for the fact that it hadn’t been.
And he’d committed suicide, leaving behind a wife and children. A family. Broken because of her arrogance. Her assumption of his guilt.
“… which is why New Mexico has a law on the books that says that idiots can’t vote,” Had said, concluding whatever random thread he’d been pursuing for the last five minutes. Sariah nodded, not having a single clue with what she was agreeing.
Had was driving the Chevy Tahoe they’d rented from the Albuquerque Airport. He’d been so excited to drive, and relinquishing the responsibility to him had been a relief to Sariah. The thought of navigating through this desert had given her a headache.
The air conditioning was a wash of sterilized cold that couldn’t quite beat back the heat radiating through the window. Waves of heat swirled up from the black asphalt, creating false images of water that dried up before they reached them.
Regardless of the harsh terrain and blistering heat, there was a part of Sariah that was relieved to be out here. It was a momentary reprieve from a case that had burrowed under her skin and taken up residence there.
They had been tracking someone they thought to be the Humpty Dumpty killer. Turned out to be a knockoff, a copycat, Humpty lite. And yet even that watered-down version of the killer had left Sariah in a state somewhere north of done in and just south of dying.
After bringing in what had been left of Preston Longmore, the young man who had tried to take Humpty’s place, most of their leads had dried up. Even the severed head that had been left for Sariah back in Iowa hadn’t led to anything, other than a near-breakdown for her. There had been a PO Box in Maryland, but it had been paid for in cash, the story so old and tired that she could write it in her sleep with one hand tied behind her back.
She was mixing metaphors, a sure sign that she wasn’t herself.
It wasn’t even clear if she hadn’t found anything because there was nothing to find, or if it was more due to the fact that she was incapable of focusing for longer than two minutes at a time. Or making a decision more complicated than what pen to use.
A long sigh escaped from her lips.
“Stick a fork in you. You’re done.” Officer Hadderly turned his attention from the surface-of-the-moon vista. “Hey, you know where that comes from? Barbeque. You can tell whether or not a brisket is done by sticking a fork in it and twisting it.” Had must have spotted the look on her face, as he followed that statement up with another in short order. “Sorry. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she answered. “Nothing at all.” Other than the fact that I’m done. Overdone. Cooked to a crisp. Dried up.
It’s your case, her boss, Special-Agent-in-Charge Nathan Tanner, had said, because you’ve got nothing better to do right now. He’d given her a long look. And… because I need the real Coop to show back up.
He didn’t seem to realize that this was the real her now.
And it wasn’t just that she’d made a good man hang himself in a sad little hotel room far from his loved ones. They’d also come back with Joshua beaten to a bloody pulp, and Had having been kidnapped by the killer. The fact they’d made it out alive was more a product of dumb luck than any sort of leadership on her part.
Of course, the real issue wasn’t with Had’s capture or Joshua’s injuries. It wasn’t even the fact that a blameless man had dangled from a rope. The true problem was with her. She was broken. She knew it, her boss knew it, the team knew it.
“It’s this case, isn’t it?” Had asked, intruding once more on her morbid thoughts. “It’s not what you wanted, maybe, but we had to take it, right?”
“Only because no one else would.” She didn’t bother to explain how much she didn’t want to go back to the Humpty case. Maintaining some sense of leadership was required of her at this point, wasn’t it? She’d just fake her way through.
Even the mandatory psyche eval after Preston’s brutal death had been that way. Sariah had known what responses would get her out of the shrink’s office. Getting back to work hadn’t been a prime motivator, but escaping the probing questions of the psychiatrist had been.
Had was busy chuckling about her last statement. “That’s our MO. We take the jobs everyone else is too smart to touch with a ten-foot pole?”
“A Native American case. The Tribal Police hate FBI teams at the best of times. And with us having to question one of their own, they’ll like us even less.”
“Yeah,” Joshua said, his tone dry. “We’ll be lucky if we make it out with our scalps intact.”
Reggie muttered. “Racist much? And the Navajo never took scalps. At least not until the white folk turned up and started paying good money for them.”
“White folk?” he asked. “Isn’t that just racist in the opposite direction?”
She jabbed him in the ribs, somehow making her pointed statements into something more teasing. Although just how playful it was could be up for debate, seeing that Joshua was recovering from broken ribs.
He winced, but then looked like he was trying to play it off. If it had been anyone else on the team, he would’ve torn that person’s head off and used it for shooting practice on the basketball court.
And that was another issue that Sariah didn’t want to have to deal with. Those two seemed to be getting close. Having a budding relationship blow up in the middle of an investigation… which, with Joshua involved was a near-certainty… could make a bad situation worse.
That was the only problem Sariah had with it. She was sure of it. No other possible reason for her to dislike the growing sexual tension between the former FBI agent and the newest member of their team. None at all.
Dammit.
Had’s voice intruded on her thoughts. “Maybe it won’t be so bad. I mean, three-fourths of our team is non-FBI.” Had and Reggie had been culled from their respective local law enforcement precincts due to their individual talents. Joshua was ex-FBI and had worked on the Humpty case, before his family was slaughtered by the killer and he’d disappeared into alcoholism and insanity.
“A Native American foster kid is dead,” Sariah said, the words as much an admission of her own fears as they were a counterpoint to Had’s optimism. “The person we have to question first is also Native American. And living on the reservation.” Sariah shook her head. When she had looked over the case file, Sariah’s heart had dropped into her shoes at the long list of foster children the federal government had listed for this group home. She’d immediately handed it over to Joshua.
The fact that she felt that an alcoholic ex-agent, was better equipped than her to deal with things was telling. Exactly what it was telling she wasn’t sure she wanted to find out.
A N
ative American teenager’s body had surfaced along the borders of the reservation. The fact that it was on the reservation and involved violence toward a tribal member made it a federal case.
Knowing that the boy was in the system, and in a group home, only made things worse. It was the only home on the reservation, and the only one Sariah knew of that was run by a Native American. Kai Bileen had returned from a successful career as a Director of Marketing for a large consumer package goods company to take care of troubled kids in the foster care system. Not the sort of person Sariah wanted to have to start out by questioning.
This was a PR disaster in the making. Perfect task for the pariah of the BAU. She could see why her boss had handed it to her. Too bad he didn’t understand just how much she was not up for this.
Sariah turned her attention back to the road. They were making their way up from Albuquerque along the 550 Highway leading to Farmington, and would then head out along the 64 out to Shiprock, where the foster home was located.
They rounded a bend in the highway. Somehow, impossibly, the terrain got even less hospitable. And right at that moment, she saw the sign that indicated they were passing into another reservation, this one from the Pueblo tribes that lived to the southeast of the Navajo Nation.
She knew her own African American heritage and had made peace with it for the most part. But seeing how badly the US had treated its ousted natives made her ill. And twisted the knot of fear in her stomach, even tighter.
It wasn’t the first stretch they’d passed through like this. There would be trees and farmed lands, followed by acres of nothing but dust and rock. And guess who owned which part?
“Man, we sure did right by these guys, didn’t we?” Joshua griped as he stared out of the window, echoing Sariah’s thoughts. He patted his dog without much energy or attention while she squirmed under his touch, trying to reach around to lick his hand.
He was direct. He was irritating. But what the former agent was saying was spot on, as usual. It might not be pretty, it might not be kosher, it might not be anything resembling civil, but it was accurate. It was one of his gifts.
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