There was nothing she could do. She was trapped, with no recourse. The man was so much larger than she was, and her arms and legs were pinned against the shelves.
“Leave,” he said. “Leave and don’t ever come back.” Pressing in even more, he pressed his face against hers and whispered in her ear. “And remember that I can do this whenever I want.”
And then he was gone, and Sariah was shaking, her body reacting to the adrenaline coursing through her. She could still feel the rough stubble of his face, smell the foul taint of his breath. The press of his body up against hers. She shuddered.
Jackson had miscalculated. She had been overpowered, yes. Her body was smaller than his, and given the same location, same set of circumstances, he might again be able to do so again.
But she had landed a punch. She had spoken back when ordered not to. And more importantly, she had frightened the detective to begin with. For him to risk such an overt display of dominance meant he was threatened. It was the act of a frightened child.
And Sariah didn’t scare that easily.
CHAPTER 4
Following the ME, Dr. Robison, through the doors into the morgue as he flipped on the overhead lights, Reggie felt the same chill she always got when entering into a space that contained dead bodies. She knew it was stupid… what exactly were cadavers going to do to her? But that didn’t make it any less uncomfortable for her.
“I don’t know what you guys think you’re going to find down here,” Dr. Robison said. “We’ve gone over this whole case with a fine toothed comb.”
“Oh, we know that, Doctor,” Had said, his tone conciliatory. “We just want some time with the victims. It sometimes can help.”
“Well, I pulled the girl out,” said the doctor. “She was the second one found.”
“Thank you, Dr. Robison,” Reggie said.
The doctor sniffed and strode back toward the doors. The man had a bald spot at the crown of his head. It looked like he had tried to comb the hair over the patch, but had missed. Then the doors swung shut, and Reggie could no longer see him.
Had leaned in close and whispered, “Okay, now what are we supposed to do?”
Reggie shrugged. “I don’t know. You heard Joshua as well as I did. He said it was a good idea.”
“Yeah, but he was drunk,” came the response.
There was that. Reggie wandered around the body, trying to see with Joshua’s eyes. What was it that they were supposed to find here? Or was Had right? Was it just a random thought out of a brain pickled by too much whiskey?
“You’re right, Had,” she said. “All the important information should be in her file back at the department. And then we could get out of this place.”
“What’s wrong with the morgue?” Had asked.
“Nothing,” Reggie responded, remembering that Had’s father had been a mortician. “Nothing at all.”
“Mm hm,” he murmured, peering into her face. “You’re afraid of dead bodies, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Prove it.”
Reggie squared her shoulders. “Fine. I will.” Marching over to the side of the double doors, she punched her finger at the button for the overhead lights. The room plunged into darkness.
“Impressive,” Had said, his voice reverberating in the room to the point that Reggie had no idea where he was. “You’re in the dark with a bunch of dead people. But how long can you stay like this?”
Reggie wasn’t positive, as her forehead had already broken out in a cold sweat. There was no way, however, that she was going to let Had know that.
“I can stay like this as long as you want.”
“Fine,” he said, and there was a scraping sound, like that made by a chair being pulled across a tile floor. “Let’s just see how long that is.” A squeaking sound confirmed her impression as Had sat down.
Great. Reggie’s ego and big mouth had gotten her into this. Now how was she supposed to get out.
She stared around the room, squinting to see if she could make out anything, anything at all, with which to distract herself. The low light made every object appear twisted and strange.
But then she saw something that took her mind off of whatever boogeyman might be lurking in the shadows. It was a faint glow, and it looked like it was coming from the forehead of the body on the slab.
She moved in close.
“Had,” she whispered. “Come here and look at this.”
“What? I’m not letting you off the hook, if that’s what you… oh,” he breathed as he caught sight of what she was looking at.
There, painted on the woman’s forehead in some kind of luminescent paint, was the word Meanie. It was blurred a bit, probably from the examinations that had been performed on the body here in the morgue, but it was still clear.
“Okay,” Reggie said. “Time to get the ME back in here.”
* * *
Sariah was still rattled from her encounter with Jackson, but her temper had taken over not long after she left the janitorial closet, her heart still beating fast. There was no way she was going to let some jerkoff like that detective have any power over her.
As she rounded the corner that led to the parking garage and her rental car, she almost ran into Detective Mason. Fantastic. One of a couple of people she didn’t want to see right now.
“Oh, hey, Agent Cooper,” he said after a moment of surprised silence. “I was looking for you.”
“You were?” That didn’t bode well, considering her recent encounter with Mason’s partner.
“Yeah…” The detective seemed to look more closely at Sariah’s face. “I just… I wanted to…”
Great. Sariah was either surrounded by sexist pigs, or indecisive men who couldn’t get a word out. Well, that or alcoholics, she supposed.
“Spit it out, Detective,” she said, her tone irritated.
“Sorry. I was just… checking on you. Jackson was pretty pissed off earlier.”
For a brief instant, Sariah considered telling Mason what his partner had done. But she didn’t have any proof. Besides, for all she knew, this guy could feel the same way.
