by Blake Pierce
“Well?” John said. “I heard the word Italy. Honestly,” he said, puffing his chest, “I’m picking up on the language.”
“You’ll be fluent in no time.”
“So, what did he say?”
“I don’t think he’s our guy.” Adele glanced back toward the squad car door, watching the officer she’d talked to writing down Mr. Gunderson’s statement.
“Yeah?”
“He seemed pretty confident in his alibi. Said he was in Italy during the summer.”
“Well, that would make it quite hard for him to kidnap Amanda Johnson. She went missing five months ago.”
“Exactly. If he has an alibi for that, it will be problematic. More importantly though, he doesn’t fit the MO. Remember that hairline fracture? The one the doctor saw. That was from being hit from behind. Right? Our kidnapper sneaks up from behind, clocks people. A sneaky bastard. Mr. Gunderson, he’s a buffoon. Loud, angry, but he uses that gun. He’s not a sneak. He prefers to take out people at a distance.”
“Honestly, I don’t think he was trying to shoot us. At least not at first. The shots were too high. Mostly just warning shots.”
“Even more so, then. He doesn’t fit the MO. I don’t think he’s knocking young folks unconscious and dragging them away. For another, we don’t fit the bill. At least, you don’t. You’re old.”
John snorted. “Only a few years older than you,” he said.
Adele shrugged. “When has that ever stopped you from anything?”
John smirked. “Well,” he said, “if it’s not him, then who? You said we were on a timer. Starting to feel like that time is running out.”
Adele shook her head and stood beneath the quiet of the trees, staring along the trail. She glanced toward the squad car, but then looked away again. Disgust settled on her. There had to be something she was missing. Something obvious.
She stood there for a few more moments with John at her side, just allowing herself to think. But try as she might, she couldn’t see the angle. She couldn’t figure it out.
She shook her head again and sighed once more. Just then, her phone began to ring. She reached into her buzzing pocket and pulled out the device. She pressed it to her ear. “Yes?” she huffed.
A German voice replied, “Agent Sharp? Is this the Interpol agent?”
“Yes, who is this?”
“I’m on duty at the precinct. I was told to call you. We found a body.”
Adele blinked. “A body? Where?”
“I can text you the coordinates.” A pause, then Adele’s phone buzzed once more. “Get it?” the voice said.
Adele glanced and nodded to herself. “Got it. Thanks.” She clicked her phone and looked at John. She held his gaze for a moment. “They found a body.”
He went still. “Related to our case?”
“They seem to think so. Or they wouldn’t have called.”
John puffed a breath, his cheeks bulging then receding as the air escaped his mouth. Then, cursing once, as if following some protocol, he turned on his heel and began stalking back toward their parked car.
Adele followed, her insides swirling with guilt, frustration, anticipation. She pulled her phone out again, scanning the coordinates, and flashed them to John as they got into their car, gunned the engine, and, blinker on, moved back onto the highway.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The forests faded to fields.
Adele heard a quiet crunch of tires as they moved off road and their vehicle whirred to a stop. Ahead, she saw the flashing lights of patrol cars, and an officer sealing off the crime scene. A fresh scene. Caution tape was still being dragged from one sawhorse to another.
Adele glanced around, frowning. “This is miles from the Black Forest,” she murmured. This time, at least, it wasn’t in the middle of the road. No traffic. No civilians. A grim air hung over the field.
Adele and John exited the car together and moved around the hood, rejoining on the other side in lockstep. A body dropped—but far from the forest. Intentionally far? Was it the same kidnapper? Now a killer, then… Adele could feel bile in the back of her throat and swallowed, her fingertips tapping a tattoo into her upper thigh as she moved.
“Why so far?” she said.
“Maybe it’s not one of ours,” John replied quietly.
Adele and John flashed their credentials and ducked beneath the caution tape, moving toward the crime scene. Adele spotted a couple of BKA agents, judging by the lettering on their fleeces, standing off, huddled in one corner of the scene, muttering to each other.
“Looks like we were beaten here,” she murmured.
“That timer is still ticking,” John replied, barely moving his lips. “You think BKA is going to keep playing nice?”
Adele shook her head, but then stepped forward, her feet pressed against terrain that seemed strange after so much time spent in a forest. The field was barren as winter had inserted itself across the land. But the body was visible, wedged against ridged and furrowed ground.
As she neared, she winced. A young girl, dark hair, her neck slit.
“That’s Ha Eun Lee,” said John, grim. “Look,” he said. She glanced down as he quickly scrolled through his phone.
“One of the sixteen names?” she asked.
He nodded, growling now. “I guess I know why they called us.”
The two of them approached the young girl. Whoever had cut her throat had done so ear to ear. Practiced. One didn’t cut so deeply, through sinew and muscle and flesh, in a single stroke, if they hadn’t practiced.
A farmer? A butcher? Or… a slow chill settled on Adele—perhaps a seasoned murderer. Another international student—another victim far from family or friends. More phone calls would eventually be made. More weeping on the other end. More expectation.
But Adele didn’t need any more expectation. She’d given her word to the Johnsons. She’d promised. This had to end. It had to end now. Again, she shivered, considering the way the kidnapper—now killer—played with his victims. Considering the way he tortured them, abused them.