“Yeah. I saw him downstairs by Records. He didn’t seem too happy.”
That seemed to make the detective look even more closely at Sariah’s face, almost as if he were checking to see if she were telling the truth. He cleared his throat.
“Oh, he didn’t… that’s good. I mean. Um… Look,” he wrung his fingers together. “Just watch out for yourself around him. He can get… cranky.”
Too little, too late, buddy, she thought, but that maybe wasn’t fair. The guy clearly seemed to want to help.
“I definitely will,” she replied, and continued on her way out to the parking garage. Time to regroup with her team, maybe get some lunch. It was early still, but apparently getting cornered in a broom closet by a sexist asshole built up an appetite.
As she stepped into the darkened garage, lit only by sporadic fluorescent lights above her, she felt her cell phone ring. “Agent Cooper speaking.”
“Coop, it’s Reggie,” came the voice over the phone. The connection seemed to be cutting out, so Sariah glanced down at the cell. Two bars. No, one.
“I’m in the police parking garage. Having a hard time hearing you. What’s up?”
“We found something… bodies in the morgue… that rhyme for picking who’s…” The connection seemed to be getting worse. Sariah moved back toward the door, hoping it would be better there.
“What was that?” she asked, straining to hear the response.
“Stay there,” Reggie said, her voice clearer but still cutting out. “We’ll grab Joshua and meet you. There’s some new information that might help with the case.”
“Okay. Will do.” She slipped her phone back in her pocket and moved back toward the building. It sounded like there might be something that would allow them to move forward with this case.
She was focusing on that conversation so much that it might have expla
ined why she didn’t notice the figure coming up behind her. Nor did she realize she was being attacked until she felt a blaze of pain in the back of her head, and everything went dark.
* * *
Had drove through the streets of Kansas City, trying to get back to the hotel as soon as possible. After having spent some time in a cab with Nadira, he’d learned a few tricks.
After examining the rest of the bodies, they had found the words Eennie and Miney on the other corpses. That discovery had stunned the ME, who was now going back over the autopsy reports to see if there had been anything else that he might have missed.
Had didn’t really blame the man all that much. Kansas City wasn’t the crime capital of the world or anything, but they had their fair share of bodies that came through the morgue, and this had been an unusual case.
But for the team, there was new information here, and it was important to get everyone back together to go over it. Including Joshua. There might be nothing to it, but Had’s feeling was that it was going to be significant.
“Eennie, Meanie, Miney,” Had said to Reggie. “That’s the kid’s rhyme for picking who’s next, right? ‘Catch a tiger by the toe’?”
Reggie nodded, but her face seemed troubled. “Yeah, but that doesn’t do all that much for us. It’s still a random selection process. It seems to just be saying that these killings are just as much a matter of chance as we were afraid they might be.”
Her pronouncement deflated Had a bit, but not for too long. This was the first significant lead they’d had since they started. It must mean something.
“How does the whole rhyme go?” he asked.
Reggie grimaced. “Depends on which version you use. The standard one today is some variation on Eennie, meanie, miney, moe. Catch a tiger by his toe. If he hollers, let him go. Eennie, meanie, miney, moe.”
“Yeah, that sounds like the one we used when I was a kid.” Had thought about it for a moment as he swerved to avoid a car in his way and Reggie clutched the armrest. “What are the other versions?”
“Well, the original’s totally racist,” Reggie answered.
“Racist? Really?”
“Uh huh. Instead of tiger, they would use… well… you know.”
Had frowned. Maybe he just wasn’t that racist, but he couldn’t figure out what word to substitute for tiger to make the rhyme racist. The only thing that was coming to mind was liger, and that didn’t seem right.
Reggie must have seen the confusion on his face. “It’s the N-word, Had.”
“The N…? Oh.” Had thought about that for a moment. “Oh.”
“Changes it a bit, doesn’t it?” Reggie muttered. “The rest of it goes if he hollers make him pay…” She trailed off.
Had saw the dawning realization growing in her. “What? What is it?”
Reggie pulled out her cell phone. “I’m not sure. Once we grab Joshua, we need to check something out back at the station.” She shifted in her seat. “And drive faster.”
Whoa. This was a big deal. Reggie wanted him to speed?
Stuff just got real.
* * *
Problem with being sober for so long? You forgot your survival skills.
Joshua had done everything he could think of to get alcohol. It had started with housekeeping, but they’d been warned ahead of time. Whether that had been Coop or Reggie was up for debate, but Joshua suspected it was Coop. She’d had an alcoholic father, so she knew how to maneuver around an addiction.
And it had gone downhill from there, no matter what he attempted. He’d wheedled, he’d pleaded, he’d even offered to work for the liquor. But since Coop had stolen his wallet, he didn’t have access to any kind of currency or cards. And Kansas City wasn’t feeling all that generous today, apparently.
The clerk at the liquor store had rebuffed him from the first, not even allowing him to get two words out before he threatened to call the cops. He’d tried to lift something at the grocery store, but security there had picked up on Joshua’s presence immediately, stalking after him until he’d been forced to leave.