Adele had to close her eyes, staving off the sudden surge of anxiety and urgency. Each second wasted was another broken bone. Each minute dawdled was another laceration, another minute of agony.
She shook her head, crouching in the field, her feet strained against the ridged, frosted ground.
“Why is the body all the way out here?” she murmured.
John stooped next to her, hands on his knees.
She caught the BKA agents glancing toward them, frowning. Agent Marshall wasn’t there—she’d chaperoned for a few hours on the first day, but Adele was starting to wonder if perhaps even their babysitter had been called away from helping them.
The timer was ticking. Other agencies were going to keep getting involved. This was going to turn into a mess if she didn’t clean it up soon. But already, they had a body. A murder.
“I guess our kidnapper is a killer after all,” Adele murmured.
“Wasn’t much doubt of that,” John said. He trailed off, still flicking through his phone. Then his thumb paused, pressed against the glass screen. His tone took on an edge. “Adele,” John said, his voice barely louder than a whisper.
“Yes?”
He swallowed. “Ha Eun, our friend here, she went missing three years ago.”
Adele turned sharply, glancing at John. She turned back to the corpse, her eyes flitting along the half-open eyes staring lifelessly at the sky down to the bruises and cuts along her body. Ha Eun was also half naked as the first girl had been. Only a thin layer for a T-shirt and boxers.
Adele felt a spasm of rage pulse in her chest. Through tight lips, she said, “She would have frozen if she tried to escape. You think that’s what happened here?”
“All I can tell is she’s been through hell. Look at her fingernails.”
Adele glanced and winced. Two of them had been ripped off completely. One of the fingers, the pinkie, was missing a knuckle. Though it seemed
an old, healed wound.
She looked away in disgust and got back to her feet, shaking her head. Her eyes now scanned the ground, looking for a clue. Anything.
Adele noticed something and her hand darted forward. A piece of string. Blue. She hesitated, frowning, but then glanced toward the BKA agents. She held up the single piece of thread and realized it was an exact match for their uniforms.
She tossed it away in disgust, allowing it to drift on the breeze.
“You think they’d be more careful with the crime scene,” she muttered.
John, though, was still staring at his phone. He looked up, his eyes burning. “Adele, did you hear me? Three years. She’s been in this maniac’s grip for the last three years. She went missing, much like Amanda. Backpacking with friends. Disappeared, not in the summer, but the spring.”
Adele shook her head. “You don’t think it could be a coincidence? Maybe it has nothing to do with Amanda?”
“Come on,” John grunted, shaking his head. “That’s stupid. Of course it does. What are the odds?”
Adele shrugged. “She has some of the same bruisings, beatings. She’s in a similar state of undress. That wasn’t something the news picked up on. I mean… it’s probably our same guy. Which just means one thing, if he’s been active for at least three years…”
She trailed off. John looked down at her, and said, “This confirms it. He’s been active longer. We didn’t look at cases more than three years old. But Ha Eun—what are the odds she’s his first victim?”
“There will be more missing people, then,” Adele said. “Not all of them will tie to our kidnapper…” she swallowed, “killer. But some of them might. We need to check the records further back.”
“Did you see her wrists?” John said, his voice a soft growl.
Adele returned her attention, and winced. The girl’s small, slender wrists had deep, painful rashes around them. “Bound with rope,” she said. “He tortures them.”
“We’re going to have to check five years back.”
“Make it ten, to be safe,” Adele said.
They fell silent for a moment, and Adele felt a cold shiver across her shoulders.
“You think that’s possible?” John murmured. “Our killer has been operating in the forests for a decade? With no one finding out?”
“I think anything’s possible. Just do it, all right, I’ll help. But look, give me a second, I need to make a call.”
John muttered darkly to himself, standing in the middle of the crime scene, ignoring the looks from the BKA agents.
Adele moved, stepping out of the crime scene once more, a trembling hand rooting her phone from her pocket.
She walked stiff backed, straight postured, until she reached their parked car. And then she started trembling all over. She wanted to collapse. She stared at her phone, wondering who she would call.
Call someone—why had that seemed the thing to do? She wasn’t a child—she couldn’t run to someone for help when things got tough.
Still, she could feel tears threatening to spill from her eyes. That girl had been tortured. For three years. Dropped dead in a field. Why? Because Amanda had escaped. That’s what she had told the trucker. People were going to be punished, because Amanda had survived.
Adele knew what that was like. People around her died. People around her suffered. Her mother had died. Robert’s health was declining. Her father’s head was who knew where. And yet Adele always survived. Like a rat clinging to a piece of wood on a sinking ship.
They were accusing, harsh thoughts. Not valuable thoughts. And yet, they hounded her. She stood there, trembling, shielded from view from the others by the tinted windows of the car.
She wiped angrily at her face. “Come on, get it together,” she muttered to herself.
She wasn’t helping anyone like this. Pity parties didn’t help. She breathed, inhaling, holding it, then exhaling, trying to calm herself through a breathing exercise.
She could feel Ms. Jayne, as if she were a god, staring down, watching. The timer was ticking, grains of sand sluicing by. The Germans were starting to be less helpful. She knew that eventually they would edge her and John out. And then what? Then, too many hands on the case. Too many bureaucracies. Too much red tape. Everyone would want to do it their way. Everyone would try to interject. Everyone would want to handle their own cases, and then start shielding information. The cynicism would set in. No agency would cooperate. Eventually, the case would collapse. Adele had seen it many times before. The more agencies that got involved, the less likely the case was solved. People just didn’t get along that well.
But in this case, there were still others out there. Others like Ha Eun. Others who could end up in a field, half naked and bloodied. Corpses.
She couldn’t allow it. This was her job. This was what she had been placed on this earth to do. With a shaking hand, she lifted the phone, staring at it. She flipped through the numbers, clicking contacts and throwing her head back in a sigh. She spun through her contacts again, again.
There was no help. Nothing out there could solve it.
And yet, somehow, she found her finger hovering over her father. Sometimes she changed the stored name to Dad, but other times, back to The Sergeant. Today it was the latter.
She clicked his number and started a video call. For a moment, she thought to hang up. He needed to sleep after the last night. But after the second ring, the phone vibrated.
Her father’s face appeared. He was sitting at a table.
“Dad?” she said.
He blinked a few times, his eyes bloodshot. His head hung low, even in the frame of the video.
“Adele,” he said.
The Sergeant lowered something with his other hand, and Adele realized he’d been eating two strips of bacon gripped in one hand dripping with grease.
“You’re awake?” she said.
“It’s nearly ten AM,” he said. “Course I’m awake.” Another bite from the bacon.
“I heard you were out all night last night,” she said.
“Yes, well, it didn’t pay off. I’ll be out there again in an hour. Just gotta finish breakfast and then drive over.”
Adele swallowed. “All right,” she said. Her fingers trembled for a moment, but she gripped the phone, staring at the screen, wondering why she’d called to begin with. “Take care of yourself.”
He didn’t reply. Took another bite of the greasy strips of meat.
“How did the search go?” she said.
“Like I said, nothing,” he replied, curtly. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard a note of anger in his tone.
“Yeah,” she said, gently, “well, it was still very good of you to try.”
He munched on another strip of bacon, folding it into his mouth, then grunted, flecks of grease speckling the camera on his end. Angrily he wiped at the screen with a finger, only smudging the streak of opaque droplets. “Trying isn’t that useful.” He grunted.
Adele could feel her own frustration mounting. Why did he make it so difficult to be nice to him?
“You didn’t see anything? Meet anyone? Nothing out of the ordinary?”
Her father shook his head dismissively, but then hesitated.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing, not really. I did meet a nice, pleasant, older couple. About my age, maybe even older. They were just living off-grid. Have their own farm and everything. Sustainable living. Honestly, got me thinking.”
“Right, so you met an older couple?”
“Yeah, it’s nothing. They’re very kind. Very nice. They have nothing to do with it. But like I said, it got me thinking. I,” he swallowed, “I’m thinking, maybe it might be smart for me to move out into the woods or something. I’ve always liked hunting and fishing. I don’t know. Maybe it’s time I sold the house.”
Adele stared. “What brought this on?”
“You know what, forget about it. I’m just tired. How about you? Did you find anything? What�
��s new with the case?”
Adele hesitated, glancing along the hood of her vehicle toward the crime scene, then turning back, staring out across the empty fields again.
“It’s not good,” she said. “We found a body. One of the missing people. They’d been gone for three years,” she said. “She just turned up now.”
Her father stared at her. “What do you mean she just turned up now?”
“I mean, whoever this guy is, he’s a sick fuck.”
“Language!”
“Yes. Well, he is. Had this girl locked up somewhere. Her wrists bound. Rope burns. Scars upon scars. He’s had her tied up for years. Tortured too. Just left her in the middle of the field, throat slit. She wasn’t killed here. But he brought her here. I think he wanted us to find the body. He’s taunting us.”
Her father’s face darkened on the other end of the line. “Another one dead?”
“Another? She’s the first victim…”
“Oh.” He cleared his throat and shook his head. “Yes, of course.”
“Yeah, well, there’s nothing we can—”
“I search all night, find nothing, and then someone ends up dead in the morning. Again. I fail, and they die. Every time.” His voice warbled, and for a moment, it didn’t really feel like he was speaking to her, more like he was speaking his own thoughts out loud. She saw, for a brief instance, a glimpse into her father’s mind. And it troubled her. She could sense rage, hurt, pain.
His voice was shaking now. “Adele, I’m going to have to call you back. Have a good day.”
“Dad, it’s not—”
Before she could finish, her father hung up.
Adele stood trembling, cold, but also exhausted against her car. She could hear quiet murmurs from the investigators in the crime scene behind her. She could hear the swish of the wind across the open fields and the frozen ground.
She could hear the strain in a memory of Ms. Jayne’s voice. The other agencies were going to want to get involved soon. Ha Eun had been an international student as well. Eventually, the bureaucracies would take over. And it would be too late to help anyone. Failure ended in bodies. And so, for Adele, failure couldn’t be an option.