He’d even tried panhandling a bit, but apparently he was too well dressed for anyone to take him seriously. Since when was Joshua too put together? How had that happened? Even having Bella along didn’t seem to help.
So after multiple attempts and a near arrest or two, he was headed back to the hotel, a smug-looking dog trotting along at his side. Maybe the housekeeping staff had changed shifts and he could talk to someone that Coop hadn’t gotten to yet.
As he approached the building, Had and Reggie pulled up. Reggie rolled down her window.
“Joshua, we need you.”
Shit.
“I was just going back to--”
But Reggie wasn’t having any of it. “Not a chance. Get in the car.”
Joshua looked longingly back at the hotel. There, at least, he could take a nap if he couldn’t find any alcohol. There was no respite in the car.
But there was something in Reggie’s voice that urged his compliance. He still harbored strong feelings for her, even if he knew now that he would never be worthy of having them reciprocated. A man like him should never hope for someone like her.
He opened the back door to the car, motioning for Bella to precede him. “Where’s Coop?” he asked. “Isn’t she invited to his little party?”
“She’s waiting for us back at the station,” Reggie answered.
Joshua stared out the window as Had pulled away from the curb. His hand that was resting in his lap began to tremble.
Fantastic. He was headed to the police station to help out with a case that he had no desire to be a part of, and now he was starting to detox. This had the potential to get really ugly, really fast.
This day couldn’t get much worse.
CHAPTER 5
Coop was nowhere to be found. When Reggie and the two men had gotten to the station, they’d asked around the building, but no one seemed to know where she was. Detective Mason mentioned he’d seen her headed down to the parking garage, but that was about it.
When they checked down there, her car was present, but there was no sign of her. Maybe she’d gotten tired of waiting and gone out to grab a bite to eat or something.
After the brief search, the first place Reggie looked was in the DNA database. She had thought it a long shot, but what she found there chilled her to the bone. Turning to face Joshua and Had, she saw that they were both staring at her.
“You finally gonna tell us what’s going on now?” Joshua groused. He hadn’t looked good when they found him outside the hotel. Now, under the fluorescent lights, he appeared half-dead.
She deserved the rebuke. Ever since the thought had formed in her head, she had been playing it close to the vest. A part of her didn’t want to put forward a theory that was so far-fetched. But the reality was that she hadn’t trusted herself.
From what she was seeing on the screen, maybe she should have.
“When I saw the eennie, meanie and miney on the victim’s foreheads, I realized it was from that children’s rhyme,” she said, filling Joshua in. “But when I was talking to Had, I thought that it might be more racially motivated. Check this out.” She pointed to the screen.
Two out of the three victims were listed in the DNA database. The only one missing was the older Black man.
“What are we seeing here?” Joshua asked, wiping a shaking hand across his brow. It looked like he was sweating, which was strange. The air inside the building was cool.
“Look at the ancestry part of the test,” Reggie said, gesturing to the appropriate part of the information. “What do you see?”
Had spotted it first. “They both have African ancestors.”
“I think these murders are racially motivated.”
Joshua stared at the screen for a moment, almost like he couldn’t quite focus on what he saw there. Then he frowned.
“Okay, but two of these people don’t look Black at all,” he argued. “They barely have
any African blood in them.”
“I know,” Reggie agreed. “That’s why I didn’t want to say anything. It was too weird.”
“My mama used to talk about that,” Had said. “She said there used to be a one-drop rule back in the Reconstruction-era South. If you had any African ancestry, that was it. You were Black.”
“Fine, but that still doesn’t give us anything concrete,” Joshua said.
Reggie cleared her throat. “I think we might be talking about someone who has access to the database.”
Had whistled. “That’s a strong accusation.”
“Well, it’s not one that we have to make,” she replied. “At least not yet. But we can factor it into the search. Hold on.” Typing rapidly, Reggie entered a query.
The response she got back was another shocker. She could feel the blood drain out of her face.
“What is it?” Had asked, seeing her reaction.
She pointed at the screen. “Look who the last person was that made a search based on race.”
There, in bold letters, was the name. DETECTIVE CHARLES JACKSON.
“We’ve got to find him,” Had said. “Maybe there’s a good reason he…” The officer trailed off, and Reggie sympathized with him. It was hard to think another cop could do this.
“Shit,” Joshua swore. Without warning, he turned around and strode off in the opposite direction.
Reggie stood and scrambled after him. “Where are you going?”
“Haven’t you figured it out yet?” he said over his shoulder. “Coop’s missing.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
He stopped and turned to face her. “She’s Black.” Spinning back around, Joshua kept walking down the hall.
The statement took a while to filter down into Reggie’s consciousness. She never really thought of Coop as being one thing or the other. The FBI agent was gorgeous, smart, capable… but Black wasn’t a descriptor Reggie used to describe her.
But it seemed clear that someone else did.
* * *
Detective Mason stared up at Had with a blank expression on his face.
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